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More "Foible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which had become inveterate, was to explain states of being by phrases. These not only explained, they seemed to condone; and to her there's no doubt, they accounted for everything. Mr. William Chevenix, aware of her foible, did not scruple to turn it to his ends when putting before her Sanchia's case. "You see, Aunt, one rather admires her loyalty to the chap. He was precious miserable, and she pitied him. Well, we know what comes of that, don't we? It turns to liking, and gratitude, and all those swimmy ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... and contempt of others. He chooses what is physically the shortest line in preference to the line of least resistance. He makes up for his want of light by his superiority in weight. Social adaptability is not his foible. He accepts the conventionality of his class and wears it as an impenetrable armour. Out of his own class he may sometimes appear less conventional than the American, simply because the latter is quick to adopt the manners of a new ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... of approval from the gray heads, Daddy was soon off at a tangent in playful fancy, hitting off a foible or "celebrating truth and justice" in one of the unconscious epigrams which it is sought herein to preserve, even when having occasionally to hammer them into shape, for, while Daddy was almost unerring in rhyme, his rhythm, ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... been putting my things to rights to go off to-morrow. Though I always wonder why it should be so, I feel a dislike to order and to task-work of all kinds—a predominating foible in my disposition. I do not mean that it influences me in morals; for even in youth I had a disgust at gross irregularities of any kind, and such as I ran into were more from compliance with others and a sort of false shame, than ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... came to the "Packhorse" now and then; but Mercy protected her husband's heart from pain. She was kind, and even pitiful; but so discreet and resolute, and contrived to draw the line so clearly between her husband and her old sweetheart, that Griffith's foible could not burn him, for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... of praise is in some instances a ridiculous, and in others a mischievous passion; that to it we owe the breed of coquettes and coxcombs, and, a more serious evil, the noxious race of heroes and conquerors. We too are ready, when it appears in the shape of vanity, to smile at it as a foible, or in that of false glory, to condemn it as a crime. But all these are only its perversions; and on account of them to contend against its true forms, and its legitimate exercise, were to give into the very error which you formerly yourself condemned, of arguing against the use ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... the gout, Messer Bartolommeo's felicity was far from perfect: it was embittered by the contents of certain papers that lay before him, consisting chiefly of a correspondence between himself and Politian. It was a human foible at that period (incredible as it may seem) to recite quarrels, and favour scholarly visitors with the communication of an entire and lengthy correspondence; and this was neither the first nor the second, time that Scala had asked the candid ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... gratification they could have commanded would have been for him but a whet. If he had a weak side it was his own astuteness: he could not always see how unutterably foolish a man might be if he were let alone. Another foible he had—intellectual appreciation of beauty pushed to fainting-point. His senses were so straitly tied to his brains that to pluck at one was to thrill the other. Made on a small scale, he was pretty rather than handsome, had quiet watchful eyes, a smiling mouth, very little hands and ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... neatness was more like a lady's boudoir than the workshop of a very busy man. Ohne Hast, ohne Rast, might have been his motto. He had much belief in the future of English land, and was not, I think, at all exempt from the great English landlord's foible of adding field to field. In the long period of agricultural depression it was easy for a rich man to do so. 'In my experience,' he used to say, 'in nine cases out of ten it is Naboth who comes to Ahab and begs him to buy his vineyard.' Certainly no ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... invariable effect of vanity. You cannot so disguise it, but that it will be detected, and cover you with disgrace. There is no foible more common than this, and there is none more ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... enthusiasm with which this old officer spoke of his profession, and the high point of view in which he placed it, increased our hero's desire to serve a campaign abroad. Good sense, politeness, and experience of the world preserved Count O'Halloran from that foible with which old officers are commonly reproached, of talking continually of their own military exploits. Though retired from the world, he had contrived, by reading the best books, and corresponding with persons of good information, to keep up with the current of modern affairs; ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... same manner Berni travestied the courtly pastoral of vernacular writers in his realistic pictures of village love. But though the satirist might find ample scope for his wit in anatomizing the foible of the day, fashionable society continued none the less to encourage the exquisite inanity, and to be flattered by the elegant obscurity, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... composition is pride, which, according to the doctrine of some, is the universal passion. There are others who consider it as the foible of great minds; and others again who will have it to be the very foundation of greatness; and perhaps it may of that greatness which we have endeavoured to expose in many parts of these works; but to real greatness, which is the union of a good heart with a good head, it is almost diametrically ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... the morning was suddenly transformed, and fearing an evil thing had indeed befallen the other, he turned to the terrace and entered the breakfast-room from it. The time was now five minutes to nine, and as unfailing punctuality had ever been a foible of Sir Walter, his guests usually respected it. Most of them were already assembled, and Mary May, who was just stepping into the garden, asked Henry if ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... looked rich from the extreme distinction of its fashion, and if it is permissible to look for expression in the arrangement of stuffs, surely those numerous straight folds invested her with a great dignity. There may have been some lingering trace of the indelible feminine foible in the minute care bestowed upon her hand and foot; yet, if she allowed them to be seen with some pleasure, it would have tasked the utmost malice of a rival to discover any affectation in her gestures, so natural did they seem, so much ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... and—of reading. She reads incessantly and enormously; and, when she gets tired, she goes to bed. That's all there is about it. Lord! I wish I could. But, when I get tired, I have to go and make another speech. They think the American Ambassador has omniscience for a foible and oratory ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... careful to let the light and worth of the rest of his character in upon the company, so that they should go away with something of the impression that we have of him; instead of suffering them to dwell only upon this fault or foible that was commented upon, which was as nothing against him in our hearts—mere fringe to the character, which we were accustomed to, and rather liked than otherwise, if the truth ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... and ambition, we have been more indulgent to vanity than our proud readers will approve. We hope, however, not to be misunderstood; we hope that we shall not appear to be admirers of that mean and ridiculous foible, which is anxiously concealed by all who have any desire to obtain esteem. We cannot, however, avoid thinking it is a contradiction to inspire young people with a wish to excel, and at the same time to insist ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... told her; there was no need for you to write or to trouble yourself in any way. I am afraid my mother is rather exacting; it is a Blake foible.' He smiled as he spoke, and there was no special meaning in his tone; he seemed to take it as a matter of course that Audrey's visits to the Cottage had ceased. 'It will be all right,' he said, as he put the letter in his breast-pocket; and then he stopped and called some boy ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... letter-writer, and habitually think of the uncertainty as to who may be the reader of anything that I write. It is my fate, as a writer of history, to have before me letters never intended for my eyes, and this has aggravated my foible, and makes me a wretched correspondent. I should like very much to write letters gracefully and easily, but I can't, because it is contrary to my nature." "I have got," he writes so early as 1873, "to shrink from the use of the pen; to ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... lady who was presumed to be the rival of Mrs Fitzherbert, and had been rash enough even to make some remarks on Mrs Fitzherbert's en bon point, a matter of course never to be forgiven by a belle. This extended to a "declining love" between him and the Prince, whose foible was a horror of growing corpulent, and whom Brummell therefore denominated "Big Ben," the nickname of a gigantic porter at Carlton House; adding the sting of calling Mrs Fitzherbert Benina. Moore, in one of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... one had heard him. The men moved on and struck into the rutted track leading from the batteries to camp. He turned and followed them in a brown study. Ever since Badajoz, siege operations had been Sergeant Wilkes's foible. His youngsters played upon it, drawing him into discussions over the camp-fire, and winking one to another as he expounded and illustrated, using bits of stick to represent parallels, traverses, rampart and glacis, scarp and counterscarp. But he had mastered something ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... has given me time to form a correct judgment of you—and at the very time that my husband was trying to discover some foible in you he might make use of, or what evil passions he might rouse in you, I looked in your heart and discerned that it still contained good feelings which eventually may ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... Eleanor's cheeks only relieved her white drapery to perfection; and her beautiful hair and faultless figure harmonized with flowing folds and soft laces which can do so much for outlines that are not soft. Eleanor was not without a consciousness of this; nevertheless, vanity was not her foible; and her state of mind was anything but enviable when she left the dressing-room for the gallery. But Mr. Carlisle was there, to meet her and her mood too; and Eleanor found herself taken in hand at once. He had a way of mixing affection with ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... while his friends were admiring the "greatness of his behavior" at the approach of death, he may have had a twinkling hope of immortality. Mens cujusque is est quisque, said his chosen motto; and, as he had stamped his mind with every crook and foible in the pages of the Diary, he might feel that what he left behind him was indeed himself. There is perhaps no other instance so remarkable of the desire of man for publicity and an enduring name. The greatness of his ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... all forces to bear in the right way—a man of consummate adroitness, to sail in torpedo-sown waters without exciting an explosion, though conducting wires of local prejudice, class sensitiveness, and personal foible on every hand led straight down to magazines of wrath which might shatter the cause in a moment—a man having resources of his own to such an extent that he could supplement from himself what was wanting in others—always awake, though others might want ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... generally conceded, in spite of prejudices, that the Irish, of all peoples, had been preeminently moral and Christian. No one has dared accuse them of open vice, however they may have been accused of folly. Intemperance is the great foible flung at them by many who, careful to conceal their own failings, are ever, ready to "cast the first stone" at them. It would be well for them to ponder over the rebuke of the Saviour to the accusers of the woman taken in adultery; when perhaps they may think twice ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... waiting, even at what is called the best, the Bauer-Gruenwald, say, or the Pilsen, is leisurely. Add to this that the guests receive no welcome, partly because, all the places being understaffed, no one can be spared for that friendly office, and partly because politeness is not a Venetian foible. An immense interval then elapses before the lista, or bill of fare, is brought, partly because there is no waiter disengaged and partly because there seems to be a law in Venetian restaurants that one lista shall suffice for ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... fail. Then, more than ever, did he entertain and plan new schemes, as if to persuade himself that he had unlimited time before him in which to execute them. His flatterers knew how to play upon his weakness, and they never failed to do so. Perhaps this foible explains the influence which Doctor Jameson undoubtedly exercised upon the mind of Rhodes. He believed himself to be in safety whenever Jameson was about him. And so in a certain sense he was, because, with all his faults, ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... It was the foible of Harvey to wish to conceal the humble avocation of his father: this forms a perpetual source of the bitterness or the pleasantry of Nash, who, indeed, calls his pamphlet "a full answer to the eldest son of the halter maker," which, he says, "is ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... of paper. Each one wants a certificate showing that he has contributed to my comfort and entertainment, and lastly comes the nawab himself and his bosom friend, the hospital doctor, to bid me farewell and request the same favor. This certificate-foible is one of the greatest bores in India; almost every native who performs any service for a Sahib, whether in the capacity of a mere waiter at a native hotel, or as retainer of some wealthy nabob—and not infrequently the nabob himself, if a government official—wants ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the third time you have spoken about her figure to-day," said Helen, irritably. "What on earth can you see in it?" for Mrs. Romer, who was slight almost to angularity, was, as all thin women are, openly indignant at the masculine foible for more flowing outlines, which was displayed with greater candour than discretion ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... prosper you!" The other gave him a crownpiece, and desired him to keep it for his sake. Had he given him a hundred crowns they would have been nothing to the honied words of the former. In truth, the leading foible of Hodgkinson through life, was vanity—the great taproot of all his irregularities and errors. He was quite agog to learn who those two men might be: he asked, but no one knew them—they were strangers. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... and have played a better party game, it is perhaps fortunate for the country, and certainly happy for his own reputation, that his virtues thus predominated over his talents. The most remarkable foible of the late King was his passion for speechifying, and I have recorded some of his curious exhibitions in this way. He had considerable facility in expressing himself, but what he said was generally useless or improper. He never ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... hurt you out of sheer clumsiness." His chin and throat were covered with blood, now; blood enough to satisfy the most indignant consumer. The moment the measure was set again, Winfree lunged, trying to slip his blade beneath MacHenery's guard to strike his arm. His foible met the flash of the other man's forte, and his blade bounced aside ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... glaring faults, some of them of a sort not to have been expected in him. Vanity, the common weakness of small minds, was the most disfiguring foible of this great one. He had not the simplicity which becomes greatness so well. He could give himself theatrical airs, strike attitudes, and dart stage lightnings from his eyes; yet he was formidable even in his affectations. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... his feelings been more generous and ardent, had his moral sense been less shallow, he might have made important contributions to literature. As it was, to be a man of the world was his trade, to be a writer was only an admirable foible. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... But wise things require to be done wisely: he sometimes carried this system so far as to discourage his client too much. It is a fine thing to make your client think his case the weaker of the two, and then win it for him easily; that gratifies your own foible, professional vanity. But suppose, with your discouraging him so, he flings up or compromises a winning case? Suppose he takes the huff and goes to some other lawyer, who will warm him with hopes instead of cooling him with a one-sided and hostile ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... aware, Mrs. Creighton, that false taste is always a very expensive foible," said Mr. Wyllys; "for it looks upon ornament and improvement as the same thing. My neighbour, Mr. Taylor, certainly has as much of that spirit as any man I ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... the intemperate spirit exhibited, which destroyed the effect of the shrewd and just comments often appearing in "Home as Found." This was full as much impaired by the display of personal weaknesses. Cooper's foible about descent he could not help exposing. No thoughtful man denies the desirability of honorable lineage, or undervalues the possession of it; but not for the reasons for which the novelist regarded ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... There lies my foible, I confess; no fortifications, no courage, conduct, nor vigilancy, can pretend to defend a place where the cruelty of the governor forces ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... a fantastic world, Bohun, and nothing is impossible for it. Suppose he were to select some one, some weak and irritable and sentimental and disappointed man, some one whose every foible and weakness he knew, suppose he were to place himself near him and so irritate and confuse and madden him that at last one day, in a fury of rage and despair, that man were to do for him what he is too proud to do for himself! Think of the excitement, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... boards over the dividing screen, so that the chancel was entirely concealed from the church; and no one ever thought of setting foot there till Eustacie, whose Catholic reverence was indestructible, even when she was only half sure that it was not worse than a foible, had stolen down thither, grieved at its utter desolation, and with fond and careful hands had cleansed it, and amended the ruin so far as she might. She had no other place where she was sure of being uninterrupted; ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... up, and waited with breathless anxiety. We stood face to face, more like two men about to engage in deadly duel than a pair of amateurs with blunt foils. My antagonist was evidently a practised swordsman. I could see that as he came to guard. As for myself, the small-sword exercise had been a foible of my college days, and for years I had not met my match at it; but just then ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... The prevailing foible of a nation is generally to be found in the proverbs of the country and of those adjacent. The Genevese appear to have the credit of excelling the Swiss generally: they say here, "Il faut trois Juifs pour faire un Baslois, et trois Baslois ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... he replied promptly, tucking them under his chair. "These experiments in costume are a foible with me." ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... put in a plea for this pursuit, as about the least costly foible to which those who can afford to indulge in foibles can devote themselves, one might descant on certain auxiliary advantages—as, that it is not apt to bring its votaries into low company; that it offends no one, and is not likely to foster actions of ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... inexplicable. Yet Louis de Soyecourt could see that not one of these folk was blind to his or her yoke-fellow's frailty, but that, beside this something very precious to which they had attained, and he had never attained, a man's foible, or a woman's defect, dwindled into insignificance. Here, then, were people who, after five years' consortment,—consciously defiant of time's corrosion, of the guttering-out of desire, of the ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... shrewd foreigner as saying of Americans that, "Whatever they say has a little the air of a speech," he proceeds to speculate whether "the American forest has refreshed some weeds of old Pictish barbarism just ready to die out?" He finds the foible especially of American youth to be—pretension; and remarks, suggestively, that we talk much about the key of the age, but "the key to all ages is imbecility!" He cannot reconcile himself to the mania for going abroad. "There is a restlessness in our people ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... his lugubrious accents. An ugly saint is an unmixed calamity to jolly fellows; but to be lord and master, and possessor, of a beautiful saint, was not without its piquant charm. His jealousy was dormant, not extinct; and Kate's piety tickled that foible, not wounded it. He found himself the rival of heaven,—and the successful rival; for, let her be ever so strict, ever so devout, she must give her husband many delights she could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... at all, with a soul centred on sport. His second son, Anthony, between five and six, was large and robust, like his father. Not having been polished at that time, it is hard to say what sort of gem Tony was. When engaged in mischief—his besetting foible—his eyes shone like carbuncles with unholy light. He was the plague of the family. Of course, therefore, he was ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... of pseudos. After all, it was nothing for an illiterate fool like you to take such a fancy into his head, and walk about with his chin in the air, aping the gait and dress and expression of his supposed model: even the Epirot king Pyrrhus, remarkable man that he was in other respects, had the same foible, and was persuaded by his flatterers that he was like Alexander, Alexander the Great, that is. In point of fact, I have seen Pyrrhus's portrait, and the two—to borrow a musical phrase— are about as much like one another as bass and treble; and yet he was convinced he was the image of Alexander. ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... evil; and all evils were about of equal magnitude. Besides, in attacking an evil or an abuse, he did not fail to attack the perpetrator or upholder of it also, and that, too, with a strength of invective, or of cutting sarcasm, which brought every foible, and weakness of his, and even those of his father before him, vividly into view. This was the baleful secret of his strength as an assailant; but this, too, caused him to be regarded by his victims ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... James's presence in Manchester was not accidental. Far from abandoning the case, as Julius supposed, he had by some means of his own successfully run the missing girl to earth. The only thing that puzzled Tommy was the reason for all this secrecy. He concluded that it was a foible of the legal mind. ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... child's foible. I could see, as I talked to her, that her thoughts were elsewhere (as yours, my friend, have been absent once or twice to-night). To know the secret of Masonry was the wretched child's mad desire. With a thousand wiles, smiles, caresses, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... he had his weak points; but in speaking of these, I must not be understood as referring to his obstinacy: which was one of his strong points—"assurement ce n' etait pas sa foible." When I mention his weakness I have allusion to a bizarre old-womanish superstition which beset him. He was great in dreams, portents, et id genus omne of rigmarole. He was excessively punctilious, too, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... suddenly to be endowed with speech, he would prate interminably, and still about himself; when we had friends, we should be forced to lock him in a garret; and what with his whining jealousies and his foible for falsehood, in a year's time he would have gone far to weary out our love. I was about to compare him to Sir Willoughby Patterne,[7] but the Patternes have a manlier sense of their own merits; and the parallel, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... son of Roussillon, ever since he was a helpless child. A succession of complacent tutors would by no means destroy the illusion; and it is from their hands that Shakspeare receives him, while yet in his minority. An overweening pride of birth is Bertram's great foible. To cure him of this, Shakspeare sends him to the wars, that he may win fame for himself, and thus exchange a shadow for a reality. There the great dignity that his valor acquired for him places him on an equality with any one of his ancestors, and he is no longer beholden to them alone for the ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... see," she dried her eyes on a handkerchief of costliest lace, "you see my—that is, the Duchess, is of such a romantic temperament, so enamoured of rural scenes, idyllic meadows, pretty shepherdesses, and the like—all the court makes merry at her foible. She thought to astonish Paris to-night by a lavish display of sweet simplicity—did Monsieur see it? That big dark place back there, behind the glass partition, was arranged as a meadow, with a stream winding through it, and rocks ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... first encounter with the man, after his long expiation had ended, willing to add at least a little self-reproach to his suffering. I suppose, as nearly as I can analyse my mood, I must have been expecting, in spite of all reason and experience, that his anguish would have wrung that foible out of him, and left him strong where it had found him weak. Tragedy befalls the light and foolish as well as the wise and weighty natures, but it does not render them wise and weighty; I had often made this sage reflection, ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... James Bisset's foible. Of some subjects, such as buttling, carpentry, and mending bicycles, it was practical; of others, such as shooting, gardening, and motoring, it was more theoretical. To Sir Reginald and my lady he was quite indispensable, for he could repair almost anything, knew his ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... king and court. Let me die, but I fear they have found my foible, and will turn me into ridicule. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... you to be on your guard against that intellectual foible, which I believe has held me back in a region of sadness and solitude that I need not have ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... could not help saying to Mrs. Bretton. That lady had her own "comfort" and nonpareil on a much larger scale, and, for the moment, absent; so she sympathised with his foible. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... fame most congenial to Borrow's strange nature. Dinners, receptions, and the like caused him to despise those who found pleasure in such "crazy admiration for what they called gentility." It was his foible, as much as "gentility nonsense" was theirs, to find pleasure in the role of the mysterious stranger, who by a word could change a disdainful gypsy into a fawning, awe- stricken slave. Fame to satisfy George Borrow must carry with it something ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... than when he had not come by a drop of usquebaugh. It was, we remarked, only on such occasions that Donald talked with an air of importance of the family of MacLeish; and we had no title to be scrupulous in censuring a foible, the consequences of which were confined within such ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... shall hear. I was to dine the other day at a great Nabob's that must be nameless, who, between ourselves, is strongly suspected of—being very rich, that's all. John, my valet, who knows my foible, cautioned me, while he was dressing me, as he usually does where he thinks there's a danger of my committing a lapsus, to take care in my conversation how I made any allusion direct or indirect to presents—you understand me? I set out double charged ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... Genoises peuvent venir y mettre echelle a terre. Mais comme tout le monde sait cela, je m'abstiens d'en parler. Cependant il m'a semble que du cote de la terre, vers l'eglise qui est dans le voisinage de la porte, a l'extremite du havre, il y a un endroit foible. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... juries. He became a very profound lawyer, always mastering the learning of the case, but never leaning too much upon authorities. Charles Emerson's beautiful phrase in his epitaph upon Professor Ashmun, "Books were his helpers, never his masters," was most aptly applied to Thomas. If he had any foible which affected at all his usefulness or success in life it was an impatience of authority, whether it were the authority of a great reputation, or of party, or of public sentiment, or of the established and settled opinions of mankind. He went on the Supreme Bench ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... him with politic honours. He took his guest by his foible for pageantry, all the easier as it was a foible of his own; and Charles walked right out of prison into much the same atmosphere of trumpeting and bell-ringing as he had left behind when he went in. Fifteen days after his deliverance he was married ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tanned fellow, nearly forty—eldest of the party—whom the others used to guy discreetly, because you couldn't mention a place anywhere on the known globe, except the far north, which he had not personally inspected. But for this foible, as the untravelled considered it, he was well liked and a little feared—except by the Boy, who liked him "first-rate," and feared him not at all. They had promptly adopted each other before they discovered that it was necessary to have one or more "pardners." It seemed, from ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... WILLIAM is a rubber—not of whist, bien entendu, but of men. In build WILLIAM is pear-shaped, the upper part of him, where you would expect to find the stalk, broadening out into a perpetual smile. He has lived in the Baths twenty-three years, and yet his gaiety is not eclipsed. If he has a foible it is his belief that he thoroughly understands London and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... This oration is graceful and strong, and possesses sufficient and appropriate eloquence. It is chiefly interesting, however, from the reserve and self-control, dictated by a nice sense of fitness, which it exhibited. Omniscience was not Mr. Webster's foible. He never was guilty of Lord Brougham's weakness of seeking to prove himself master of universal knowledge. In delivering an address on science and invention, there was a strong temptation to an orator like Mr. ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... best of living creatures (as so many of us are), but he has one detestable foible—he always wants to read something aloud. Now, reading aloud is a very special gift. Few men have it, and even of those few there are some who do not force it upon their friends; the rest have it not, and Leeson ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... is explained to him, his agency has been very efficacious. He has a great deal of sound genius, is well remarked by the King, and rising in popularity. He has nothing against him, but the suspicion of republican principles. I think he will one day be of the ministry. His foible is, a canine appetite for popularity and fame; but he will get above this. The Count de Vergennes is ill. The possibility of his recovery, renders it dangerous for us to express a doubt of it; but he is in danger. He is a great minister in European affairs, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... there at that particular instant. There was no blinking the fact that Ralston had enjoyed Paul's discomfiture, and his talk of the previous night came back to mind—the fun he had made of the Isolated Soul; his good-humoured allowance for the one foible in the character of a lady whom he had known from childhood, and for whom he professed both affection and esteem. It matters not how impossible a suggestion of this kind may seem to a lover's mind. His ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... you are, search into the characters of men; find out, if possible, their foible, their governing; passion, or their particular merit; take them on their weak side, and you will generally succeed: their prevailing vanity you may readily discover, by observing; their favourite topic of conversation, for every one talks most of what he would ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... hear with his own ears, how all who knew Roland loved and honored him,—except his son. Then I took him round the ruins (still not suffering him to enter the house); for those ruins are the key to Roland's character,—seeing them, one sees the pathos in his poor foible of family pride. There, you distinguish it from the insolent boasts of the prosperous, and feel that it is little more than the pious reverence to the dead, "the tender culture of the tomb." We sat down on heaps of mouldering stone, and it was there that I explained ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... degree, and if they possess at the same time the art of telling the humorous story about themselves, they become very popular. This popularity accounts for a good deal of seeming modesty and humorous self-depiction; it is a sort of recompense for the self-confessed foible and weakness; it is a way of seeking the good opinion and applause of others and is sometimes sought to a ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... annoyed. Wellingsford was my little world. I knew everybody in it. I had grown to regard myself as the repository of all its gossip. The fraction of it that I retailed was a matter of calculated discretion. I made a little hobby—it was a foible, a vanity, what you will—of my omniscience. I knew months ahead the dates of the arrivals of young Wellingsfordians in this world of pain and plenitude. I knew of maidens who were wronged and youths who were jilted; of wives who led their husbands a deuce of a dance, and of wives who ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... them gregarious influences, and all of them contagious—may decide by a shout what years of afterthought may find it hard, or even impossible, to undo. There have been some things in the deportment of the President of late that have suggested to thoughtful men rather the pettish foible of wilfulness than the strength of well-trained and conscientious will. It is by the objects for whose sake the force of volition is called into play that we decide whether it is childish or manly, whether we are to call ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... one of which, "Damnation to the dogfish," gave opportunity to a wag, seated near the piper, to play upon the old man's well known foible by adding, "an' Cawmill o' Glenlyon;" whereupon Duncan, who had by this time taken more whisky than was good for him, rose, and made a rambling speech, in which he returned thanks for the imprecation, adding thereto the hope that never might one of the brood accursed go down ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... attack him suddenly. At the same time the Indians came secretly aboard the English ships with terrible complaints of Spanish cruelty. Berreo was keeping the ancient chiefs of the island in prison, and had the singular foible of amusing himself at intervals by basting their bare limbs with broiling bacon. These considerations determined Raleigh to take the initiative. That same evening he marched his men up the country to the new capital of the island, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... foible is well known to my readers, made me laugh when she said that her genius had told her that I had got myself arrested to be talked about, for reasons which ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... once surprised and charmed with the choice of attitudes in both, I cannot be blind to the defects that stain as well the painting as the scene: there was always what the judges call a dryness, a hardness in the painter, and the same foible now and then discloses itself in the less guarded moments of the player: neither the one nor the other seem to have been perfect masters of the doctrine of lights and shadows, and both are therefore sometimes extravagant, and not always graceful: this happy difference, however, appears ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... what is to come, that even the last generation of discovery is nothing in comparison with the expansion of our knowledge and the enslavement of natural forces which must be looked for in the years on which we enter. Well, we are not sure of that. It has been a foible of many an era to think itself remarkable as a time when "the world's great age begins anew." But let us grant, if you choose, that we are moving into an incomparable age of scientific light and clearness, and ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... with the minute finish of a miniature; it shows how Shakespeare had studied every fold and foible of Mary Fitton's soul. In the third act Cleopatra takes up again the theme of Octavia's appearance, only to run down her rival, and so salve her wounded vanity and cheat her heart to hope. The messenger, too, who lends himself to her ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Egyptian appealed to Ione's ruling foible—most dexterously had he applied the poisoned dart to her pride. He fancied he had arrested what he hoped, from the shortness of the time she had known Glaucus, was, at most, but an incipient fancy; and hastening to change the subject, he now led ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... the relative respectability of the hair and the scalp, close neighbors, offspring of the same osseous tissue? Turn to baldness and dandruff, and you have your answer. To be bald is no more than a genial jocosity, a harmless foible—but to have dandruff is almost as bad as to have beri-beri. Hence the fact that the hair is in Class I, while the scalp is at the bottom of Class V. So again and again. To break one's collar-bone (Class II) is to be in harmony with the nobility and ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... is that we see, on almost every page, contradictory teachings and conflicting methods of salvation. This, of course, is by no means fatal to it in the estimation of Hindus, with whom consistency has never been a foible, and in the eyes of whom two mutually contradictory teachings can rest peacefully ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... the advent of a London pedler was a great and pleasant event at the Manor House. Katherine had that delightful and excusable womanly foible, a love of fine clothing; and shops for its sale were very rare, even in towns of considerable size. It was from packmen and hawkers that fine ladies bought their laces and ribbons and gloves; their precious toilet and hair pins, ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... expectations, and very amusing qualifications. Horace is a strange composition of all the good-natured whimsicalities of human nature, happily blended together without any very conspicuous counteracting foible. Facetious, lively, and poetical, the cream of every thing that is agreeable, society cannot be dull if Horace lends his presence. His imitations of Anacreon, and the soft bard of Erin, have on many occasions puzzled the cognoscenti of Eton. Like Moore too, he both composes ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Englander is bravely free from it, while it is not unknown in Alaska or Japan. From such an over-conscientious conscience, and from its incidents and its counterfeits, there is bred a redundancy of verbal moralising. That was not a foible of Lincoln. The sense of moral obligation underlies his weightier utterances, as the law of gravitation underlies scientific demonstrations,—not ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... none too much wit in her pumpion-pate, observed:—"Did you but know by whom my charms are prized, then, for sure, you would have nought to say of the rest." Her gossip, all agog to hear, for well she knew her foible, answered:—"Madam, it may be as you say, but still, while one knows not who he may be, one cannot alter one's mind so rapidly." Whereupon my Lady Featherbrain:—"Gossip," said she, "'tis not for common talk, but he that I wot of is ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... disinterested abhorrence than any sins against decency. It contained, or was supposed to contain, a broadly ludicrous caricature of one well-known local physician; and an allusion, brief, indeed, and covert, but highly scandalous, to a certain "droll foible" attributed to another personage of much wider celebrity in the scientific world. The victim in the latter case was no longer living; and this circumstance brought upon Sterne a remonstrance from a correspondent, to which he replied in a letter so characteristic in many respects ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... is "one of the unloveliest female portraits ever traced." Mr. Watkinson is the opposite of a ladies' man. Gallantry was never his foible. He hates female Freethinkers with a perfect hatred. He pours out on Harriet Martineau his whole vocabulary of abuse. But it is, after all, difficult to see what he is in such a passion about. Harriet Martineau had no sexual sins, no dubious relations, no skeleton ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... always been Dr. Ellison's foible. In the beginning of the great antislavery agitation, he had exchanged letters (corresponded, he used to say) with John Quincy Adams on the subject of Lovejoy's murder; and he had met several Boston men at the Free Soil Convention in Buffalo in 1848. "A little formal perhaps, ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... the wife of the Lord Lieutenant, who sat at his side, seemed a little startled. She was probably one of the only people present who was not aware of the Duke's foible. ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sit talking about love to each other!" The gentleman was astounded, and could only sit wrapping his toga in silent dismay for the rest of the evening. Thackeray then, as at other similar times, had no idea of giving pain, but when he saw a foible he put his foot upon it, and tried ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... is it, that we make such an ado about it? And what is constancy, that it commands such usurious interest? The one is a foible only in its relations. The other is only thus a virtue. "Fickle as the winds" is our death-seal upon a man; but should we like our winds un-fickle? Would a perpetual Northeaster lay us open to perpetual gratitude? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... which she had she could never be got to own. But if there came a woman with even a semblance of beauty to Castlewood, she was so sure to find out some wrong in her, that my lord, laughing in his jolly way, would often joke with her concerning her foible. Comely servant-maids might come for hire, but none were taken at Castlewood. The housekeeper was old; my lady's own waiting-woman squinted, and was marked with the small-pox; the housemaids and scullion were ordinary country wenches, to whom Lady Castlewood ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Troubadourish "Partant pour la Syrie" of Queen Hortense, are emblematical. Mme. Recamier, although in date all but the contemporary of Mme. Lebrun, is, in her position of mistress of a salon, essentially the impersonation of a foible peculiar to the present day; she typifies the class of women who, in Paris, are absolutely absorbed by the thought of their salons, for whom to receive is to live, and who are ready to expire at the notion of any celebrity not being ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... was the consistent and unflinching supporter of religious liberty and constitutional law. The battle of Heiliger Lee and the capture of Mons were his most signal triumphs, but the fruits of both were annihilated by subsequent disaster. His headlong courage was his chief foible. The French accused him of losing the battle of Moncontour by his impatience to engage; yet they acknowledged that to his masterly conduct it was owing that their retreat was effected in so successful, and even so brilliant a manner. He was censured for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... vois, victimes du genie, Au foible prix d'un eclat passager, Vivre isoles, sans jouir de la vie! Vingt ans d'ennuis pour ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... thinking anyway. His hair was thinning rapidly at the top, as if his brain was struggling to get as near as possible to the realities of things. He prided himself on having no fads. Few men are without some foible or hobby; Crowl felt almost lonely at times in his superiority. He was a Vegetarian, a Secularist, a Blue Ribbonite, a Republican, and an Anti-tobacconist. Meat was a fad. Drink was a fad. Religion was a fad. Monarchy was a fad. Tobacco was a fad. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... knew his father's foible, answered, that the cause of his surprise did not lie where Sir Robert apprehended, but that he only wondered they should think of attacking a house where there were so many servants, and where a signal to the neighbouring tenants could call in such strong assistance; and added, that he ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that I dare to say it, all my life will I live in your presence, and trust to your sympathy and truth—and feel that I am false to love if I do not. If there were anything in my heart so foul that I feared to speak of it, I should give you that first, as the sacrifice of love; or any vanity or foible—such things are really hardest to have others know, so great is ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... contradictions and falsities and hypocrisies which come every morning and go every night,—all these would soon have been to you—oh! I'm afraid they'd have been as big as a herd of buffalo! There would have been a bull fight for every foible." ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... his own, where they probably would have been readily adopted, as being so much in their own way. But I never found that he used the least endeavour to make himself master of any one. This kind of indifference is indeed the characteristic foible of his nation. Europeans have visited them at times for these ten years past, yet we could not discover the slightest trace of any attempt to profit by this intercourse, nor have they hitherto copied after us in any one thing. We are not, therefore, to expert that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... He had a native gift for administration, being tolerant both of opinions and conduct, because he felt himself able to overrule them, and was free from the irritations of conscious feebleness. He smiled pleasantly at the foible of a taste which he did not share—at floriculture or antiquarianism for example, which were much in vogue among his fellow-clergyman in the diocese: for himself, he preferred following the history of a campaign, or divining from his knowledge of Nesselrode's motives what would have been his conduct ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... with all his faults, inseparable it may be from the society into which he had been thrown, was not vicious. Loving and beloved, he existed but as the object of woman's regard. This foible he indulged not farther. But many a bright eye waxed dim,—many a fond heart was withered, in the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... circulating library into Scotland, and among his other enterprises was an unsuccessful attempt to establish a theatre in Edin. On the whole his life was a happy and successful one, and he had the advantage of a cheerful, sanguine, and contented spirit. His foible was ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... myself in Bell's little shop on the quay. {9} You know the man by report at least; he is more a collector than a bookseller, though poor; and I verily believe that he would sell all his children—Douglas Bell, Percy Bell, Hobbie Bell, and Kinmont Bell—"for a song." Ballads are his foible, and he can hardly be made to part with one of the broadsides in his broken portfolios. Well, semel insanivimus omnes (by the way, did it ever strike you that the Roman "cribbed" that line, as the vulgar say, from an epigram in the Anthology?), and you and I will scarce throw ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... characters traced by experience on his heart; and in the mirror of her conscience he might see the image of his very self, as dwarfed in actual appearance, or developed after the divine ideal. Her sincerity was terrible. In her frank exposure no foible was spared, though by her very reproof she roused dormant courage and self-confidence. And so unerring seemed her insight, that her companion felt as if standing bare before a disembodied spirit, and communicated without reserve thoughts ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... not allow him to conceal or feign anything. If he loved praise, why should he not be frank about it? Did he not lay claim to the vices and vanities of men also? At its worst, Whitman's vanity was but the foible of a great nature, and should count for but little in the final estimate. The common human nature to which he lay claim will assert itself; it is not always to be kept up to ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... thank God for their sickness and pain—at the same time naively praying Him to take back His gift. This inconsistency was due to a combination of ignorance and the good old human foible of blaming some one else. Folks did not know then, as well as they do now, that they had the stomachache because they were too fond of rich dainties. The cause of the pain being mysterious, they went back to first principles ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... benefit. Napoleon visited her very frequently, and always treated her with the respect to which she was entitled. He added also to her dowry a third million of francs, that she might feel no inconvenience from the habits of expense to which it was her foible to be addicted. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... to hide a scowl of irritation. Alice Webster was her friend, and she disliked having her display herself in her worst light. She knew her to be a warm-hearted, honorable girl whose gravest fault, which, after all, might be only a foible, was her tendency to turn coquettish when she was in the ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... addicted myself to expense and pleasure, that now I can hardly reclaim myself to look after my great business of settling Gravely business, until now almost too late. I pray God give me grace to begin now to look after my business, but it always was, and I fear will ever be, my foible that after I am once got behind-hand with business, I am hard to set to it again to recover it. In the evening I begun to look over my accounts and upon the whole I do find myself, by what I can yet see, worth near L600, for which ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... it some day," remarked Edna, "and then what would you do, miles from a hooker as you are? I was telling you, Miss Lacey, that I have a mother with only one foible,—she doesn't like our island. You will see what heresy it is when you come over there. So Miss Martha has taken pity on me the last few summers, and I think she loves it as much ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... Socialist, State bred. There are enormous handicaps at every other social level upon efficient parentage, and upon the training of children for any public and generous end. Parentage is treated as a private foible, and those who undertake its solemn responsibilities are put at every sort of disadvantage against those who lead sterile lives, who give all their strength and resources to vanity and socially harmful personal indulgence. These latter, with an ampler leisure and ampler means, ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... knew I loved her like a good sister. The other I worshipped as an angel: and as soon as she ceased to be an angel for me, as a mere woman I felt none of the former fire towards her: nothing remained, not even smoke nor ashes. But this girl, whose every foible I know, whose beauty was enhanced by no reverie, whom I only saw as she really is,—I love her now, as a faithful woman, who repays love in true coin: and I shall marry her—not out of gratitude, but because she has ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... inferior in a general way to Edouard Riviere, would have made a sensible reply to this. Such as, "Oh, any friend of yours, mademoiselle, must be welcome to me," or the like. But the proposal caught Edouard on his foible, his vanity, to wit; and our foibles are our manias. He was mortified to the heart's core. "She refuses to know me herself," thought he, "but she will use my love to make me amuse that old man." His heart swelled against her injustice and ingratitude, and his crushed vanity ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... of a very black kind, into this work. To which I shall answer: first, that it is very difficult to pursue a series of human actions, and keep clear from them. Secondly, that the vices to be found here are rather the accidental consequences of some human frailty or foible, than causes habitually existing in the mind. Thirdly, that they are never set forth as the objects of ridicule, but detestation. Fourthly, that they are never the principal figure at that time on the scene: and, lastly, they never produce ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... the platform rises to the ceiling the huge organ, of dark wood and silvered pipes, with fans of trumpets pointing heavenward from the top. This enormous toy occupies much space that could be better filled, and is only less superfluous than the bell; but we must pardon and indulge a foible. We could never see that Mr. Forrest walked any better for having such thick legs; yet they have their admirers. Blind old Handel played on an instrument very different from this, but the sexton had to eat a cold Sunday dinner; for not a Christian ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... and in others a mischievous passion; that to it we owe the breed of coquettes and coxcombs, and, a more serious evil, the noxious race of heroes and conquerors. We too are ready, when it appears in the shape of vanity, to smile at it as a foible, or in that of false glory, to condemn it as a crime. But all these are only its perversions; and on account of them to contend against its true forms, and its legitimate exercise, were to give ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... preceding century has fabricated, does not find herself in an antiquated cut nor with stitches placed amiss, loses no time of course in dreaming of new fashions, nor self-respect in being obliged to parade in the old ones. Her only fashionable foible is that of knitting silver lace, she not having as yet been initiated into the mystery of making Chinese boxes and card-racks, dolls' dresses ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... we make such an ado about it? And what is constancy, that it commands such usurious interest? The one is a foible only in its relations. The other is only thus a virtue. "Fickle as the winds" is our death-seal upon a man; but should we like our winds un-fickle? Would a perpetual Northeaster lay us open to perpetual gratitude? or is a soft South gale to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... rear of my mind was stirring restively the instinct to get back to my writing; and these sedately frolicsome benevolent people—even Rosalind—plainly thought that "writing things" was just the unimportant foible of an otherwise fine ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... a fool, Shirley, in some respects; I do despise myself. But I said I would not make you my confessor, for you cannot reciprocate foible for foible; you are not weak. How steadily you watch me now! Turn aside your clear, strong, she-eagle eye; it is an insult to fix it ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... was Jim's especial Foible, He ran away when he was able, And on this inauspicious day He slipped his hand and ran away! He hadn't gone ...
— Cautionary Tales for Children • Hilaire Belloc
... wife of the Lord Lieutenant, who sat at his side, seemed a little startled. She was probably one of the only people present who was not aware of the Duke's foible. ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... memoirs there is a chapter devoted to the newspaper critics, and it is interesting to note the good-nature with which the sprightly cantatrice handles these touchy gentlemen. Not an unkind word is said; occasionally a foible or a trait is hit off, but all is done cleverly and in the most genial temper. Considerable space is devoted to the Chicago critics—Messrs. Upton, Mathews, McConnell, and Gleason—who, Miss Abbott says, have helped her with what they have written about her. Messrs. Moore, Johns, and Jennings, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... fearing an evil thing had indeed befallen the other, he turned to the terrace and entered the breakfast-room from it. The time was now five minutes to nine, and as unfailing punctuality had ever been a foible of Sir Walter, his guests usually respected it. Most of them were already assembled, and Mary May, who was just stepping into the garden, asked Henry if ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... trouble, so that by his ready apprehension of things, he was able to do more in one hour than others could do in many days by hard study and close application; and yet he was ever humble, and never exalted with self-conceit, the common foible of ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... are always seen in the streets with an umbrella under their arm. Such a foible may be permitted to such men as Mr. Southey and the Duke of Wellington: but in ordinary men it looks like affectation, and the monotony is exceedingly boring ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... have reason. I have spoken much More than my wont: it is a foible which Was not of mine, but more excuses you, Inasmuch as it shows, that I approach A dotage which may justify this deed Of yours, although the law does not, nor ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... second daughter of an English earl, a young gentleman of considerable expectations, and very amusing qualifications. Horace is a strange composition of all the good-natured whimsicalities of human nature, happily blended together without any very conspicuous counteracting foible. Facetious, lively, and poetical, the cream of every thing that is agreeable, society cannot be dull if Horace lends his presence. His imitations of Anacreon, and the soft bard of Erin, have on many occasions puzzled the cognoscenti of Eton. Like Moore too, he both composes ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... other hand, it must be admitted that the faculty has always possessed members of a spirit to condemn and regret such despicable practices. There cannot be juster objects of satire than such empirics, nor is there a foible more deserving of ridicule than the selfish timidity of the hypochondriac, who, ungrateful for the store of good health with which nature has endowed him, assumes the habitual precautions ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... violation of propriety, is shocked by the lack of decency in the representation of Ophelia's madness, finds Hamlet's frequent levity and the buffoonery of Polonius alike regrettable —Shakespeare's favorite foible, he feels, is "that of raising a laugh." The introduction of Fortinbras and his army on the stage is "an Absurdity"; the grave-diggers' scene is "very unbecoming to tragedy"; the satire on the "Children of the Chapel" is not allowable in this kind ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... at home was not generally half full, though we've tried so hard to find out what he likes," said May plaintively. If otherwise engaged it would be in chasing cats, running down fowls, barking at message boys—to whom he had the greatest antipathy—or, most serious foible of all, threatening to engage in single combat with dogs twice his size and three ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... it, who preached better or had more authority in his parish? He had a native gift for administration, being tolerant both of opinions and conduct, because he felt himself able to overrule them, and was free from the irritations of conscious feebleness. He smiled pleasantly at the foible of a taste which he did not share—at floriculture or antiquarianism for example, which were much in vogue among his fellow-clergyman in the diocese: for himself, he preferred following the history of a campaign, or divining from his knowledge of Nesselrode's motives ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... worried, I felt annoyed. Wellingsford was my little world. I knew everybody in it. I had grown to regard myself as the repository of all its gossip. The fraction of it that I retailed was a matter of calculated discretion. I made a little hobby—it was a foible, a vanity, what you will—of my omniscience. I knew months ahead the dates of the arrivals of young Wellingsfordians in this world of pain and plenitude. I knew of maidens who were wronged and youths who were jilted; of wives who led their ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... often not whether X is a saint and Y a Satan, but rather what road a man's indulgence takes. Is it body or spirit that rules him—his fear, lust, vanity, gluttony, surliness, or sloth? his humility, generosity, piety, sense of justice, sense of duty? Is his cardinal weakness a vice or only a foible—a crime that degrades or only a pettiness ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... and when he could not get that he put up with the applause of the many. And thus his letters are full of that heartiness and vigour which comes from the determination to do everything he tries to do well. They have besides the most perfect and unmistakable reality. Every foible is confessed; every passing thought, even such as one would rather not confess even to oneself, is revealed and recorded to his friend. It is from these letters to a great extent that Cicero has been so severely judged. He stands, say his critics, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... intended to apply it to "Master Jerrold;" but he was never known to bring it out in his tormentor's presence. Jerrold's "skull" witticism has already been recorded; and of the same kind was his loud enquiry over the Punch dinner-table—when Smith's obtrusive foible of calling his acquaintances by their abbreviated Christian names became intolerable—"I say, Leech, how long is it necessary for a man to know you before he can call you 'Jack'?" When Jerrold first saw Smith's initials, he had said that he believed they were "only two-thirds of the truth"—and ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... This archimimus performed his part admirably, not only representing the person, but imitating, according to custom, ut est mos, the manners and language of the living Emperor. He contrived a happy stroke at the prevailing foible of Vespasian, when he enquired the cost of all this funeral pomp—"Ten million of sesterces!" On this he observed that if they would give him but a hundred thousand they might throw his body ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... bird; Then to his friend: "An old procrastinator, Sir, I am: do you wonder that I hate her? Though she but seven words can say, Twenty and twenty times a day She interferes with all my dreams, My projects, plans, and airy schemes, Mocking my foible to my sorrow: I'll ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... France quiet. In this Bismarck thought he had succeeded by means of interviews which he held with Napoleon III. at Biarritz (Nov. 1865). What there occurred is not clearly known. That Bismarck played on the Emperor's foible for oppressed nationalities, in the case of Italy, is fairly certain; that he fed him with hopes of gaining Belgium, or a slice of German land, is highly probable, and none the less so because he later on indignantly ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... the sea. They could not be roused to enthusiasm. Fisher-folk and fisher-life were outside their sympathies. They preferred a comic song—a song that hit a famous person, or a political principle, or a Western foible. Miners liked to hear about "Leadville Jim." It touched their sensibilities when the "Three Fishers who Went Sailing out into the West" made no picture in their minds. Without being a failure, Denasia ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... truth and religious appeal. The result is that we see, on almost every page, contradictory teachings and conflicting methods of salvation. This, of course, is by no means fatal to it in the estimation of Hindus, with whom consistency has never been a foible, and in the eyes of whom two mutually contradictory teachings can rest ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... though statistics are the childish foible of modern statesmen, who think that figures are estimates, we must cipher to estimate. Figures are, moreover, the convincing argument of societies based on self-interest and money, and that is the sort of society the Charter has given us,—in my opinion, at any rate. Nothing convinces ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... the language and conduct of others that they will bear: hence he conceives himself grossly insulted, when no ill was designed; and a gentle rebuke, or a good-humored repartee, constitutes an unpardonable offence. He always looks on the dark side of human character, so that a single foible or one glaring fault will eclipse a thousand real excellences. He is always complaining of the degeneracy of the times, and especially of the corruption of the church; for he can see nobody around him who is perfect, and therefore he comes to the conclusion that ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... "Cover yourself—I might hurt you out of sheer clumsiness." His chin and throat were covered with blood, now; blood enough to satisfy the most indignant consumer. The moment the measure was set again, Winfree lunged, trying to slip his blade beneath MacHenery's guard to strike his arm. His foible met the flash of the other man's forte, and his blade bounced aside ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... at the conceit of the hereditary nobility, at the affectation of majestic stateliness inherent in royalty. But the pedantic display of learning, the disregard of the real wants of the people, the contempt of all knowledge which does not wear the academic garb, show the same foible, the same conceit, the same spirit of caste among those who, from the sixteenth century to the present day, have occupied the most prominent rank in the society of Germany. Professorial knight-errantry still waits for its Cervantes. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... of the man's nature would not allow him to conceal or feign anything. If he loved praise, why should he not be frank about it? Did he not lay claim to the vices and vanities of men also? At its worst, Whitman's vanity was but the foible of a great nature, and should count for but little in the final estimate. The common human nature to which he lay claim will assert itself; it is not always to be kept ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... character.] Quintus Caecilius Metellus was elected consul for the year 109, and received Numidia as his province. He was a stern, proud man; but if in his childish hauteur he had a double portion of the foible of his order, he was free from many of its vices. He set to work at once to rediscipline the army; and his punishment of deserters, abominable in itself, was no doubt an effective warning that the new general was ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... Veblen. It was curious, said Sylvia, but nobody was free from this kind of vanity. There was dear old Uncle Basil, a more godly bishop never lived, and yet he had a foible for carving! In his opinion the one certain test of a gentleman was the ease with which he found the joints of all kinds of meat, and he was in arms against the modern tendency to turn such accomplishments over to butlers. He would hold forth on ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... scandal all, I have no doubt—Your head a little to the right, if you please—And the publication will be stopped, of course, and the young lady's friends—you are interested for her, I see; so am I—always am for the young and fair, that's my foible; and indeed, confidentially I can inform you—If you could keep your head still, my ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... hands that the president of the Pacific Southwestern was a careful man and a thrifty. It was these qualities which had first determined his election. There were many small stock-holders in the company, and it is the foible of small stock-holders to believe that rigid economy counts for more than adventurous ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... crises which from time to time shake a university to its base. The meeting of the faculty that day bid fair to lose all vestige of decorum in the excitement of the moment. For, as Dean Elderberry Foible, the head of the faculty, said, the motion that they had before them amounted practically to a revolution. The proposal was nothing less than the permission of the use of lead-pencils instead of pen ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... the less a lasting community of thought between the two spirits, a lasting debt from the younger to the elder. Indeed, we cannot say that at all points Shakspere outwent his guide. It is a curious reflection that they had probably one foible in common; for we know Montaigne's little weakness of desiring his family to be thought ancient, of suppressing the fact of its recent establishment by commerce; and we have evidence which seems to show that Shakspere ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... many reasons, the advent of a London pedler was a great and pleasant event at the Manor House. Katherine had that delightful and excusable womanly foible, a love of fine clothing; and shops for its sale were very rare, even in towns of considerable size. It was from packmen and hawkers that fine ladies bought their laces and ribbons and gloves; their precious toilet and hair pins, their paints and powders, and India scarfs and fans, ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... plots to inveigle or surprise his friend into compliance. He often succeeded, but he failed quite as frequently, so that, as a Mrs. Malaprop might have said, Hawthorne as a social lion was a rara avis, from first to last. The foible of artificial, as distinguished from spontaneous, society is that it so seldom achieves ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... especial attractions to him. This oration is graceful and strong, and possesses sufficient and appropriate eloquence. It is chiefly interesting, however, from the reserve and self-control, dictated by a nice sense of fitness, which it exhibited. Omniscience was not Mr. Webster's foible. He never was guilty of Lord Brougham's weakness of seeking to prove himself master of universal knowledge. In delivering an address on science and invention, there was a strong temptation to an orator like Mr. Webster to substitute ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... face, more like two men about to engage in deadly duel than a pair of amateurs with blunt foils. My antagonist was evidently a practised swordsman. I could see that as he came to guard. As for myself, the small-sword exercise had been a foible of my college days, and for years I had not met my match at it; but just then ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... faults that she had not, to this which she had she could never be got to own. But if there came a woman with even a semblance of beauty to Castlewood, she was so sure to find out some wrong in her, that my lord, laughing in his jolly way, would often joke with her concerning her foible. Comely servant-maids might come for hire, but none were taken at Castlewood. The housekeeper was old; my lady's own waiting-woman squinted, and was marked with the small-pox; the housemaids and scullion ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... whether he merely amused himself by giving currency to them among his domestics and dependents. He certainly never scrupled to express a belief in supernatural visitations, both verbally and in his correspondence. If such were his foible, the Rook Cell was an admirable place to engender these delusions. As I have lain awake at night, I have heard all kinds of mysterious and sighing sounds from the neighboring ruin. Distant footsteps, too, and the closing of ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... was still living in the Flaming Youth era of the twenties. She was an extremely good egg; he liked her very much. After all, insisting upon remaining an F. Scott Fitzgerald character was a harmless and amusing foible, and it was no more than right that somebody should try to keep the bright banner of Jazz Age innocence flying in a grim and sullen world. He accepted a cigarette, shared the flame of his lighter with mother and daughter, and submitted to being ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... the better listeners. Yet, to say nothing of the gout, Messer Bartolommeo's felicity was far from perfect: it was embittered by the contents of certain papers that lay before him, consisting chiefly of a correspondence between himself and Politian. It was a human foible at that period (incredible as it may seem) to recite quarrels, and favour scholarly visitors with the communication of an entire and lengthy correspondence; and this was neither the first nor the second, time that Scala had asked the candid opinion of his friends as to the balance ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... very men of the elder day of religion. Their robes shine with an unearthly light, and their abstracted eyes are hypnotized by the effulgence of their own haloes. Yet the poet never fails to insinuate some naive foible in their personification, a numbness of the heart or an archaism of soul, which reveals the possessed one as but a human brother, after all, shaped by his environment, and embodying the spirit of an historic epoch out of which the current ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... every individual is a volume to be read. We are vexed, and perhaps tormented, by the vices or foibles of those with whom we are thrown in contact. Let us not stop in vexation, but study our own hearts, and see if there is not some kindred vice or foible in ourselves that perhaps troubles our friends quite as much as this disturbs us; for it is often the case that our own vices, when we meet them in others, are precisely those which irritate us most; and we are almost always more irritable through our vices ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... putting my things to rights to go off to-morrow. Though I always wonder why it should be so, I feel a dislike to order and to task-work of all kinds—a predominating foible in my disposition. I do not mean that it influences me in morals; for even in youth I had a disgust at gross irregularities of any kind, and such as I ran into were more from compliance with others and a sort of false shame, than any pleasure I sought or found ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... feelings of his grandchildren; and I will do them the justice, once for all, to avow, thus publicly, that I have known a great many bigger rogues, and most of themselves in the number. But I have referred, with moderation, to this little flaw in a worthy character (or foible, as we call it, when a man is dead) for this reason only—that without it there was no explaining John's dealings with ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... attendants present themselves with broad smiles and sheets of paper. Each one wants a certificate showing that he has contributed to my comfort and entertainment, and lastly comes the nawab himself and his bosom friend, the hospital doctor, to bid me farewell and request the same favor. This certificate-foible is one of the greatest bores in India; almost every native who performs any service for a Sahib, whether in the capacity of a mere waiter at a native hotel, or as retainer of some wealthy nabob—and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... extravagance of phrase and love of applause accounted for that. Secondly, Firio was devoted to him. Such worshipful attachment on the part of a native Indian to any Saxon was remarkable. Yet this was explained by his love of color, his foible for the picturesque, his vagabond irresponsibility, and, mostly, by his latent savagery—which she would hardly have been willing to apply to Ignacio's ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... against Folly and Affectation. There is at the same time an humble Ignorance, a modest Weakness, that ought to be spar'd; they are unhappy already in the Consciousness of their own Defects, and 'tis fighting with the Lame and Sick to be severe upon them. The Wit that genteely glances at a Foible, is smartly retorted, or generously forgiven; because the Merit of the Reprover is as well known as the Merit of the Reproved. In such delicate Conversations, Mirth, temper'd with good Manners, is the only Point ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... This good lady, whose foible is well known to my readers, made me laugh when she said that her genius had told her that I had got myself arrested to be talked about, for reasons which were known ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Godolphin, for he had instinctively felt that in choosing a name he might as well take a handsome one while he was about it, and that if he became Godolphin there was no reason why he should not become Launcelot, too. He did not put on these splendors from any foible, but from a professional sense of their value in the bills; and he was not personally characterized by them. As Launcelot Godolphin he was simpler than he would have been with a simpler name, and it was his ideal to be modest in everything that personally ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... mort. Nous perdons encore la vie avec joie, pourvu qu'on en parle. On ne peut faire une bonne physionomie (in a portrait) qu'en accordant toutes nos contrarietes. L'homme n'est qu'un roseau, le plus foible de la nature, mais c'est un roseau pensant. Il ne faut pas que l'univers entier s'arme pour l'ecraser. Une vapeur, une goutte d'eau, suffit pour le tuer. Mais quand l'univers l'ecraseroit, l'homme seroit ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... an adorable thing it is to discover a little foible in your friend, a bit of vanity that gives you one thing more about her to adore! On a cold morning she will perhaps walk to church with you without her furs, and she will blush and return an evasive answer when you ask her why she does not ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... appealed to Ione's ruling foible—most dexterously had he applied the poisoned dart to her pride. He fancied he had arrested what he hoped, from the shortness of the time she had known Glaucus, was, at most, but an incipient fancy; and hastening to change the subject, he now led her to talk of her brother. Their conversation ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... invited Lyndhurst, Brougham, Campbell, and Charlie Wetherell, when the latter warned Lyndhurst and Brougham of Campbell's design, in terms almost prophetic of what has occurred. 'My biographical friend will excel in exhibiting every little foible; Hunc tu Romane caveto.' I cannot describe the whole scene to you, but ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... you and me sit talking about love to each other!" The gentleman was astounded, and could only sit wrapping his toga in silent dismay for the rest of the evening. Thackeray then, as at other similar times, had no idea of giving pain, but when he saw a foible he put his foot upon it, and tried to stamp ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... faults, some of them of a sort not to have been expected in him. Vanity, the common weakness of small minds, was the most disfiguring foible of this great one. He had not the simplicity which becomes greatness so well. He could give himself theatrical airs, strike attitudes, and dart stage lightnings from his eyes; yet he was formidable even in his affectations. Behind his great intellectual powers lay a burning ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... time there was an ostrich who, though very ostrichy, was even more of an egoist. He thought only of himself. That is not a foible peculiar to ostriches, but this particular fowl—and he was very particular—was notable for it. "Where do I come in?" was a question written all over him—from his ridiculous and inadequate head, down his long neck, on his plump ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... laughing. "It is only my foible for making a thing look nice. And, Ethel," she added, drawing her down close over her, "I did not think the trouble wasted, if seeing me look fresher cheered ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... a cheery, robust man in the late thirties, in his own line one of the ablest specialists in New York, had a foible for social position and his success in it. Even now, with such grave news to communicate, he couldn't divest himself of his dinner-party manner ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... cheeks only relieved her white drapery to perfection; and her beautiful hair and faultless figure harmonized with flowing folds and soft laces which can do so much for outlines that are not soft. Eleanor was not without a consciousness of this; nevertheless, vanity was not her foible; and her state of mind was anything but enviable when she left the dressing-room for the gallery. But Mr. Carlisle was there, to meet her and her mood too; and Eleanor found herself taken in hand at once. He had a way of mixing ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... a genuine Valois; and he distinguished himself, like the rest of his homonyms, by excellent manners, which proved him a man of society. He dined out every day, and played cards every evening. He was thought witty, thanks to his foible for relating a quantity of anecdotes on the reign of Louis XV. and the beginnings of the Revolution. When these tales were heard for the first time, they were held to be well narrated. He had, moreover, the great ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... reinforcements to Marguerita and Cumana, meaning to attack him suddenly. At the same time the Indians came secretly aboard the English ships with terrible complaints of Spanish cruelty. Berreo was keeping the ancient chiefs of the island in prison, and had the singular foible of amusing himself at intervals by basting their bare limbs with broiling bacon. These considerations determined Raleigh to take the initiative. That same evening he marched his men up the country to the new ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... the King, that the nations of Europe were wholly destitute of this grand desideratum; and he strongly recommended the establishment of a college founded upon the simple principles he had suggested. The king, either to humour this Quixotic foible, or to gratify his own ambition at the expense of truth, observed, in reply, 'Why, Sir, I have a Professor of Signs in one of the northernmost colleges in my dominions; but the distance is, perhaps, six ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... elegance of her admirer, that he can discern and flatter those qualities in her. A man of the character here supposed, will easily insinuate himself into her affections, by means of this latent but leading foible, which may be called the guiding clue to a sentimental heart. He will affect to overlook that beauty which attracts common eyes, and ensnares common hearts, while he will bestow the most delicate praises on the beauties ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... which this old officer spoke of his profession, and the high point of view in which he placed it, increased our hero's desire to serve a campaign abroad. Good sense, politeness, and experience of the world preserved Count O'Halloran from that foible with which old officers are commonly reproached, of talking continually of their own military exploits. Though retired from the world, he had contrived, by reading the best books, and corresponding with persons of good information, to keep up with ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... poor man is so wonderfully narrow-minded in his authorship capacity, though otherwise good, humane and generous, that he changes countenance at either seeing or hearing of any writer whatsoever. Mrs. Thrale, with whom, this foible excepted, he is a great favourite, is so enraged with him for his littleness of soul in this respect, that merely to plague him, she vowed at the rooms she would walk all the evening between Dr. Delap and me. I wished so little to increase his unpleasant feelings, that ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... an island. A moment's pause is presently created by the return of CRICHTON, wearing the wonderful robe of which we have already had dark mention. Never has he looked more regal, never perhaps felt so regal. We need not grudge him the one foible of his rule, for it is ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... nought; though all the while there rose A ready answer, which at once enables A matron, who her husband's foible knows, By a few timely words to turn the tables, Which, if it does not silence, still must pose,— Even if it should comprise a pack of fables; 'T is to retort with firmness, and when he Suspects with one, do you reproach ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Mais comme tout le monde sait cela, je m'abstiens d'en parler. Cependant il m'a semble que du cote de la terre, vers l'eglise qui est dans le voisinage de la porte, a l'extremite du havre, il y a un endroit foible. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... faults, inseparable it may be from the society into which he had been thrown, was not vicious. Loving and beloved, he existed but as the object of woman's regard. This foible he indulged not farther. But many a bright eye waxed dim,—many a fond heart was withered, in the first spring-tide of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... her diversions, the accomplishments and acquirements she was mistress of will show what they must have been. She was far from being fond of cards, the fashionable foible of modern ladies; nor, as will be easily perceived from what I have said, and more from what I shall further say, had she much time for play. She never therefore promoted their being called for; ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... themselves by seniority divine. Society is spoiled if pains are taken, if the associates are brought a mile to meet. And if it be not society, it is a mischievous, low, degrading jangle, though made up of the best. All the greatness of each is kept back and every foible in painful activity, as if the Olympians ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the Armenian; "take another glass of wine; you possess a great deal of philological knowledge, but it appears to me that the language of this Petulengro is your foible: but let us change the subject; I feel much interested in you, and would fain be of service to ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... occasion, enquired of her concerning the abbess and Elgidia; on which she informed him of all the particulars related in the preceding chapter; adding, that after the receipt of the two letters he had sent, the sisters came to a mutual understanding, each confessed her foible to the other, and the cause of their quarrel being for ever removed, a sincere ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... say, not over-clean; yet he was jaunty, and moved with the air of a man much better clad. I was impressed with his appearance, and especially with his voice, which was vibrant, firm, and excellently intoned. It is my foible, perhaps, but I am always charmed with bonhommie, I class originality among the cardinal virtues, and I am as eager in the chase after eccentricity as a veteran fox-hunter is in pursuit of Reynard. M. Cesar promised a compensative proportion of all three qualities, could ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... incessantly and enormously; and, when she gets tired, she goes to bed. That's all there is about it. Lord! I wish I could. But, when I get tired, I have to go and make another speech. They think the American Ambassador has omniscience for a foible and oratory ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... than one vital part. In show and splendour a higher point was probably reached in Edward III's than in any preceding reign. The extravagance in dress which prevailed in this period is too well known a characteristic of it to need dwelling upon. Sumptuary laws in vain sought to restrain this foible; and it rose to such a pitch as even to oblige men, lest they should be precluded from indulging in gorgeous raiment, to abandon hospitality, a far more amiable species of excess. When the kinds of clothing respectively worn by the different ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Bill Kirby's foible was not punctuality; when Christian arrived at the appointed cross-roads in the middle of Nad Wood she found a patient little group of three or four men, farmers, all of them, she thought, waiting under the dewy branches of the beeches for the arrival of the hounds. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... than a pretty thing; and another that the Englishman, inveterately a draper, is often horrified and occasionally heart-broken. The Spaniard may regret, but cannot mend the organ. His own will never suffer the same fate. Chercher le midi a quatorze heures is no foible of his. ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... see her: I always knew I loved her like a good sister. The other I worshipped as an angel: and as soon as she ceased to be an angel for me, as a mere woman I felt none of the former fire towards her: nothing remained, not even smoke nor ashes. But this girl, whose every foible I know, whose beauty was enhanced by no reverie, whom I only saw as she really is,—I love her now, as a faithful woman, who repays love in true coin: and I shall marry her—not out of gratitude, but because she has filled ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... man, and if he had a foible which Milly could be said to execrate, it was that of "sitting in wet feet." He expected the door to fly open; but it did nothing of the kind. There was not a trace of anxiety in the grudging voice ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... electricity. They intend to make the lightning a domestic slave in every house, and to turn Ariel into a common carrier. But, from the aspect of Winter's den in Paterson's Rents, it was easy to read that his heart was set on a more ancient foible. The white deal book-shelves, home-made, which lined every wall, were packed with tattered books on mechanics, and especially on the art of flying. Here you saw the spoils of the fourpenny box of cheap bookvendors ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... his studies been more serious, had his feelings been more generous and ardent, had his moral sense been less shallow, he might have made important contributions to literature. As it was, to be a man of the world was his trade, to be a writer was only an admirable foible. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... leave of the Hall and its inmates, and brought the history of my visit to something like a close, there seems to remain nothing further than to make my bow, and exit. It is my foible, however, to get on such companionable terms with my reader in the course of a work, that it really costs me some pain to part with him; and I am apt to keep him by the hand, and have a few farewell wards at the end of my ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... Marshman is no more perfect than other men, partakers like him of the grace of God. His natural bias and habits are his own, and differ as much from those of other men as theirs differ from one another. I do not deny that he has an inclination to display his children to advantage. This, however, is a foible which most fond parents will be inclined to pardon. I wish I had half his piety, energy of mind, and zeal for the cause of God. These excellencies, in my opinion, so far overbalance all his defects that I am constrained to ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... full-length portrait, with the minute finish of a miniature; it shows how Shakespeare had studied every fold and foible of Mary Fitton's soul. In the third act Cleopatra takes up again the theme of Octavia's appearance, only to run down her rival, and so salve her wounded vanity and cheat her heart to hope. The messenger, too, who lends himself to her humour now becomes a proper man. ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... pride, and ambition, we have been more indulgent to vanity than our proud readers will approve. We hope, however, not to be misunderstood; we hope that we shall not appear to be admirers of that mean and ridiculous foible, which is anxiously concealed by all who have any desire to obtain esteem. We cannot, however, avoid thinking it is a contradiction to inspire young people with a wish to excel, and at the same time to insist upon their repressing all expressions of satisfaction if they succeed. The desire ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... at all in the first instance, and if you surmount them, of keeping out in the second, are pretty much on a par, and no slight ones either—and so Miss Amelia Martin shortly discovered. It is a singular fact (there being ladies in the case) that Miss Amelia Martin's principal foible was vanity, and the leading characteristic of Mrs. Jennings Rodolph an attachment to dress. Dismal wailings were heard to issue from the second-floor front of number forty-seven, Drummond-street, George-street, Euston-square; ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... But you shall hear. I was to dine the other day at a great Nabob's that must be nameless, who, between ourselves, is strongly suspected of—being very rich, that's all. John, my valet, who knows my foible, cautioned me, while he was dressing me, as he usually does where he thinks there's a danger of my committing a lapsus, to take care in my conversation how I made any allusion direct or indirect to ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... hickory-stick broke in two, and the two brands fell controversially out and apart on the hearth, scattering the ashes and coals, and calling for Jennie and the hearth-brush. Your wood-fire had this foible, that it needs something to be done to it every five minutes; but, after all, these little interruptions of our bright-faced genius are like the piquant sallies of a clever friend,—they do ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... a loss what countenance to put on during a narrative which raised in him nearly the same conjectures; he shrugged up his shoulders, and faintly said that appearances were often deceitful; that Lady Chesterfield had the foible of all beauties, who place their merit on the number of their admirers; and whatever airs she might imprudently have given herself, in order not to discourage his royal highness, there was no ground to suppose that she would indulge him in any greater liberties to engage him: but in vain was ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... decide by a shout what years of afterthought may find it hard, or even impossible, to undo. There have been some things in the deportment of the President of late that have suggested to thoughtful men rather the pettish foible of wilfulness than the strength of well-trained and conscientious will. It is by the objects for whose sake the force of volition is called into play that we decide whether it is childish or manly, whether we are to call ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... had been no misjudgment and no lack of pre-vision. We made our mistakes before, and during the war, but neither Mr. Asquith's Governments nor that of his successor need fear comparison with those of our Allies or our enemies on that account; and it is merely a modest foible of the people, which has hardly lost a war for nearly four hundred years, to ascribe its escape to fortune, and to envy the prescience and the science which have lightened the path of its ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... very high: he would indeed put it, in its own compartment, almost on a level with the drama of 1585-1625 or the poems of 1798-1825. Just at the present moment there may be a pretty general tendency to consider this allowance exaggerated if not preposterous: and to set it down to the well-known foible of age for the period of its own youth. There is no need to do more than suggest that those who were young when Shakespeare, or when Byron, died, would not have been exactly in their dotage if, forty years later, they had extolled the literature of their ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... a plea for this pursuit, as about the least costly foible to which those who can afford to indulge in foibles can devote themselves, one might descant on certain auxiliary advantages—as, that it is not apt to bring its votaries into low company; that it offends no one, and is not likely to foster actions of damages for nuisance, trespass, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... at least; he is more a collector than a bookseller, though poor; and I verily believe that he would sell all his children—Douglas Bell, Percy Bell, Hobbie Bell, and Kinmont Bell—"for a song." Ballads are his foible, and he can hardly be made to part with one of the broadsides in his broken portfolios. Well, semel insanivimus omnes (by the way, did it ever strike you that the Roman "cribbed" that line, as the vulgar ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... be well spiced with the national flavour. Of course he had his views on the Irish question. Every American newspaper reader is cheerfully satisfied with the conviction that the Celtic race on its native sod has no real faults. A constitutional antipathy to rent may exist, but that is a national foible which, owing doubtless to some peculiarity of the climate, is almost praiseworthy in Ireland, though elsewhere regarded as hardly respectable. At any rate, with the consciousness that he was about to come face to face with the much-talked-of ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... talent, predilection, bent. Failing, shortcoming, defect, fault, foible, infirmity. Famous, renowned, celebrated, noted, distinguished, eminent, illustrious. Fashion, mode, style, vogue, rage, fad. Fast, rapid, swift, quick, fleet, speedy, hasty, celeritous, expeditious, instantaneous. Fasten, tie, hitch, moor, tether. Fate, destiny, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... too much of human nature in her not to feel sometimes a little flush of vanity on seeing herself admired; but she immediately corrected the foible, by reflecting that whatever advantages of mind or form had fallen to her share, they were given her by one who expected she should not suffer her thoughts or attention to be withdrawn thereby from him, who was the perfection of all excellence, while she at best could ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... spirits, and the luckless caligrapher went down to his grave—without dining at the Academy! This authentic anecdote has been considered as "satire improperly directed"—by some friend of Mr. Tomkins—but the criticism is much too grave! The foible of Mr. Tomkins as a writing-master presents a striking illustration of the class of men here delineated. I am a mere historian—and am only responsible for the veracity of this fact. That "Mr. Tomkins lived in familiar intercourse with the Royal Academicians of his day, and was a frequent ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... perfectly whatever is explained to him, his agency has been very efficacious. He has a great deal of sound genius, is well remarked by the King, and rising in popularity. He has nothing against him, but the suspicion of republican principles. I think he will one day be of the ministry. His foible is, a canine appetite for popularity and fame; but he will get above this. The Count de Vergennes is ill. The possibility of his recovery, renders it dangerous for us to express a doubt of it; but he is in danger. He is a great minister in European affairs, but has ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... false distinctions which at present regulate society. I might assume the severe tone of the moralist, and urge your compliance with my request as a duty: but I would rather indulge what may perhaps be the foible of immature virtue, and follow the affectionate impulse which binds me to you as my friend and brother. Beside these are vibrations with which I am persuaded your warm and kindred heart will more readily ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... remarkable degree, and if they possess at the same time the art of telling the humorous story about themselves, they become very popular. This popularity accounts for a good deal of seeming modesty and humorous self-depiction; it is a sort of recompense for the self-confessed foible and weakness; it is a way of seeking the good opinion and applause of others and is sometimes sought to a ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... used to come to Stayes in his holidays. Lately, coming back to England, he had turned up with his wife again; that was before he—the old man—had been put to grass. He was a taking dog, but he had a monstrous foible. ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... gentlemen,' said Redgauntlet; 'the foible of which you complain so heavily has always been that of kings and heroes; which I feel strongly confident the king will surmount, upon the humble entreaty of his best servants, and when he sees ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... most. But is amusement all? studious of song And yet ambitious not to sing in vain, I would not trifle merely, though the world Be loudest in their praise who do no more. Yet what can satire, whether grave or gay? It may correct a foible, may chastise The freaks of fashion, regulate the dress, Retrench a sword-blade, or displace a patch; But where are its sublimer trophies found? What vice has it subdued? whose heart reclaimed By rigour, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... Everard has kindly sent me the following quotations from Joseph Lauthier's book on the game (1st ed., 1717): 'C'est quand deux ou plusieurs jouent a qui poussera plus loin, et quand l'un est plus fort que l'autre, le plus foible demande avantage, soit par distance d'arbres, soit par distance de pas.' 'On finit la Partie en touchant un arbre ou une pierre marquee qui sert de but.' If certain trees were marked as goals, that would be a better explanation than the one given ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... great deal of sound genius, is well remarked by the King, and rising in popularity. He has nothing against him, but the suspicion of republican principles. I think he will one day be of the ministry. His foible is a canine appetite for popularity and fame; but he will get above this. The Count de Vergennes is ill. The possibility of his recovery renders it dangerous for us to express a doubt of it; but he ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... and very absolute in his whims. By a strange madness, this prince spent his time seated at a table, upon which were placed three dice and a dice-box. One end of the table was covered with pieces of silver, designed to excite the avarice of his courtiers and people. He, knowing the foible of his subjects, addresses them as follows: Slaves, I wish your happiness. My goodness proposes to enrich you, and make you all happy. Do you see these treasures? Well, they are for you; strive to gain them; ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... poets are like a foolish ringer at Plymouth that Northcote tells the story of. He was proud of his ringing, and the boys who made a jest of his foible used to get him in the belfry and ask him, 'Well now, John, how many good ringers are there in Plymouth?' 'Two,' he would say, without any hesitation. 'Ay, indeed! and who are they?' 'Why, first, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... of temper, turn out a consummate herald of his fame. Upon these considerations, he met with a most engaging reception from the entertainer, who was a well-bred man, of some learning, generosity, and taste; but his foible was the desire of being thought the inimitable pattern of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... his own [Greek: hubris] and contempt of others. He chooses what is physically the shortest line in preference to the line of least resistance. He makes up for his want of light by his superiority in weight. Social adaptability is not his foible. He accepts the conventionality of his class and wears it as an impenetrable armour. Out of his own class he may sometimes appear less conventional than the American, simply because the latter is quick to adopt the manners of a new milieu, while John Bull clings doggedly or unconsciously ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... heartfelt delight in the superiority of other men to himself than men in general derive from their belief of their own. His readiness to imagine a superiority where it did not exist, was for many years his predominant foible; his pain from the perception of inferiority in others whom he had heard spoken of with any respect, was unfeigned and involuntary, and perplexed him as a something which he did not comprehend. In ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... build WILLIAM is pear-shaped, the upper part of him, where you would expect to find the stalk, broadening out into a perpetual smile. He has lived in the Baths twenty-three years, and yet his gaiety is not eclipsed. If he has a foible it is his belief that he thoroughly ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... given me time to form a correct judgment of you—and at the very time that my husband was trying to discover some foible in you he might make use of, or what evil passions he might rouse in you, I looked in your heart and discerned that it still contained good feelings which eventually ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... not merely the intemperate spirit exhibited, which destroyed the effect of the shrewd and just comments often appearing in "Home as Found." This was full as much impaired by the display of personal weaknesses. Cooper's foible about descent he could not help exposing. No thoughtful man denies the desirability of honorable lineage, or undervalues the possession of it; but not for the reasons for which the novelist regarded it and celebrated ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... presumed to be the rival of Mrs Fitzherbert, and had been rash enough even to make some remarks on Mrs Fitzherbert's en bon point, a matter of course never to be forgiven by a belle. This extended to a "declining love" between him and the Prince, whose foible was a horror of growing corpulent, and whom Brummell therefore denominated "Big Ben," the nickname of a gigantic porter at Carlton House; adding the sting of calling Mrs Fitzherbert Benina. Moore, in one of his satires on the Prince's letter of February the 13th, 1812, to the Duke ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... very wise of them. But wise things require to be done wisely: he sometimes carried this system so far as to discourage his client too much. It is a fine thing to make your client think his case the weaker of the two, and then win it for him easily; that gratifies your own foible, professional vanity. But suppose, with your discouraging him so, he flings up or compromises a winning case? Suppose he takes the huff and goes to some other lawyer, who will warm him with hopes instead of cooling him ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... thanked him each and all; until the old crocodile actually began to cry and whimper sentimentally at what he now perceived to be excess of munificence in himself. Munificence, indeed, he remarked, was his foible ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... so is it regarded with the most indulgence: a latent consciousness averts the censure of the weak; and the wise, who flatter themselves with being exempt from it, plead in its favour, by ranking it as a foible too light for serious condemnation, or too inoffensive for punishment. Yet, if vanity be not an actual vice, it is certainly a potential one—it often leads us to seek reputation rather than virtue, to substitute ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Cambridge. He has written learnedly on many subjects: his most valuable works are: A History of the Inductive Sciences, The Elements of Morality, and The Plurality of Worlds. Of Whewell it has been pithily said, that "science was his forte, and omniscience his foible." ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... very agreeable. At times he was all sunshine, and his outrageous temper slumbered peacefully till some new offence wakened it again; nor is there much doubt that many of his worst outbreaks were the work of his enemies, who knew his foible, and studied to exasperate him. He was full of contradictions; and, intolerant and implacable, as he often was, there were intervals, even in his bitterest quarrels, in which he displayed a surprising moderation and patience. By fits he could be magnanimous. A woman once brought him a petition ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... besides himself. Perhaps while his friends were admiring the "greatness of his behavior" at the approach of death, he may have had a twinkling hope of immortality. Mens cujusque is est quisque, said his chosen motto; and, as he had stamped his mind with every crook and foible in the pages of the Diary, he might feel that what he left behind him was indeed himself. There is perhaps no other instance so remarkable of the desire of man for publicity and an enduring name. The greatness of his life ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... ingrained in the man. Mrs. Vint had pricked his conscience, but she had wounded his foible. He was not in love with Mercy, but he esteemed her, and liked her, and saw her value, and, above all, could not bear another ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... humility Hartley thought inconsistent with the affectation of possessing superior influence, which Barak had shown while at the Presidency; but exaggeration of their own consequence is a foible common to all who find themselves in a land of strangers. Addressing the senior Fakir, therefore, he told him in as few words as possible the villanous plot which was laid to betray Menie Gray into the hands of the Prince Tippoo. He made his suit for the reverend ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... his, all the gratification they could have commanded would have been for him but a whet. If he had a weak side it was his own astuteness: he could not always see how unutterably foolish a man might be if he were let alone. Another foible he had—intellectual appreciation of beauty pushed to fainting-point. His senses were so straitly tied to his brains that to pluck at one was to thrill the other. Made on a small scale, he was pretty rather than handsome, had quiet watchful eyes, a smiling mouth, very little hands and ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... man is a drunkard, and you tell him he ought to be sober; he is debauched, and you ask him to reform; he is idle, and you recommend industry to him as his wisest course; he gambles, and you remind him that he may be ruined by this foible; he has lost his character, and you advise him to get into some reputable service or lucrative situation; vice becomes a habit with him, and you request him to rouse himself and shake it off; he is starving, and you warn him that if he breaks ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... oratory of abuse there is no resource so successful as raking up the weaknesses of the opponent's family, especially when the parties are married, for having gossiped with each other for so long in the most confidential manner, they know every foible. How Robert drank, and Tom bet, and Sam swore, and Bill knocked his wife about, and Joseph did as Potiphar's spouse asked him, and why your uncle had to take refuge in Spain; and so on to an indefinite extent, like the ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... rather pitied, not to say despised, Saltwell, for his want of the polish he possessed and his indifference to the elegancies of life, though he was not unable to appreciate his messmate's frankness of manner and truthfulness of character. His foible was his admiration for the poets, and his belief that he could write poetry and ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Burgundy received him with politic honours. He took his guest by his foible for pageantry, all the easier as it was a foible of his own; and Charles walked right out of prison into much the same atmosphere of trumpeting and bell-ringing as he had left behind when he went in. Fifteen days ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... creature of your forming?" said Ellen, turning away from her fruitless examination, with a sudden lighting of her sprightly blue eyes, that showed she knew how to play with the foible of her learned companion. ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... inspiration came to him, a means to snap the tension, to create a diversion wholly efficacious. He would turn to his boasting again, would call upon his vanity, which he knew well as his chief foible, and make it serve as the foil against his love. He strove manfully to throw off the softer mood. In a measure, at least, he won the fight—though always, under the rush of this vaunting, there throbbed the ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... for this promised land as Denys; for the latter constantly chanted its praises, and at every little annoyance showed him "they did things better in Burgundy;" and above all played on his foible by guaranteeing clean bedclothes at the inns of that polished nation. "I ask no more," the Hollander would say; "to think that I have not lain once in a naked bed since I left home! When I look at their linen, instead of doffing habit and hose, it is mine eyes and nose I would ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... which lies between your hands. This portion really corresponds with the "forte" of a sword or stick. If you have learned fencing with the foils it will be of the greatest possible advantage to you, for you will then understand how slight an effort brought to bear on the foible of your opponent's staff—in this case it will be somewhere within two feet of the end—will suffice to turn aside ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... qui sortoit de dessous la neige et qui rouloit son eau crystalline sur un sable argente, et ce qui etoit plus seduisant encore, une vue d'une etendue et d'une beaute dont une description ne peut donner qu'une bien foible idee. ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... grunts of approval from the gray heads, Daddy was soon off at a tangent in playful fancy, hitting off a foible or "celebrating truth and justice" in one of the unconscious epigrams which it is sought herein to preserve, even when having occasionally to hammer them into shape, for, while Daddy was almost unerring in rhyme, his rhythm, never at fault in delivery, was strictly a temperamental ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... my God, how different were Thy thoughts from theirs,—how different that which was without, from what passed within! My husband had that foible, that when anyone said anything to him against me, he flew into a rage at once. It was the conduct of providence over me; for he was a man of reason and loved me much. When I was sick, he was inconsolable. I believe, had it not been for my mother-in-law, and the girl I have spoken of, ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... music. Never were people happier on an island. A moment's pause is presently created by the return of CRICHTON, wearing the wonderful robe of which we have already had dark mention. Never has he looked more regal, never perhaps felt so regal. We need not grudge him the one foible of his rule, for it is all coming to ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... not by nature," he would say, "a letter-writer, and habitually think of the uncertainty as to who may be the reader of anything that I write. It is my fate, as a writer of history, to have before me letters never intended for my eyes, and this has aggravated my foible, and makes me a wretched correspondent. I should like very much to write letters gracefully and easily, but I can't, because it is contrary to my nature." "I have got," he writes so early as 1873, "to shrink from the use of the pen; to ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... never been the foible of the rich American, but as the seigneur is a species of recent growth and has not yet had time to blossom into flower and show us just to what his nature turns, we must watch his movements hereafter with ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... record properly ends. I have faithfully recounted the events of the 9th of November, at what cost to my own sensibilities none but myself can ever know. But the one foible of my life is amiability; and, from the first, I had no intention of breaking off abruptly when my promise was fulfilled, leaving the reader to conclude that I woke up at my camp, and found the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... truthfulness, nor to stimulate a jaded imagination by Caligulan horrors of plot. He is never, like many of his fellow-dramatists, confronted with unnatural Frankensteins of his own making, whom he must get off his hands as best he may. Given a human foible, he can incarnate it in the nothingness of Slender, or make it loom gigantic through the tragic twilight of Hamlet. We are tired of the vagueness which classes all the Elizabethan playwrights together as "great dramatists,"—as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... if they possess at the same time the art of telling the humorous story about themselves, they become very popular. This popularity accounts for a good deal of seeming modesty and humorous self-depiction; it is a sort of recompense for the self-confessed foible and weakness; it is a way of seeking the good opinion and applause of others and is sometimes sought to a ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... have been selected for so important a movement, was not at all surprising; it was well known that the emperor was attached to him both from habit, (for he was his oldest aid-de-camp) and from a secret foible, for as the presence of that officer was mixed up with all the recollections of his victories and his glory, he disliked to part from him. It is also reasonable to suppose that it flattered his vanity, to see men who were his ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... to any body but you, who know me so well, I should be afraid this would be taken for pique and pride, and be construed into my thinking all ministers inferior to my father but, my dear Harry, you know it was never my foible to think over-abundantly well of him. Why I think as I do of the great geniuses, answer for me, Admiral Matthews, great British Neptune, bouncing in the Mediterranean, while the Brest squadron is riding ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Cumana, meaning to attack him suddenly. At the same time the Indians came secretly aboard the English ships with terrible complaints of Spanish cruelty. Berreo was keeping the ancient chiefs of the island in prison, and had the singular foible of amusing himself at intervals by basting their bare limbs with broiling bacon. These considerations determined Raleigh to take the initiative. That same evening he marched his men up the country to the new capital of the island, St. Joseph, which they easily ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... the eminent ministers of the city, and learned professors of the university, yet was he ever humble, never exalted above measure, nor swelled with the tympany of pride and self conceit, the common foible and disease of young men of any ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... sex, as women always do. But you'll admit that, as your friend, Mrs. Miller may have this foible." ...
— The Elevator • William D. Howells
... centred on sport. His second son, Anthony, between five and six, was large and robust, like his father. Not having been polished at that time, it is hard to say what sort of gem Tony was. When engaged in mischief—his besetting foible—his eyes shone like carbuncles with unholy light. He was the plague of the family. Of course, therefore, he was the ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the rear of my mind was stirring restively the instinct to get back to my writing; and these sedately frolicsome benevolent people—even Rosalind—plainly thought that "writing things" was just the unimportant foible of ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... more perplexity to his Whig Government and have played a better party game, it is perhaps fortunate for the country, and certainly happy for his own reputation, that his virtues thus predominated over his talents. The most remarkable foible of the late King was his passion for speechifying, and I have recorded some of his curious exhibitions in this way. He had considerable facility in expressing himself, but what he said was generally useless or improper. ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... are always having hits at it, and in that philosophical study and scientific vivisection of character which two friends are always so ready to practice at the expense of a third, and which weak-minded people confound with scandal, to no foible is the knife so pitilessly applied as to vanity. What makes this rigor seem all the more cruel and unnatural is that vanity never gets so little quarter as from those who ought, one would think, to be on the best possible terms ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... shall set it to music. And any shall be eligible to this society by only changing his name; for this is one of its happiest hits, to give a name to each of its members arising from some mental peculiarity (which the gods and peacemakers call "foible"), whereby each being perpetually kept in mind of this defect and being always willing to justify it shall raise a clamour and cause much ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... an inspiration came to him, a means to snap the tension, to create a diversion wholly efficacious. He would turn to his boasting again, would call upon his vanity, which he knew well as his chief foible, and make it serve as the foil against his love. He strove manfully to throw off the softer mood. In a measure, at least, he won the fight—though always, under the rush of this vaunting, there throbbed the anguish ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... was entirely concealed from the church; and no one ever thought of setting foot there till Eustacie, whose Catholic reverence was indestructible, even when she was only half sure that it was not worse than a foible, had stolen down thither, grieved at its utter desolation, and with fond and careful hands had cleansed it, and amended the ruin so far as she might. She had no other place where she was sure of being uninterrupted; and here had been her oratory, where she daily ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... however, at most only calculated to excite a smile; there is no turpitude in them, and they merit notice but as indications of the humour of character. It was his Lordship's foible to overrate his rank, to grudge his deformity beyond reason, and to exaggerate the condition of his family and circumstances. But the alloy of such small vanities, his caprice and feline temper, were as vapour compared with ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... caraques Genoises peuvent venir y mettre echelle a terre. Mais comme tout le monde sait cela, je m'abstiens d'en parler. Cependant il m'a semble que du cote de la terre, vers l'eglise qui est dans le voisinage de la porte, a l'extremite du havre, il y a un endroit foible. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... Vivisection or the Defence of Philosophic Doubt. His social agreeableness has, indeed, been marred by the fatuous idolatry of a fashionable clique, stimulating the self-consciousness which was his natural foible; but when he can for a moment forget himself he still is excellent company, for he is genuinely amiable and ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... sana in corpore sano was the famous Dr. Whewell, Master of Trinity. Mr. Murray tells a story of his concern at a dinner-party upon a prospect of an altercation between Borrow and Whewell. With both omniscience was a foible. Both were powerful men; and both of them, if report were true, had more than a superficial knowledge of the art ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... seriously throughout the work of these poets. Side by side with this mania for bombast is another mania, much more clearly traceable to education and associations, but specially odd in connection with what has just been noticed. This is the foible of classical allusion. The heathen gods and goddesses, the localities of Greek and Roman poetry, even the more out-of-the-way commonplaces of classical literature, are put in the mouths of all the characters without the remotest attempt to consider propriety or relevance. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... efficacious. He has a great deal of sound genius, is well remarked by the King, and rising in popularity. He has nothing against him, but the suspicion of republican principles. I think he will one day be of the ministry. His foible is a canine appetite for popularity and fame; but he will get above this. The Count de Vergennes is ill. The possibility of his recovery renders it dangerous for us to express a doubt of it; but ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Jim's especial Foible, He ran away when he was able, And on this inauspicious day He slipped his hand and ran away! He hadn't gone a ...
— Cautionary Tales for Children • Hilaire Belloc
... unsatisfied—nay, shall kill some souls. . . . This too Browning could perceive and show; and once more, loved to show in the person of a girl. There is something in true womanhood which transcends all morgue: it seems almost his foible to say that, so often does he say it! In Colombe, in the Queen of In a Balcony (so wondrously contrasted with Constance, scarcely less noble, yet half-corroded by this very rust of state and semblance); above all, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... that the Englishman, inveterately a draper, is often horrified and occasionally heart-broken. The Spaniard may regret, but cannot mend the organ. His own will never suffer the same fate. Chercher le midi a quatorze heures is no foible of his. ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... felt that in choosing a name he might as well take a handsome one while he was about it, and that if he became Godolphin there was no reason why he should not become Launcelot, too. He did not put on these splendors from any foible, but from a professional sense of their value in the bills; and he was not personally characterized by them. As Launcelot Godolphin he was simpler than he would have been with a simpler name, and it was his ideal to be modest in everything that personally belonged to him. ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... passion for finery. To this foible Pope, in the early days of his acquaintance with the young man, made reference in a letter to Swift, December 8th, 1713: "One Mr. Gay, an unhappy youth, who writes pastorals during the time of Divine Service, whose ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... connected by marriage. It seems also that you are a sort of nephew on his mother's side; he was explaining it to me again only yesterday. If you are his nephew, it follows that I must also be a relation of yours, most excellent prince. Never mind about that, it is only a foible; but just now he assured me that all his life, from the day he was made an ensign to the 11th of last June, he has entertained at least two hundred guests at his table every day. Finally, he went so far as to say that they never rose from the table; they dined, supped, and had ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... generation of discovery is nothing in comparison with the expansion of our knowledge and the enslavement of natural forces which must be looked for in the years on which we enter. Well, we are not sure of that. It has been a foible of many an era to think itself remarkable as a time when "the world's great age begins anew." But let us grant, if you choose, that we are moving into an incomparable age of scientific light and clearness, and at the same time of unprecedented social change. Is it necessary that this clear ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... all his faults, inseparable it may be from the society into which he had been thrown, was not vicious. Loving and beloved, he existed but as the object of woman's regard. This foible he indulged not farther. But many a bright eye waxed dim,—many a fond heart was withered, in the first spring-tide of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the false distinctions which at present regulate society. I might assume the severe tone of the moralist, and urge your compliance with my request as a duty: but I would rather indulge what may perhaps be the foible of immature virtue, and follow the affectionate impulse which binds me to you as my friend and brother. Beside these are vibrations with which I am persuaded your warm and kindred heart will more readily harmonize. In youth, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Bruyere, qui n'a point de Style forme, ecrivant au hazard, employe des Expressions outrees en des Choses tres communes; & quand il en veut dire de plus relevees, il les affoiblit par des Expressions basses, & fait ramper le fort avec le foible. Il tend sans relache a un sublime qu'il ne connoit pas, & qu'il met tantot dans les choses, tantot dans les Paroles, sans jamais attraper le Point d'Unite, qui concilie les Paroles avec les choses, en quoi consiste tout le Secret, & la Finesse ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... of vanity, pride, and ambition, we have been more indulgent to vanity than our proud readers will approve. We hope, however, not to be misunderstood; we hope that we shall not appear to be admirers of that mean and ridiculous foible, which is anxiously concealed by all who have any desire to obtain esteem. We cannot, however, avoid thinking it is a contradiction to inspire young people with a wish to excel, and at the same time to insist upon their repressing all expressions ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... affectation, nor even insincerity, but merely a different conception of the social amenities from that of the all-conquering American, who, it is to be hoped, will not treat this foible with the contempt which, in his superior wisdom, ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... beauty, while it will be the most convincing proof of the taste, sense, and elegance of her admirer, that he can discern and flatter those qualities in her. A man of the character here supposed, will easily insinuate himself into her affections, by means of this latent but leading foible, which may be called the guiding clue to a sentimental heart. He will affect to overlook that beauty which attracts common eyes, and ensnares common hearts, while he will bestow the most delicate praises on the beauties of her mind, and finish ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... of Burgundy received him with politic honours. He took his guest by his foible for pageantry, all the easier as it was a foible of his own; and Charles walked right out of prison into much the same atmosphere of trumpeting and bell-ringing as he had left behind when he went in. Fifteen days after his deliverance he was married to Mary of Cleves, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... banker, by the second daughter of an English earl, a young gentleman of considerable expectations, and very amusing qualifications. Horace is a strange composition of all the good-natured whimsicalities of human nature, happily blended together without any very conspicuous counteracting foible. Facetious, lively, and poetical, the cream of every thing that is agreeable, society cannot be dull if Horace lends his presence. His imitations of Anacreon, and the soft bard of Erin, have on many occasions puzzled the cognoscenti of Eton. Like Moore ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... his friend: "An old procrastinator, Sir, I am: do you wonder that I hate her? Though she but seven words can say, Twenty and twenty times a day She interferes with all my dreams, My projects, plans, and airy schemes, Mocking my foible to my sorrow: ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... a rubber—not of whist, bien entendu, but of men. In build WILLIAM is pear-shaped, the upper part of him, where you would expect to find the stalk, broadening out into a perpetual smile. He has lived in the Baths twenty-three years, and yet his gaiety is not eclipsed. If he has a foible it is his belief that he thoroughly understands ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... author who writes over the head of the public is the most dangerous enemy of his publisher—and the most insidious as well, because so many publishers are in private life interested in literary matters, and would readily permit this personal foible to influence the exercise of their vocation were it possible to do so upon ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... The result is that we see, on almost every page, contradictory teachings and conflicting methods of salvation. This, of course, is by no means fatal to it in the estimation of Hindus, with whom consistency has never been a foible, and in the eyes of whom two mutually contradictory teachings can ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... [Greek: hubris] and contempt of others. He chooses what is physically the shortest line in preference to the line of least resistance. He makes up for his want of light by his superiority in weight. Social adaptability is not his foible. He accepts the conventionality of his class and wears it as an impenetrable armour. Out of his own class he may sometimes appear less conventional than the American, simply because the latter is quick to adopt the manners of a new milieu, while John Bull ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... 'the foible of which you complain so heavily has always been that of kings and heroes; which I feel strongly confident the king will surmount, upon the humble entreaty of his best servants, and when he sees them ready to peril their all in his cause, upon the slight condition of his resigning the society of ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... parish? He had a native gift for administration, being tolerant both of opinions and conduct, because he felt himself able to overrule them, and was free from the irritations of conscious feebleness. He smiled pleasantly at the foible of a taste which he did not share—at floriculture or antiquarianism for example, which were much in vogue among his fellow-clergyman in the diocese: for himself, he preferred following the history of a campaign, or divining from ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Syrie" of Queen Hortense, are emblematical. Mme. Recamier, although in date all but the contemporary of Mme. Lebrun, is, in her position of mistress of a salon, essentially the impersonation of a foible peculiar to the present day; she typifies the class of women who, in Paris, are absolutely absorbed by the thought of their salons, for whom to receive is to live, and who are ready to expire at the notion of any celebrity not being a frequenter of their tea-table. Mme. Nodier's—and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... studious of song And yet ambitious not to sing in vain, I would not trifle merely, though the world Be loudest in their praise who do no more. Yet what can satire, whether grave or gay? It may correct a foible, may chastise The freaks of fashion, regulate the dress, Retrench a sword-blade, or displace a patch; But where are its sublimer trophies found? What vice has it subdued? whose heart reclaimed By rigour, or whom laughed into reform? Alas, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... truly an evil; and all evils were about of equal magnitude. Besides, in attacking an evil or an abuse, he did not fail to attack the perpetrator or upholder of it also, and that, too, with a strength of invective, or of cutting sarcasm, which brought every foible, and weakness of his, and even those of his father before him, vividly into view. This was the baleful secret of his strength as an assailant; but this, too, caused him to be regarded by his victims with intense dislike, bordering on hatred. This style of ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Count von Cobenzl's foible is said to be a passion for women; and it is reported that our worthy Minister, Talleyrand, has been kind enough to assist him frequently in his amours. Some adventures of this sort, which occurred at Rastadt, afforded much amusement at the Count's expense. Talleyrand, from envy, no doubt, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... his heart of hearts he rather pitied, not to say despised, Saltwell, for his want of the polish he possessed and his indifference to the elegancies of life, though he was not unable to appreciate his messmate's frankness of manner and truthfulness of character. His foible was his admiration for the poets, and his belief that he could write poetry and was a ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... things to rights to go off to-morrow. Though I always wonder why it should be so, I feel a dislike to order and to task-work of all kinds—a predominating foible in my disposition. I do not mean that it influences me in morals; for even in youth I had a disgust at gross irregularities of any kind, and such as I ran into were more from compliance with others and a sort of false shame, than any pleasure I sought or found ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... demand of Art is that it shall give us the artist's best. Art is the mintage of the soul. All the whim, foible, and rank personality are blown away on the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... individual is a volume to be read. We are vexed, and perhaps tormented, by the vices or foibles of those with whom we are thrown in contact. Let us not stop in vexation, but study our own hearts, and see if there is not some kindred vice or foible in ourselves that perhaps troubles our friends quite as much as this disturbs us; for it is often the case that our own vices, when we meet them in others, are precisely those which irritate us most; and we are almost ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... it was Rudolph Musgrave's besetting infirmity always to shrink—under shelter of whatever grandiloquent excuse—from making changes. One may permissibly estimate this foible to have weighed with him a little, even now, just as in all things it had always weighed in Lichfield with all his generation. An old custom ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... despair—"Then O! thou barbarian, think of the bacon and cabbage I fried for thy supper yesterday evening." "Oh, the sorceress!" cried Turlupin—"I can't resist her—she knows how to take me by my foible; the bacon, the bacon, quite unmans me, and the very fat is now rising in my stomach. Live on then thou charmer—fry ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... this work. To which I shall answer: first, that it is very difficult to pursue a series of human actions, and keep clear from them. Secondly, that the vices to be found here are rather the accidental consequences of some human frailty or foible, than causes habitually existing in the mind. Thirdly, that they are never set forth as the objects of ridicule, but detestation. Fourthly, that they are never the principal figure at that time on the scene: and, lastly, they ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... nothing more. I am sure, however, that he was very ill at ease upon this point, and that if a dangerous illness had overtaken him, and he had had the time, he would have thrown himself into the hands of all the priests and all the Capuchins of the town. His great foible was to pride himself upon his impiety and to wish to surpass in ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... of phrase and love of applause accounted for that. Secondly, Firio was devoted to him. Such worshipful attachment on the part of a native Indian to any Saxon was remarkable. Yet this was explained by his love of color, his foible for the picturesque, his vagabond irresponsibility, and, mostly, by his latent savagery—which she would hardly have been willing to apply to ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... vital part. In show and splendour a higher point was probably reached in Edward III's than in any preceding reign. The extravagance in dress which prevailed in this period is too well known a characteristic of it to need dwelling upon. Sumptuary laws in vain sought to restrain this foible; and it rose to such a pitch as even to oblige men, lest they should be precluded from indulging in gorgeous raiment, to abandon hospitality, a far more amiable species of excess. When the kinds of clothing ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... are being educated amain, let us hope. Germany has prided herself on her education, her learning, and on her Kultur. To-day she is beyond the calculation of all that foresight which has been her boast, and foible. Human nature, other than German, has not been on the national curriculum, and, as in other departments of study, what has not been reduced to rule and line is beyond the ken and apprehension. How ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... he might have conveyed to his own, where they probably would have been readily adopted, as being so much in their own way. But I never found that he used the least endeavour to make himself master of any one. This kind of indifference is indeed the characteristic foible of his nation. Europeans have visited them at times for these ten years past, yet we could not discover the slightest trace of any attempt to profit by this intercourse, nor have they hitherto copied after us in any one thing. We are not, therefore, to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... get that he put up with the applause of the many. And thus his letters are full of that heartiness and vigour which comes from the determination to do everything he tries to do well. They have besides the most perfect and unmistakable reality. Every foible is confessed; every passing thought, even such as one would rather not confess even to oneself, is revealed and recorded to his friend. It is from these letters to a great extent that Cicero has been so severely judged. He stands, say his critics, self-condemned. This is true; but ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... was James Bisset's foible. Of some subjects, such as buttling, carpentry, and mending bicycles, it was practical; of others, such as shooting, gardening, and motoring, it was more theoretical. To Sir Reginald and my lady ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... represented his, all the gratification they could have commanded would have been for him but a whet. If he had a weak side it was his own astuteness: he could not always see how unutterably foolish a man might be if he were let alone. Another foible he had—intellectual appreciation of beauty pushed to fainting-point. His senses were so straitly tied to his brains that to pluck at one was to thrill the other. Made on a small scale, he was pretty rather than handsome, had quiet watchful eyes, a smiling mouth, very little ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... enough, but I never will seem to look, fearing to distress them; thus I gain a double pleasure when I recite to them my poems; for I leave those poor fellows who have not breakfasted free to eat, even while I gratify my own dearest foible, see you? ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... serious, had his feelings been more generous and ardent, had his moral sense been less shallow, he might have made important contributions to literature. As it was, to be a man of the world was his trade, to be a writer was only an admirable foible. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... imagine it is something about the cotillon, concerning which I am absolutely ignorant, and am therefore capable of offering any amount of advice. I am a whale at giving advice, and my only consolation is that no one is ever foolish enough to follow it; so that I can humour my little foible without suffering the terrors of responsibility. Au revoir, my dear Stafford, until this evening. Good-bye, Tiny! What a selfish little beast it is; he won't even ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... to thank God for their sickness and pain—at the same time naively praying Him to take back His gift. This inconsistency was due to a combination of ignorance and the good old human foible of blaming some one else. Folks did not know then, as well as they do now, that they had the stomachache because they were too fond of rich dainties. The cause of the pain being mysterious, they went back to first principles and blamed (or thanked) God for ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... encounter with the man, after his long expiation had ended, willing to add at least a little self-reproach to his suffering. I suppose, as nearly as I can analyse my mood, I must have been expecting, in spite of all reason and experience, that his anguish would have wrung that foible out of him, and left him strong where it had found him weak. Tragedy befalls the light and foolish as well as the wise and weighty natures, but it does not render them wise and weighty; I had often made this sage ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... combien l'homme est inconstant, divers, Foible, lger, tenant mal sa parole, J'avois jur, mme en assez beaux vers, De renouncer tout Conte frivole. Depuis deux jours j'ai fait cette promesse Puis fiez-vous Rimeur qui rpond D'un seul moment. Dieu ne fit la sagesse Pour les cerveaux qui ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... will object. "All this happened a hundred years ago. Yet here are you talking as if you had been present." Very true: it is a way we have in Troy. Call it a foible—but forgive it! The other day, for instance, happening on the Town Quay, I found our gasman, Mr. Rabling, an earnest Methodist, discussing to a small crowd on the subject of the Golden Calf, and in this fashion: "Well, friends, in the midst of all this pillaloo, hands-across and down-the-middle, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... much of human nature in her not to feel sometimes a little flush of vanity on seeing herself admired; but she immediately corrected the foible, by reflecting that whatever advantages of mind or form had fallen to her share, they were given her by one who expected she should not suffer her thoughts or attention to be withdrawn thereby from him, who was the perfection of all excellence, while she at best could but flatter herself ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... loss what countenance to put on during a narrative which raised in him nearly the same conjectures; he shrugged up his shoulders, and faintly said that appearances were often deceitful; that Lady Chesterfield had the foible of all beauties, who place their merit on the number of their admirers; and whatever airs she might imprudently have given herself, in order not to discourage his royal highness, there was no ground to suppose that she would indulge him in any greater liberties to engage ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... Folly and Affectation. There is at the same time an humble Ignorance, a modest Weakness, that ought to be spar'd; they are unhappy already in the Consciousness of their own Defects, and 'tis fighting with the Lame and Sick to be severe upon them. The Wit that genteely glances at a Foible, is smartly retorted, or generously forgiven; because the Merit of the Reprover is as well known as the Merit of the Reproved. In such delicate Conversations, Mirth, temper'd with good Manners, is the only Point in View, and we grow gay ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... a fol Qui trop met en fame sa cure; Fame est de trop foible nature, De noient rit, de noient pleure, Fame aime et het en trop poi d'eure: Tost est ses talenz remuez, Qui fame ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... formidable revolt of the Poles in 1863. It remained to keep France quiet. In this Bismarck thought he had succeeded by means of interviews which he held with Napoleon III. at Biarritz (Nov. 1865). What there occurred is not clearly known. That Bismarck played on the Emperor's foible for oppressed nationalities, in the case of Italy, is fairly certain; that he fed him with hopes of gaining Belgium, or a slice of German land, is highly probable, and none the less so because he later on indignantly denied in the Reichstag that ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... too; an over-age dizzy blonde who was still living in the Flaming Youth era of the twenties. She was an extremely good egg; he liked her very much. After all, insisting upon remaining an F. Scott Fitzgerald character was a harmless and amusing foible, and it was no more than right that somebody should try to keep the bright banner of Jazz Age innocence flying in a grim and sullen world. He accepted a cigarette, shared the flame of his lighter with mother and daughter, and ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... possibly a preceding century has fabricated, does not find herself in an antiquated cut nor with stitches placed amiss, loses no time of course in dreaming of new fashions, nor self-respect in being obliged to parade in the old ones. Her only fashionable foible is that of knitting silver lace, she not having as yet been initiated into the mystery of making Chinese boxes and card-racks, dolls' dresses and ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... incurred your displeasure. I see you are also a man who does not forget easily. And that, too, I understand. It is a foible of my own, Out-Hunter. I neither forget nor forgive my enemies, though I may seem to do so and time separates them from their past ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... never members of the Church of England. Methodists, Romanists, Presbyterians appeared to stand high in his favour, and Peak readily discerned that this was a way of displaying 'large-souled tolerance'. It was his foible to quote foreign languages, especially passages which came from heretical authors. Thus, he began to talk of Feuerbach for the sole purpose of ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... his habits, came to the "Packhorse" now and then; but Mercy protected her husband's heart from pain. She was kind, and even pitiful; but so discreet and resolute, and contrived to draw the line so clearly between her husband and her old sweetheart, that Griffith's foible could not burn him, for want ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... though all the while there rose A ready answer, which at once enables A matron, who her husband's foible knows, By a few timely words to turn the tables, Which, if it does not silence, still must pose,— Even if it should comprise a pack of fables; 'T is to retort with firmness, and when he Suspects with one, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... boughs with his stick, remarked that they grew extremely fast. But the keeper, usually so keen to take a hint, only answered that the lime was the quickest wood to grow of which he knew. In his heart he enjoyed the squire's difficulty. Finally the squire, legalising his foible by recognising it, fetched a ladder and a hatchet, and chopped off the boughs with ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... lugubrious accents. An ugly saint is an unmixed calamity to jolly fellows; but to be lord and master, and possessor, of a beautiful saint, was not without its piquant charm. His jealousy was dormant, not extinct; and Kate's piety tickled that foible, not wounded it. He found himself the rival of heaven,—and the successful rival; for, let her be ever so strict, ever so devout, she must give her husband many delights she could not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the "greatness of his behavior" at the approach of death, he may have had a twinkling hope of immortality. Mens cujusque is est quisque, said his chosen motto; and, as he had stamped his mind with every crook and foible in the pages of the Diary, he might feel that what he left behind him was indeed himself. There is perhaps no other instance so remarkable of the desire of man for publicity and an enduring name. The greatness of his life was open, yet he longed to communicate its smallness also; ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... recognized on the way and perhaps followed—'t was a foible of his to believe that throughout all France his fame was as great and popular as it was at Tarascon—he had made a great detour before entering Switzerland and did not don his accoutrements until after he had crossed the frontier. Luckily for ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
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