"Weak spot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an excellent partner and a man of most industrious habits, had, so Mr. Taynton would have admitted, one little weak spot. He never was at the office till rather late in the morning. True, when he came, he soon made up for lost time, for he was possessed, as we have seen, of a notable quickness and agility of mind, but sometimes Taynton found that he was himself forced to be idle till Mills turned up, if his signature ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... found that enemy troops could be contained along the line without such numerous and expensive precautionary attacks, and possibly these were really intended not so much to contain the enemy as to test his line with the idea of finding some weak spot which might be pierced. None of them succeeded to that extent, though Bellewarde was temporarily taken in front of Ypres, Le Bridoux redoubt in front of Bois Grenier, the slopes of the Aubers ridge, and some trenches near La Basse. The last operation, if ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... his office and had been made sacrosanct by the laws. The proposal was received by the senators with loud cries of acclamation. A glance at Tiberius would probably have shown that Annius had found the weak spot, not merely in his defensive armour, but in his very soul. The deposition of Octavius was proving a very nemesis; it was a democratic act that was in the highest degree undemocratic, an assertion and yet a gross violation ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality on his brain. Poe, for instance, really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he was specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical for him; he disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles, ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... two men to the present political situation was peculiar, and, as it turned out, was to constitute the weak spot in the Cowperwood-McKenty campaign. Tiernan and Kerrigan, to begin with, being neighbors and friends, worked together in politics and business, on occasions pooling their issues and doing each other favors. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... shaken, no doubt, by loss of Officers (complete); by heavy losses of men (not replaced, or replaceable, under a month) and by sheer physical exertion. Small wonder then that one weak spot in our barrier gave way before the solid mass of the attacking Turks, who came on with the bayonet like true Ghazis. The first part of the rifle fire last night was entirely from our own men. The break by one battalion ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... does you a mean turn he is expecting you will repay him in like manner. He guards himself against this. He is ready for your revenge, but if you repay him with good you attack him in a weak spot and make him feel like thirty cents, and this is all the revenge ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... with a wink, snugging up to the lady, I did; For she'd found a weak spot in my 'art, this cold classical gal, and no kid. I'd been 'aving a pull at my flask, up that tree, and her pluck and blue eyes Made me feel a bit spoony; in fact I was mashed. ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... you are grumbling yourself at me because I grumbled!" says a quick-witted darling not ten years old. Ah! never shall any weak spot in our armor escape the keen eyes of these ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... starting to cross over to where the other stood, looking so forlorn that had any observing fellow come along just then and noticed the expression on his face, he might have spread an alarm to the effect that the big fullback was ill, and consequently there would be a weak spot in the line-up that afternoon, as sure ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... but too well that that is the weak spot in our armor,—a very weak spot, too; for it is quite clear, that, if M. de Boiscoran had given this explanation on the day of his arrest, he would have been released instantly. But what better can be found? What else can be found? However, this is only a rough sketch of ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... Wilson, flicking his cigar ash with his long finger. "It's curious, watching boys," he went on reflectively. "I'm sure I did you justice in the matter of ability. Yet I always used to feel that there was a weak spot where some day strain would tell. Even after you began to climb, I stood down in the crowd and watched you with—well, not with confidence. The more dazzling the front you presented, the higher your facade rose, the more I expected to see ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... was clever enough to bridle her indignation. He followed up his advantage swiftly, leaving her no time to pry for a weak spot in his pleading. ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... intention that made Margaret shrink as if from a danger she was not able to meet. There was something bright and hard and daring in Rosa's eyes as she stared unwinkingly, as if she had come to search out a weak spot for her evil purposes, and Margaret was so tired she wanted to lay her head down on her desk and cry. She drew some comfort from the reflection that if she should do so childish a thing she would be at once surrounded ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... have a weak spot or two in a character before we can love it much. People that do not laugh or cry, or take more of anything than is good for them, or use anything but dictionary-words, are admirable subjects for biographies. But we don't care most for those flat pattern flowers ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... conditions, instantly changing his heart with his change of sky, and learning to wave his stars and stripes with the best of the native-born, must seem miraculous to the ordinary patriot. And here we touch the weak spot in Mr. ZANGWILL'S paean of the Melting Pot. For those who migrate to America for the sake of its democratic freedom are the few; and those who go there for the sake of its dollars are the many; and into the Melting Pot—or, to use an image more apposite to indigenous tastes, its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... again all day. SAGE OF QUEEN ANNE'S GATE and his Party active as usual. The PARTY a little doubtful of the SAGE. Sometimes, in blessed intervals of silence, is discovered gazing on a bald space on back of SAGE'S head, striving, as it were, to pierce through this weak spot, and discover what is in the SAGE'S mind. The SAGE in outward manner most deferential and encouraging. Misses no opportunity of publicly applauding him. It is true that when the SAGE has got him on his legs, starting afresh on new Amendment, he seizes the opportunity to slink out of the House, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, May 9, 1891 • Various
... machine was not shattered; it simply ran down. To this fact the phenomenon owes its peculiar interest. For we behold here in the case of man the same spectacle that we see cosmically in the case of the moon, the spectacle of a world that has died of old age. No weak spot in their social organism destroyed them from within; no epidemic, in the shape of foreign hordes, fell upon them from without. For in spite of the fact that China offers the unique example of a country that has simply ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... method of living does not contribute to building up and strengthening what is in the first place a weak structure, the structure itself will, during the first strain put upon it, give way, and naturally the weak spot will be the point of election for the invasion of disease. This strain may be one of the infantile diseases,—scarlet fever, or measles, or whooping cough, or it may be bronchitis. Instead of convalescing from these conditions, as a normally constituted child will, ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... of shaving off his beard, partly to defy time, but partly also (I must admit) because a friend had suggested to him, wildly, perhaps—that if he dispensed with a beard his hair might grow more sturdily ... Yes, there was one weak spot in the middle of the top of his head, where the crop had of late disconcertingly thinned! The hairdresser had informed him that the symptom would vanish under electric massage, and that, if he doubted the bona-fides of hairdressers, ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... just," answered Denham, pleasantly, though the blood mounted to his face. "You have found out my weak spot. I confess I am not ambitious. I aspire to no greatness of ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... blanket as much dried meat as she could carry, she slipped unnoticed from the kraal. Her object was to escape from the Great Place, but this she did not try to do by any of the gates, knowing them to be guarded. Some months ago, before she started on her embassy, she had noted a weak spot in the fence, where dogs had torn a hole through which they passed out to hunt at night. To this spot she made her way under cover of the darkness—for though she still greatly feared to be alone at night, her pressing need conquered her fears—and found that the ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... hour's fighting, and the total losses on this field, where skirmishing went on for many days, were 13,000. But Grant was as resolute as ever. His forces once more manoeuvred against Lee's inner flank, still found no weak spot, and eventually arrived upon the James. The river was crossed, Lee as usual conforming to the movement, and on the 15th of June the Federals appeared before the works of Petersburg (q.v.). Here, and in the narrow neck of land between the Appomattox and the James, was the ganglion ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... mood was she in sympathy. She was fond of poetry and of music; indeed, to sum up her character in as few words as possible, she was everything that so critical a dreamer of the ideal as Mr. Augustus Richards could have wished for, nor was there one weak spot in the armor of her character at ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... your car and your maids for some small hotel?" she questioned, with her favorite air of neatly placing her fingertip upon the weak spot in her opponent's armor. "No clubs, no dinners, none of your old friends—have you thought ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... line of fortifications covering the town of Williamsburg. Smith's engineering skill and his quick intelligence served him again most fortunately, and with the aid of Captain West of the Coast Survey then serving on his staff, soon enabled him to find the weak spot in the enemy's position. This time it turned out to be on the extreme left, where he had failed, probably through lack of troops, to occupy the extensive works which had been previously constructed. Realizing ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... a large handkerchief and passed it across his face. "It's only the fear of physical violence," he said. "That's the only weak spot. Fear was formerly distributed over a wide variety of possibilities, but now it's all ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... more and more exasperated. He was happening upon every weak spot in the crust, and floundering at almost every step. All at once, as the surface broke there came to his nostrils the familiar smell of a partridge. It was a fresh scent. The fox forgot his indignation. He poked ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... weak spot, Miss Urquhart, right in the bull's-eye," he declared, sighing furiously. "If I could have paid her, of course there'd have been no difficulty at all. ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... poem, logical in its development, and theatrically effective, ought not to be a difficult thing to do. And yet, in the case of this opera, Barbier did not do it, and by a singularly persistent and consistent fatality Rubinstein apparently found every weak spot in the poet's fabric, and loosened and tangled his threads right there. The operas and ballets performed by the National Opera Company in this season besides "Nero" were "The Flying Dutchman," "The ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... reply. It was true—Olga Lermontof had laid a finger on the weak spot in her friendship with Adrienne. The latter never talked to her of her past life; their mutual attachment was built solely around the present, and if by chance any question of Diana's accidentally probed into the past, ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... escape from the abdominal cavity, which we call hernia. This is one of a fair-sized group of dangers clearly due to the assumption of the erect position and our incomplete adjustment thereto. In the quadrupedal position this necessary weak spot—a partial opening through the abdominal wall—was developed in that region which was highest from the point of view of gravity and least exposed to strain. In the bipedal position it becomes lowest ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... station where the moist heat rose in fever mists and where an endless stream of men passed backward and forward to their tasks with wan, weary faces and slowly dragging limbs. What a cursed chance which had brought him once more face to face with the one weak spot in his life, the one chapter which, had he the power, he would most willingly seal for ever! From outside came the ringing of a bell, the hoarse shouting of many voices in the ring, through the open door a vision of fluttering waves of colour, ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... much in earnest for either humility or vanity Ignorance is a solemn and sacred fact Imperative demand of patients and their friends Invectives against such as dared to doubt the dogmas Kept extreme remedies for extreme cases Logical errors Loud outcry on a slight touch reveals the weak spot Medical Jounals must find something to fill their columns Medical logic which does not seem to have been taught Medicines proper, which hurts a well man, hurts a sick one Much as you know, something is still left for you to learn Mutual respect of which outward ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... spontaneously charges itself with electricity. If the glass has a weak spot, a scratch say, an electric spark is produced at that point and the vessel crumbles, just like a Leyden jar ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... eyes; but human nature has its ingrained likes and dislikes, and I for one couldn't question Amos, because I hate a hunchback, and I wouldn't trust one of they humped people—man or woman—with anything that belonged to me. The broadest-minded of us have got a weak spot like that somewhere and hate some harmless thing ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... the court, with Mr. Narkom on his right and Dollops on his left, waited for that one weak spot in the evidence, and saw with a smile how the coroner lit upon it. His opinion of that worthy went ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... had reached the isolated pass. It was now likely that Madame would arrive before Bleiberg ere her enemies dreamed of the stroke. Maurice could see how well the traitorous administration had played into Madame's hands. Here was the one weak spot, and they had allowed it ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... McKinstry-Harrison boundaries, and that the new landlord would at once attempt its legal possession. The inspiration of genius that had thus effected a division of the Harrison-McKinstry combination at its one weak spot excited even the admiration of the sceptics. No one in Indian Spring knew its real author, for the suit was ostensibly laid in the name of a San Francisco banker. But the intelligent reader of Johnny Filgee's late experience during the celebration will have already recognized Uncle Ben as the man, ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... references and passages which bore upon the next day's work. This Willoughby Smith has nothing against him, either as a boy at Uppingham or as a young man at Cambridge. I have seen his testimonials, and from the first he was a decent, quiet, hard-working fellow, with no weak spot in him at all. And yet this is the lad who has met his death this morning in the professor's study under circumstances which can ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that there had been spirited fighting for the last week along that portion of the front. The men were of the opinion that the attacks and counter-attacks thus far had been in the nature of feelers and that both sides were searching for a weak spot in their opponent's line. They all seemed to feel that a general offensive was about to be undertaken and every man was convinced that the dispatches the three young friends had brought were in some way connected with ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... mirror in her garret, so she had dressed by her sense of touch, and I could see that she was afraid to stand up and look at herself in the mirror in my room. I knew the weak spot in all women's hearts (which men are very wrong in considering as matter for reproach), and I encouraged her to admire herself, whereupon she could not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... house against Sheen, caused by the story of his encounter with Attell, had not diminished. Stanning had fostered it in various little ways. It was not difficult. When a house of the standing in the school which Seymour's possessed exhibits a weak spot, the rest of the school do not require a great deal of encouragement to go on prodding that weak spot. In short, the school rotted Seymour's about Sheen, and Seymour's raged impotently. Fags of other houses expended much crude satire on Seymour's fags, and even the seniors of the house came ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... not treating his craft fairly in driving her thus recklessly in a strong breeze against a heavy sea; but he had perfect faith in her; he had driven every bolt and nail in her with his own hands, and was confident that there was not a weak spot anywhere about her; and the excitement and tension of the last few hours had wrought him into a condition of desperate impatience that would brook nothing savouring of delay. And, being completely dominated by this spirit of impatience, it was a vexation to him to find that he would be unable ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... because he had nothing else to do. When they were separate his occupation was gone, and they never HAD been separate. I judged rightly that in their awkward situation their close union was their main comfort and that this union had no weak spot. It was a real marriage, an encouragement to the hesitating, a nut for pessimists to crack. Their address was humble—I remember afterwards thinking it had been the only thing about them that was really professional—and ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... have some weak spot in his insane armor, some way by which he could be reached and destroyed—and Bentley swore to himself that it would be he who would find that ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... consider it wise to take any European territory, but will make minor corrections of frontiers for military purposes by occupying such frontier territory as has proved a weak spot ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that are to be found in every Indian bungalow, and returned, still absently holding it between his finger and thumb. A confession of weakness: there is no denying it. But let him who has not yet found the devil's chink in his own defences cast the stone. Head, heart, or heel—there is a weak spot in the strongest. Not even Achilles' self was plunged wholesale into ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... road lay for a mile or so along a canal with open fields on either side. Uhlan patrols had been reported in this part of the country, which was in a weak spot in the Belgian lines, and the Colonel told the staff officer to keep a sharp lookout and be ready with his revolver and prepared for a burst of speed. That military genius replied with an air of assurance: "Oh, that's all right. They cannot ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... the mental powers of perception, which seem like duplicates of the senses, had the mysterious power of swift projection that astonishes us in intellects of a high order—slingers who are quick to detect the weak spot in any armor. ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... about the rejoicing up above, over the one who went astray. I do not believe we rejoice with a very full heart: maybe we are not heavenly enough. We can never be sure of our own strength until some far-reaching test is applied, and yet it may not be an entirely true test. It may quiver about the weak spot in our souls; but, while there is any feeling, one cannot be entirely lost. That is why I say he never forgot. And you and I ought to rejoice that he did come back instead of going off in that gloomy, diseased, Manfred style, and upbraiding the world. 'Whatever ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... I am afraid that the borrowed handkerchief to which you applied the match really did get burnt, and you will probably have to offer the owner one of your own instead. That is the only weak spot in one of the most baffling tricks ever practised by the amateur prestidigitator (to use the word for the last time). It will make a fitting climax to your evening's entertainment—an entertainment which will ensure you another warm invitation next year when the "festive ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... the criticisms were visibly right, while even those with which I could not concur showed me the weak spot in my work that had occasioned them. They have helped me to improve the book—I think I may ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... he made that confidence which he had repressed on the day when they sat upon the foreshore of the Nile. "Each man has his particular weak spot of sentiment, I suppose. I have mine. I am not a marrying man, so it's not sentiment of that kind. Perhaps you will laugh at it. It isn't merely that I loathe this squalid, shadeless, vile town of Omdurman, or the horrors of its prison. It isn't merely that I hate the emptiness ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... stronger than his own will; and his spirit was savage within him. He had no authority to dig the floors of the Mission, for the Mission and several acres about it were the property of the Church. The priest never would take him on that underground journey again, for he had learned the weak spot in his armor, nor had he fear of death. Unless accident favored him, or some one more fortunate, the golden heart of the San Rafael hill would ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... weak spot in your idea, as I told you, is that you and George Chandos have the same body. Now, if you could manage to provide George with separate flesh and blood of his own, there's ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... leaving only his head showing above the white mass around him. Lancy was soon at Dexie's side, and understood the situation at once. The level stretch of snow was but the covering of a frozen stream that here flowed parallel with the road. He had led the horse near a weak spot, and the ice had given away beneath him. The water might not be deep enough to drown him, but Lancy saw at once it would be impossible to get the horse out without assistance. He helped Dexie back ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... you're on to my weak spot, all right, partner," he hastened to say in the boldest manner possible. "But really and truly, I have got some things I want to do, though of course they could be postponed if absolutely necessary. Some time perhaps you'll be having my plebeian dish over at your house; ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... said—that they would be in Ladysmith on November 9, and I believe they half believed themselves. At any rate I make no doubt that all this morning they were feeling—feeling our thin lines all round for a weak spot to break ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens |
