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Hair's breadth   Listen
noun
Hair's breadth, Hairbreadth  n.  (Also spelled hairsbreadth)  The diameter or breadth of a hair; a very small distance; sometimes, definitely, the forty-eighth part of an inch. "Every one could sling stones at an hairbreadth and not miss."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hair's breadth" Quotes from Famous Books



... all instances it will test the mechanical dexterity and patience for cutting in confined spaces. When this has been accomplished to satisfaction, a piece of maple without curl or knot must be cut a little thicker than what has been removed, but as to superficial area, fitting to a hair's breadth ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... unthinkable, that she should disappear like that. Through a foot of space, in a hair's breadth of time, she ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... have ceased to improve anything at all. Their language and writing are childishly imperfect, though the oldest in existence. In government, in the forms of social life, in their ideas generally, they follow rules laid down for them three thousand years ago or more and from which to swerve a hair's breadth were blasphemy. As they have always stubbornly resisted foreign influences, and gone the length of trying actually to erect material walls between themselves and the rest of the world, their empire is a perfectly fair specimen of what the ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... England, he still served Walking the strict path, with the old high pride Of those invincible knights who never swerved One hair's breadth from ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes

... safety was secured his whole soul was stirred by anxiety for Fred Linden, who, he knew, was placed at more disadvantage than he. Since he was further from shore than was he, and since the latter had been able to save himself only by a hair's breadth, it was clearly beyond the power of Fred to escape in the same manner—though it might be that there was some other remote chance ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... not infrequently expend upon a book an amount of labour and a value of material quite out of proportion to the importance of the book. Still, being a thoroughly conscientious workman, who never hurried the forwarding, never cut from a margin a hair's breadth more than was necessary, and hated finger-marks on the whiteness of a page, he was well known as such, and had plenty of work—had often, indeed, to refuse what was offered him, hence was able to decline all such jobs as would give him no pleasure, and grew ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... was! See how small my knowledge, and how faint my strength! For hours he lay there sick unto death, and I felt it not—I who had waited for him for two thousand years—I knew it not. And then at last I see him, and behold, my chance is gone but by a hair's breadth even before I have it, for he is in the very jaws of death, whence no power of mine can draw him. And if he die, surely must the Hell be lived through once more—once more must I face the weary centuries, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... the rest of us ain't," insinuated Andy softly, and lifted his hat to wipe the sweat off his forehead. "I will say that—" After all, he did not. Instead, he knelt beside Happy Jack and painstakingly adjusted the crumpled hat a hair's breadth differently. ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower

... abruptly. This, upon first reading it, was a very decided feeling in my own case; but, on reading it a second time, when surprise had subsided, I felt it less, and yet I fear that you may have, in this, gone a hair's breadth too far. Mignon, before her end, had begun to appear more womanly and softer, and thus to have become more interesting in herself; the repulsive heterogeneity of her nature had relaxed, and with this relaxation some of her impetuosity had likewise ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... be discovered thus by the blunder of a servant, he met this little vexation with the characteristic effrontery which had served his turn so well in the endless intrigues of his self-seeking career. Without altering his attitude a hair's breadth, one leg in a silk stocking advanced, his head twisted over his left shoulder, he called ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad

... objected that the moral state of men is fixed at death, and that nothing that we or they can do can influence it by a hair's breadth. That this has been a popular opinion is true; and it is equally true that many have supposed that all who have had faith on the earth are in bliss; and that all who have been without faith are in misery; and that the beatitude of all the good is ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford

... Anna's hand on the door. The effort of rising, and of composing his face to meet her, gave him a factitious sense of self-control. He said to himself: "I must decide on something——" and that lifted him a hair's breadth ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... hides from them in the belfry of a church. It was the custom to ring the bells at sunset. He had ensconced himself between the wall and the great bell, and "when this rose, and showed to him the whole opening of its mouth," he found he was within a hair's breadth of contact with it. Retreat was impossible, and the least movement exposed his head to be shattered. The conception is terrible enough, but by no means a novel one, as all readers conversant with the pages of this Magazine ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... things: it alters its position no more than space, of which it is doubtless but the incomprehensible reflex. It reigns in the centre of every event; and every event is fixed in its centre; and all that comes and all that goes passes from end to end of our little life without moving by a hair's breadth around its motionless pivot. It is entitled to but one of the thousand names which we have been wont to lavish upon its power, a power that seemed to us manifold and innumerable: yesterday, recently, formerly, erewhile, after, ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... do, but so that, by maintaining the rights of others, they may also remain in the Union? Now, Gentlemen, permit me to say, that I speak of no concessions. If the South wish any concession from me, they will not get it; not a hair's breadth of it. If they come to my house for it, they will not find it, and the door will be shut; I concede nothing. But I say that I will maintain for them, as I will maintain for you, to the utmost of my power, and in the face of all danger, their rights under the Constitution, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... Gabriel take note of such lies by women; and which side of the account does he put them on?) 'Father says a fact is a hard nut to crack. You're not to take any notice of this attack on me. You're not to flinch from the fight for my sake or deflect a hair's breadth on my account. You know what you said. Things have gone so far that crime is invading decent lives. Well, it has invaded yours and mine; and you're not to slack one jot. Dick, I command it. I command it in the name of that seal I ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... did not falter for an instant. She would not stop; nothing on earth should make her stop now. Only, because she knew the man, she kicked her feet clear of the stirrups. He had said he would shoot and he would shoot, and if the grey shied or swerved a hair's breadth she would probably receive the bullet that was meant for him. Better that! Yes, even ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... noon, talking it over this way and that, and at last began to look at their watches. They had brought Geissler down to half a million now, but not a hair's breadth farther. No; they must have put him out sorely some way or other. They seemed to think he was anxious to sell, obliged to sell, but he was not—ho, not a bit; there he sat, as easy and careless as themselves, and ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... nerves under control. He would go through the next hour without anyone suspecting the madness that was in his mind. He was absolutely sober and self-collected. He walked along a seam of the matting that ran the whole length of the gallery, and did not deviate from it one hair's breadth. Now he was ready. Perfectly prepared to deliver his lecture. He sat down and picked up the newspaper, and the print was clear. "The weather still continues to be fine over the British Islands. The anti-cyclone has not ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke

... Miss Poole," stood smiling with a feline delight in the encounter. April turned from her bitter face to the other woman, an elaborately-dressed shrew with a domineering hook to her nose, and had the thankful feeling of a mouse who has just missed by a hair's breadth the click of the ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... his stroke. But it was only by a hair's breadth, and had it not been for his own sword and my fleetness of foot, the false Wringham Pollixfen might for the second time have vanished as completely as before, while if Louis had died, no one would ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... convincing enough, at any rate. You see, there is a certain per cent of—let us call it waste effort—in this colonization business. We have to reckon on a certain number of nibblers who won't bite"—Andy's honest, gray eyes widened a hair's breadth at the frankness of her language—"when they get out here. They swallow the folders we send out, but when they get out here and see the country, they can't see it as a rich farming district, and they won't ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... the changes of expression in the human countenance. The greater he is, the more he will feel their subtlety, and the intense difficulty of perceiving all their relations, or answering for the consequences of a variation of a hair's breadth in a single curve. Indeed, there is nothing truly noble either in color or in form, but its power depends on circumstances infinitely too intricate to be explained, and almost too subtle to be traced. And as for these Byzantine buildings, we only do not feel them because we ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... and it will just do the same thing over again. It will form itself into a six-sided pyramid, and go on repeating this same form ad infinitum as often as it is dissolved and without ever improving by a hair's breadth. Its law of crystallization allows it to reach this limit, and nothing else within its kingdom can do any more for it. In dealing with the crystal, in short, we are dealing with the maximum beauty ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... the infancy of man you also find in the infancy of nations. It is the same. In both cases there is the same necessity of idealization, the same tendency to personify the unknown. And it may be said that between Punch and Jupiter, Mother Hubbard and Venus, there is only a hair's breadth. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... missed him by a hair's breadth through sheer bad luck, and it was only by exercising almost superhuman restraint that we prevented ourselves from doing bodily harm to the three Chinese who ruined our hunt. Every evening for a week we had faithfully taken a goat into the "Long ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews

... the Mexicans and then at Jim. It was not a pastime he was expert in. The hunchback took a step forward with his dagger poised over his shoulder, and holding it by its sharp tip. Then it flashed red straight for Jim's eye, apparently, but it would have missed his head by a hair's breadth if he had ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt

... silent, hatchet poised, then nodded, launching the axe. Crack! came the handles of the two hatchets, and rattled together. But the blade of her hatchet divided the space betwixt my blade and the painted face, nor touched the outline by a fair hair's breadth. ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... here!' said the old man gently. 'Thou hast never stepped a hair's breadth from the Way of Obedience. Neglect me? Child, I have lived on thy strength as an old tree lives on the lime of a new wall. Day by day, since Shamlegh down, I have stolen strength from thee. Therefore, not through any sin of thine, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... brink and yet never tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approximating something 'not quite proper,' while like a skilful posture master, balancing between decorums and their opposites, he keeps the line from which a hair's breadth deviation is destruction.... That conceit arrided us most at that time, and still tickles our midriff to remember where allusively to the flight of Astroea we pronounced—in reference to the stockings still—that 'Modesty, taking her final leave of mortals, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... repetition of this assertion, she rose and now stood upright, with her finger pointing straight at Quimby. Had he cringed or let his eyes waver from hers by so much as a hair's breadth, her accusation would have stood and her cause been won. But not a flicker disturbed the steady patience of his look, and Hammersmith, who had made no effort to hide his anxiety to believe her story, showed his disappointment with ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... right or wrong, we should resist, become disobedient and quarrel. On the other hand, the spiritual power is an exceeding great blessing, and far too precious in His eyes, that the very least of Christians should endure and keep silent, if it departs a hair's breadth from its own duty, not to say when it does the very opposite of its duty, as we now see it do ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther

... these men to talk as collectedly as if the ship were laid alongside a Thames wharf. They knew not the instant the Kansas might lift again and turn turtle, yet they did not dream of deviating a hair's breadth from their duties. The second officer went aft to carry out the captain's instructions. Courtenay followed a little way, passing to leeward of the chart-house, until he reached his own quarters. There was no door on that side, but light streamed through a ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... And with the base of his palms he shoved at the chin, with all his might. And it was pleasant, too, to have that chin, that hard jaw already slightly rough with beard, in his hands. He did not relax one hair's breadth, but, all the force of all his blood exulting in his thrust, he shoved back the head of the other man, till there was a little cluck and a crunching sensation. Then he felt as if his head went to vapour. ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence

... but in his firmness. Napoleon soon saw that all his efforts to bend him were in vain. Neither in regard to the Imperial title, nor the limits, nor the transmission of letters to Europe, would the Governor swerve a hair's breadth from his instructions. At the risk of giving a surfeit of quotations, we must cite two more on this topic. Basil Jackson, when at Paris in 1828, chanced to meet Montholon, and was invited to his Chateau de Fremigny; ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... would have put the round pier so exactly under the round cliff. It is under it so accurately, that if the nearly vertical falling line of that cliff be continued, it strikes the sea-base of the pier to a hair's breadth. But Turner knew better than any man the value of echo, as well as of contrast,—of repetition, as well as of opposition. The round pier repeats the line of the main cliff, and then the sail repeats ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin

... fashion when he recognized Jacob Relstaub, whom he had frightened almost out of his wits a week before. No doubt the German had told the incident many times afterward, and would always insist he escaped by a veritable hair's breadth. ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... silk. If the silk were twisted, it would twist the magnets, and the accuracy of their position would be disturbed. Magnets, like telescopes, must be true in their adjustment to the hundredth part of a hair's breadth. One magnet hangs north and south; another east and west; and a third, like a scale-beam, is balanced on knife-edges and agate planes, so beautifully, that when once adjusted and inclosed in its case, it is opened only once ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... best results in rapid passages, for it does not impart sufficient clarity. In the modern idea something more crisp, scintillating and brilliant is needed. So we use a half staccato touch. The tones, when separated a hair's breadth from each other, take on a lighter, more vibrant, radiant quality; they are really like strings of pearls. Then I also use pressure touch, pressing and caressing the keys—feeling as it were for the quality I want; I think it, I hear it mentally, and ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... sculptors? Add a little more of that quality which now reads and sees, and they will seize the pen and chisel. And if one remembers how innocently he began to be an artist, he perceives that nature joined with his enemy. A man is a golden impossibility. The line he must walk is a hair's breadth. The wise through excess of wisdom is ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... "Your bodies have been made just like those of the mermaids in order that you may fully enjoy your visit to us. One of our peculiar qualities is that water is never permitted to quite touch our bodies, or our gowns. Always there remains a very small space, hardly a hair's breadth, between us and the water, which is the reason we are always warm ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum

... this kind of thing from a boy," the cripple said. "I could shoot you where you sit within a hair's breadth of where I wanted to ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White

... he fail of his purpose by more than a hair's breadth. The talk of the street saw the beginning of the end. The common voice ran: "It's 'God help Ridgway' now. He's ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... the canvas back over the face of the dead man. As she followed Macdonald back to the trail, tears filled her eyes. She was remembering that the white, stinging death that had crept upon these men so swiftly had missed her by a hair's breadth. The strong, lusty life had been stricken out of the big Cornishman and probably of his partner in crime. Perhaps they had left mothers or wives or ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... done with two quick movements—a flash and a jerk of one hand up, and the other down, the eye riveted to the nicety of a hair's breadth, the stroke downward gauged to the cup of a thimble, to settle over the point of the spindle's end; for the missing of a thread's breadth would send a spindle blade through the hand, or tangle and snap a thread which ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... soldiers, fighting under the flag of the British Empire, were we to violate one little rule ... were we to take any property, no matter how small, without just payment to its owner; were we to drink one glass of beer too much ... were we to overstep by a hair's breadth the smallest rule of the code of a "soldier and a gentleman," we were liable to ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat

... Fair), one of the brightest and most original, as well as one of the most generous spirits who ever handled Indian subjects, has drawn a picture in his Twenty-one Days in India of a Raja and his Sow[a]ri [Cavalcade] which could not be bettered by a hair's breadth." ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... head, in which the gray was beginning to sprinkle thick, a contrast to the dark pillar of the porch. "I just returned an hour ago," he added as casually as though food for gossip had not been avoided by a hair's breadth and was not still imminent. "It's good, ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... wind and is waiting for us. . . . A cable's length on the port, and level with us—that's the order, and you'll watch it until I give the next. You have lost us twenty minutes. Happen that might turn out the hair's breadth I was speaking of—the difference between life and death—and the ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... month, when it had not yet gained a hundred miles southwest from Scilly. Here Nelson met his former long-tried second in the Mediterranean, Sir Richard Bickerton, going home ill; having endured the protracted drudgery off Toulon only to lose, by a hair's breadth, his share ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... he dreamed on, "for the stars to rebel and start playing nine-pins with one another, as it is for any man to swerve one hair's breadth from that which is natural for him to do, he being what he is and influences at any given time being what they are. None of us can help anything. We are all poor devils, within whom the human desire to love one another struggles with the brute desire to survive ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... a piece of iron egotism. He preferred, for himself, the chance of being picked up by a vessel. He thought it was about a hair's breadth better than running for an island, as to whose bearing he was not very clear, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... present, but he could not stir nor speak! Catharine felt his gaze, although her eyes were not towards him. At last the lily came to an end and she tossed the naked stalk after the flower. She loved this man; it was a perilous moment: one touch, a hair's breadth of oscillation, and the two would have been one. At such a crisis the least external disturbance is often decisive. The first note of the thunder was heard, and suddenly the image of Mrs. Cardew presented itself before Catharine's eyes, appealing to her ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... Robespierre, headstrong orators and wire-pullers like the Girondin leaders, or lucky journalists like Lebrun. To play to the gallery was his first instinct; and the tottering fortunes of the Gironde made it almost a necessity. Hence his refusal and that of his colleagues to draw back a hair's breadth from the unjustifiable position which they had taken up. Behind them loomed the September massacres, fatal to two Foreign Ministers of France; before them shone the splendours of a liberating crusade. We can scarcely blame men so ardent, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... Dodgson could see the man with his grimy hands and torn collar, crumpling up as the volley from the firing party caught him. The editor himself had never come in contact with crude realities such as this—a London County Councillor escaping by a hair's breadth from a fully-deserved conviction for corruption over a tramway contract was the nearest approach he had witnessed—but he understood the value of Jimmy's reminiscences, and, without a moment's hesitation, he asked him for an article, hinting ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... I obey official instructions," announced Bart. "Please do not degrade yourself and embarrass me, Colonel Harrington, by saying anything further on this score. I will not sell my honor, nor swerve a hair's breadth from a line of duty plain and clear. The package you refer to was legally purchased by the highest bidder, I hold it temporarily in trust for him. It is as safe and sacred with me as if it was the property of the First ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman

... was not easy. The thing which had taken hold of him was as strong as he was and seemed to be watching him, grip for grip, hold for hold, wrench for wrench. It had not beaten him yet, but he knew that to yield a hair's breadth would mean a fall, and a bad one. He had almost relaxed his strength that little, last night, when he had been alone ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... thou would'st, Trim, quoth my uncle.—For if your Honour, continued the Corporal, could but mark me the polygon, with its exact lines and angles—That I could do very well, quoth my uncle.—I would begin with the fosse, and if your Honour could tell me the proper depth and breadth—I can to a hair's breadth, Trim, replied my uncle.—I would throw out the earth upon this hand towards the town for the scarp,—and on that hand towards the campaign for the counterscarp.—Very right, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby:—And when I had sloped them to your mind,—an' please your Honour, I would face the glacis, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... her ideas but the one that exactly fitted it? She applied it then, though her own instinct moved her, at the same time, to pay her tribute to the good taste from which they hadn't heretofore by a hair's breadth deviated. "If it didn't sound so vulgar I should say that we're—fatally, as it were—SAFE. Pardon the low expression—since it's what we happen to be. We're so because they are. And they're so because they can't be anything ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... to deviate the fraction of a hair's breadth from the alignment Carlton took the punch, added three 0's, and a star after the 25, making it $25,000. Finally the whole thing was again ironed to give it the smoothness of an original. Here at last was the completed work, the first product ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve

... one in which the Lord's Prayer will become a fulfilled prophecy upon this earth. Remembering, however, that you may call anything by any name without in the least changing its nature—bethinking myself that you may, if you be so minded, call a butterfly a buffalo, without advancing a hair's breadth towards making it one— I became composed in my mind, and resolved to stick to the very homely intention I had previously formed. This was merely to tell you, the members, students, and friends of the Birmingham ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... Pete all the reasons he can think up and guesses mebbe he's got the old boy going, he winds up by saying: 'And now what shall I tell the Great White Father at Washington you say to his kind words?' Old Pete, still not moving the rifle a hair's breadth, he calls out: 'You tell the Great White Father at Washington to go to hell!' Yes, sir; just like that he says it; and I guess that shows you what kind of a murderer he is. And what I allus say is, 'what's the use of spending ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... is the taste of verse, prose, and painting since le bon vieux temps, dear madam! Nothing attracts us but what terrifies, and is within—if within—a hair's breadth of positive disgust. The picture of Death on his Pale Horse, however, is very grand certainly-and some of the strange things they write remind me of Squoire Richard's visit to the Tower Menagerie, when he says "Odd, they are pure grim devils,"—particularly a wild and hideous tale called ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... the reader will remember, at the moment when, by the merest hair's breadth, she was enabled to avoid what must have been a terribly disastrous collision with the ill-fated Princess Royal on the day when the hurricane burst with such destructive ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... mm.), and had therefore decreased by .1 of an inch (2.54 mm.). After only 10 hrs. 37 m. the margin began to re-expand, for the distance from edge to edge was now a trace wider, and after 24 hrs. 20 m. was as great, within a hair's breadth, as when the drops were first placed on the leaf. From this experiment we learn that the motor impulse can be transmitted to a distance of .22 of an inch (5.590 mm.) in a transverse direction from the midrib to both margins; but it would be safer to say .2 of an inch (5.08 mm.) ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... but this time quickly broken; a boy's black head appeared above the bracken, a little brown hand was held out, and David, without troubling himself to move a hair's breadth, looked full ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade

... things—above all, he feared myself, as I could see, having met me first at the very house of Rumbald, as if I were his friend, and now again in the chamber of his accuser. It was piteous to see how he sought to be very exact in his memories, and not go by a hair's breadth beyond the truth. ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... there is! Listen! The long impunity enjoyed by this desperado has made him daring to fatuity. Why, I was within a hair's breadth of capturing him myself ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... have been mothers and widows for whom a single grave, or the appearance of one name on the missing list, has turned the whole conflict into an idiot's tale. There have been many such; but there have apparently not been enough to deflect by a hair's breadth the subtle current of public sentiment; unless it is truer, as it is infinitely more inspiring, to suppose that, of this company of blinded baffled sufferers, almost all have had the strength to hide their despair and to say of the great national effort which has lost ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... called, of a considerate and respectable woman. A woman of proper dignity of manners and character, especially with a few years' advantage, can do this without the least injury to herself, and without stepping a hair's breadth beyond the bounds which should surround her sex. Happy is the young man who enjoys a fostering care so important; he may learn the value of the sex; learn to discriminate among them, to esteem many of them, and ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... his master transacted business with the trader, that they were within a hair's breadth of being hand-cuffed, ere they knew that they were sold. Probably no outrage will be remembered with feelings of greater bitterness, than this proceeding on the part of the master; yet, when he reflected that he was ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... me. The sail slipped through my fingers, and I fell backwards, hanging head downwards over the seething tumult of shining foam under the ship's bows, suspended by one foot. But I felt only high exultation in my certainty of eternal life. Although death was divided from me by a hair's breadth, and I was acutely conscious of the fact, it gave me no sensation but joy. I suppose I could have hung there no longer than five seconds, but in that time I lived a whole age of delight. But my body asserted itself, and with a desperate gymnastic effort I regained the boom. How I furled ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... man laughed. An improper sound it was to come from his manly chest; and what made it worse was the thought that for the least thing, by a mere hair's breadth, he might have taken this affair sentimentally. But clearly Anthony was no diplomatist. His brother-in- law must have appeared to him, to use the language of shore people, a perfect philistine with a heart like a flint. What Fyne precisely meant by "wrangling" ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... soldier can do. He kneeled down and adjusted his gun, just as he would have done in a practising ground. He had a pot shot to take, and a pot shot he would take. He ignored three hundred muskets that were levelled at him. He looked along his gun, adjusted it, and re-adjusted it to a hair's breadth. The enemy's bullets pattered upon it: still he adjusted it delicately. His men were groaning and tearing their hair inside ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... Marchmont denied either the greatness or the pliancy. The Dean could see with what ardour he maintained his position; in spite of the unvarying suavity of his manner there was something naturally repulsive to him in yielding a hair's breadth in deference to the wishes or the weaknesses ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... blind trail, how he had escaped capture at Lake Sturgeon by a hair's breadth and a snowfall that obliterated his tracks, and how he had, finally, in despair, started for Fort Severn for help, took ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... or be it delusion—and the difference stands often on a hair's breadth—I am glad that Rudolf had it. For if a man once grows rusty, it is everything short of impossible to put the fine polish on his skill again. Mr. Rassendyll had strength, will, coolness, and, of course, ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... screen of gaunt and barren rock, a shot was fired at her, and flew within a hair's breadth of her brain; she never even looked around to see whence it had come; she knew it was from some Arab prowler of the plains. Her single spark of light through the half-veiled lantern passed as swiftly as a shooting-star across the plateau. And as she felt the hours ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... cleaner, and the odour of horse was replaced by that of cigars, less objectionable to Clyde. As he took his seat he glanced at her frankly, a shade of drollery in his eye, as if he were quite aware of her disapproval, and was amused by it. She stiffened a trifle, ignoring him utterly. Not by a hair's breadth would ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... Flying Fish's sides were actually grazing the ice on either side, he increased the pressure of his hand upon the lever, the engines revolved a shade more rapidly, and the flying ship slid through the narrowest part of the pass uninjured, but escaping by the merest hair's breadth. ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... friend, let me assure you that you have not wandered a hair's breadth from the point at issue ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... is evident that without departing by a hair's breadth from the lines of this framework, an indefinite number of services might by a process of substitution be put together, each one of which would in outward appearance differ widely from every other one. The identical ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... her cheek, but she did not budge, not by a hair's breadth. "I beg your pardon," said Lawrence, standing erect. He had measured in that moment the extent of his error, and he cursed, not for the first time, his want of perception, which his ever-candid father had once called a streak of vulgarity. Defrauded of the pleasure he had promised himself from the ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... life and undeviating course of moral uprightness which can alone distinguish the good and just man. As the operative workman erects his temporal building with strict observance of that plumb-line, which will not permit him to deviate a hair's breadth to the right or to the left, so the speculative Mason, guided by the unerring principles of right and truth inculcated in the symbolic teachings of the same implement, is steadfast in the pursuit of truth, neither bending beneath the frowns of adversity nor yielding ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... inferior workmen. For the machine tools have no unsteady hand, are not careless nor clumsy, do not work by rule of thumb, and cannot make mistakes. They will repeat their operations a thousand times without tiring, or varying one hair's breadth in their action; and will turn out, without complaining, any quantity of work, all of like accuracy and finish. Exercising as they do so remarkable an influence on the development of modern industry, we now propose, so far as the materials at our disposal will admit, to give an account ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... with the addition of a demand for Cuba and an indorsement of the Dred Scott decision and of any future decisions of the Supreme Court on slavery in the Territories. But the Southerners would not yield a hair's breadth. Yancey, their orator, upbraided Douglas and his followers with cowardice because they did not dare to tell the North that slavery was right. In that strange way the question of right and wrong was ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown

... the question of eugenics, that question was exclusively in the hands of scientific men, who felt all the natural timidity of the scientific man towards the realization of his proposals, and who were not prepared to depart a hair's breadth from the conventional customs of their time. The experiment of Noyes, at Oneida, marked a new stage in the history of eugenics; whatever might be the value of the experiment—and a first experiment cannot well be final—with Noyes the questions of eugenics passed beyond the purely ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever so little towards "fuming," you will say "fuming-furious;" if they turn, by even a hair's breadth, towards "furious," you will say "furious-fuming;" but if you have that rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll

... time without hesitation. His pretended severity only made her happy, for nothing could intimidate by a hair's breadth this exquisite first ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood

... Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and chisels Nos. 10, 11, 12, and with them cut down the outline as accurately as possible to the depth of the ground, and, if you are lucky, just a hair's breadth deeper. In doing this make the sides slope a little outward toward the bottom. If the gouges do not entirely adapt themselves to the contours of your lines, do not trouble, but leave that bit to be done afterward with a sweep ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack

... difference, this tiny leak, one might say, of their personality, that stamps them finally as belonging to an immense mediocrity. It is this subtle and microscopic change, a sixteenth of an inch in the height of a collar, a line in the pattern of a scarf, a hair's breadth in the disposition of a crease, that the psychologists of the market-place call distinction, and labour ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... nations; who must go mad, unless he finds that history is not a dreary aimless procession of lost spirits descending into the pit, or that the salvation of millions does not depend on an obscure and controverted hair's breadth of ecclesiastic law. ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... Him! He has no pleasure in iniquity. Wrong-doers are so precious to Him that He never will magnify or exaggerate their wrong— no, not a hair's breadth. He will not dwell on it—no, not a moment, except to plead some reasonable ground for its pardon, such as this—the ignorance of the wrong-doer, or the rich efficacy of His sacrifice. He will only name sin to the Father, in order that He may confess it for the sinner, and intercede ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth

... and the calmest of mankind could fail to feel some slight degree of tremour or uneasiness; and, although we can fairly claim for Henry Bannerworth that he was as truly courageous as any right feeling Christian man could wish to be, yet when it was possible that he stood within, as it were, a hair's breadth of eternity, a strange world of sensation and emotions found a home in his heart, and he could not look altogether undaunted on that future which might, for all he knew to the contrary, be so close at hand, as far ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... a modest man, as well as an honest one. Censure cannot move me by one hair's breadth from the narrow path of rectitude; praise cannot unduly puff me up. Had I been other than I am, this last week would have gone fatally near to ruining that timid and shrinking diffidence which (I say it without egotism) marks me off from the poisonous, pestilential, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various

... or scornful beam, yet always sinking, in moments of repose, to an expression of high-bred melancholy, it was a face that looked, after all, made for suffering—already half pleading, half defiant—as of a creature you could hurt, but to the last never shake a hair's breadth from its estimate ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater

... her tired psychology, she was trying to listen. As for Aunt Paula—if his gaze wandered from her to Annette and then back, he caught her stifling a yawn. Her final shot was to interrupt his best story a hair's breadth ahead of the point. When he said good-night, his manner—he flattered himself—betrayed nothing of his sense of defeat. But no fellow pedestrian, observing the savage vigor of his swift walk homeward, could have held any doubt as to ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin

... was almost within reach. He leaped upward to seize it, but as he did so his rifle caught on a bush and was jerked from his hand. A great gray foamy-jawed creature snapped closely at his heels and by a hair's breadth he escaped, as ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden

... cigar smoke between his words, "and there's so little to tell with any real evidence behind it, that it's almost impossible to make a consecutive story for you. It's the total cumulative effect that is so—so disquieting." He chose his words with care, as though determined not to travel one hair's breadth beyond ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... shining hair, and upon cheek and brow; and I could see her bosom rise and fall with the quick-coming breath, and the pulse throbbing in her fair white neck. And with the seeing I became a fool of love again in very earnest, and was within a hair's breadth of sinking honor and all else in an outpouring of such words as a man may say once to one woman in all the world—and having said them may never ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... kind of relief to gain a few moments only by engaging in the trifling occupation of snuffing the candle. His hand trembled a little, and the snuffers were heavy and awkward to use. When he closed them on the wick, he closed them a hair's breadth too low. In an instant the candle was out, and the room was ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... dial. They came back to the handle—a wrench—then a low, amused chuckle—and the door swung open. The great, unwieldy thing was only a monumental bluff! It not only had not been locked, but it COULD NOT be locked—the mechanism was out of order, the bolts could not be moved by so much as a hair's breadth! ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... he thought of a race of men so absurd as to be always ready to commit suicide for the sake of ideas.... Madmen. Crazy logicians. And yet they are good men. Each man sees only his own ideas, and wishes to follow them through to the end, without turning aside by a hair's breadth. And it is all quite useless: for they crush each other out of existence. The humanitarians wage war on the patriots. The patriots wage war on the humanitarians. And meanwhile the enemy comes and destroys both country ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... about in. On his way in, what pollen he already may have collected on his furry back slips easily off on the very lip of the stigma which waits at the strategic point with the antlers crowding well forward, but firmly held a hair's breadth behind it. Thus each bloom is fertilized with the pollen from some other, insuring cross-fertilization. The bumblebee takes his toll in honey, but when he comes to back out he has trouble. If you will listen close ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... that he quite deliberately knocked down a little boy who would not get out of his way. It is asserted with equal confidence that the boy was a man who tried to pass across the front of the motor-car as it came slowly through the crowd, who escaped by a hair's breadth, and then slipped on the tram-rail and fell down. I have both accounts set forth, under screaming headlines, in two of these sere newspapers upon my desk. No one could ever ascertain the truth. ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... the resurrection of the dead. Cure, then, thy servant Basil of his cruel malady, and do not let him die; do not let his wife and children be given up to weeping.' And the Lord graciously heard, and had mercy upon him, although he was within a hair's breadth of death. Glory to thine omnipotence and mercy, that thou, Lord, hast vouchsafed ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... and soul that the people have at last consented to the enfranchisement of two millions of black men. I recognize that, as the load is raised one inch, we must work by degrees, accepting every inch, every hair's breadth gained toward the right. I welcome the enfranchisement of the negro as a step toward the enfranchisement ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... deserts, and suffered all the perils all the emotions of a journey from Bengal by land, would think himself much nearer home, at Naples, than I do, coming from Naples, at Paris: and those who have sailed round the world seem satisfied that their labour is within a hair's breadth of being at an end, when they arrive, on their return, at the Cape ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... of three or four yards from the shore. Just at that moment, Deerslayer had got abreast of the point, and turned the bows of his own boat to the land; first casting loose his tow, that his movements might be unencumbered. The canoe hung an instant to the rock; then it rose a hair's breadth on an almost imperceptible swell of the water, swung round, floated clear, and reached the strand. All this the young man noted, but it neither quickened his pulses, nor hastened his hand. If any one had been lying in wait for the arrival of the waif, he must be seen, and the utmost caution ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... best-natured, but not the most diffident of men, wears upon what he very inelegantly calls his "mug." Take the man, for instance, who deals in the mathematical sciences. There is no elasticity in a mathematical fact; if you bring up against it, it never yields a hair's breadth; everything must go to pieces that comes in collision with it. What the mathematician knows being absolute, unconditional, incapable of suffering question, it should tend, in the nature of things, to breed a despotic way ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... broad knife will be found most useful here) very carefully work all round until you arrive at the extreme tip of the inner skin of the upper jaw, which is now turned inside out, and actually rests below the under jaw. Your cuts must be made a hair's breadth at a time to get to the extreme edge. By this time the severed nostrils will have fallen some little distance underneath the under jaw. See, now, that the lips, both upper and lower, as well as the inner angles of the mouth, are skinned inside ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... know. If it's by a good author, it's a good play, naturally. That stands to reason. Who is the author? Tell me that; and I'll place the play for you to a hair's breadth. ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw

... a hair's breadth from what he considered his duty, even for party ends. "I would rather be right than be President," he said, and men knew that ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy

... came over him, and he sought in vain for a sufficient evidence that in the event of his death it would be well with him, he girded up his soul with the reflection that, as he suffered for the word and way of God, he was engaged not to shrink one hair's breadth from it. "I will leap," he says, "off the ladder blindfold into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell. Lord Jesus, if thou wilt catch me, do; if not, I will venture in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... muttered exclamation of chagrin the Texan leaped to his feet, reaching the spot in a couple of bounds, and let fly with two chambers of his weapon. The bullets skimmed over the door, the inimitable dexterity of the Indian saving him as by a hair's breadth. ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis

... is," answered the Captain, "that the Projectile was not aimed true. Every possible precaution had been taken, I am well aware, but we all know that an inch, a line, even the tenth part of a hair's breadth wrong at the start would have sent us thousands of miles off our course ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... abolition of slavery throughout the land; and whether in the prosecution of our object this party goes up or the other party goes down, it is nothing to us. We cannot alter our course one hair's breadth, nor accept a compromise of our principles for the hearty adoption of our principles. I am for meddling with slavery everywhere—attacking it by night and by day, in season and out of season (no, it can never be out of season)—in order to effect its overthrow. (Loud applause.) Higher yet will ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... trouble Israel!" "What! What is that you say?" said I, in much astonishment. "It is even so," he continued; "the Philistines are abroad in the land, having among them, as they assert, many valiant men who can sling stones at a hair's breadth and not miss. They await us, even now, in the forest beyond. But, Son of Jeremiah," said he, "if the uncircumcised heathen should assail the Lord's anointed, be strong, and quit yourself like a man!" "All right, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... swept up the crumbs with a little broom (putting on a pair of gloves first), until there did not appear to be one microscopic speck left on the carpet; next dusted and arranged the room, which was dusted and arranged to a hair's breadth already. When all these tasks were performed to her satisfaction, she took off the gloves and apron, folded them up, put them in the particular corner of the press from which they had been taken, brought out her work-box to her own table in the open window, and sat ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... I did not, William Hinkley, these base insinuations against the man, of whom, knowing nothing, you would still convey the worst imputations, would never move my mind a hair's breadth from its proper balance. Go, sir—you have your answer. I need not your counsel. I should be sorry to receive it from such a source. Failing in your own attempt, you would seek to fill my mind with ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... as your master did. Very many of them are gentlemen in feeling and conduct; neither arrogant nor insolent, nor rogues and knaves, like those who go about inns, measuring the length of strangers' swords, and ruining their owners if they find them a hair's breadth ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... the fears for the other fellow which had harassed him during his former experience, were speedily transferred to himself. To his excited imagination, we time and again escaped complete wreck and annihilation by a mere hair's breadth. The route which we had taken, I learned afterwards, was one of the worst for motoring in all London. The streets were narrow and crooked and were packed with traffic of all kinds. Tram cars often ran along the middle ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... but conquer. He drove the spirit of temptation from his breast, and enthroned in its stead the principle of everlasting right. There was no thought now of yielding; he felt brave and strong to meet every trial, yes, every terror that might lie in his path, without flinching one hair's breadth from ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene

... their sentinels were everywhere, watching for the enemy's approach. Athanasius was always warned in time and led by trusty guides to another and a safer place. Sometimes it was only by a hair's breadth that he escaped, but for six years he eluded his enemies. There was not one of the monks who would not gladly have laid down his life for him. He lived among them as one of themselves, and they learned more from him of the religious life than they could ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes

... murk, and the lifeboat remained motionless in space. No, not motionless—the red rod was shortening, drawing the truant craft back toward the launching port from which she had so hopefully emerged a few days before. Back and back it was drawn; Costigan's utmost efforts futile to affect by a hair's breadth its line of motion. Through the open port the boat slipped neatly, and as it came to a halt in its original position within the multilayered skin of the monster, the prisoners heard the heavy doors clang shut behind ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... me to go forward and stand an hour's watch on the bridge. I obeyed, creeping on all fours most of the time, till I reached the opening between the deck houses. I escaped, by a hair's breadth, a sea which came over the side like ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... century in impotence, watching a fluffy, pink figure that swayed over a bottomless space and moved forward a hair's breadth each year. I made no sound during this interval. In fact, I do not remember drawing a really satisfactory breath from the time I left the hotel-roof, until I lifted a soft, faint-scented, panting bundle to the roof of the Councillor ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... up by the French! I remember once, Johnny Courtland and I, after dining at my house, till the champagne had played the dancing-master to our brains, mounted our horses, and rode twenty miles for a cool thousand the winner. I lost it, Sir, by a hair's breadth; but I lost it on purpose; it would have half ruined Johnny Courtland to have paid me, and he had that delicacy, Sir,—he had that delicacy, that he would not have suffered me to refuse taking his money,—so what could I do, but lose on purpose? You ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... he was addressing them. For a hair's breadth of a second they paused. Then, with a speed that had a suggestion of panic in it, they flew out to sea. And again a flood of girl-laughter ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... over him? In spite of his passion for her had she ever turned him by so much as a hair's breadth from the direction of his impetuous desires? Once only she had withstood him—once only she had triumphed, and for that triumph she had paid by a complete surrender! She had been too glad to yield, too fearful of bringing a cloud over the ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... the witness in hand, but shrewd and able as they were they utterly failed to make her swerve even a hair's breadth from her evidence. She returned to her place beside Mme. de Rancogne, confident that she had done her duty and uttered not a single ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg

... act of "Tannhauser," with the exception of the little cut in the adagio. This will be done at our next representation. Send me therefore the necessary instructions about the study of the "Flying Dutchman," and be assured that I shall not deviate from them by a hair's breadth. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... it," he said, "till I began to look at her with an eye to reproducing line for line and curve for curve. Her face is the most exquisite piece of modeling that ever came from creative hands. Not a line without meaning, not a hair's breadth that is not admirably finished. And then her mouth! It 's as if a pair of lips had been shaped to utter pure truth without doing it dishonor!" Later, after he had been working for a week, he declared if Miss Light were inordinately plain, she would ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... again, and looked at the last zecchin, intending, doubtless, to bestow it upon Gurth. He weighed it upon the tip of his finger, and made it ring by dropping it upon the table. Had it rung too flat, or had it felt a hair's breadth too light, generosity had carried the day; but, unhappily for Gurth, the chime was full and true, the zecchin plump, newly coined, and a grain above weight. Isaac could not find in his heart to part with it, so dropt it into his ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... entreat him, as he loved me, to deliver me from the dire necessity of obeying my father. If he were a gentleman, as I hope he may be, he would manage to get me out of it somehow, and wouldn't compromise me a hair's breadth. But, that is, if I were you. If I were myself in your circumstances, and hated him as you do, that would not serve my turn. I would ask him all the same to set me free, but I would behave myself so that he could not ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... were disabled in six days. On the 12th at daylight, a heavy fire opened from the town, which, he says, "seldom missed our battery;" and at seven o'clock a shot, which on the ricochet cleared his head by a hair's breadth, drove sand into his face and right eye with such violence as to incapacitate him. He spoke lightly and cheerfully of the incident to Lord Hood, "I got a little hurt this morning: not much, as you may judge by my writing," and remained absent from duty ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... against which I had laid my ear. No crack or seam indicated a hidden door, yet I knew there must be one, and gently pressed the wainscot with my shoulder. It gave, almost imperceptibly; I pressed again, and the hidden door opened a hair's breadth, a finger's breadth, an inch, widening, widening noiselessly; and I bent forward and peered into another closet like the one I stood in, also lighted by a loop for rifle-fire. As my head advanced, first a corner of the floor littered with papers came into my range of vision, then an angle of the ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... a little ironically as she said it, and exaggerated by a hair's breadth, perhaps, the purely conventional ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... but when Christians take leave of their senses, who is to expect that pencils will keep their points? Give me your orders, Mr. Jennings. I'll have them in writing, sir. I'm determined not to be behind 'em, or before 'em, by so much as a hair's breadth. I'm a blind agent—that's what I am. A blind agent!" repeated Betteredge, with infinite relish of his ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... the saddle, in lieu of the fine courtesy she would have swept had her position been more favourable. His words—such gloriously sweet words when uttered by the lips of a Duke—fed her vanity. Her face flushed as she thought of what his love must be. He saw his vantage and drew nearer—it may be a hair's breadth over the line of respect—indeed 'twould have been an innovation had he not done so, as the time warranted nothing else but ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... marvellous than their size or number is the mathematical exactitude of their proportions,—the minute perfection of their balance,—the exquisite precision with which every one part is fitted to another part, not a pin's point awry, not a hair's breadth astray. Well, the same exactitude which rules the formation and working of Matter controls the formation and working of Spirit; and this is why I know that ghosts exist, and, moreover, that we are COMPELLED by the laws of the phenomena surrounding us ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... the hair's breadth, hardly the shade of a shade, your honor! Oh, it's the miraculous eye ye've got, for the judgmint of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... has been deferred till now, because the placing of the colours is, of course, of as much importance as the harmony. This done, the canvas is for the first time produced, and thereon is enlarged the design, the painter re-drawing the outline—never departing a hair's breadth from the outlines and forms already obtained—and then highly finishing the whole figure in warm monochrome from the life. Every muscle, every joint, every crease is there, although all this careful painting is shortly to be hidden with the draperies; ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys

... descriptions better than the wickedest old man in the neighbourhood. Long experience had so precisely taught the animal the difference between such exclamations as "Come in!" and "D—— ye, come in!" that he knew to a hair's breadth the rate of trotting back from the ewes' tails that each call involved, if a staggerer with the sheep crook was to be escaped. Though old, he was clever and ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... mid air, missed the ape by but a hair's breadth, and with horrid snarlings rolled over upon its back, clutching and clawing in an effort to reach and dislodge the antagonist biting at its neck and knifing it in ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... vision of dispersal. You see those bundles hurling into stations, catching trains by a hair's breadth, speeding on their way, breaking up, smaller bundles of them hurled with a fierce accuracy out upon the platforms that rush by, and then everywhere a division of these smaller bundles into still smaller bundles, into dispersing parcels, into separate papers. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... hundred yards between himself and that house, he turned to look back. He put his hand to his face and wiped away drops of sweat, a clammy exudation that broke out all over his body very much as if he had just become aware of escaping by a hair's breadth some imminent and terrible disaster. In truth that was precisely his feeling,—as if he had been capering madly on the brink of some fearful abyss which he could not see until it was revealed to ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... would like to know! It would please your pride to feel that your sister was truly married! Well, you shall not know. That was my revenge on you, and I do not mean to change it by a hair's breadth. I have come here tonight simply to let you know that I am alive, so that if any violence be done me where I am going there ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker

... probably be agreed to by the Senate, but no concession in the form of a treaty would be acceptable. His words were emphatic. "One inch of ground yielded on the northwest coast,—one step backward from the claim to the navigation of the St. Lawrence,—one hair's breadth of compromise upon the article of impressment would be certain to meet the reprobation of the Senate." In this temper of parties, Adams added, "All we can hope to accomplish will be to adjourn controversies which we cannot adjust, and say to Britain as the Abbe Bernis said to Cardinal ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... the die and the coin that comes from it only two sides of the same form?—there is not a hair's breadth anywhere between their surfaces where they lie, the one inclosing the other. Yet part them, and the light strikes on them how differently! That is a mere condition of light: join them in darkness, where the light cannot strike, ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous

... the small mind that plans down to the hair's breadth. Your truly great man, like Bismarck or Napoleon, takes up life as he finds it, and little by little learns the business of compelling other men to do his bidding; and always in this there is a large element left to the ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel



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