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Flaw   /flɔ/   Listen
Flaw

noun
1.
An imperfection in an object or machine.  Synonyms: defect, fault.  "If there are any defects you should send it back to the manufacturer"
2.
Defect or weakness in a person's character.
3.
An imperfection in a plan or theory or legal document that causes it to fail or that reduces its effectiveness.



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"Flaw" Quotes from Famous Books



... flaw in your reasoning," the other objected. "Why, necessarily, should I be the one to get out? I found ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London

... and Lieutenants Terry and Overton had joined the first two officers on the deck, and order was maintained without a flaw. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock

... o' that. She's as toom's a cock. Gang and luik. The last drap in her wame flaw oot at the window i' that bottle. Eh! Alec, but I'll hae a sair day, and ye maun be true to me. Gie me my Homer, or I'll never win throu't. An ye may lay John Milton within my rax (reach); for I winna pit my leg oot o' the blankets till ye come ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... the three thousand attendants much benefit is derived; some come from twenty to twenty-five miles. The men flaunt about in gaudy-coloured lambas of many folded kilts—the women work hardest—the potters slap and ring their earthenware all round, to show that there is not a single flaw in them. I bought two finely shaped earthen bottles of porous earthenware, to hold a gallon each, for one string of beads, the women carry huge loads of them in their funnels above the baskets, strapped ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... of "Serendib;" and the travellers of the Middle Ages, on returning to Europe, told of the "sapphires, topazes, amethysts, garnets, and other costly stones" of Ceylon, and of the ruby which belonged to the king of the island, "a span in length, without a flaw, and brilliant beyond description."[1] ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... been an easy dupe," he said. "A child in intrigue should have picked the flaw though he were half asleep. Yet it was a pretty enough story—a loving lady, a frowning King, a false abduction. . ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott

... perfect, everything—no flaw in the perfect harmony of the seen. No limit to its onapproachable beauty. Yes, the glory of that seen as it bust onto my raptured vision will go with me through life, and won't never be outdone and replaced by anything ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... another lady. Send him away by himself this time; and let him feel the want of some kind creature to look after him. And when he meets with that kind creature (they are as plenty as fish in the sea), never trouble your head about it if there's a flaw in her character. I have got a cracked tea-cup which has served me for twenty years. Marry him, ma'am, to the new one with the utmost speed and impetuosity which the law will permit.' I hate Mr. MacGlue's opinions—so ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... is to be decided by others. Employ a competent person, and he will insure, by full investigation, that your rights are maintained entire. Your acceptance of Mr. Marlow's proposals contingent on the full recognition of his claim, will be far from prejudicing your case, should any flaw in your title be discovered. On the contrary, should the decision of a point of law be required, it will put you well with the court. By frankly doing so, you also meet him in the same spirit in which I am sure he comes to you; and as I am certain he has a very high sense of equity, I think he ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... or cruel conqueror; he gave privileges to the Scottish clergy, and re-instated the families of the barons killed in the war. Doubtless he hoped to do great good to the wild population, and bring them into the same order as the English; but the flaw in his title made this impossible; the Scots regarded his soldiery as their enemies and oppressors, and though the nobles had given in a self-interested adhesion to the new government, they abhorred it all the time, and the mutual hatred between the ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... asleep, according as sense and imagination are free, so is the judgment of his intellect unfettered, though not entirely. Consequently, if a man syllogizes while asleep, when he wakes up he invariably recognizes a flaw in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... title to a thousand acre boundary traceable to the Commonwealth without break or flaw, might not be the owner in fact of a single acre of land; as the whole boundary might be covered by senior grants or the natural objects called for, impossible ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... the early days of the French Revolution, men must have looked for an immediate and universal improvement in their condition. Christianity, up to that time, had been somewhat of a failure politically. The reason was now obvious, the capital flaw was detected, the sickness of the body politic traced at last to its efficient cause. It was only necessary to put the Bible thoroughly into practice, to set themselves strenuously to realise in life the Holy Commonwealth, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... small, and quite a tiny stream ran down the valley, cutting itself a channelled course; but Will knew enough—knew the power of water, and what such a tiny stream could do. In short, in those brief moments he had grasped the fact that a dangerous flaw had been formed in the dam, which, if unchecked, might mean destruction to ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn

... brilliant, crystal clarity which he had dreamed of adding to the honors of the Stabilimento Magagnati—so strong that a single sheet might be framed in the great spaces of the windows of the palaces and show neither curve nor flaw—so pure that their only trace of color should come from a chance reflection which would but lend added charm—these might not be the discovery of his later days, though the time was near in which this gift must come to Venice. He had not dreamed ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... cultivated land that looked like door-mats flung out upon the hillsides. The huge mountains raised their jagged heads through the snow, and were so sharp-edged that they might have been clipped out of cardboard. The sky was blue, without a flaw; but lost clouds crawled like snakes between heaven and earth. All day the sun scorched her, but ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... cast iron; and that part of the bow which clasps the withers and sits on the shoulders spread out in the form of iron wings or plates. The saddle, at some time in its history, had received a strain which was too much for it, and one of the iron wings broke partly across; and this flaw, hidden by leather and padding, had been lurking in the dark and biding its time. When Janet braced her foot in the stirrup and made the horse dodge, it cracked the rest of the way, whereupon the jagged point of metal pressed into his shoulder ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... became friendly, and very seldom did a week pass without their seeing something of each other. Try as she might, and dangerous as she assumed the acquaintanceship to be, Lady Mottisfont could detect no fault or flaw in her new friend. It was obvious that Dorothy had been the magnet which had drawn the Contessa hither, and not ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy

... I deserve it, for my ill-timed truth. Was it for me to prop The ruins of a falling majesty? To place myself beneath the mighty flaw, Thus to be crushed, and pounded into atoms, By its o'erwhelming weight? 'Tis too presuming For subjects to preserve that wilful power, Which courts its ...
— All for Love • John Dryden

... time some distance out. The wind had carried him along finely, the boat scudding, as he expressed it. He was congratulating himself on the success of his trial trip, when all at once a flaw struck the boat. Not being a skillful boatman he was wholly unprepared for it, and the ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... plausible tale which her then betrothed had told her about Suke—the dramatic account of her entreaties to him to draw the aching enemy, and the fine artistic touch he had given to the story by explaining that it was a lovely molar without a flaw! ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... gets turned down just because he goes around looking like a slob; while a feller what can't pay his own laundry bill, Mawruss, has no trouble getting a thousand dollars because the second vice-president is buffaloed already by a stovepipe hat, a Prince Albert coat and a four-carat stone with a flaw in it." ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass

... to myself, smiling in spirit, "what would my Chartist friends say if they saw me here? Not even Crossthwaite himself could find a flaw in the appreciation of merit for its own sake, the courtesy and condescension—ah! but he would complain of it, simply for being condescension." But, after all, what else could it be? Were not these men more experienced, more learned, older than myself? ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... at lavish cost seems one day, when some great new force enters our life, to begin to crumble and fall away from us, and leave us strangers in a new world, so it is with the greater types of life, with peoples and civilisations; some secret inherent flaw was in their structure; they meet a trial for which they were not prepared, and fail; once more they must be passed into the crucible and melted down to their primitive matter. Yet Nature does not repeat herself; ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... temporary union was formed, but it was impossible that a permanent crystallization should take place where so strong a dissolvent as the Catholic clause had been admitted. In the sequel, therefore, the union fell asunder precisely at this fatal flaw. The next union was that which definitely separated the provinces into Protestant, and Catholic, into self-governing republics, and the dependencies of a distant despotism. The immediate effect, however, of the "Brussels Union" was to rally all lovers of the fatherland and haters of a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... scrawling in the inside of his envelope, furiously, furtively, while the ink of his neat copperplate dried on the outside, and Macartney likely stood by poring over the actual letter, wondering if there was any flaw in it that could show out and damn him. And the desperate scrawl in the envelope had been no good, thanks to the fool brain and tongue of myself, Nicky Stretton! It had done more to warn Macartney than either Dudley or me, since if Thompson had written in the reverse ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... flaw or the depth of the plan In the make of that wonderful creature called man, No two virtues, whatever relation they claim, Nor even two different shades of the same. Though like as was ever twin-brother to brother. Possessing the one shall imply ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... its single pupils, goes forward without hesitation, and threads the obstacles without contact. So well it directs its tortuous flight that, in spite of all the obstacles to be evaded, it arrives in a state of perfect freshness, its great wings intact, without the slightest flaw. The darkness is ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... day I had a last interview with Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant at 63 Fleet Street. Mr. Bradlaugh told me he could find no flaw in our Indictment, and his air was that of a man who sees no hope, but is reluctant to say so. Mrs. Besant was full of quiet sympathy, proffering this and that kindness, and showing how much her heart was greater than her opportunity ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... day—as sunny, at least, as a London day ever can make up its mind to be—and as the yellow, slanting rays pour in through the muslin curtains full on face and figure, you may search and find no flaw in either. It is a very lovely face, a very graceful, though petite figure. She is a blonde of the blondest type: her hair is like spun gold, and, wonderful to relate, no Yellow Wash: no Golden ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... more. You all know that stage solicitors are more outrageous villains than even their originals. Mr. Gammon is, of course, a "fine speciment of the specious," as Mr. Hood's Mr. Higgings says. It is he who, finding out a flaw in Aubrey's title, angled per advertisement for the heir, and caught a Tittlebat—Titmouse. It is he who has so disinterestedly made that gentleman's fortune.—"Only just merely for the sake of the costs?" one naturally asks. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... towards it. He unscrewed the lens, brought it to the lamp, and peered attentively through it, now into the air, now at his sleeve and hand, as if looking for a flaw in it. Then he replaced it, and pulled up the collar of his dressing-gown as if ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... ruined us yet more: The fort's revolted to the emperor; The gates are opened, the portcullis drawn, And deluges of armies from the town Come pouring in: I heard the mighty flaw, When first it broke; the crowding ensigns saw, Which choked the passage; and, what least I feared, The waving arms of Aureng-Zebe appeared, Displayed with your Morat's: In either's flag the golden serpents bear Erected crests alike, like volumes ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... satisfied with his opponents' admission that the being of God is proved by reason, but it would be hard to discover how, upon his own conception of the nature and limits of reason, such a proof could ever be given. It has been said that it is no flaw in Butler's argument that he has left atheism as a possible mode of viewing the universe, because his work was not directed against the atheists. It is, however, in some degree a defect; for his defence of religion against the deists rests on a view ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... Their faces beam; I give them all their names, Bertram and Gilbert, Louis, Frank and James, Each with his aims; One thinks he is a poet, and writes verse His friends rehearse; Another is full of law; A third sees pictures which his hand can draw Without a flaw. ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman

... published and explained in Locke's lifetime, would have tainted his whole philosophy with suspicion. It relates to the Aristotelian doctrine of syllogism, which Locke undertook to ridicule. Now, a flaw, a hideous flaw, in the soi-disant detecter of flaws, a ridicule in the exposer of the ridiculous—that is fatal; and I am surprised that Lee, who wrote a folio against Locke in his lifetime, and other examiners, should have failed in detecting this. I shall expose it elsewhere; ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... most ingenious. But there is in this plan one flaw which no one has noted. I suppose that you, Maternus, evolved this really promising idea from pondering on what Claudius told us. All the hearsay about Rome and its festivals which ever came to the ears of all of us put together ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... of it, if each had his opponent looking over his shoulder, pointing out flaws in his arguments, suggesting untimely truths, and putting every possible impediment in the path of his logic; and if, moreover, he were obliged to mend every flaw, prove every such truth a falsehood, and remove every impediment before he could advance a step. Were such the case, how much less would there be of fine-spun theory and specious argument; how much more of practical truth! Always supposing the logical combatants did not lose their patience and ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... digestive organs are susceptible to disorder, be reasonably careful about what you eat, even though you consider yourself quite well. What a stomach has once done in the line of misbehavior, a stomach may do again. If a pitcher has in it a tiny flaw, it may crack when filled with boiling liquid. If you know of some article of food which disagrees with you, let it alone. If you are inclined to dyspepsia, eschew hot breads, pastry, fried or greasy food, nuts and many sweets. Avoid becoming dependent ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... was a stool eighteen inches high and four feet in diameter chiseled out of a solid block of natural crystal. M. Tavernier asserts that it was the largest piece of crystal ever discovered, and that it was without a flaw. It was shattered by the barbarians during the invasion of the Marathas in 1789. But the peacock throne, which stood in the room I have just described, was even more wonderful, and stands as the most extraordinary ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... making his escape from it through the several Greek dialects, when he was pressed with it in any particular syllable. For the most apt and elegant word in the whole language was rejected, like a diamond with a flaw in it, if it appeared blemished with a wrong letter. I shall only observe upon this head, that if the work I have here mentioned had been now extant, the "Odyssey" of Tryphiodorus, in all probability, would have been ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... ago by the working of Fate and now brought together once more through the power of an overmastering attraction, their union could not have been more complete. To the eye of the observer, and indeed to their own eyes, it showed neither seam nor flaw. ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard

... coldly regarded by the commercial white colonist all over the heathen world, as a rule, and its product is nicknamed "rice-Christians" (occupationless incapables who join the church for revenue only), but I think it would be difficult to pick a flaw in the work of these Catholic monks, and I believe that the disposition to attempt it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... enterprise gloriously terminated, with the loss of only two men—Wolfet Van Horne, a tall spare man, who was knocked overboard by the boom of a sloop in a flaw of wind, and fat Brom Van Bummel, who was suddenly carried off by an indigestion; both, however, were immortalized as having bravely fallen in the service of their country. True it is, Peter Stuyvesant had one of his limbs terribly fractured in the act of storming the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... superstitious—not in the least. He feared nothing material or immaterial except—and it was a curious exception—except Bessie Ormiston; yet it is true he loved her, perfectly as he thought, but there was a flaw somewhere: it was not the perfect love that casteth out fear. The turning of a straw, however, might make it that, but who was to turn the straw? He feared to do it, and she would not. Notwithstanding these perturbed and cantankerous circumstances, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... with whom his life Was harmony without a flaw, He took no other for a wife, Nor sighed for any that he saw; And if he doubted his two sons, And heirs, Alexis and Evander, He might have been as doubtful once Of Robert Burns ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... intended to come of it, and that, when the poet abandoned the idea, he did not think it worth while to remove the scaffolding. To this change of plan, too, we may possibly trace what I take to be the one serious flaw in the the play—the comparative weakness of the second half of the third act. The scene of Erhart's rebellion against the claims of the mother, aunt, and father strikes one as the symmetrical working out of a problem rather than a ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen

... like a man who has suddenly discovered a flaw in his calculations. "I was thinking of the front parlor ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs

... eyes open. To see them, you would suppose there was nothing to look at and no one to speak with; you would imagine they were paralysed or alienated; and yet very possibly they are hard workers in their own way, and have good eyesight for a flaw in a deed or a turn of the market. They have been to school and college, but all the time they had their eye on the medal; they have gone about in the world and mixed with clever people, but all the time they were thinking of their own affairs. As if a man's ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... that I appeared to be alone in finding her so. Little Arcadians of my own sex younger than myself—and, if I may suggest it, less discerning—were not only not menaced, but she invited them with a cordiality in which the keenest eye among them could detect no flaw. Miss Lansdale's mother had also pleased the masculine element of the town at her first progress through its pleasant streets. But Miss Caroline, despite many details of dress and manner that failed interestingly ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... tell you. Life, to me, is like this train, a lot of sections and a lot of couplings. When you're through with a car, side-track it and—yank out the coupling. Like all philosophies, this one has its flaw. Once in a while your soul looks out of the window and sees some long-forgotten, side-tracked car beckoning to be coupled on again. If you try to go back and pick it up, you're done. Never look back, boy; never look back. Live ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... skysail seems high enough in all conscience; and the idea of any thing higher than that, seems preposterous. Besides, it looks almost like tempting heaven, to brush the very firmament so, and almost put the eyes of the stars out; when a flaw of wind, too, might very soon take the conceit out of these ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... (and unless it be rarefied it should not be put forward as poetry), could possibly accept these lines as expressionally poetical. It would seem as though, from the first, Browning's ear was keener for the apprehension than for the sustained evocation of the music of verse. Some flaw there was, somewhere. His heart, so to say, beat too fast, and the singing in his ears from the o'er-fevered blood confused the serene rhythm haunting the far perspectives of the brain, "as Arab birds ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... appears to me irrefragable; and if logicians, though unable to dispute it, have usually exhibited a strong disposition to explain it away, this was not because they could discover any flaw in the argument itself, but because the contrary opinion seemed to rest on arguments equally indisputable. In the syllogism last referred to, for example, or in any of those which we previously constructed, is it not evident that the conclusion ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... object of disinterested observation among actual leaders of opinion. They preferred the argument of doubt to the argument of certitude, and sought to defeat intolerance by casting out revelation as they had defeated the persecution of witches by casting out the devil. There remained a flaw in their liberalism, for liberty apart from belief is liberty with a good deal of the substance taken out of it. The problem is less complicated and the solution less radical and less profound. Already, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... after him. He will give thee leave, and summon himself in the suit, and thou shalt summon after him there and then, and this time say every word right. When it is done, ask Hrut if that were rightly summoned, and he will answer 'there is no flaw to be found in it'. Then thou shalt say in a loud voice, so ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... intended to do in the false light of something which she had really done. The unconscious contradiction of herself was easy to account for in this way—but it was likely to lead to serious results. It was a stumble on the threshold at starting—it was a flaw in the evidence which told fatally ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... the Book, in its perfection and integrity, fully satisfies the conditions of artistic triumph. Are we to ignore the grandeur of a colossal statue, and the nobility of the human conceptions which it embodies, because here and there we notice a flaw in the marble, a blemish in its colour, a jagged slip of the chisel? "It is not force of intellect," as George Eliot has said, "which causes ready repulsion from the aberration and eccentricities of greatness, any more than it is force of vision ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... seemed to see Fate as a thin female with a soppy expression and pince-nez, sniffing a little as she worked the thing out. He could picture her glutinous satisfaction as she re-read her scenario and gloated over its sure-fire qualities. There was not a flaw in the construction. It started off splendidly with a romantic meeting, had 'em guessing half-way through when the hero and heroine quarrelled and parted—apparently for ever, and now the stage ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... mode of living and that Milburgh was under suspicion of having robbed the firm. Suppose Milburgh had committed the crime? Suppose, to hide his defalcations, he had shot his employer dead? There was a flaw in this reasoning because the death of Thornton Lyne would be more likely to precipitate the discovery of the manager's embezzlements—there would be an examination of accounts and everything would come out. Milburgh himself was not unmindful of this argument ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... only one flaw in your argument, George," interrupted Billy Gordon. "Granting that they did row away from here, how do you know that at daylight they did not pick up a launch and hike half ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge

... knowledge of the previous night's disclosures worried and distressed her. She thought Collie's half promise to Overland Red to turn to their old life had been too easily made. Her pride in him was touched. She was hurt, and not a little angry. She saw the flaw in his ultimate decision to sacrifice himself and his prospects through a too stringent and quixotic interpretation of his duty. To go back to the old life ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... popular morals, using the word in its limited sense, were peculiar. The number of espostos que nao se sabe quem, sao seus pais (fatherless foundlings) outnumbered those born de legitimo matrimonio; and few of the gudewives prided themselves upon absolute fidelity. This flaw, which in England would poison all domestic affection, was not looked upon in a serious light by the islandry. The priesthood used to lament the degeneracy of the age and sigh for the fine times of foros e fogos, the rights and fires of an auto-da-fe. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... which has proved very successful is to pass the bar or rod to be tested through a solenoid electro-magnet. With suitable instruments it is claimed that this is an almost infallible test as the instruments show at once when a seam or flaw is ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin

... anything can be predicated of a Scottish parish, in which there cannot be discovered a reason for enlarging the endowments of the minister. I returned after two, with a sousing shower for companion; I got very wet and very warm. But shall we go mourn for that, my dear?[394] I rather like a flaw of weather; it shows something of the old man is left. I had Mr. Buchanan to help pack my papers and things, and got through part of that ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... surrounded him. He knew the danger was rapidly increasing because whenever he pressed his ear to the wall he could hear the almost inaudible tickings and vibrations as the bubble's skin contracted or expanded and the Nothing tapped and searched with its empty fingers for a flaw or crack that it could ...
— The Nothing Equation • Tom Godwin

... sapphire windows lent Whence on my heart of old Its earliest sigh, as shall my last, was sent; In arrowy jets of fire thence came and went Arm'd messengers of love, whereof to think As then they were, with awe —Though now for them with laurel crown'd—I shrink Of one rare diamond, square, without a flaw, High in the midst a stately throne was placed Where sat the lovely lady all alone: In front a column shone Of crystal, and thereon each thought was traced In characters so clear, and quick, and true, By turns it gladden'd me and ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... mind, Violet was free to enjoy, and soon found that the only flaw in Olivia's felicity was the Wrangerton fashion of sneering at her husband, and trying to keep her up to Matilda's measure of gentility. Proud as she was of her 'George,' he had not made her bold enough to set those censures at nought; but when she found Violet of his way of thinking, she joyfully ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... your physical conduct is largely a matter of taste, in a philosophy which ranks affairs of the mind immeasurably above the gross accidents of matter. Indeed, man can win to heaven only through repentance, and the initial step toward repentance is to do something to repent of. There is no flaw in this logic, and in its clear lighting such abrogations of parochial and transitory human laws as may be suggested by reason and the consciousness that nobody is looking, take on the aspect of divinely ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... to evidence of curative processes, viz., that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare homoeopathy, and all other such things. It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think, in my beloved Dr. Gully, that he believes in everything. When Miss — was very ill, he had a clairvoyant girl to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep—an homoeopathist, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... cube-doublers, had seen their long-flouted theories proved to demonstration by one of the most learned and responsible men of science in the world, and one of their most sarcastic and hitherto successful flouters had been compelled to confess that he could find no flaw in the calculations of this mathematical Daniel so unexpectedly come to judgment. They did not understand his proofs, but that was no reason why they should reject them, and so they rose as one man in support of their champion to demand that Professor ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... of purely divine descent. Her maternal ancestor, Sonisonbu, had not been a scion of the royal house, and this flaw in her pedigree threatened to mar, in her case, the sanctity of the solar blood. According to Egyptian belief, this defect of birth could only be remedied by a miracle,* and the ancestral god, becoming incarnate in the earthly father at the moment of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... barring a flaw, and I congratulate you on its recovery, but I see no human eye in it. I see some indistinct lines, fine as the thread of a spider's web, that is all. There is the breakfast bell, duke. We will go into the drawing room and find Cora. She ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... serious flaw in Ann Veronica's arrangements for self-rehabilitation, and that was Ramage. He hung over her—he and his loan to her and his connection with her and that terrible evening—a vague, disconcerting possibility of annoyance and exposure. She could not see ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... a raising of cairns and crosses, as memorials of the purchase and boundaries. There is no longer any such security, but there is far more craft and deceit, and a tombstone's breadth of written parchment to secure the bargain; and for all that, it is a wonder if a flaw be not in it, or said to be at least." "Well then," said Taliesin, "I should not be worth a straw in the world at present. I am better where I am. Truth will never be had where there are many poets, nor fair dealing where ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... Mr. Gilley is the dubble-extract of rottinness, and the hull rank and file of the party is in a fit state to be condemned by the fresh meet inspector. How is the Republican party? Its swete and pure as a new-born baby. Its leeder is as clene and wite as new milk, and all Hay-dies culdnt find a flaw in the platform on wich we stand." Just then I guess the devil muster taken excepshuns to the remarks, cos I'd pulled the rope wot I'd fixed to the loose leg of the platform, and the hull bisness toppled over the speekers and vice preserdents of the ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray

... Nothing was known of the stove at this latter day in Hall. The grandfather Strehla, who had been a master-mason, had dug it up out of some ruins where he was building, and, finding it without a flaw, had taken it home, and only thought it worth finding because it was such a good one to burn. That was now sixty years past, and ever since then the stove had stood in the big, desolate, empty room, warming ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... long, throwing the most delicious purple light from its hundreds of facets, quite takes you captive, and you put your hand in your pocket for the fifteen dollars which shall make you its possessor; but a closer inspection is sure to show you either a broad transverse flaw, or a spot where the color fades into transparency. The white topaz, known as the "Siberian diamond," is generally flawless, and the purest specimens are scarcely to be distinguished from the genuine brilliant. A necklace ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... voyages, when there is a risk of falling in with an enemy; and they won't be putting out from port until there is some change in the weather. However, it looks to me as if there is a chance of a little breeze, from the south, when the sun goes down. I have seen a flaw or two on the water, ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... that thrills with awe Seraphs who veil their face above? Is this the Face without a flaw, The Face that is the Face of Love? Yea, this defaced, a lifeless clod, Hath all creation's love sufficed, Hath satisfied the love of God, This Face the Face of ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... dust.' I drave the impostor forth: Perjured ere long he fled, and now returns To reap a harvest from his master's dream" - Thus mused he, while black shadow swept the moor. So day by day darker was Milcho's heart, Till, with the endless brooding on one thought, Began a little flaw within that brain Whose strength was still his boast. Was no friend nigh? Alas! what friend had he? All men he scorned; Knew truly none. In each, the best and sweetest Near him had ever pined, like stunted growth Dwarfed by some glacier nigh. The fifth day dawned: And inly thus he muttered, darkly ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... 'that if I went into technical details you would not understand them. There was a flaw in one of the rods connected with the engine. That rod broke, and in breaking it damaged other parts of the machinery. Doubtless you heard the three thuds which it gave before the engine was stopped. At present it is impossible to tell ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr

... idea that would simplify, and nothing would do this so much as the fact that he was done for and finished. If it had been in such a light that he had just detected in his cup the dregs of youth, that was a mere flaw of the surface of his scheme. He was so distinctly fagged-out that it must serve precisely as his convenience, and if he could but consistently be good for little enough he might do everything ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... of its qualities—apparently in all essential qualities of decorative invention—was quite without rival; seeming as if it might have advanced to the highest triumphs in architecture and in painting. But there was one fatal flaw in its nature, by which it was stayed, and stayed with a conspicuousness of pause to which there is no parallel: so that, long ago, in tracing the progress of European schools from infancy to strength, I chose for the students of Kensington, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... sea, and life, for those at home, became a joy without a flaw—except the thought that he would sometime ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... read the evidence. You have formed some conclusion? Do you not see some loophole, some flaw? Do you not yourself think ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... conceded to me, for that white, being white, cannot be also black is not nearly so certain as that idea and sensation, being two distinct things, idea of idea cannot be idea of sensation. The concession, indeed, is likely enough to be accompanied by an exclamation of wonder that so microscopic a flaw in an elaborate exposition should be thought worth pointing out; but Hume himself would certainly not have so retorted. Of the doctrine which I am impugning, viz., that every idea is copied from some preceding sensation, he had spoken as follows:—'Those who would assert that ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... driven the jury. He was therefore reprieved, and committed to the Tower, where his wife was allowed to bear him company, and where his youngest son was born. His estates were, in general, preserved to him, but Carr, the infamous minion of the King, under some pretext of a flaw in the conveyance of it by Raleigh to his son, seized upon his manor of Sherborne. In the Tower he continued for twelve years. These years his industry and genius rendered the happiest probably of ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... I am unable, even after the most careful revision, to find any flaw in my argument; and I incline to think none has been found by my critics—at least, if they have, they have kept the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... sheep. The magnificent semi-circle of the Southern Alps stood out, for a hundred miles from north to south, in appalling white distinctness, and no one in the whole Colony had ever seen the splendid range thus free from fleck or flaw. We had done all we could within working distance, but what was, the use of digging in drifts thirty feet deep? Amidst, and almost above, the terrible anxiety about our own individual safety,—for the snow was over the roof of many of the station-houses,—came the pressing question, "Where are ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... chin, a dried-apple mouth, and two fiercely bright eyes, that looked clear through you, and plainly indicated that she thought you all wrong, and at fault. Whenever she heard any one praised, she immediately set about finding a flaw somewhere, and heralded it to the world, as soon as found. She knew the Dering family were not as nice and worthy of praise and sympathy, as people seemed to think, and she had come this morning on purpose to find out, and then correct the deluded ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving

... those things," she admitted again; "but it is a flaw in a young man, isn't it," she persisted, betraying an unusually anxious interest, "for him never to think of a ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester

... making the necessary arrangements for the docking of the Thetis he at once found himself confronted with that adamantine procrastination which constitutes such a serious flaw in the Spanish character; manana (to-morrow) is the word that is most often in the Spaniard's mouth, and his invincible determination never to do to-day what can possibly be postponed until the morrow is perhaps as marked a national ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... certain luxurious spiritual sensibilities. This choice of emotional gratification before truth and upright dealing with one's own understanding, creates a character that is certainly far less unlovely than those who sacrifice their intellectual integrity to more material convenience. The moral flaw is less palpable and less gross. Yet here too there is the stain of intellectual improbity, and it is perhaps all the more mischievous for being partly hidden under the mien ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... light On one side leaves the other in night. Never was saint so good and great As to give no chance at St. Peter's gate For the plea of the Devil's advocate. So, incomplete by his being's law, The marvellous preacher had his flaw; With step unequal, and lame with faults, His shade on the path of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... to replace the racial areas, was a very drastic proposal to put forward; and he added that when the historic provincial divisions of France were broken up into departments, the nation had been prepared by nearly 200 years of centralization under the monarchy. It is a flaw in his argument to say that the previously existing areas were racial, whereas populations of identical race were divided from one another by the course of events. And in the proposed obliteration of these divisions—to be effected in a less arbitrary fashion than in France, where no ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... Lancaster found what he believed was the flaw that was blocking progress. The man had used a simplified quantum mechanics without correction for relativistic effects. That made for neater mathematics but overlooked certain space-time aspects of the psi function. ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson

... immediately ordered the sails to be clewed up and handed. While the people were on the yards, we caught sight of a boat pulling from the brig towards the town. Just then, before the people were off the yards, a sudden flaw of wind drove the ship's head off the bank. Hoping now to get off, the order was given to hoist the driver and mizzen-staysail, and to keep the sheets to windward. The instant the ship lost her way, the bower-anchor was let go, on which she tended to the wind; but the after-part of her ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston

... men had studied her character as manifested in the trying phases of prison existence, finding no flaw; to-day they looked up reverently at the graceful form in its homespun uniform, at the calm, colorless face, wearing its crown of meekness, with an inalienable, proud ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... of nature any more clement than the doings of the sky. For we passed through a stretch of blighted country, sparsely covered with brush, but handsomely enough diversified with factory chimneys. We landed in a soiled meadow among some pollards, and there smoked a pipe in a flaw of fair weather. But the wind blew so hard, we could get little else to smoke. There were no natural objects in the neighbourhood, but some sordid workshops. A group of children headed by a tall girl stood and watched us from a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... rhetoric, without one flaw, and, in my opinion, not very far from historical truth. When I consider that Lucan died at twenty-six, I cannot help ranking him among the most extraordinary ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... signifies now, quirk, quibble, or flaw, Since Law is made Justice, seek justice ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various

... an excellent physician and an equally excellent man. Louisa Irving could not have picked a flaw in his history or character. Indeed, against Dr. Hamilton himself she had no grudge, but he was the brother of a man she hated and whose relatives were consequently taboo in Louisa's eyes. Not that the brother was ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... I had better not tell you what I mean. Miss Farrel gives herself clean away just by her looks. No living woman was ever made so there wasn't a flaw in her face but that there was a flaw in her soul. We're none of us perfect. If there ain't a flaw outside, there's a flaw inside; you ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... next evening, Republican Chicago greeted its protagonist with much the same demonstrations, as he took his place on the balcony from which Douglas had spoken. Lincoln found the flaw in Douglas's armor at the outset. "Popular sovereignty! Everlasting popular sovereignty! What is popular sovereignty"? How could there be such a thing in the original sense, now that the Supreme Court had decided that the people in their territorial status might not prohibit slavery? And as for ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... beauty and sweetness, would dare Think aught but the rarest of virtues dwelt there? Rare virtues she had, but in commonplace ones Which make happy husbands and home loving sons She was utterly lacking. Ruth Somerville saw In sorrow and silence this blemishing flaw In the friend whom she loved with devotion! Maurice Saw only the angel with eyes full of peace. The faults of plain women are easily seen. But who cares to peer back of beauty's fair screen For things which are ugly ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... the tower estimated the UFO to be southwest of Godman and at an elevation of about 45 degrees. Allowing for human error in estimating directions and angles, this was close. I agreed. There was one big flaw in the theory, however. Venus wasn't bright enough to be seen. He had computed the brilliance of the planet, and on the day in question it was only six times as bright as the surrounding sky. Then he explained what this meant. Six times may ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... assented the other sadly. "It's a most incomprehensible case. The chain of evidence seems absolutely complete, and yet I'm convinced—as every sane man must be—that there is in it some fatal flaw, which, once discovered, will send the whole structure tottering. It must be my business to ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson

... of the Kremlin live in fear their power and position would collapse were their own people to acquire knowledge, information, comprehension about our free society. Their world has many elements of strength, but this one fatal flaw: the weakness represented by their iron curtain and their police state. Surely, a social order at once so insecure and so fearful, must ultimately lose its ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... O Sovereign Seer of time, But Thee, O poet's Poet, Wisdom's Tongue, But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, O perfect life in perfect labor writ, O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest,— What if or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, What least defect or shadow of defect, What rumor, tattled by an enemy, Of inference loose, what lack of grace Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's,— Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford

... returning. Now it would be gratified to the full, as they should be gone perhaps two months and would pass through regions wholly unknown. Moreover he had worked hard for a long time and he felt that his holiday was fully earned; hence there was no flaw in ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... have realised for himself had he not been obsessed by the new conviction that the real diamonds, now virtually Alan's, were hidden in the clock in that upper room. Further, it contained a serious flaw, in that it allowed nothing for the possibility of Alan's making a fresh will. And finally, if one may be permitted to put the primary objection last, it depended on the possession of the Green Box which had just passed ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell

... family. Such is the last practical advice of the French Philosophic school of the eighteenth century and of its unconscious followers in this. If the conclusion does not satisfy the highest aspirations of the human race, that is perhaps because of some flaw in ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... grew the documents as the lawyer's hand travelled downward; any flaw or failure must have been healed by lapse of time long and long ago; dust and grime and mildew thickened, ink became paler, and contractions more contorted; it was rather an antiquary's business now than a lawyer's to ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... thee treasures rich and rare, White pearl to deck thy golden hair, And coral beads, so smoothly fair And free from every flaw or speck; That they may lie upon thy neck, This sweetest day—this brightest day That ever on the green world shone— O lovely May, O long'd-for May! As if thy neck and ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... to tell without strict inquiries. I doubt me if we could learn all before next May Day, when we might get hold of the man himself and find out who and what he is. Such wedlock as his cannot be without flaw, and might be made invalid by law; but, wife, there is no getting over this, that the child took her vows in the name of God, and I dare not act as though such vows were unspoken. Her youth and ignorance may ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... larger than the end of my thumb—as large as a big hickory-nut and, my uncle averred, flawless. Rubies of such a size and without a flaw are extremely rare, I believe; in fact, there are only one or two known to be in existence. The old gentleman declared that one of five carats was worth five times as much as a diamond of equal weight, and ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk

... time she became aware of the slight discrepancy in Ears, she suffered only a slight Annoyance. It handed her a tiny Pang to find a Flaw in a Piece of Work that she had ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... admirable new dictionary, I have remarked a flaw sub voce Beacon. In its express, technical sense, a beacon may be defined as "a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... flickering combustion illuminated the drifting hulk. His face and hands had been recently washed—a rite insisted upon by Phillips as a memorial to the slaughtered conventions. In the candle-light he stood, a flaw in the decorous fittings of the apartment. His face was a sickly white, covered almost to the eyes with a stubble the shade of a red Irish setter's coat. Phillips's comb had failed to control the pale brown hair, long matted and conformed to the contour of a constantly worn hat. His eyes ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... is of so shining a quality," quoth Sir Mortimer, with courteous emphasis, "that here and there a flaw cannot mar its curious worth. Smerwick Fort lies in Ireland, senor, not in England. Though verily the best thing I know of Edmund Campion is the courageousness of his end; yet indeed he died not with a halo about his head, nor were miracles wrought with his blood. Her Gracious ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... cherries out of the bag and ate them abstractedly. Other boats passed them, crossing the backwater from side to side to avoid each other, for many were now moored, and there were now white dresses and a flaw in the column of air between two trees, round which curled a thread of blue—Lady Miller's picnic party. Still more boats kept coming, and Durrant, without getting up, shoved their ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... that they feel, and puppetry remain, Is an owned flaw in her consistency Men love to dub Dame Nature—that lay-shape They use to hang phenomena upon— Whose deftest mothering in fairest sphere Is girt about ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... At sea he allows her to wear an easy neglige, but in port she must appear in full dress. Not a sign of the long voyage, of the storms, of the glowing heat she has suffered, must be visible. Then begins an incessant hammering, planing, and sawing; every flaw, every crack or injury is made good, and, to wind up, the whole vessel is painted afresh. The worst of all, however, is the hammering when the cracks in the deck are being repaired and filled up with pitch. This is ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... every respect. Not only has the sitter been taken in the popular modern "one-twentieth face," showing only the back of the head, the left ear and what is either a pimple or a flaw in the print, but the whole thing is plunged in the deepest shadow. It is as if my uncle had been surprised by the camera while chasing a black cat in his coal-cellar on a moonlight night. There is no question as to which of the two makes the more attractive picture. My ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... her head, the neck is as the continuation of the face,—the same breadth, which is very rare; sometime on the Transtevere one might see women with similar necks; but never in that perfection. Really, who seeks to find a flaw in Laura's beauty, must seek in vain. Lukomski goes so far as to maintain that statues ought to be raised to women like her in their lifetime. Of course, ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... and forty-five sapphires," he replied without a moment's hesitation. "The rubies were uncut and of various sizes, ranging perhaps from ten to eighty carats. They were true rubies, not spinels, remember that. The sapphires ran from fifteen carats to sixty, and there was not a flaw amongst them." ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby

... impossible to provide adequately for their defence. And this essential defect rendered the nation semi-dependent on its neighbour and adversary and powerless to pursue a policy of its own. For half a century this dangerous flaw in the national edifice and its pernicious effects on Italy's international relations had been patiently borne with, but Baron Sonnino considered that the time for repairing it and strengthening the groundwork of peace ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... up at the maestro's windows. 'Hark! it is her voice,' he said, and drew up his clenched fists with rage, as if pumping. 'Cold as ice! Not a flaw. She is a lantern with no light in it—crystal, if you like. Hark now at Irma, the stork-neck. Aie! what a long way it is from your throat to your head, Mademoiselle Irma! You were reared upon lemons. The split hair of your mural crown is not thinner than that voice of yours. It is a mockery ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... turned out to be a good driver of aeroplanes," commented Roy, as he watched; "see that flaw strike them! There! he brought the Cobweb through it like an old general ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham



Words linked to "Flaw" :   blister, glitch, failing, imperfectness, damage, hole, bug, imperfection, blemish, hamartia, tragic flaw, fault, weakness



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