1 About this period, however, the health of Mr. Dimmesdale had evidently begun to fail.
2 Its result, on earth, could hardly fail to be insanity, and hereafter, that eternal alienation from the Good and True, of which madness is perhaps the earthly type.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In XVII. THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER 3 This figure of the study and the cloister, as Hester Prynne's womanly fancy failed not to recall, was slightly deformed, with the left shoulder a trifle higher than the right.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In II. THE MARKET-PLACE 4 There was, perhaps, a fortunate disorder in his utterance, which failed to impart any distinct idea to the good widows comprehension, or which Providence interpreted after a method of its own.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In XX.THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 5 There was a remarkable intelligence in his features, as of a person who had so cultivated his mental part that it could not fail to mould the physical to itself and become manifest by unmistakable tokens.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In III. THE RECOGNITION 6 Brooding over all these matters, the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to win the master-word that should control this new and incomprehensible intelligence.
7 Yet the taste of the age, demanding whatever was elaborate in compositions of this kind, did not fail to extend its influence over our stern progenitors, who had cast behind them so many fashions which it might seem harder to dispense with.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In V. HESTER AT HER NEEDLE 8 He looked now more careworn and emaciated than as we described him at the scene of Hester's public ignominy; and whether it were his failing health, or whatever the cause might be, his large dark eyes had a world of pain in their troubled and melancholy depth.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In VIII. THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER 9 For her kindred, should the tidings ever reach them, and for the companions of her unspotted life, there remained nothing but the contagion of her dishonour; which would not fail to be distributed in strict accordance and proportion with the intimacy and sacredness of their previous relationship.
10 There was no other attribute that so much impressed her with a sense of new and untransmitted vigour in Pearl's nature, as this never failing vivacity of spirits: she had not the disease of sadness, which almost all children, in these latter days, inherit, with the scrofula, from the troubles of their ancestors.