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Definition
a peculiar behavioral trait in an individual — perhaps a weakness, but never important- He sang Lord Robert to sleep every night, and tweaked the noses of Lady Lysa's suitors with verses that made mock of their foibles.George R.R. Martin -- A Storm of Swords
- She didn't know all my foibles and shortcomings.Gillian Flynn -- Gone Girl
- For all of Mum's foibles, she didn't mistake sludge for coffee.Henry H. Neff -- The Maelstrom
- Everybody knew of Gawaine's foible.T. H. White -- The Once and Future King
- We all have our little foibles, and mine is the prompt settling of accounts.E.M. Forster -- A Room With A View
- K. took this to be just a foible of the painter's, and it irritated him as it made him lose time.Franz Kafka -- The Trial
- Surely I don't have to remind you that our professional duty is not to our own foibles and sentiments, but to the wishes of our employer.Kazuo Ishiguro -- The Remains of the Day
- I don't choose to discuss scandal out loud: A woman laughs at these masculine foibles, And never plagues her mate with paltry troubles.Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere -- Tartuffe
- Now that was tact, for two of the ruling foibles of the masculine mind were touched.Louisa May Alcott -- Little Women
- Marguerite Blakeney was, above all, a woman, with all a woman's fascinating foibles, all a woman's most lovable sins.Baroness Orczy -- The Scarlet Pimpernel
- But that foible his father had of increasing his age to magnify his guilt had long ago become familiar to him.Henry Roth -- Call It Sleep
- Most Loonies ignored them and granted them their foibles.Robert A. Heinlein -- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
- They made up for the respect with which unconsciously they treated him by laughing at his foibles and lamenting his vices.W. Somerset Maugham -- Of Human Bondage
- While she has been doing all these things, you no doubt have been observing her failings and foibles and deciding what effect they have had on her opinions.Virginia Woolf -- A Room of One's Own
- You select great materials; the foibles, the afflictions of human nature, the peculiarities of nations!Henry James -- The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1
- So she headed toward Cop Central, rested, well fed, and in her newly repaired vehicle, which in under five blocks decided to surprise her with a new foible.J.D. Robb -- Immortal in Death
- He knew that this was like the sudden impulse of a madman—incongruous even with his habitual foibles.George Eliot -- Middlemarch
- You select great materials; the foibles, the afflictions of human nature, the peculiarities of nations!Henry James -- The Portrait of a Lady - Volumes 1 & 2
- She worked with too many therapists, saw that they were human, full of foibles, in need of help themselves.Amy Tan -- The Bonesetter's Daughter
- Catherine feared, as she listened to their discourse, that he indulged himself a little too much with the foibles of others.Jane Austen -- Northanger Abbey