make allowance

“My dear Lizzy, do not give way to such feelings as these. They will ruin your happiness. You do not make allowance enough for difference of situation and temper. Consider Mr. Collins’s respectability, and Charlotte’s steady, prudent character. Remember that she is one of a large family; that as to fortune, it is a most eligible match; and be ready to believe, for everybody’s sake, that she may feel something like regard and esteem for our cousin.”

But we all must make allowance for his newfound “strong focus” on the coronavirus, which Trump is fighting with every tool in his golf bag: not just irons and wedges, but putters, drivers and fairway woods.

Alas, my plan to sort and cull my thousands of books — described last week in my Zippy Shell column — failed to make allowance for human nature.

When this happens, it’s often useful to heed Rudyard Kipling’s advice: “Trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too.”

Most would have accepted Frappart’s penalty call as understandable five years ago; now, with a mechanism in place that has been proselytized as a guarantee of accuracy failing to live up to its billing, there is no need to make allowance for human error.