hair's breadth

“Denied many suitable targets for his Blowpipes, hammered for hours on end by every enemy weapon in the inventory, and forced to make two hair's breadth escapes from capture by Russian infantry, it was nothing short of a miracle to him and his detachments that they were still alive to tell the tale.”

First Clash

“And so I feel safe in saying that if any man were so good and perfect an animal that he had the hound's sense of smell, the cat's eyesight, the rabbit's sense of hearing, the horse's sense of taste, and the homing pigeon's “locality,” he would not be one whit better prepared to appreciate Kipling's “Dipsy Chanty,” and not a hair's breadth nearer a point where he could write a poem equal to it.”

Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great

“I have imagined and executed a mould-board which may be mathematically demonstrated to be perfect, as far as perfection depends on mathematical principles, and one great circumstance in it's favor is that it may be made by the most bungling carpenter, & cannot possibly vary a hair's breadth in it's form, but by gross negligence.”

Letters

“He would not go a hair's breadth astray, if he knew it; but because Greystock had, in debate, called him timid and tyrannical, he believed that Greystock would stop short of nothing that might injure him.”

The Eustace Diamonds