Feet of clay

This originated in Daniel 2:31-34, in which a figure in a dream of Nebuchadnezzar is described in this way: “This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his lets of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.” A stone struck “the feet that were iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors, and the wind carried them away.” The moral, of course, is that a fatal flaw can be the undoing of a man and his career.