"Brittle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bravely said, but I knew from the careful repression of his tone that his hardness was a brittle veneer. He was young to carry so bold a front when his heart must be hammering, and I would willingly have talked any doggerel to have ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... the gallows four wooden boxes were piled upon each other at the edge of four newly excavated pits, the fresh earth of which was already dried and brittle ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... in this pottery, look down to the ground, Where bottle and mug, jug and pottle abound; From the plebeian throng see the graded array; There is shelf above shelf of brittle display, As rank above rank the poor mortals arise, From ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... from the old applewoman two Banbury cakes for a penny and broke the brittle paste and threw its fragments down into the Liffey. See that? The gulls swooped silently, two, then all from their heights, pouncing on prey. Gone. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... they were mournful? Fasting was alien to the spirit which ruled in his company. It would be just as inappropriate as to patch a piece of unshrunken stuff on an old garment, or to put fermenting wine in old and brittle skin bottles. The religion of Jesus, then, was distinguished from other earnest religion by its happy and sunny character. See also the sharp distinction he makes between the ascetic life of John and his ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... the burning forest was swirling about the open space in front of the station and he knew that before long he would be seeing flame instead of smoke. The fire fighters had been working ceaselessly, fighting gallantly, but the elements were against them. The air was almost as dry and brittle as the wood which the flames lapped up and there was a steady wind that drove ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... pieces of very differing kinds, both for their outward shape, colour, grain, texture, hardness, &c. some being brown and redish; others gray, like a Hone; others black, and Flint-like: some soft, like a Slate or Whetstone, others as hard as a Flint, and as brittle. That which I more particular examin'd, was a piece about the bigness of a mans hand, which seem'd to have been a part of some large tree, that by rottenness had been broken off from it before ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... half-curled up, with her back against the brushwood wall. Her light sun-helmet lay on the floor. In her ruffled hair were caught two or three thin brown leaves, their brittle edges curled inwards. The little boy, slightly smiling, yet essentially serious, as are children tested by a great new experience, squatted close to her and facing her, with one leg under him, the other leg stretched out confidentially, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... cooled too quickly, lest it be brittle. It must be annealed—cooled slowly—in order to withstand the rough usage to which it is to be subjected. The annealing process takes place in a long, brick tunnel, heated at one end, and gradually cooling to atmospheric temperature at the other. The bottles are placed ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... the green and sparkling waters of which rippled over pebbles, or expanded into lagoons. The already scanty vegetation diminished rapidly: it consisted chiefly of scattered bushes of a dwarf scrubby honeysuckle and tufts of nettle, both so brittle as to be trodden into powder, and the short leafless twiggy Ephedra, a few inches higher. The most alpine rhododendron (R. nivale) spread its small rigid branches close to the ground; the hemispherical Arenaria, another ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... inspirations of Heaven. The adoption of fraud and sophistry in the defence of revelation too often reminds us of the injudicious conduct of those poets who load their invulnerable heroes with a useless weight of cumbersome and brittle armor. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... duty it is to weigh spirits, particularly brandy: for that purpose they make use of the areometer and the thermometer. An areometer, to be good, must be proved with distilled water, at the temperature of 55 deg.. Areometers, being made of glass, are brittle, and must be used with great care. This inconvenience might be remedied, by making them of silver; I have seen several of this metal. A good silversmith could easily make them; I invite those artists to attend to that branch of business; it might become valuable, as the distillers ...
— The Art of Making Whiskey • Anthony Boucherie
... that I had a great mass of small fibrous rootlets tightly woven about my whole person, so that I was like a colossal basket-worm in its case, or a big man-shaped bottle covered with wicker-work. It appeared as if the roots had grown round me! Luckily they were quite sapless and brittle, and without bothering my brains too much about the matter, I set to work to rid myself of them. After stripping the woody covering off, I found that my tourist suit of rough Scotch homespun had not suffered much harm, although the cloth exuded a damp, moldy smell; also that my thick-soled ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... you?" said the peasant. "It is unkind to pass our houses by. Why do you deny your brothers so? You said you slept in the fields, eh? That is bad. You shouldn't. The earth here is full of evil, and the malaria comes up with the dampness. Your bones grow brittle and break, or they go all soft, you shrivel up and become white, or swellings come out on you and you get bigger and bigger until you die. No, no! God be ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... lowered and her arms pressed close to her side. The nearer she came, the more astonished was the hostess at the fragile slenderness of her form. Her face was fair, but it was delicate and transparent, as though it had been made of brittle glass. ...
— The Treasure • Selma Lagerlof
... on stout white wove paper, similar to that used for the Jubilee stamps and at some time or other a slightly thinner and more brittle paper seems to have been used. The paper for the 5c is of a distinctly bluish color—this being the first occasion on which colored paper was used for any of the postage stamps of ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... black, rich, though thin one; the sides of the hills covered with large trees, and very thick, growing to a great height before they branch off. They are all of the evergreen kind, different from any I ever saw; the wood is very brittle, and easily split; there is a very little variety of sorts, having seen but two. The leaves of one are long and narrow; and the seed (of which I got a few) is in the shape of a button, and has a very agreeable smell. The leaves of the other are like the bay, and it has a seed like ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... as in ships and brittle barks Into the seas descend, Their merchandise through fearful floods To compass and to end; There men are forced to behold The Lord's works what they be; And in the dreadful deep the same, Most marvellous ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... often entreated that some case might be given to him wherein he might enclose the brittle vase of his body, so that he might not break it in putting on the ordinary clothing. He was consequently furnished with a surplice of ample width, and a cloth wrapper, which he folded around him with much care, confining it to his waist with ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... is an animal unfledged, A monkey with his tail abridged; A thing that walks on spindle legs, With bones as brittle, sir, as eggs; His body, flexible and limber, And headed with a knob of timber; A being frantic and unquiet, And very fond of beef and riot; Rapacious, lustful, rough, and martial, To lies and lying scoundrels partial! By nature form'd with splendid parts To rise in science—shine in arts; Yet ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... the words infer, 70 But, by the practice of the age, Are to be judg'd how far th' engage; And, where the sense by custom's checkt, Are found void, and of none effect. For no man takes or keeps a vow 75 But just as he sees others do; Nor are th' oblig'd to be so brittle, As not to yield and bow a little: For as best-temper'd blades are found, Before they break, to bend quite round, 80 So truest oaths are still most tough, And though they bow, are breaking proof. Then wherefore should ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... I hastily take the load of blankets Herr Liebert lent us off a boy's back and undo it, throwing one blanket round each man, and opening my umbrella and spreading it over the other blankets. Then I give them a tot of rum apiece, as they sit huddled in their blankets, and tear up a lot of the brittle, rotten wood from the trees and shrubs, getting horrid thorns into my hands the while, and set to work getting a fire with it and the driest of the moss from beneath the rocks. By the aid of it and Xenia, who soon revived, and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Rice—good all the way through, absolute in integrity and adjusted perfectly to other men. In between these wholly contrasting elements was the group majority, trying to do duty, with varying degrees of success. That would include Greeley, strong in self-discipline but likewise brittle. It would include Lieutenant Lockwood, a lion among men for most of the distance, but totally downcast and beaten in the last dreadful stretch, Israel, the youngest of the party who won the love of other men by his frankness and generosity, Sergeant Gardiner ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... 'Brittle, the member for Stoney-Muckford, was in the next carriage to me yesterday; and he's a slow coach, too,' I threw in. 'It does look as if the division was ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... considerable heights, Mr. Kent found only a few shells; but from the summit of one hill, 625 feet high, he brought me specimens of the Concholepas, Mytilus Chiloensis, and a Turbo. These shells were softer and more brittle than those from the height of 164 feet; and these latter had obviously a much more ancient appearance than the same species from the height of only ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... the remains of that fortune which her extravagance had left; and then, after the worst usage, abandoning her with contempt, she sinks into an obscurity that cuts short the thread of her life, and leaves no remembrance, but on the brittle glass, and still more faithless bark, that ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... lot of boys," said Mr. Anderson. "You will have to remember not to go too near to the edge of these cliffs up here, for the frost has made the face of some of them very brittle." ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... are times that he'll do with a little, Work till his nerves and his temper are brittle; Fire cannot daunt him, nor long hours disturb him, Gold cannot buy him and threats cannot curb him; Highbrow or lowbrow, your own speech he'll hand you, Talk as you will to him, he'll understand you; He'll go wherever another man can— That is the ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... McGregor, hot but triumphant in a petticoat that crackled like brittle ice beneath her black alpaca skirt and a pair of white cotton gloves at the fingers of which she was continually tugging. Both her hat and Mary's gleamed ebon under a recent coat of blacking—so recent that they entertained some concern lest it trickle down their heated faces in disfiguring ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... each other through all the summer months. Withal the ground must be rigidly kept free from grass and weeds, and after the plants have attained any size this must be done by hoe; horse and plow would break and bruise the brittle leaves. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Reasoning, is the passage of the mind from one or more judgements to another, e.g. from the two judgements 'Whatever is made of porcelain is brittle,' and 'This cup is made of porcelain,' we elicit a third judgement, ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... the most splendid in the world. It was made wholly of fine porcelain, very costly, but so brittle and so hard to handle that one had to take care how one touched it. In the garden were to be seen the most wonderful flowers, and to the prettiest of them silver bells were tied, which tinkled, so that nobody should pass by without noticing ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the opposite attack warily with his shield. That of Sir Tarquin was framed of a bull's hide, stoutly held together with thongs, and, in truth, seemed well-nigh impenetrable; whilst the shield of his opponent, being of more brittle stuff, did seem as though it would have cloven asunder with the desperate strokes of Sir Tarquin's sword. Nothing daunted, Sir Lancelot brake ofttimes through his adversary's guard, and smote him once until the blood trickled ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... turned upon the others. This was sport. He was reveling in the joy of battle and the lust of blood. As though it had been but a brittle shell, to break at the least rough usage, the thin veneer of his civilization fell from him, and the ten burly villains found themselves penned in a small room with a wild and savage beast, against whose steel muscles their puny strength ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... some difficulty that I contrived, by means of tackles, to lower them to the hold, which I succeeded in accomplishing with safety excepting in one instance, when, from the tackle-fall giving way, the image fell to the bottom of the vessel, and being very brittle, was broken into pieces. As it was no longer of any value as a statue, I broke it up to examine it, and I can assure your highness that it was very wonderful to witness how every part of the human body was ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... while the burning lime Eats flesh and bone away, It eats the brittle bone by night, And the soft flesh by day, It eats the flesh and bone by turns, But ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... the plans, exhaustive and painstaking as had been the preparations, the bridge-builders met with unpreventable delays, disappointments, and disasters; for man is but a feeble creature whose brain tires and whose dreams are brittle. It is with these hindrances and accidents and with their effect upon the outcome ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... be so called because in its natural state it is infested with insects) which is exuded from the locust tree, Hymenaea coumaril, and other species of Hymenaea growing in tropical South America. It is of a pale brown colour, transparent, brittle, and in consequence of its agreeable odour is used for fumigation and in perfumery. Its specific gravity varies from 1.054 to 1.057. It melts readily over the fire, and softens even with the heat of the mouth; it is insoluble in water, and nearly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... however, and arose to find a foot of snow glistening on the ground and the air keen and brittle with cold. No word came from Dan, and in the afternoon she threw discretion to the winds and went boldly to the ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... course of the bear was marked by a swath of broken brush. It dashed headlong through the forest regardless of obstruction. Small trees in his way meant nothing to him; he ran over them, or if old and brittle, smashed them down. Into the densest portion of the woods he made his way. Not more than three hundred yards from the spot he started, he treed again. In an almost impenetrable thicket of small cedars, the dogs ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... terms. Life! what is life? A shadow! Its date is but the immediate breath we draw; Nor have we surety for a second gale; Ten thousand accidents in ambush lie For the embody'd dream. A frail and fickle tenement it is, Which, like the brittle glass that measures time, Is often broke, ere half its ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... Revolution, when King James fled overseas, and the Dutch King William reigned in his stead. The event was a godsend to our trade, for with Scotland in a bicker with Covenants and dragoonings, and new taxes threatened with each new Parliament, a merchant's credit was apt to be a brittle thing. The change brought a measure of security, and as we prospered I soon began to see that something must be done in our Virginian trade. Years before, my uncle had sent out a man, Lambie by name, who watched his interests in that country. But we had to face such fierce ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... degrees. They are often altered into a kind of chert. At Muara there is an outcrop of coal seams twenty, twenty-five and twenty-six feet thick. The coal is of excellent quality, quite bitumenised, and not brittle. The beds are being worked by private enterprise. I saw no fossils, but the beds and the coal reminded me much of the older Australian coals along the Hunter river. The mines are of great value. They are rented for a few thousand dollars by two enterprising ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... important thing is that it did. It was all-metal, of course, tested and guaranteed. The guarantee isn't worth much here. A flaw in the forging, perhaps, that escaped detection. And this low temperature. Makes metal as brittle as glass. And the thing may have been ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... be considerably stronger than the crisp, brittle crust which Aunt Bettie brings to our table," replied ...
— Grandfather's Love Pie • Miriam Gaines
... Skin.—The hair loses its gloss, becomes dry and brittle, and readily falls out, either as an exaggeration of the normal shedding of the hair, or in scattered areas over the scalp (syphilitic alopoecia). The hair is not re-formed in the scars which result from ulcerated lesions ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... distance. There were quite strong indications that the water had run here not so very long ago, and we could trace the course of the little streams round among little sandy islands. A little stunted brush grew here but it was so brittle that the stems would break as ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... my Chimney-pieces with Looking-glass, and planted every Corner with such heaps of China, that I am obliged to move about my own House with the greatest Caution and Circumspection, for fear of hurting some of our Brittle Furniture. She makes an Illumination once a Week with Wax-Candles in one of the largest Rooms, in order, as she phrases it, to see Company. At which time she always desires me to be Abroad, or to confine my self ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to take and tear up that paper you were surreptitiously scribbling at, when Pye ordered you to go up and hand it in?" demanded Gaunt, of George Brittle. "It was that which put him out with us all. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... or copper, because the action of the wine thereon produces verdigris, and provokes vomiting. But no one is to presume to sing mass with a chalice of wood or of glass," because as the wood is porous, the consecrated blood would remain in it; while glass is brittle and there might arise danger of breakage; and the same applies to stone. Consequently, out of reverence for the sacrament, it was enacted that the chalice should be made of the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... she stood such an attempter, such attempts, and such snares, as I see will be laid for her. And, after all, I see not when men are so frail without importunity, that so much should be expected from women, daughters of the same fathers and mothers, and made up of the same brittle compounds, (education all the difference,) nor where the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... regarded the present accident, she said her father had repeatedly told the authorities these particular shells were not safe to handle. Apparently the safety-bolt was missing from all of them, making them when loaded as brittle as an eggshell. This young lady and her mother were certainly very anti-Boer in their sympathies, though terribly afraid of allowing their feelings to be known. All that day and the next they spent in the laager, looking after the injured pere ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... little brittle bones quickly solder, and it did not take me long to recover from the effects ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... later Romans; they were used by the Arabs of the 8th century, and in Europe till the 12th; at first long strips were rolled up, but later rectangular pages were cut and bound together book fashion; though age has rendered the soft white pages brown and brittle, much ancient literature is still preserved on papyrus; the use of papyrus was superseded by that ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... thousands in the higher latitudes. New York became, after awhile, the furthest habitable city north, an arctic city, where warmth seldom penetrated. And great fields of ice began to make their way southward, grinding before them the brittle remains of civilizations, covering over relentlessly ...
— The Coming of the Ice • G. Peyton Wertenbaker
... he agreed, smiling. "Our mothers used to stir it in the pot with pounded hickory nuts and bears' grease. Good eating! And the trading trips! Some of our men used to go as far as Little River for chert which they liked better for arrow-points than our own flints, being less brittle and more easily worked. That was a canoe trip, down the Scioto, down the O-hey-yo, up the Little Tenasa as far as Little River. There was adventure ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... out a few miles from the town over the grass brittle and hot, from which the clapping grasshoppers rose in swarms, and dropping down on the point of a mesa I relived again in drowse the joys of other days. It was plain to me that goldseeking in the Rocky Mountains was marvellously simple and easy compared to even the best ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... all that, the sweat on your salty skin Shall dry and crack, in the breathing of a wind That's like a draught come through an open'd furnace. The leafage of the trees shall brown and faint, All sappy growth turning to brittle rubbish As the near heat of the star strokes the green earth; And time shall brush the fields as visibly As a rough hand brushes against the nap Of gleaming cloth—killing the season's colour, Each hour charged with the wasting of a year; And sailors panting on their warping decks Will ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... advise a start before March, and not until April unless a steady heat of 60 deg. or 65 deg. can be maintained. Sow in well-drained pots, filled with soil composed of two parts of turfy loam and one part of leaf-soil, with very little sand added. The seedlings are exceedingly brittle at the outset, and re-potting should not be attempted until they are about an inch high. Even then they need delicate handling, and after the task is accomplished they should be promptly placed in a warm frame or propagating pit for a few days. ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... is my fate; Both void of state; And yet the threshold of my door Is worn by th' poor, Who thither come, and freely get Good words, or meat. Like as my parlour, so my hall And kitchen's small; A little buttery, and therein A little bin, Which keeps my little loaf of bread Unchipt, unflead; Some brittle sticks of thorn or briar Make me a fire, Close by whose living coal I sit, And glow like it. Lord, I confess too, when I dine, The pulse is thine, And all those other bits that be There placed by thee; The worts, the purslain, and the mess Of water-cress, ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... brimstone, is a hard, brittle substance of various colors, from brilliant yellow to dark brown, without smell when cool, of a mild taste, and burns with a pale blue flame, emitting pungent and suffocating fumes. Its specific gravity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... through with the green vines and pale pink blossoms of the mayflower, and she felt its fragrant breath streaming up in the moist moonlight. As she leaned forward to look through a rocky crevice, her arms rested on a bed of that brittle white moss she had often gathered with so much admiration, and a scarlet rock-columbine, such as she loved to paint, brushed her cheek,—and all these mute fair things seemed to strive to keep her company in her chill suspense of watchfulness. Two whippoorwills, from a clump ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... down the canyon, the fog was lifting and the forest growing lighter. Everything was as white with frost as if it had snowed. A thin, brittle frost crackled under our feet. When we, had gotten below the rocky confines of the canyon we climbed the slope to the level ridge. Here it was impossible not to believe it had snowed. The forest was as still as night, and looked very strange with the white aisles lined by black tree ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... replace the stoppers in the decanters. I was feeling rather cross. I hate having my settled convictions tampered with. They are not elastic, and this makes them brittle, and I always feel nervous about their stability when the intellectual pressure of ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... but coarser, more brittle and of stronger flavor; turns rust of iron color when bruised; grows on banks, ...
— Mushrooms of America, Edible and Poisonous • Anonymous
... that russet patch on one side of it? You'll often see it on oranges that go North. Sometimes they're russet all over. That means the rust mite has dried the oil in the skin and made the skin thinner and more brittle. It doesn't seem to ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... around the dome, the desert land lies as chilled and brittle as it did for eons before Earthmen reached Mars. The sky is suddenly raw and cruel. You pull your furs around your nose and check your oxygen mask, and wish you were inside something, even a thin ...
— Fee of the Frontier • Horace Brown Fyfe
... number of cousins, some of them common enough along our shores. One of the strangest is the Brittle Star. On first seeing one of these animals I tried to capture it by holding its long, wriggling arms. At once the arms broke off. Then I tried to scoop the creature out of its watery home. But it began to break its "rays" off as if they were of no value whatever. ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... "we're foolish. We should try to cut through the stone slab itself. It can't be so very thick. And another thing. I'm going to play the flames from the gas torches on the stone. The fires will make it brittle and it ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... life's dying sunset glows; Sinking sudden from its pride Into death—the Lethe tide. Ask'st thou whence thy beauties rise? Boastest thou those radiant eyes?— Or that cheek in roses dyed? All their beauty (thought of sorrow!) From the brittle mould they borrow. Heavy interest in the tomb For the brief loan of the bloom, For the beauty of the day, Death the usurer, thou must pay, In the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... broken that gorgeous lump of coral Alfonso gave me," said Dennis. "But it's as brittle as egg-shell, though I rather fancy the half of it would astonish most museums. You're a wonderful boy, Alister! Ah, we'll all live to see the day when you're a millionaire, laying the foundation-stone ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... And certainly, the more a man drinketh of the world, the more it intoxicateth; and age doth profit rather in the powers of understanding, than in the virtues of the will and affections. There be some, have an over-early ripeness in their years, which fadeth betimes. These are, first, such as have brittle wits, the edge whereof is soon turned; such as was Hermogenes the rhetorician, whose books are exceeding subtle; who afterwards waxed stupid. A second sort, is of those that have some natural dispositions which have ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... sort of combination of glass and flint for hardness," Tom explained. "It is brittle, black in color, and the natives of the Admiralty Islands use it for tipping their spears with which they slay ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... more favorable season, to find easy travelling and abundant supplies. On these great wastes and wilds, however, each season has its peculiar hardships. The travellers had not proceeded far, before they found themselves among naked and arid hills, with a soil composed of sand and clay, baked and brittle, that to all appearance had never been visited by the dews ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... under any wholesome dew, is crystallised over with it, as with hoar frost, and becomes to the true life what an arborescence is to a tree, a candied agglomeration of thoughts and habits foreign to it, brittle, obstinate, and icy, which can neither bend nor grow, but must be crushed and broken to bits if it stands in our way. All men are liable to be in some degree frost-bitten in this sort; all are partly encumbered and crusted over with idle matter; only, if they have real life in them, they are always ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... and thin. This necessitates storing away a considerable length of wire in the bulb without permitting the loops to come into contact with each other. After the filaments have been in operation for a few hundred hours they become brittle and faults develop. When examined under a microscope, parts of the filament operated on alternating current appear to be offset. The explanation of this defect goes deeply into crystalline structure. The tantalum filament was ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... as Genevieve Ward made it, began in artifice, became profoundly sincere, and then was stunned and startled into a recoil of resentment by a harsh rebuff, whereupon it subsided through hysterical levity into frigid and brittle sarcasm and gay defiance. For a while, accordingly, the feelings of the observer were deeply moved. Yet this did not make the character of Stephanie less detestable. The blight remains upon it—and always must remain—that it repels the interest of the heart. The ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... glow subsided, and poor Septimius spent the rest of the day, as was his wont, poring over his books, in which all the meanings seemed dead and mouldy, and like pressed leaves (some of which dropped out of the books as he opened them), brown, brittle, sapless; so even the thoughts, which when the writers had gathered them seemed to them so brightly colored and full of life. Then he began to see that there must have been some principle of life left out of the book, so that these gathered thoughts lacked something that had ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... as the watchman's footsteps had died away, Maya began to widen the chink through which she had peeped into the hall. It was easy to bite away the brittle stuff of the partition, though it took some time before the opening was large enough to admit her body. At length, in the full knowledge that discovery would cost her her life, she squeezed through into the hall. From remote depths ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... nimble faculties nothing escaped, noted this appeal. He thought the less of it, since Mr. Harley had given him some glint of the measureless millions of Mr. Gwynn, and he deduced from this stiff turning towards Richard, this brittle deference, nothing save a theory that Mr. Gwynn, by virtue of his tremendous riches, had grown too great to do his own listening and thinking. It was as plain, as it was proper, that he should hire them done, precisely as he hired a groom for his horses or a ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... just showed above the foam, and its banks were further cumbered by a whitened driftwood frieze over which the men must clamber warily, clawing for a foothold on the great battered trunks, or smashing through a tangle of brittle limbs. At times they were stopped altogether by a maze of washed-up timber no man could struggle through, and the axes were plied for an hour or more before they ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... and pins. On the mantel-shelf stood a pile of white, blue-edged plates, and mugs, and pitchers, from which projected sticks of red and white candy, like miniature barber's poles, and heaps of "gibraltars," hard and solid, sweet and brittle, and honest. Every child knew that they were a cent apiece, and thought ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... a short, brittle laugh. "I'll tell yuh. He says the sheriff's a crook! What do you know about that? I heard him tellin' it to Miss Mary the other day when he come in from Paloma about dinner-time. She was askin' him the same question, an' he up an' tells her it wouldn't ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... and true, and sturdily said he— 'Abide, my lord, and rule your own, and take this rede from me, That woman's faith's a brittle trust. Seven twelve- months didst thou say? I'll pledge me for no lady's truth beyond the seventh day.'" —Ballad of the ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... size and matter made, Were swiftly down a rolling stream convey'd. The larger vessel, form'd of solid brass, Did boldly o'er the rapid water pass; While that whose substance was but brittle clay, Would, for his safety, give the stronger way. Him the Brass Pot invited to draw near, And said, "His frailty need not cause his fear; For he, with just precaution would prevent The danger of their jostling as they went." The Earthen Pot, that knew his weaker frame, Excused himself, that he ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... the two cubs. And the leash will be of no avail unless it be plucked from his beard while he is alive, and twitched out with wooden tweezers ... and the leash will be of no use should he be dead because it will be brittle,"—that is, when the sun is set (dead) his rays have no power (Mabinogion, vol. II. p. 288). The same idea lies at the bottom of the English superstition that "if a person's hair burn brightly when thrown into the ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... miner nor a mine-surveyor who could boast that he had never in his life been down in the beggarly plain. I awoke in the straw, in the corn, such was the rascals plot to ruin me. The ears were sticking in my nose and eyes when I came to myself, the sorry, brittle, bristly stuff, that I had never yet seen except in the pallet of my bed. Scandal and shame! Murder and house-breaking are not so detestable! and no law against it, no remedy, no mortal skill in the whole ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... philosophy of the age, attested by divine revelation, made accessible to all by the incarnation of the Logos, and purified from any connection with Greek mythology and gross polytheism.[4] A motley multitude of primitive Christian ideas and hopes, derived from both Testaments, and too brittle to be completely recast, as yet enclosed the kernel. But the majority of these were successfully manipulated by theological art, and the traditional rule of faith was transformed into a system of doctrine, in which, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... and the engineer were not so brittle of temper. They discussed the matter, calling on the fireman, who had heard nothing, being busy in ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... white, And dicky-birds were his delight, A childish bow with coloured cord, A little brittle wooden sword. From bagpipes or the bogy-man Into his mother's arms he ran, There coaxed from her a ball to throw With his daddy ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... a stalk about fifteen feet in height yearly, which, after flowering, grows stalky and brittle, and remains an unsightly thing. The interior is pithy, but after the death of the stalk the pith contracts, and leaves the greater portion of the interior hollow, as we have seen in the case of the cactus branches. How the birds ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... radiance where the veiled sun hung without warmth, and the earth was everywhere frozen granite-like. He could see beyond the Forge shed heaped charcoal, and the black mass seemed no more dead than the ground or bare, brittle trees sweeping down and up to where, on encircling hills, they were lifted sharply against ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... is dry and brittle really requires some oleaginous preparation, used in moderation. Yellow vaselin is good. Part the hair and rub it into the scalp with the tips of the fingers. A sufficient amount will find its way to the hair itself to relieve the dryness. Cocoanut oil is also ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... smoke rose up in steady columns, magic within the dark air. Near at hand came the long rows of dwellings, approaching curved up the hill-slope, in straight lines along the brow of the hill. They were of darkened red brick, brittle, with dark slate roofs. The path on which the sisters walked was black, trodden-in by the feet of the recurrent colliers, and bounded from the field by iron fences; the stile that led again into the road was rubbed shiny by the moleskins of the passing miners. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... of brittle rock fell away. His efforts were greeted with cheers from the other side, and he redoubled them, with the result that in a short time, a passage between the two sections of the underground ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... truth, the two mummies he had gathered already quite satisfied my small ambition. The goatskins in which they were sewn up were as brittle as paper, and the poor old things themselves gave out dust like a puffball whenever they were touched. But you know what Coppinger is. He thought he'd come upon traces of an old Guanche university, or sacred college, or something of that kind, like the one there is on the ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... indeed near to my imagination, but far, infinitely far, beyond my reach. Nevertheless, I may attempt to describe her as she appears to me. Let me begin with that part of my ideal which has been inherited from Diana. My ideal woman has a sound body. She has bone, not brittle sticks of phosphate of lime. She has muscles, not flabby, slender ribbons of empty sarcolemma. She has blood, not a thin leucocytic ichor. I have no sympathy with that pseudo-civilization which apparently has for its object the destruction of the human race by the production of a race ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... did suggest was that these were parts of a body which had decayed in a very dry atmosphere (in which no adipocere would be formed), and which had been pulled or broken apart. Also that the ligaments which held the body—or rather skeleton—together were brittle and friable, as suggested by the detached hand, which had probably broken off accidentally. But the only kind of body that completely answers this description is an Egyptian mummy. A mummy, it is true, has been more or less preserved; ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... handsome conical tree sixty to eighty feet high, two to three feet in diameter. In Otago it produces a dark-red, freeworking timber, rather brittle . . . frequently ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... room. From the table to the outside window was one charred, black line which had burnt its way through the carpet. He threw open the window. The wire whose course he had followed ended there with a little lump of queer substance. He broke it off from the end of the wire, which was absolutely brittle, and brought it into ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it was found undesirable to use welded joints on aircraft in any part where the material is subjectto a tensile or bending load, owing to the danger resulting from bad workmanship causing the material to become brittle—an effect which cannot be discovered except by cutting through the weld, which, of course, involves a test to destruction. Written, as it has been, in August, 1920, it is impossible in this chapter ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... great when, underneath the planks, he came to a marble pavement which resisted his one tool. But he remembered having read of a general who had broken with an axe hard stones, which he first made brittle by vinegar, and this Casanova possessed. He poured a bottle of strong vinegar into the hole, and the next day, whether it was the effect of the vinegar or of his stronger resolution, he managed to loosen the cement which bound the pieces of marble together, and ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... it is brought into contact is more severely tried than in ordinary circumstances. In order apparently to excuse certain railway companies, a pretence has been set up that iron and steel become brittle at a low temperature. This pretence, although put forth in defiance, not only of all we know, of the properties of materials, but also of the experience of everyday life, has yet obtained the credence of so many people that I thought it would ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... thawed a little, but by the time it was dark everything was frozen hard again. The moon was nearly full, and shone brightly upon the frozen grass, casting queer shadows through the bare branches of the trees; it was very cold, and I walked fast; the brittle, frozen mud of the road broke beneath my feet with a creaking, crunching sound, and startled the deep stillness. As I neared the house the moon was before me, and the mass of buildings ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... galloping, Joris and I, Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white, And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... to him as the divining-rod of Aaron, blooming ever afresh with magic flowers. Now that the flame of pain and passion burned it up, and left a bare sear brittle ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... were a sad bungle, taken all in all. I was wrong to make you as I did, for a more useless, conceited and brittle thing never before existed." ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... solidifying outside in slight projections which the insect does not remove, being unable to get at them, and polished on the inside surface, which is within the worm's reach. What can be the nature of that singular lid whereof the Cerambyx furnishes me with the first specimen? It is as hard and brittle as a flake of lime-stone. It can be dissolved cold in nitric acid, discharging little gaseous bubbles. The process of solution is a slow one, requiring several hours for a tiny fragment. Everything is dissolved, except a few ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... been overlooked, felt for during the next trip beneath the surface. Fronds of laminaria yards in length, like sheets of rubber, offer convenient holds, and at their roots many curious creatures make their home. Serpent starfish, agile as insects and very brittle, are abundant, and new forms of worms, like great slugs,—their backs covered with gills in the form ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... me most in him was not his mind—which lacked elasticity—but his religion, his unquestioning obedience to the will of God and his perfect freedom from cant. His mentality was brittle and he was as quick-tempered in argument as he was sunny and serene in games. There are people who thought Alfred was a man of strong physical passions, wrestling with temptation till he had achieved complete self-mastery, but nothing was farther from the truth. In him you ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... not opaque, or dark—it gives admission to the light, and reflects it back again in all its beauty, brilliancy, and purity. I do not wish to see my little boy a green-house, or a glass-house merely, for then he would be brittle, and not strong—easily damaged, if not broken up. But crystals are hard bodies; they resist all injuries, they can bear a beating without breaking; for they are regularly formed, and complete in all their parts. And crystal glass is the firmest and the best, has fewest flaws and ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... for on July 21 this appears: "The Theatre of this Town was opened by Mr. McGrath's Company of Comedians, with the celebrated comedy The Miser. This Company is by far the best that ever visited this town." Then on August 12 there was "The Beggars Opera and A Comedy of two acts, Barnaby Brittle or a Wife at her Wits End. Also in August Mr. McGrath's Company of Comedians gave The Tragedy of Douglas and Garrick's Comedy of Two Acts ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... at it, and it looked at them. Its veil of myrtle, trembling yet with the shock of its entrance, gave it the semblance of movement and of life. It towered in the majesty of its insistent whiteness. It trailed its mystic modesties before them. Its brittle blossoms quivered like innocence appalled. The wide cleft at its base betrayed the black and formidable heart beneath the fair and sugared surface. These crowding symbols, perceptible to Edith's subtler intelligence, massed themselves ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... weird hush was uncomfortably impressive, and gave a sense of fantastic unreality to the scene. The sleepy, mesmeric radiance of the full moon, shining on the delicate traceries of the quaintly sculptured houses on either hand, made them look brittle and evanescent; the great heavy, hanging orange- boughs and the feathery frondage of the tall palms seemed outlined in mere mist against the sky; and the glimpses caught from time to time of the broad and quietly flowing river were like so many flashes of light seen through a veil of cloud. Theos, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... 1861, the British iron-plate committee fired with 68-pounders at many varieties of iron, cast-steel and puddled-steel plates, and combinations of hard and soft metals. The steel was too brittle, and crumbled, and the targets were injured in proportion to their hardness. An obvious conclusion from all subsequent firing at thick iron plates was, that, to avoid cracking on the one hand, and punching on the other, wrought-iron armor should resemble copper more than steel, except ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... his rested spear, So wheels his horse, he seems equipt with wings; Who, turning swiftly with the cavalier, Amid the closest crowd, impetuous springs. Composed of brittle glass the arms appear Where Sir Rinaldo red Fusberta swings. Nor tempered steel is there, nor corslet thick, Which keeps the sword from biting ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... by hour, as the dentist tramped steadily on, the heat increased. The baked dry sand crackled into innumerable tiny flakes under his feet. The twigs of the sage-brush snapped like brittle pipestems as he pushed through them. It grew hotter. At eleven the earth was like the surface of a furnace; the air, as McTeague breathed it in, was hot to his lips and the roof of his mouth. The ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... over the cliff! You have shown me how you used to do it, a thousand times—but you had no cricks in your back then: and remember how brittle the ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... are besides A very brittle glass; And Time, in his unresting tides, Makes all things change and pass; Turns riches to a beggar's dole; Sets glory's race an ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... quarrelsome and thieving tribes, their favorite game being to steal each other's horses. The Indian method of caring for their horses in the cold winter was to let them shift for themselves during the day, and to take them into their own lodges at night where they were fed with the juicy, brittle twigs of the cottonwood tree. With this spare fodder the animals thrive and keep their coats fine ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... wood in the main branches becomes very brittle and is easily broken by wind or ice. This condition is followed by the dying back of branches and finally the death of the tree. Trees even moderately affected soon become worthless for nut production, as few nuts are set and those that mature ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... have been used for many years in Russia, Norway, Sweden, and Canada, and nothing that we know in regard to iron gives us any reason to suppose that any thing of the kind ever will happen. But here, again, every thing turns upon the quality of the iron. Iron containing phosphorus is "cold-short," or brittle when cold, and will break quicker under repeated and sudden shocks in cold weather than when it is warm. With good iron, properly used, we need have no fear on this point. The securing such iron is a matter to ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose
... thus it falleth,' quod the friar, 'by folk here on earth, The water is lik'ned to the world, that waneth and waxeth, The goods of this world are likened to the great waves That as winds and weathers, walken about, The boat is liken'd to our body, that brittle is of kind, That through the flesh, and the fraile world Sinneth the sadde man, a day seven times, And deadly sin doeth he not, for Dowell him keepeth, And that is Charity the champion, chief help against sin, For he strengtheth man to stand, and stirreth man's soul, And though thy body bow, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... fire Flashed out and licked along his upper teeth. Smoke rolled inside the sockets of his eyes.) Then he came at me with one hand outstretched, The way he did in life once; but this time I struck the hand off brittle on the floor, And fell back from him on the floor myself. The finger-pieces slid in all directions. (Where did I see one of those pieces lately? Hand me my button-box—it must be there.) I sat up on the floor and shouted, "Toffile, It's coming ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... were spring, thundering delicate, tender spring. I wish these brittle, frost-lovely flowers of pas- sionate, mysterious corruption were not yet to come still more from the still- ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... Stockings, Hat nor Shooe. These Sot-weed Planters Crowd the Shoar, In hue as tawny as a Moor: Figures so strange, no God design'd, To be a part of Humane kind: But wanton Nature, void of Rest, Moulded the brittle Clay in Jest. At last a Fancy very odd Took me, this was the Land of Nod; Planted at first, when Vagrant Cain, His Brother had unjustly slain; Then Conscious of the Crime he'd done From Vengeance dire, he hither run, ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... day of the New Year (January 1, 1915) was cloudy, with a gentle northerly breeze and occasional snow-squalls. The condition of the pack improved in the evening, and after 8 p.m. we forged ahead rapidly through brittle young ice, easily broken by the ship. A few hours later a moderate gale came up from the east, with continuous snow. After 4 a.m. on the 2nd we got into thick old pack-ice, showing signs of heavy pressure. It was much hummocked, but large areas of open water ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton |
