"Brittle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will be found to possess the following merits: less weight, greater strength, stiffness, durability, and speed than a wooden boat of the same size and model; and the moulded paper shell will retain the delicate lines so essential to speed, while the brittle wooden shell yields more or less to the warping influences of sun and moisture. A comparison of the strength of wood and paper for boats has been made by a writer in the Cornell Times, a journal published by the students of that ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... and thirty-eight feet in rather more than a mile), the ground became more and more full of pitch, and the vegetation poorer and more rushy, till it resembled, on the whole, that of an English fen. An Ipomoea or two, and a scarlet flowered dwarf Heliconia, kept up the tropic type, as does a stiff brittle fern about two feet high. We picked the weeds, which looked like English mint or basil, and found that most of them had three longitudinal nerves in each leaf, and were really Melastomas, though dwarfed into a far meaner habit than that of the noble forms ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... recess opening from the court; to which we flocked and pushed, in a merciless squeeze, with all our coppers, and the products of which, the oblong farinaceous compound, faintly yet richly brown, stamped and smoking, not crisp nor brittle, but softly absorbent of the syrup dabbed upon it for a finish, revealed to me I for a long time, even for a very long time supposed, the highest pleasure of sense. We stamped about, we freely conversed, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... to be gummed at once to the paper, for it becomes so brittle, in drying, that it falls to pieces with the most careful handling. In the air and light it fades white, but the elegance of its pinnate branches will well repay any pains you may bestow ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Cream Muffins Club Sandwich with Sweetbreads Pickled Ripe Cucumber Rings Apricots with Cream and Nut Brittle ...
— For Luncheon and Supper Guests • Alice Bradley
... that the ice was in awful upheaval around us; we heard, as our eyelids sweetly closed, the slow booming of distant guns, and brittle cracklings of artillery. This may have been a result of the tempest stirring up the ocean beneath the ice. Whatever it was, we did not care: ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... of vegetation—this little spongeous tract of water plants, and on either side of it all the growths are tough or brittle—heather, bracken, hurts, pines. Very ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... be used as an ingredient of tooth-powder, it makes the teeth brittle. Camphor certainly has the effect of making the teeth, for a time, look very white; but it ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... begins to thicken, dip the handle of a spoon in it, and put that into a pint bason of water. Squeeze the sugar from the spoon into it, and so on till all the sugar is extracted. Take a bit out of the water, and if it snaps and is brittle when cold, it is done enough. But let it be only three parts cold, then pour the water from the sugar, and having a copper form oiled well, run the sugar on it, in the manner of a maze, and when cold it may be put on the dish it is intended to cover. If on ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... shedding a new joint or ring is added to the rattle. How often the shedding takes place depends on various circumstances and may occur an uncertain number of times each year. Such a rattle, loose-jointed as it is, is rather brittle and the tip of the sounding instrument is easily broken and lost. It will therefore be easily understood that the common notion that a rattlesnake's age can be told by the number of the rings in its rattle is absolutely ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... set. She has of course had the advantage of teachers of all sorts, but the claims made upon her time by thoughtless parents have usually been so great as to leave her at the end of her school-room period with a few brittle fragments of knowledge, which shift and change in her mind as the bits of glass might shift in a kaleidoscope from which the looking-glass had been omitted. It is enough for her if, in place of historical dates, she ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... which 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 be useful to make the ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... Celtic sort described by Polybius would have bent, not broken. There is no doubt on that head: if Polybius is not romancing, the Celtic sword of 225 B.C. doubled up at every stroke, like a piece of hoop iron. But Mr. Leaf tells us that, "by primitive modes of smelting," iron is made "hard and brittle, like cast iron." If so, it would be even less trustworthy for a sword than bronze. [Footnote: Iliad (1900), Book VI, line 48, Note.] Perhaps the Celts of 225 B.C. did not smelt iron by primitive ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... not made of a brittle substance like glass, but resemble mica, except that they are more tough and durable. These Moonites are wiser than we in roofing their houses. They have discovered a mineral composition which in its plastic state is daubed over the roof. This, upon hardening, is proof against all ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... glaucous-green, the cushions few and scattered; spines white, flattened, of various lengths. Flowers tawny yellow, small for the size of the plant. A native of Cuba, and requiring stove treatment. Being very brittle, this plant should ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... lose an hour At evening, till at length the freezing blast That sweeps the bolted shutter, summons home The recollected powers, and, snapping short The glassy threads with which the fancy weaves Her brittle toys, restores me to myself. How calm is my recess! and how the frost Raging abroad, and the rough wind, endear The silence and the warmth enjoyed within! I saw the woods and fields at close of ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... the sewing, and any light and tough wood served its turn as a more or less efficient substitute for the white cedar framing. But elm and other alternative barks {24} were all bad. The elm bark was used inside out, because the outside was too rough and brittle for the bottom of a canoe. It made dull paddling and never lasted the whole of a hard season, unlike the birch-bark, which sometimes had a life of six or seven years. The most modern material is canvas, which is generally painted red or green. It is light, easily ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... enough to make the 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 easy as ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... from nine to ten inches long. It is made out of the leaf of a species of palm-tree called coucourite, hard and brittle, and pointed as sharp as a needle. About an inch of the pointed end is poisoned. The other end is burnt to make it still harder, and wild cotton is put round it for about an inch and a half. It requires ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... with his back resting against a chest, lay a fine-looking young Lansquenet. He was undoubtedly a gay, active fellow, but now sat mute and melancholy, supporting with his right hand his wounded left arm, as if it were some brittle vessel. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... destroy, And hurl o'er the best scenes of Nature alloy— Who Earth's brightest portions cut through at a dash— Who mix beauty and beastliness all in one hash"— (I don't dwell upon deaths, since a reason so brittle Is but worthy of minds unpoetic and little)— "Base scum of the Earth, and sweet Nature's dissectors, Meet with no just reward—these same Railway Directors!" I've not mentioned the "Laughters," the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... as ever. The so-called "witches-broom," as commonly seen in the Japanese walnut, is the form most people seem to think of. The second form is the rapid-growing type, that lops, or arches downward, is gray or green in color of wood, is very brittle and easily broken in the wind, ripping off good sized limbs, and winter-injures badly. An investigation, will, however, show much dead wood comes before severe weather. This form has some broomy, upright growth, like the first, but it is never bunched. The ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... himself;—he "must" come off. Again, if you wish to kill a snake, it is no use hitting and trying to crush his head. The bones of the head are composed of the densest material, affording effectual protection to the brain underneath: a wise provision for the animal's preservation; for were his skull brittle, his habit of crawling on the ground would render it very liable to be fractured. The spinal cord runs down the entire length of the body; this being wounded, the animal is disabled or killed instanter. Strike therefore his tail, and not his head; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... And what becomes of the skin, ordinarily so delicate, so easily abraded or pierced, so readily injured? Is that transmuted also? Let us concede it. But the concession does not suffice. There remain the bones and cartilages, naturally so brittle, so liable to fracture. Let us even suppose the breast and stomach of a convulsionist protected by an artificial coating of actual gum-elastic, would it be a safe experiment to drop upon it, from a height of twelve feet, a flint stone weighing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... curl herself up in a big chair before the fire that night with "Richard Carvel" in one hand and a box of peanut brittle in the other, she was startled by a loud ringing of the bell. Going to the door she beheld Anne who was fairly wriggling with excitement. Her cheeks were flushed and her dark eyes ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... The Trades were assembled, And they all yelled together, and tempers got brittle; And when Burns rose and thundered, all Liverpool trembled (Though Burns is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... names Of Baalim and Ashtaroth—those male, These feminine. For Spirits, when they please, Can either sex assume, or both; so soft And uncompounded is their essence pure, Not tried or manacled with joint or limb, Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones, Like cumbrous flesh; but, in what shape they choose, Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure, Can execute their airy purposes, And works of love or enmity fulfil. For those the race of Israel oft forsook Their Living Strength, and unfrequented left His righteous altar, bowing ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... flannels playing tennis; at Mr. and Mr. Jervis and the Verekers and Norrises; at the Flemings, old Mrs. Fleming, and Louie and Emmeline and Edith, and the disgraceful Maurice, all five of them useless pensioners on his brother's bounty; Maurice a thing of battered, sodden flesh hanging loose on brittle bone, a rickety prop for the irreproachable summer suit bought with Anthony's money. He scowled at the tables covered with fine white linen, and at the costly silver and old china, at the sandwiches and cakes and ices, and the piled-up fruits and the claret cup and champagne ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... annoying vermin, like Jacaro's gunmen"—Denham's voice was brittle—"had come out of it, why, intelligent men might send something living and deadly down it, as men on Earth will send ferrets down a rat-hole! To wipe out the breed! That's what's happened! Jacaro's gone through and attacked the Golden City. They've found ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... you, Mawley," said the vicar, "the truth is not so brittle that we should be afraid of handling it; if religion were more openly discussed and brought into our daily life, I believe we should be all the better ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... in the lungs four years, during which time there was a constant dry and spasmodic cough, and corresponding depression and emaciation. When it was ultimately coughed up it appeared in one large piece and several smaller ones, and was so corroded as to be very brittle. After dislodgment of the pin there was subsidence of the cough and ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... stick-in-the-way, Bruff. Why, if you could have done as you liked, there would never have been any railway down here. Mind! don't break that. Cast-iron's brittle." ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... well on them, discover'd their surface to be variously raz'd or scratched, and to consist of an infinite of small broken surfaces, which reflect the light of very various and differing colours. And indeed it seems impossible by Art to cut the surface of any hard and brittle body smooth, since Putte, or even the most curious Powder that can be made use of, to polish such a body, must consist of little hard rough particles, and each of them must cut its way, and consequently leave ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... The kail grows brittle from the snow in my dank and cheerless garden. A crust of bread gathers timid pheasants round me. The robins, I see, have made the coal-house their home. Waster Lunny's dog never barks without rousing my sluggish cat to a joyful response. It is Dutch courage with ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... very little, And your bones are very brittle; If you would grow great and stately, You must try ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... freshmen. Nine tenths of them are expressions of deep concern and distress. A boy's college years are the years when he finds out that life isn't what he thought it, and the finding out is a painful experience. He discovers that he and his fellows are made of very brittle clay: usually he loathes himself; often ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... heir of the same common dust! Thy life is no less precarious, if it be less wretched, than that which animates a meaner clay, and breathes in a less decorated exterior! If the one be porcelain, and the other earthen ware, both are brittle! "God hath made of one blood all nations of men." Sometimes a cottage furnishes an impressive lesson respecting the independence of happiness upon external circumstances. It teaches the salutary ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... to bear in mind a few simple rules. The first of these is to go quietly. One's good sense would of course tell him not to rush headlong through the woods, talking loudly to a companion, stepping upon brittle twigs, and crashing through the underbrush. Go quietly, stopping to listen every few steps. Make no violent motions, as such actions often frighten a bird more than a noise. Do not wear brightly coloured clothing, but garments of ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... corrections with a pencil. "This," said he, turning to his companion, "is an amusement with which I sometimes pass idle hours at an inn. These are quotations from those humble poets, who trust their fame to the brittle tenure of windows and drinking-glasses." "From our inn," returned the gentleman, "a stranger might imagine that we were a nation of poets; machines, at least, containing poetry, which the motion of a journey emptied of their contents. Is it ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... for Coney Island. Although I have examined him closely on this point, he does not seem to have any very clear idea yet as to where they went that day, or what they did. All he can say is that "it was awful." They insisted on Hot Dogs, Pop Corn, Peanut Brittle, Dreamland, Luna Park, and all the rest; they went through the Old Mill, and they made George come down the "Bump the Bumps," "Shoot the Shoots" and such other exhilarating devices as they did ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... 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
... underneath pale yellow, fleshy feelers with suckers like a sea-anemone. These were as pliant as rubber in the water, but, when long out, as hard as stone. The sea-urchins were of many kinds, some with large spikes, as firm as rock, and others almost as brittle as glass, their needles, half a dozen inches long and sharp, dangerous to step on even with my rubber-soled, canvas shoes. All hues were these urchins, blood-red and heavenly blue, almost black, and as white ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... purposes new metals. The difference in the appearance of brass and copper is familiar to everyone; brass is also much harder than copper and much more suitable for being turned in a lathe. Similarly, bell-metal is harder, more sonorous and more brittle than either of its components. It is almost impossible by mechanical means to detect the separate ingredients in such an alloy; we may cut or file or polish it without discovering any lack of homogeneousness. But it is not permissible to call brass a chemical compound, for we can largely alter ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the wood, with a darkness more unbroken than the stillness which yet seemed part of it. A thousand little scraping noises broke the quiet air, chill and dank. Leaves pattered against each other, twigs rubbed faintly, brittle things broke under the lightest foot. Still hardly a wing unfolded ever so little, not a distressful chirp heralded the slaughter that threatened. Gradually, to eyes growing used to the gloom, differing shades of darkness became apparent; it was faintly ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... cold when we left, 38 deg. F., hard frost. All the world seemed buttoned up and great-coated; the trees seemed wiry and cheerless; the legs of the pack-horses seemed brittle, and I felt so. Breath issued visibly from the mouth as I trudged along. My boy and I nearly came to blows in the early morning. I wanted to lie on; he did not. If he could not entertain himself for half an hour with his own thoughts, I, who could, thought it no fault of mine. ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... boulder with the skeleton tree topping it, withered in the cleft that had first nourished, then denied it nourishment. It gleamed silver gray, attracting his attention. As he gazed his sharp ears caught the tiny crack of a brittle branch. Instantly he dropped to all fours as a spurt of flame showed from the tree and a bullet whined over him, to smack against ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... so unfeeling." This sally, though the poet had evidently brought it upon himself, annoyed him most deeply. "Call me cold-hearted—me insensible!" he exclaimed, with manifest emotion—"as well might you say that glass is not brittle, which has been cast down a precipice, and lies dashed to pieces at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... two quarts of the water, and obtained from it four ounces and half of a hard and brittle saccharine mass, like treacle which had been some time boiled. Four ounces of blood, which he took from his arm with design to examine it, had the common appearances, except that the serum resembled cheese-whey; ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... in, were Sir Martin Marrall, Gomez in the Spanish Friar, Sir Nicolas Cully in Love in a Tub, Barnaby Brittle in the Wanton Wife, Sir Davy Dunce in the Soldier's Fortune, Sosia in Amphytrion, &c. &c. To tell you how he acted them, is beyond the reach of criticism: but to tell you what effect his action had upon the spectator, is not ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... the better. It is a good plan to let it soak over night, and make up your cast in the morning. When gut is thus thoroughly wet, it is wonderful how easy it is of manipulation. On the other hand, dry gut is very brittle, and will break on the slightest provocation. Fix the cast and silk-and-hair line together, having previously made a single knot on the end of the latter, as ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... started 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 ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... the shepherd had an unseemly rent in it,—but I only laughed at the disaster, and would not scold her for her awkwardness. China had a knack of slipping through Jill's fingers; she had a loose uncertain grasp of things that were brittle and delicate; she had not learned to control her muscles or restrain her strength. She had a way of lifting me up when I teased her that turns me giddy to remember: I was quite a child in her hands. She was always ashamed of herself ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... very distressing. The wind came charged with dust that rolled in columns, like smoke beaten down by a tempest, across the surface of the valley. All the vegetation seemed withered, as if in an oven; and the wheat in the ear was brittle, as though roasted. There is a good deal of wheat in this oasis. I observed an old woman reaping, and went to chat with her. Her sickle had a long handle, and the blade itself was narrow, but slightly bent and somewhat serrated. I tried it, and found that ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... in the pine wood ahead of me were parted, as brittle reeds are parted by a man thrusting through them; they were snapped off and driven headlong, and a second huge tripod appeared, rushing, as it seemed, headlong towards me. And I was galloping hard to meet ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... cilia. There were colonies of Gorgonacea, which share their food unselfishly; and corals and marine degenerate worms, which started to live in little cells like coral, but have gone down in the world. And there were starfishes, sea-urchins, brittle-stars, feather-stars and sea-cucumbers. The sea-urchins are formed of hexagonal plates, the centre of each of which is a ball, upon which a spine works on a ball and socket joint. These spines are used for protection, and when large they can be used for locomotion. But the real means ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... product is the bezoar stone. These stones are found in the gall-bladder and intestines of the long-tailed monkey SEMNOPITHECUS (most frequently of S. HOSEI and S. RUBICUNDUS). They are formed of concentric layers of a hard, brittle, olive-green substance, very bitter to the taste. A soft brown variety is found in the porcupine. Both kinds are highly valued by the Chinese as medicine. The monkeys and porcupines are hunted for the sake of these stones. A similar ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... graduate glass requires a steady hand. When you do not have a graduate at hand, a half egg-shell with a small hole pricked in the end will serve better than a funnel. Place the shell in an oven to brown the surface slightly and it will be less brittle and last much longer. —Contributed by Maurice Baudier, ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... must not be permitted to become hard and stiff. If it is impossible to procure a good shoe dressing[15], neat's-foot oil or tallow are the best substitutes; either will soften the leather and preserve its pliability. Leather requires oil to preserve its pliability, and if not supplied will become brittle, crack, and break easily under strain. Inferior dressings are always harmful, and no dressing should be used which contains acid or varnish. Acid burns the leather as it would the skin, and polish containing ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... negroes are able to distinguish them at a glance and assort them accordingly. They are not engaged in this work of selection continuously from day to day, but at intervals, for they can handle the tobacco only when the weather is damp enough to moisten the leaf, otherwise it is so brittle that it would crack and fall to pieces under their touch. They like this work, for the barn is kept very comfortable by large stoves, they do not have to move from their seats, and they can all sit very sociably ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... always matter so much whether you use a square, pointed, or a round-nosed bit, provided it is properly ground and set in the tool holder. As a rule, the more brittle the metal the less the top rake ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... infamous for roads. The oaks of Temple and Black-moor stand high in the estimation of purveyors, and have furnished much naval timber; while the trees on the freestone grow large, but are what workmen call shaky, and so brittle as often to fall to pieces in sawing. Beyond the sandy loam the soil becomes a hungry, lean sand, till it mingles with the forest; and will produce little without the assistance ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... Iron.—This is often called simply malleable iron. It is a form of cast iron obtained by removing much of the carbon from cast iron, making it softer and less brittle. It has a tensile strength of 25,000 to 45,000 pounds per square inch, is easily machined, will stand a small amount of bending at a low red heat and is used chiefly in making brackets, fittings and supports where low cost ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... plays are scarce, So Moore writes farce: The poet's fame grows brittle[i]— We knew before That Little's Moore, But now't is Moore ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... Nature can be who have not seen that land where the mercury freezes in the tubes, and there is light but no warmth in the smile of the sun. Not Sturt in the heart of Australia with the mercury bursting the fevered tubes, with the finger- nails breaking like brittle glass, with the ink drying instantly on the pen, with the hair fading and falling off, would, if he could, have exchanged his lot for that of the White Guard. They were in a frozen endlessness that stretched ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the captain, leaning on the rail. "Tell the old man to lay her alongside, as if she was eggs. There's a hell of a run of sea here, and his boat's brittle." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to that plan, and I suppose I've had to pay for it. I've just about concluded, in fact, that I would have been a hard nut for any man to crack. I've never been conspicuous for my efforts at self-obliteration. I've a temper that's as brittle as a squirrel bone. I'm too febrile and flightly, too chameleon-mooded and critical. The modern wife should be always a conservative. She should hold back her husband's impulses of nervous expenditure, conserving his tranquil-mindedness about the ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... 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[34] the rhetorician, whose books are exceeding subtle; who afterwards ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... blizzard is gathering force and we have still some hours to ride. But," he continued, stepping close to Cameron and looking him in the eyes, "there must be no more nonsense. You can see my man is somewhat short in temper; and indeed mine is rather brittle at times." ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... lanthorne. [Sidenote: 13. Saltpeter and brimstone.] Saltpeter in many places, as at Ouglits, Yaruslaue, and Vstiug, they make and some smal store of brimstone vpon the riuer Volgha, but want skil to refine it. [Sidenote: 14. Iron.] Their iron is somewhat brittle, but a great weight of it is made in Corelia, Cargapolia, and Vstiug Thelesna. Other mine they haue none gowing within ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... dwarfs are easily distinguished from any other of their congeners. The most remarkable feature is the shape of the leaves. They are broader and shorter, and especially at the base they are broadened in such a way as to become apparently sessile. The stalk is very brittle, and any rough treatment may cause the leaves to break off. The young seedlings are recognizable by the shape of the first two or three leaves, and when more of them are produced, the rosettes become dense and strikingly different from others. ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... in the most beautiful palace in the world and it was a very costly one, for it was made of the finest porcelain, and was so brittle that you had to be very careful if you touched it. It was surrounded by such a large garden that the gardener himself did not quite know where it ended. Lovely flowers grew in luxuriance, and, lest people should pass the most beautiful without noticing them, peals of silver bells ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... city,—driven,—hunted in terror, and smitten by a shock here! Driven,—driven! He could not rid his mind of the word, nor of the meaning it suggested. The pavements about him began to ring and echo with the tramp of many feet, and the cold, brittle air was shivered with the noisy voices that had roared and bawled applause and laughter at the National Theatre all the evening, and were now singing and howling homeward. Groups of rude men, and ruder boys, their breaths steaming in the icy air, began to tramp by, jostling ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... from under his fierce, fuzzy, grey eyebrows, a pair of sentinel eyes, that were keen, clear, and bold as an eagle's, looked out with a watchful steadiness—steadiness that like the sharp edge of a diamond, seemed warranted to cut through the brittle glass of a lie. Judging by his outward appearance, his age might have been guessed at as between fifty-eight and sixty, but he was, in truth, seventy-two, and more strong, active, and daring than many another ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... first soaked in lye, then thoroughly washed and scalded in abundance of fresh water, and then cooked in a very heavy sirup. The result of this treatment is that the outside of the fruit is crisp and brittle, while the inside is ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... granite. There were occasional patches of ruddy brown and yellow which relieved the general black and white appearance of this uninhabitable land, and close to the shore on the north side of Cape Evans were small patches of even gritty sand. In the neighbourhood of our Cape hard, brittle rocks cropped up everywhere, rocks that played havoc with one's boots. Sloping up fairly steeply from Cape Evans itself we had more and more rock masses until a kind of rampart was reached, on which one could see a number of extraordinary conical piles of rock, which looked much as if ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... diagonally on the table (because Alice had seen cloths so laid on model tea-tables in model rooms at Waring's), the strawberry jam occupied the northern point of the compass, and the marmalade was antarctic, while brittle cakes and spongy cakes represented the occident and the orient respectively. Bread-and-butter stood, rightly, for the centre of the universe. Silver ornamented the spread, and Alice's two tea-pots (for she would never allow even Chinese tea to remain on the leaves for more than five ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... narrow, brittle, fragrant leaves. Winsome carefully kept half for herself, and as carefully inserted a spray in each ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... such promenade, but few so genial and cosey a one as that of Budapest—not the brittle gayety of some more sophisticated capitals, but the simpler light-heartedness of a people full of feeling, fond of music and talk, and ready to share all they have ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... wings of rapture, and for some days enjoyed his good fortune better than might be expected. The necessaries and comforts of life were provided for his family, his creditors were paid, alms distributed to the poor, the brittle bowl of plenty was guarded with discretion, and everything around him was arranged for the reception of his friends, who assembled in such crowds that his cottage overflowed. The faggot-maker, who was one of those choice elevated spirits whose ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... very different from ours, and will scarce gain belief among us who value gold so much, and lay it up so carefully. They eat and drink out of vessels of earth or glass, which make an agreeable appearance, though formed of brittle materials; while they make their chamber-pots and close- stools of gold and silver, and that not only in their public halls but in their private houses. Of the same metals they likewise make chains and fetters for their slaves, to some of which, as a badge of infamy, they ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... the two extremes of very cold, or very warm weather. In the latter the combs are so nearly melted, that the weight of the honey will bend them, bursting the cells, spilling the honey, and besmearing the bees. In very cold weather, the combs are brittle, and easily detached from the sides of the hive. When necessitated to move them in very cold weather, they should be put up an hour or so before starting. The agitation of the bees after being disturbed will create considerable heat; a portion of this will be imparted to the combs, and ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... end of the roof, when a broken slate slipped under his feet. He lost his balance, fell heavily, and it would have been all over with him, if, in falling, his hand had not by a miracle encountered the trailing end of his ladder, by which he had strength enough to hold himself. Slates are brittle, and when hurled against a hard substance break in a thousand pieces. The one which Gilbert had just precipitated into space met a point of rock which scattered it into fragments, one of which struck, without wounding, ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... Tom, "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 will ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... line and lead enough to fathom this sea, and say, My misery is but this deep? Scarce any misery equal to sickness, and they are subject to that equally with their lowest subject. A glass is not the less brittle, because a king's face is represented in it; nor a king the less brittle, because God is represented in him. They have physicians continually about them, and therefore sickness, or the worst of sicknesses, continual fear of it. Are ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... pliable, and never breaks, which is far from being the case with many of the spurious articles which are sold under that name. Indeed, this commodity is very frequently adulterated. A kind of plaster, with a very thick and brittle covering, is often sold for it. The manufacturers of this, instead of isinglass, use common glue, which is much cheaper; and cover the whole with spirit varnish, instead of balsam of Peru. This plaster cracks, and has ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... an unpleasant taste in the mouth. It is said to be much improved by roasting, and to be then quite equal to Chestnuts. Yet it is not much prized in England except by pigs and children, who do not mind the trouble of digging for it. But the root lies deep, and the stalk above it is very brittle, and "when the little 'howker' breaks the white shank he at once desists from his attempt to reach the root, for he believes that it will elude his search by sinking deeper and deeper into the ground" (Johnston). I have never heard of its being cultivated ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Camden, Ill. If the animal is shod, the shoes should be removed and reset at least once a month, to allow the feet to be properly pared and trimmed. If habitually brittle, it will be proper to keep such feet off from much moisture, and instead provide dry floor of whatever kind. Once or twice a week such feet should be given an ample coat of some simple hoof ointment, such as equal parts ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... to the weight of about thirty-five pounds. The handles were made of rope. I have found this a splendid way to press flowers, as it absorbs the moisture from the flower and does not leave it at all brittle. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... propeller blades, would be lost by the ponderous air-condensing machinery you would need," Tom told Mr. Damon. "Besides, if you could surround your propellers with a strata of condensed air, it would create such terrible cold as to freeze the propeller blades and make them as brittle ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... voice, wished his old mistress all health and happiness for many long years among them. Mrs Huntingdon could not trust herself to speak, but she held out her hand to him, which he took as gently in his own as if it had been some article of ornamental glass of a peculiarly brittle nature, and then saluted it with a fervent kiss; after which, rather abashed at his own proceeding, he shrank back, and allowed the happy travellers to make their way upstairs. But he could not be satisfied with having ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... straight trunks of young oaks and Spanish chestnuts stand in crowded but careless ranks. The leaves which dropped in the preceding autumn from these trees still lie on the ground under the bushes, dry and brittle, and the blackbirds searching about among them cause as much rustling as if some animal ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... printed in Gothic letters and Tagalog [1] characters on paper made from the paper mulberry, now browned and brittle with age, consists of thirty-eight leaves, comprising a title-page as above, under a woodcut [2] of St. Dominic, with the verso originally blank, but in this copy bearing the contemporary manuscript inscription, Tassada en dos rreales, signed Juan ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... little brittle bones quickly solder, and it did not take me long to recover from the ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... remarked that in colour the pure yellow, gold colour, bluish pale, dark or lustre brown, wine red, or the violet, belong to many that are eatable; whilst the pale or sulphur yellow, bright or blood-red, and the greenish belong to few but the poisonous. The safe kinds have most frequently a compact, brittle texture; the flesh is white; they grow more readily in open places, such as dry pastures and waste lands, than in places humid or shaded by wood. In general, those should be suspected which grow in caverns and subterranean passages, on animal matter ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... cultivated in the Neolithic Age and is the ancestor of all our ordinary wheats. We must think of Neolithic man noticing the big seeds of this Hermon grass, gathering some of the heads, breaking the brittle spikelet-bearing axis in his fingers, knocking off the rough awns or bruising the spikelets in his hand till the glumes or chaff separated off and could be blown away, chewing a mouthful of the seeds—and resolving ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... roof is peaked, with many cross-beams. High up on the walls are several small square lattices of wood. The floor is of discolored stone. Everywhere one sees wood wrought into lattices, crumbling carpets that look almost as frail and brittle and fatigued as wrappings of mummies, and worn-out matting that would surely become as the dust if one set his feet hard upon it. The structure of the building is basilican, and it contains some strange carvings of the Last ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... hetchel, and out of all this ordeal came the flax. How clearly I remember Father working with it in the bright, sharp March days, breaking it, then swingling it with a long wooden sword-like tool over the end of an upright board fixed at the base in a heavy block. This was to separate the brittle fragments of the bark from the fibres of the flax. Then in large handfuls he drew it through the hetchel—an instrument with a score or more long sharp iron teeth, set in a board, row behind row. This combed out the tow and other ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... honour 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 ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... had been 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
... act—was wonderfully subtle. That appeal, 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. ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... hunter's footsteps, though the soles of his shoes are covered with fur, is carried on the wind and can be distinctly heard more than a mile away. I have frequently heard the crunching of the sled runners on the brittle snow—a ringing sound like striking bars of steel—a distance of over two miles. It was one advantage in travelling against a head wind, to counterbalance the discomfort, that it carried the sound of the sleds away ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... though she was nearly fifty; her hair was russet red, and blew about her forehead in little curls; her eyes, brown like a brook in shady places, and kind. It was a mild face, but not weak. Below them the valley shimmered in the heat; the grass was hot and brittle underfoot; popples bent and twisted in a scorching wind, and a soft, dark glitter of movement ran through the ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... this ogress and child-queller was in a steep bye-street at Brighton; where the soil was more than unusually chalky, flinty, and sterile, and the houses were more than usually brittle and thin; where the small front-gardens had the unaccountable property of producing nothing but marigolds, whatever was sown in them; and where snails were constantly discovered holding on to the street doors, and other public places they were not expected to ornament, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... blowing in from the ocean and the brittle sand grass kept up a constant rustling. This sound served admirably to cover the approach of a stealthy figure that had followed the boys at a distance ever since they had left Bartanet. This figure crept closer and closer to the sand dune, ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... can make his home in absolutely solid sapwood. Hence the first labor of the woodpecker must consist in finding a place in which it can dig. If there is an old stump of a limb sticking up, the problem is readily solved. Such wood has no sap in it, and is brittle enough to be easily dug out. But, if there be no such stub, the woodpecker will find a suitable place in most trees. At some time or other almost every tree loses a big limb. When such accident occurs there will always be in the old trunk a region through which sap once went to this ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... heated red hot again, and then dropped into cold oil to harden it. Centrifugal force, which helps in so many manufactures, drives the oil away, and the pens are dried in sawdust. They are now sufficiently hard, but too brittle. They must be tempered. To do this, they are placed in an iron cylinder over a fire, and the cylinder revolved till the pen is ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... particles of glimmer or quartz. This seems to be one of the most universal productions of nature, as it constitutes whole mountains in Sweden, in Scotland, at the Canary Islands, the Cape of Good Hope, and at this place. Another brownish brittle stone forms here some considerable rocks; and one which is blacker, and found in detached pieces, incloses bits of coarse quartz. A red, a dull yellow, and a purplish sand-stone, are also found in small pieces; and pretty large lumps ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... into the wax. This hardens the extreme point of the drill very hard, so hard, in fact, that it will penetrate the hardest steel, but care must be exercised with such a drill because the mercury makes it not only very hard but very brittle. C, Fig. 24, shows a drill after it has been finished on the Arkansas stone. This shape of drill will withstand the pressure necessary to drill into hard steel. Many watchmakers reduce the temper ...
— A Treatise on Staff Making and Pivoting • Eugene E. Hall
... few coals of soft white pine, which when burnt look exactly like charcoal. These will not burn the mouth as charcoal will. They should be picked up with a fork which will penetrate the pine coals, but not the charcoal, the latter being brittle. ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... the 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 it eats the ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... when we set out, disdaining our trim "Tree-with-Wings" from the deck of which Triplett watched our short three-mile swim across the still water. At every stroke flocks of iridescent dew-fish rose about us uttering their brittle note, "Klicketty-inkle! Klicketty-inkle!" [Footnote: One of the pleasantest sights imaginable is that of the natives gathering these little creatures as they rise to the surface at dawn. The dew-fish or kali-loa are similar to our ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... it is sold. The moist condition of this kind of commercial yeast keeps the plants in an active state and permits of very rapid growth in a dough mixture. Consequently, it proves very useful for the rapid methods of making bread. It is soft, yet brittle, is of a grayish-white color, and has no odor except ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... do not spin well and they do not dye well. On examination under the microscope it is seen that these fibres have not the flattened, twisted appearance of the ripe fibres, but are flatter, and the central canal is almost obliterated and the fibres are but little twisted. Dead fibres are thin, brittle and weak. ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... 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; but on exposure to the ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... Song for Two Children Dicky The Three Drinkers The Boy out of Church After the Play One Hard Look True Johnny The Voice of Beauty Drowned The God Called Poetry Rocky Acres Advice to Lovers Nebuchadnezzar's Fall Give us Rain Allie Loving Henry Brittle Bones Apples and Water Manticor in Arabia Outlaws Baloo Loo for Jenny Hawk and Buckle The "Alice Jean" The Cupboard The Beacon Pot and Kettle Ghost Raddled Neglectful Edward The Well-dressed Children Thunder at Night To E.M.—A Ballad of Nursery Rhyme Jane Vain and Careless Nine ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... brow fronting forked lightning, owns The horror and the havoc and the glory Of it. Angels fall, they are towers, from heaven—a story Of just, majestical, and giant groans. But man—we, scaffold of score brittle bones; Who breathe, from groundlong babyhood to hoary Age gasp; whose breath is our memento mori— What bass is our viol for tragic tones? He! Hand to mouth he lives, and voids with shame; And, blazoned in however ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... of clams and chop them fine. Fry two slices of salt pork in an iron pot. When the fat is fried out, take the brittle out, put into the fat 2 slices of onion, then a layer of sliced potatoes, then a layer of chopped clams, sprinkle well with salt and pepper, then a layer of onion, then the bits of fried pork, cut into small pieces, add a layer of broken crackers. Do this until all is ...
— 365 Luncheon Dishes - A Luncheon Dish for Every Day in the Year • Anonymous
... a certain regiment, and discharged from hospital at six o'clock that evening, had entered Queen's Hall at half-past seven. Still rather brittle and sore from his wound, he had treated himself to a seat in the Grand Circle, and there had sat, very still and dreamy, the whole concert through. It had been like eating after a long fast—something of the sensation Polar explorers must experience when they return to their first full meal. ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... agate, not in stone. Our seconds in brittle, not in bone. Our thirds in pitcher, not in bowl. Our fourths in wheel, but not in roll. Our fifths in chance, but not in skill. Our sixths in stream, but not in rill. As classic city and classic land, Our names united ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... were Brainard and 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 who was always ready to share ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... brittle, feeble. slee] sly. dansand] dancing. sicker] sure. wicker] willow. wannis] wanes. mellie] mellay. sowkand] sucking. campion] champion. stour] fight. piscence] puissance. straik] stroke. supplee] save. makaris] ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... rancher and three other boys rode into camp, saying they would like to go with us to see the fun. We were glad to have them, and we rode off through the frosted sage that crackled like brittle glass under the hoofs of the horses. Our guide led toward a branch of a park, and when we got within perhaps a quarter of a mile Teague suggested that R.C. and I go ahead on the chance of surprising the bear. It was owing to this suggestion that ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... hung it up carefully by one end, as should it become in the slightest degree bent, it would be, he explained, completely spoiled. He then commenced manufacturing arrows. They were made out of the leaf of a species of palm-tree, hard, brittle, and pointed as sharp as needles. Having burned the butt end, he fastened round it some wild cotton of just sufficient thickness to fit the hole of the tube. As soon as he had formed an arrow he put it into the blowpipe, and aimed at an unfortunate parrot perched on ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... name was Riflandouille, or Pudding-plunderer, who was armed cap-a-pie with Grison stones, one chip whereof splintering abroad cut off Epistemon's neck clean and fair. For otherwise the most part of them were but lightly armed with a kind of sandy brittle stone, and the rest with slates. At last, when he saw that they were all dead, he threw the body of Loupgarou as hard as he could against the city, where falling like a frog upon his belly in the great Piazza thereof, he with the said fall killed a singed he-cat, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... and slivers 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 chambers ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... only too real, in these woods which it would be dreadful to encounter alone and unarmed, since against such adversaries a revolver would be as ineffectual as a popgun. Some huge camoodi, able to crush my bones like brittle twigs in its constricting coils, might lurk in these shadows, and approach me stealthily, unseen in its dark colour on the dark ground. Or some jaguar or black tiger might steal towards me, masked by a bush or tree-trunk, to spring upon me unawares. Or, ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... Tea, but the Leaf somewhat fatter. I cannot say, whether it bears any Flower, but a Berry it does, about the Bigness of a Grain of Pepper, being first red, then brown when ripe, which is in December; Some of these Bushes grow to be twelve Foot high, others are three or four. The Wood thereof is brittle as Myrtle, and affords a light ash-colour'd Bark. There is sometimes found of it in Swamps and rich low Grounds, which has the same figured Leaf, only it is larger, and of a deeper Green; This may be occasion'd by the Richness that attends ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... truly acted, not played, and the business as in the rest of the world up and down, to wit, from the bottom of the cellar to the great chamber. A melancholy man would find here matter to work upon, to see heads as brittle as glasses, and often broken; men come hither to quarrel, and come hither to be made friends: and if Plutarch will lend me his simile, it is even Telephus's sword that makes wounds and cures them. It is the common consumption of the afternoon, and the murderer ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... was with this one, who had had his day of being the fashion and had broken many a fine lady's brittle heart, and, living to be no longer the mode, had seen the fragile trifles cemented together again, to be almost as good as new. When he was gone he was forgot quickly and, indeed, but talked about because her ladyship of Dunstanwolde had last beheld ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... broken up, in a manner of speaking, over Stella Starlight's turning out to be not human, but he consoles himself with a good job playing trumpet in a burlesque house where the girls wear costumes made of glass and other brittle stuff. ...
— The Flying Cuspidors • V. R. Francis
... Eloquence is but Wind, yet flowery trope Is Humbug's favourite lure; And what is Diplomatic Skill but soap? Trust me! Success is sure! Bubbles are bright, bewitch the mob, float far, And cost the blower little. The watery sphere looks like a world, a star, And when it bursts, being exceeding brittle, Where it explodes (as at the rainbow's foot) There's hidden treasure—for the clever brute Who knows that gulls are the great wealth-bestowers, Bubbles mean solid ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... polar furs and the seal, leaping chasms with a pike-pointed staff, clinging to topples of brittle ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... without impairing the strength. It may be mentioned that 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 to give any conception of how the developments of War will be applied to commercial ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... a fascination in the mere sound of articulated breath; of consonants that resist with the firmness of a maid of honor, or half or wholly yield to the wooing lips; of vowels that flow and murmur, each after its kind; the peremptory b and p, the brittle k, the vibrating r, the insinuating s, the feathery f, the velvety v, the bell-voiced m, the tranquil broad a, the penetrating e, the cooing u, the emotional o, and the beautiful combinations of alternate rock and stream, as it were, that they give to the rippling flow of speech,—there ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and a mortal body, and a brittle and brief tenure of earth, you are traversing perilous paths. Had you God for your friend, your case would be far other than it is. Peril and snare might still beset you; but you would confront and traverse ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Providence just for the sheer fun of the thing. Of course, if we did spill, it would be all right with Bryce—he was so fat that he'd just bounce—but I was slimmer, and I knew from experience that I had very brittle bones. Once in the Solomons, when a wild boar charged me, I lay for weeks in a trader's hut waiting for an obdurate fracture to knit up again. Some idea of the furious pace at which Bryce pushed the car along can be guessed ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... apart in the same way. The rust mite has gotten at this one. See 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 injure ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... of the murmur of the rain at play — These things are beautiful, beautiful as day! And I shan't stand waiting for love or scorn When the feast is laid for a day new-born . . . Oh, better let the little things I loved when little Return when the heart finds the great things brittle; And better is a temple made of bark and thong Than a tall stone temple ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... shales, and grits, with ferruginous joints. The beds are inclined at angles of 25 to 45 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 Scotchmen, ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... 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 ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... immutability of the laws of nature: in this sensible, intelligent, thinking being, whose vanity leads him to believe himself the sole object of the divine predilection, who forms his God after his own peculiar model, we see only a more inconstant, a more brittle machine; one more subject to be deranged by its extreme complication, than the grosser beings: beasts destitute of our knowledge, plants that vegetate, stones devoid of feeling, are in many respects beings more ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... of the 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 of the scalp. The ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... socket in the cap, is used, but the portion below the frill, that is, the "root" end, is discarded. Any part of the stem that is discolored or tough or woody should be rejected, and only the portion that is succulent and brittle and of a clean white color at any time used. The stems are nearly always retained in "button" mushrooms when they are cooked, and the upper or succulent parts of the stems of plump, fresh, full-grown mushrooms are often cooked along with the caps, but when cooking full-grown ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... chairs is brittle)! No, he is like Madame at Brompton, and seldom condescends to favour us now. It was but last Sunday we asked him to dinner. I am sure he need not turn up his nose at ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... like misfortunes; and so we all became, for the rest of the evening, nothing but blundering footmen, and careless servants, or were turned into broken jars, plates, glasses, tea-cups, and such like brittle substances. And it affected me so much, that, when I came home, I went to bed, and dreamt, that Robin, with the handle of his whip, broke the fore glass of my chariot; and I was so solicitous, methought, ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson |
