"Fragile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... qualities of personal genius that become more and more decisive with every new weapon and every new complication and unsuspected possibility it introduces? Suppose, for example, there was among us to-day a one-eyed, one-armed adulterer, rather fragile, prone to sea-sickness, and with just that one supreme quality of imaginative courage which made Nelson our starry admiral. Would he be given the ghost of a chance now of putting that gift at his country's ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... aperture, equal for example to four times the diaphragm, will be only 4 centimeters, while the corresponding aperture behind the lens must be 16. The dimensions of the first will be practical, and those of the second will give too cumbersome and too fragile an apparatus. But why must the aperture be larger than the diaphragm employed? This is what we are going to demonstrate. Let us make the aperture equal to the diameter of the objective, and see what occurs at the different periods of the exposure. For the sake of clearness, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... the fragile Miss Hastings a smile so pleasant that it made her instantly determine to find out something about his family and commercial standing. "What time do we start on our mad ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... relaxed, and they went on again riding by slow degrees back to Kopfontein, which they finally reached with their heavy and fragile ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... eyes when he made a melancholy pilgrimage, as it were, to his old quarters! Nothing was left of the house but a few charred walls. Broken tiles lay scattered here and there, and he picked up the head of a pretty little Saxe shepherdess, of all things the most fragile and improbable to survive such a storm. The rest of his belongings had disappeared utterly—all the treasures of a lifetime had been burned or looted—priceless letters from Chinese Gordon and from Gladstone, the ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... at the little man who sat there so still, so fragile, with eyes which gleamed so fiercely and lips that trembled with emotion; and he shivered a little at the thought that here was the man who had struck a terrible blow ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... about myself. I went into the studio; there was nothing there but my canvases and some casts, except the marble of the Easter lily. I saw it on a table across the room. Then I strode angrily over to it. But the flower I lifted from the table was fresh and fragile and filled ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... toy animals. As he could not decide which he liked best, hideous pewter mugs or delicate china dishes, he "annexed" them indiscriminately, and stored them cheek by jowl, much to the annoyance of his more orderly wife. The old New England pie-plate was a dearer article of vertu to him than the most fragile vase, unless the latter was a rare specimen of a forgotten art. He had a genuine affection for clocks of high and low degree. He loved them for their friendly faces, and endowed them with personal idiosyncrasies, according to their tickings, by which he distinguished them. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... restore To thir inheritance, then, nor till then, Thou on the Throne of David in full glory, From Egypt to Euphrates and beyond Shalt raign, and Rome or Caesar not need fear. To whom our Saviour answer'd thus unmov'd. Much ostentation vain of fleshly arm, And fragile arms, much instrument of war Long in preparing, soon to nothing brought, Before mine eyes thou hast set; and in my ear 390 Vented much policy, and projects deep Of enemies, of aids, battels and leagues, Plausible to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... well recall his language, That he came to revenge a wrong, But a wronged man is a lazar,— No, he cannot be my son, Not the son of noble fathers. But if some great chance, which no one Can be free from, should have happened, Since the delicate sense of honour Is a thing so fine, so fragile, That the slightest touch may break it, Or the faintest breath may tarnish, What could he do more, do more, He whose cheek the blue blood mantles, But at many risks to have come here It again to re-establish? Yes, he ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... rule are wont to travel with numerous small parcels, and there was no exception in our party to this rule, while Mr. Sydney and myself were not without impedimenta as well. In all, there were about a dozen—to put a familiar figure—too small or too fragile to share the dangers of the luggage-van. These, three respective porters promised to bring to the train, but as every porter broke his word, they remained in statu quo. And we may here remark how noticeable it is, that whereas English porters are always on the alert ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... door for MRS. ELVSTED, and goes out herself. —MRS. ELVSTED is a woman of fragile figure, with pretty, soft features. Her eyes are light blue, large, round, and somewhat prominent, with a startled, inquiring expression. Her hair is remarkably light, almost flaxen, and unusually abundant and wavy. She is a couple ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... rise and strip, and, naked all from toe to lip, To wander where the dewdrops drip from off the silent trees, And where the hairy spiders spin their nets of silver, fragile-thin, And out to where the fields begin, like down upon ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... which often tapers abruptly below, containing reddish scales, color dull red. It has seldom any distinct evidence of a volva at the base but abundant evidence on the cap. Ring large, superior, white, and fragile. ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... looking very white and fragile, and with lines of suffering about her mouth; but, though physically weary, her mind seemed as vigorous as ever. She received him with her usual frankness, and with more animation in her look than he had seen ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... from tempest and change. Amaranthine flowers bloom only in heaven, and must be brought thence, if they are to garland earthly foreheads. If we take God for ours, then whatever tempests may howl, and whatever fragile though fragrant joys may be swept away, we shall find in Him all that the world 'fails to give to its votaries. He is 'a crown of glory' and 'a diadem of beauty.' Our humanity is never so fair as when it is made beautiful by the possession ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... like sisters. So she had brought from the depths of the Vosges a humble relation on her mother's side, a very pious and honest soul, who had been cook to the Bishop of Nancy. Fearing, however, her inexperience of Paris ways, and yet more the evil counsel which wrecks such fragile virtue, at first Lisbeth always went to market with Mathurine, and tried to teach her what to buy. To know the real prices of things and command the salesman's respect; to purchase unnecessary delicacies, such as fish, only when they were cheap; to be well informed as to the price ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... seemed as familiar as Gama himself with compass and astrolabe, he set out boldly across the Indian Ocean, and in May arrived at Calicut. When we consider that this latter part of the voyage was with a pilot accustomed to make the trip in the far more fragile crafts of the Arabs, the boldness of the undertaking does not seem so apparent to one of our day. Compared with the voyages of Columbus, Magellan, Vespucius, or Cabral over absolutely unknown seas, without pilots or charts of any kind, the passage from Aden ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... however, there mingled no desire or eager curiosity, on my part, to find out the secret reason of her solitude, or to break down the fragile barrier of our almost voluntary separation. What to me was this woman whom I had met by chance among the mountains of a foreign land, ill in health and sick at heart though she might be? I had shaken the dust from my feet, or at least I thought I had, and felt no wish to hold to the world once ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Hendrick brought him to a sounder judgment. Unlike Jim's youthful friends, who, partly animated by love of mischief and partly by youth's natural hopefulness, had encouraged him to indulge the most glowing fancies, Hendrick showed him gently, but plainly, how fragile was the foundation on which he had been building. The watch might have been stolen, or lost, or given away. There might turn out to be no direct or traceable connection between Lady Waterham and the unknown woman whose property it had been. ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... partially filled with only the casts of worms, whilst others contained more or less of a species of Conferva; and, lastly, I obtained some with the cavities partially or wholly filled up. The receptacles varied in shape, from a sphere to an oval, and were extremely thin and fragile. They also varied in size from a pea to a nut. Externally they presented an appearance so singularly contorted, that I could not help considering they were moulded from the casts of worms. They did not appear to have any attachment to ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... boy's delight, a boy's remorse. Friend Apollyon seemed able to draw the wild animals too, to share their sport, yet not altogether kindly. Tired, surfeited, he destroys them when his game with them is at an end; breaks the toy; deftly snaps asunder the fragile back. Though all alike would come at his call, or the sound of his harp, he had his preferences; and warred in the night-time, as if on principle, against the creatures of the day. The small furry thing he pierced with his arrow fled to him nevertheless caressingly, with broken limb, to die ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... reign a queen over fickle Paris. Does any one suppose that fortunes alone are risked in the great game? The winters are to fashionable women what a campaign once was to the soldiers of the Empire. What works of art and genius are expended on a gown or a garland in which to make a sensation! A fragile, delicate creature will wear her stiff and brilliant harness of flowers and diamonds, silk and steel, from nine at night till two and often three o'clock in the morning. She eats little, to attract remark to her slender waist; she ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... in such association. It sounds something too commercial for so fragile and fleeting a thing as love. And, too, it is an error to speak of a glove as though it were of less value than an automobile. In a lover's eyes the merest trifle is the most cherished token of love. Her carte des dances, for instance—for has not ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... warmth and preciousness of the surpassing friendship, but no idea of the high and varied range of intellectual and religious interests that entered into it. "I always," Madame Swetchine writes, "have your little ring on my finger. This symbol, fragile as all symbols, will outlive me; but I grieve not for that, since I am sure that the sentiment which makes me prize it so highly will survive it in turn." Dora Greenwell says, "The letters of Madame Swetchine are ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... of the inner rooms Banneker was introduced to a fragile, desiccated-looking man languidly engaged in scissoring newspaper after newspaper which he took from a pile and cast upon the floor after operation. The clippings he filed in envelopes. A checkerboard lay ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... here and there, underneath their spreading branches, were open spaces carpeted with wind-flowers and bluebells, primroses and wild orchids, while ferns, large and small, grew in glorious profusion, some as tall as Tony, others as fragile and tiny as a fairy fern might be. In other spots large lichen-covered rocks raised their heads out of a tangle of bracken and bushes, while here and there, down by the river's brink, gleamed little bays of ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... to take to heart the lesson that such deaths will teach, but let no man reject it, for it is one that all must learn, and is a mighty, universal Truth. When Death strikes down the innocent and young, for every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, to walk the world, and bless it. Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, some good is born, some gentler nature comes. In the Destroyer's steps there spring up ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... situated at the junction of the Bhagmutty and Bishmutty, and containing a population of 50,000 inhabitants, lay spread at our feet, and we could discern the passengers on the narrow fragile- looking bridges which span the two rivers, at this time containing scarcely any water. Innumerable temples, Bhuddist and Hindoo, and mixtures of both, occupied hillocks, or were situated near the sacred fonts or groves with which the valley abounds, and which ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... clearing was made of the articles of more fragile virtue, and Timothy, entering in state, was off-loaded from his nurse's arms ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... lightning against the chair John Kenyon occupied, and that tripping her up, flung her upon him with an unexpectedness that would have taken his breath away if the sudden landing of a plump young woman upon him had not accomplished the same thing. The fragile deck-chair gave way with a crash, and it would be hard to say which was the more discomfited by the sudden catastrophe, John ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... recover from the thrill of pain so as to speak, and Mrs. Finch rattled on. 'She was not in good looks when I saw her, poor thing, but she looked so soft and fragile, it quite went to my heart; though Jane will have it she is deep, and gets her own way by being meek and helpless. I don't go along with Jane throughout; I hate ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this moment you shall be one of my guard; my lieutenant will provide you with arms." He thanked me earnestly, and his countenance lit up with sudden joy. He was installed in my guard. Oh! human justice! how fragile, and how often unintelligible art thou! Some time after this event, I learnt that Bazilio de la Cruz—this was the name of the man—was innocent. The two wretches who had denounced him had fled, to avoid the chastisement they merited. ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... possible to "create a soul under the ribs of death." Unhappily, people in sickness too seldom repair to such aid as may here be found till the last chances of recovery are exhausted. I have never seen a spot where I thought the fragile and delicate in constitution might pass a winter, sheltered from every storm, more securely than in this place. Tie houses for accommodation are without end, both at the Hot Wells and at Clifton. This last place is on the high ground, ascending up to the summit of the rocks, where ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... of those pockets!" He emphasized the command with a jerk of his gun hand, and the arms of the schoolteacher flew up over his head. Lean, fragile hands, Riley saw them to be. Altogether it was the most disgustingly inefficient piece of manhood ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... ague behind an indomitable red nose—and they called him Captain Dickson. There was another captain, also of Native Infantry, with a fair mustache; his face was like white glass, and his hands were fragile, but he answered joyfully to the cry of Tertius. There was an enormously big and well-kept man, who had evidently not campaigned for years, clean-shaved, soft-voiced, and cat-like, but still Abanazar for all that he adorned the Indian Political Service; and there was a lean Irishman, his face ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... and from Thackeray. The great illustrators, too, of the forties, fifties, and sixties, from Cruikshank and Browne to Frederick Walker, were partly helped by the system, partly helped to make it popular. But the circulating libraries did not like it for obvious reasons, the parts being fragile and unsubstantial: and the great success of cheap magazines, on the pattern of Macmillan's and the Cornhill, cut the ground from under its feet. The last remarkable novel that I remember seeing in the form was The Last Chronicle of Barset. Middlemarch ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... There she sat, crouched in the farthest corner of the sofa, with her feet drawn up under her, as in old days when she was frightened. She did not stretch out her arms; she remained huddled together. But he bent over her, knelt down, laid his face on hers, wept with her. She had grown fragile, thin, haggard, ah! as though she could be blown away. She let him take her in his arms like a child and clasp her to his breast; let him caress and kiss her. Ah, how ethereal she had become! And those eyes, which at last he saw, now looked tearfully out from their ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... boy, than you think," said Cockrell, smiling a little, "and you're going to be better than you know how. Now you understand why you've got to keep on the side-lines this afternoon. You're too fragile ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... eyes fixed upon him. Yet the mother confided his whole instruction and moral education to Stepan Trofimovitch. At that time her faith in him was unshaken. One can't help believing that the tutor had rather a bad influence on his pupil's nerves. When at sixteen he was taken to a lyceum he was fragile-looking and pale, strangely quiet and dreamy. (Later on he was distinguished by great physical strength.) One must assume too that the friends went on weeping at night, throwing themselves in each other's arms, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ever and anon to her husband for confirmation, and O'Moy, who loved her with all the passionate reverence which Nature working inscrutably to her ends so often inspires in just such strong, essentially masculine men for just such fragile and excessively feminine women, afforded this confirmation with all the ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... is a true "Story of Pornic," which may be read in guide-books to the place. A young girl of good family died there in odour of sanctity; she seemed too pure and fragile for earth. But she had one earthly charm, that of glorious golden hair; and one earthly feeling, which was her apparent pride in it. As she lay on her deathbed, she entreated that it might not be disturbed; ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Lily, she felt a pang of pity for these people. She looked at this peculiar form of poverty and hardship much as the fragile, tender girl of the city looks upon the men laying a gas-main in the streets. She felt, sympathetically, the heat and grime, and, though but the faintest idea of what it meant to wear such clothing came to her, she shuddered. Her eyes had been opened to these things ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... of Northcote, that talking with him was like conversing with the dead: "You see a little old man, pale and fragile, with eyes gleaming like the lights hung in tombs. He seems little better than a ghost, and hangs wavering and trembling on the very verge of life; you would think a breath would blow him away, and yet what fine ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... German or Belgian than French. Black hair thrown off his broad forehead accented this resemblance; a composer rather than a prose-poet and dramatist, was the rapid verdict of Ermentrude. She was not disappointed, though she had expected a more fragile type. The weaver of moonshine, of mystic phrases, of sweet gestures and veiled sonorities should not have worn the guise of one who ate three meals a day and slept soundly after his mellow incantations. Yet she was ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... right, and it is clear there is no place where you can live—together. James, she is a fragile flower; transplanted to your sterile soil, she would soon wither and drop from the stalk. Clarice, he is fastidious, critical, and intense; made a part of the things he despises, the torturing contact ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... their dingy, flickering gaslights, their ambling horse-cars, and their hideous slums, seemed appropriate settings for the unformed social life and the rough-and-ready political methods of American democracy. The railroads, with their fragile iron rails, their little wheezy locomotives, their wooden bridges, their unheated coaches, and their kerosene lamps, fairly typified the prevailing frontier business and economic organization. But only by talking with the business leaders of that time could we have understood the changes that ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... was found a small box of metal covered with several thicknesses of tar and wax impregnated fabric which had been mostly destroyed. The metal itself was badly oxidized, but served to protect an inner wooden box that contained a number of thin sheets of a fragile substance composed mainly of cellulose which were brown and crumbling with age. The sheets were covered with runes of lingua antiqua arranged in regular rows, inscribed by hand with a carbon-based ink which has persisted remarkably well despite the degenerative processes of time. Although much ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone
... fragile attempt at browbeating a lover. Fearing more the issue of such an undertaking than what a gentle young man might think of her waywardness, she immediately afterwards determined to please ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the poorest countries in the world, landlocked Burkina Faso has few natural resources, a fragile soil, and a highly unequal distribution of income. About 90% of the population is engaged in (mainly subsistence) agriculture, which is vulnerable to variations in rainfall. Industry remains dominated by unprofitable government-controlled corporations. Following the African franc currency devaluation ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... yellow butterfly she was indeed, with the sleazy, clinging, white draperies wound around her slender form, then the wings of golden maline pinioned on either softly rounded shoulder. Sally was a perfect little beauty, and also possessed that whimsical manner so attractive in this delicate, fragile type. ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... and were almost too great a weight for her slim throat and drooping figure. Her complexion was transparently delicate, and she had dark blue eyes that looked almost preternaturally large. It seems strange to remember this ethereal vision of girlish fragile beauty as belonging to my dear cousin, who, having fortunately escaped the doom by which she then seemed threatened, lived to become a most happy and excellent wife and mother, and one of the largest women ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... description,—whereas this girl was simply fair, small, and delicate, with something wistful and pathetic in the lines of her sweet mouth, and shadows as of remembered sorrows slumbering in the depths of her serene, dove-like eyes. Her fragile figure drooped wearily as though she were exhausted by some long fatigue, ... yet, ... gazing down upon him, she smiled, ... and in that smile, the faint resemblance she bore to his Spirit-ideal ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Douglas lifted her up, set her on the firmest location he could see, adoring her with his eyes and reverent touch. Since that first rough grasp as he drew her to him, Leslie had felt positively fragile in his hands. She smiled at him her most beautiful ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... stretched, fifteen acres of regal chrysanthemums, roses pink, yellow, white and red, fragile lilies of the valley, carnations and vivid orchids, no two alike, yet all expressions of plant life. Skilled gardeners from England and Germany were busy with these exquisite flower children, watering, pruning and training upon ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... not so easily described! I can only appeal to your memory of other women like her, whom you must often have seen—women who are tall and fair, and fragile and elegant; who have delicate aquiline noses and melting blue eyes—women who have often charmed you by their tender smiles and their supple graces of movement. As for the character of this popular young lady, I must not influence you either way; ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... cables go guns and food, as well as timber for the huts in which the men live, and material for intrenchments. Down these come the wounded. The first sensation of a transit down these seemingly fragile tight ropes is much more curious than the first trip in a submarine or aeroplane, and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... a breaking voice. He had enjoyed a very bad night speculating on the probable course of events. Colette came in shortly, and greeted Arthur as brazenly as usual, but with extreme sadness, which became her well; so sweet, so delicate, so fragile, that he felt pleased to have forgiven her so early in the struggle. He had persecuted her, treated her with violence, and printed her history for the scornful pleasure of the world; he had come to offer her the alternative of public shame or public trial and jail; yet she had a ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... Carlovingians is that of the greatest of the barbarians taking upon himself to resuscitate the Roman empire, and of Charlemagne's descendants disputing amongst themselves for the fragments of his fabric, as fragile as it was grand. Amidst this vast chaos and upon this double ruin was formed the feudal system, which by transformation after transformation became ultimately France. Hugh Capet, one of its chieftains, made himself its king. The ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to-day decries the greatness of the campaign may perhaps no less hesitate to approve the fitness of its chosen annalist. His fame was due to the perfection of a single book; he ranked as a potentate in STYLE. But literary perfection, whether in prose or poetry, is a fragile quality, an afflatus irregular, independent, unamenable to orders; the official tributes of a Laureate we compliment at their best with the northern farmer's verdict on the pulpit ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... as the nearest of the soldiers reached out for them, the termite-ruler lay helpless on the backs of its living crutches, with its attenuated body quivering convulsively, and its balloonlike, fragile head cleft almost in two halves. It was possible that even that terrific injury might not be fatal to a thing so great and flexible of brain, and so divorced from the ills as well as the powers of the flesh. But for the moment at ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... the room after his fragile wife and gracious sister-in-law, and Carl drank tea (with lemon instead of milk in it!) and listened to bewildering talk and to a few stanzas, heroic or hauntingly musical, by a new poet, W. B. Yeats, an Irishman associated with a thing called the Gaelic Movement. Professor Frazer had a funny, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... were a pick of glass and a spade of earthenware. The boy commenced the work, but at the first stroke his fragile pick and spade broke into a thousand fragments. For the second time he sat down helplessly. Time passed slowly, and as before at midday the damsel in white brought him ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... greatly resembling it in appearance and plumage; these birds are very cautious and shy, and run rapidly through the underwood, rarely flying unless when closely pursued. The shell of the egg is thin and fragile, and the young are hatched entirely by the heat of the sun, scratching their way out as soon as they are born, at which time they are able to shift for themselves. [Note 25: For a further account of the LEIPOA, vide CHAPTER III. of ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... The fragile tenure of the sense of personal identity is illustrated by the ease and completeness with which actors can put themselves in the place of the characters they assume, so that even their instinctive demeanor corresponds to the ideal, and their acting ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... motioned to the nurse, who laid the piece of brown paper in Macavoy's hand. He held it for a moment as delicately as if it were a fragile bit of glass, something that his huge fingers might crush by touching. Then he reached over and laid it on the bed beside her and said, looking Hilton in the eyes, "Tell her, the slip av a saint she is, if the breakin' ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... her, Kingsnorth did not love her. He gave her a form of tolerant affection. Too fragile to mix with others, she was brought up at home. Tutors furnished her education. The winters she passed abroad with her mother. When her mother died she spent them with relations or friends. The grim dampness ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... more tender than the colour of a peach-flower. I have counted one by one the fair and golden lashes that threw their tremulous shade upon it. I have traced out with care in the subdued tone that surrounds her, the evanescent lines of her throat, so fragile and inclined so modestly. I have even lifted with an adventuring hand the folds of her tunic, and have seen unveiled that bosom, maiden and full of milk, that has never been pressed by any except divine lips. I have traced out the rare clear veins ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... means of Canadian travel; for he thought it strangely unbecoming that a lieutenant-general of the king should be forced to crouch on a sheet of bark, at the bottom of a birch canoe, scarcely daring to move his head to the right or left lest he should disturb the balance of the fragile vessel. ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... distinguishable by their color, namely, the white or medullary and the gray or cortical substance, enter into the formation of nervous matter. Both are soft, fragile, and easily injured, in consequence of which the principal nervous centers are well protected by bony coverings. The nervous substances present two distinct forms—nerve fibers and nerve cells. An aggregation of nerve cells constitutes a ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... stillness, and in this condition of passive gloom the House of Claes reached the first weeks of the year 1816. Pierquin, the lawyer, was destined, at the close of February, to strike the death-blow of the fragile woman who, in the words of the Abbe de ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... increased doses, was out of pain, and wished to make her toilet. Roma brought up the night-table and the mirror, the rouge-pot, the rabbit's foot, the puff, the pencil, and the other appurtenances of her aunt's toilet-box. And when the fragile thing, so soon to be swallowed up by the earth in its great earthquake, had been propped by pillows, she began to paint her wrinkled face as if going to dance a minuet with death. First the black rings about the languid eyes were whitened, then the earthen ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... the cheerful faith of the initiate in a future life, bearing him fearlessly through all dangers and through death to the welcoming society of Elysium, as when Danae and her babe, tossed over the tempestuous sea in a fragile chest, were securely wafted to the sheltering shore of Seriphus. No emblem of our human state and lot, with their mysteries, perils, threats, and promises, could be either more natural or more impressive than that of a vessel launched on the deep. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Hibbert about his own mother. The boy listened eagerly, with one hand resting in Paul's, a smile upon his lips. Suddenly he drew a deep sigh of content; the fragile head fell back upon the chair; the hand in Paul's grew ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... things that, although he was in the midst of many people, he saw nobody. He had taken his place unceremoniously beside one of the most fascinating women in Paris, a young and graceful dancer, with slender figure, a face as fresh as a child's, all pink and white, and so fragile, so transparent, that it seemed that a man's glance must pass through her as the sun's rays pass through flawless glass. They stood there before me, side by side, so close together, that the stranger rubbed against the gauze ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... quarter. Walked and walked and walked, thinking about Antwerp all the time. Through streets of grey-white and lavender-tinted houses, with very fragile balconies. Saw the two Cathedrals[6] and the Town Hall—refugees swarming round it—and the Rab—I can't remember its name: see Baedeker—with its turrets and its moat. Any amount of time to see cathedrals in and no Mrs. ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... wagon, mounted on wheels which had once been yellow, but were now almost gray through the accumulation of mud. The front wheels were very small, the back ones, high and fragile, carried the large body of the vehicle, which was swollen like the belly of an animal. Three white horses, with enormous heads and great round knees, were the first things one noticed. They were harnessed ready to draw this coach, which had something of the appearance of a ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... and crockery of the homestead, can be noticed toddling along on the Golahek road, dodging carriages and cavaliers in a most surprising manner. They are said never to break even the smallest and most fragile articles, but such is certainly not the case with the heavily laden donkeys and mules, which often collide or collapse altogether, with most disastrous results to the ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... her in the dim light. She looked very small and wistful and fragile. Suddenly an intense desire surged over him to pick her up and crush her to him. He fought against it. He tried to fix his thoughts on the girl at home, to tell himself that he was a man of honour. His fingers, gripping the edge of the seat, tightened till every muscle ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... by modern science, is one which ought to have great weight with the mother, her relatives and friends. The practical conclusion which it suggests is, that as during pregnancy there is unusual susceptibility to mental impressions, and as these impressions may operate on the fragile structure of the unborn being, this tendency should be well considered and constantly remembered, not only by the woman herself, but by all those who associate or are thrown in contact with her. Upon the care displayed in the management of the corporeal and mental health ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... on the left bank of the Meuse, the remains of at least three human individuals were disinterred. The skull of one of these, that of a young person, was embedded by the side of a mammoth's tooth. It was entire but so fragile, that nearly all of it fell to pieces during its extraction. Another skull, that of an adult individual, and the only one preserved by Dr. Schmerling in a sufficient state of integrity to enable the anatomist to speculate ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... story I am going to tell you happened, but that is all the more reason for telling it, lest it should be forgotten. The emperor's palace was the most beautiful thing in the world; it was made entirely of the finest porcelain, very costly, but at the same time so fragile that it could only be touched with the very greatest care. There were the most extraordinary flowers to be seen in the garden; the most beautiful ones had little silver bells tied to them, which tinkled perpetually, so that one ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... shall, though, or I'll strangle you! In my strong hands your slender neck would snap Like a fragile pipe-stem. ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... his face, though. He unrolled the handkerchief slowly, as if it contained something immensely fragile and valuable, and then, thrusting it back in his pocket, he faced Mr. Trimm. He was carrying in his hands a pair of handcuffs that hung open-jawed. The jaws had little notches in them, like teeth that could bite. The question that ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... S. AEthalium pulvinate, variable in form and size, covered with a thin, fragile, blackish, cortical layer. Walls of the sporangia violaceous, next the base with broad expansions, in places more thickly grown together, toward the surface becoming narrow with more abundant fibrous threads, sometimes presenting a loose irregular network, the whole ...
— The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio • A. P. Morgan
... Oliver," she said, preserving her self-possession, for she was no fragile flower to wilt and droop before the first breath ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... your meerschaum is a fragile thing, and eminently frangible. This present writer once did see four beauties break within a single moon. And when they break, what previous joy of coloring can over-top the sorrow of their dire destruction? It ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... case?" She was ready to weep; wearily she sat down on the old box. Then she heard Boris laugh softly, it was the quick, proud laugh with which he loved to conceal his agitation. Now he too sat down on the box, took Billy's hand, this cold girlish hand, into his own, as if it were something fragile and precious, and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... shaken Society long ago, when the mighty dame had asserted her right to be "Mrs. Devon," and the only "Mrs. Devon." He told them also about her wonderful dinner-set of china, which had cost thirty thousand dollars, and was as fragile as a humming-bird's wing. Each piece bore her crest, and she had a china expert to attend to washing and packing it—no common hand was ever allowed to touch it. He told them, also, how Mrs. Devon's housekeeper had wrestled for so long, trying to teach ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... strong can escape the clutch of the primitive, wherefore there can be no successful social order which does not conform in its essentials to the blind impulses of the natural man or man-ape. We are in danger of overestimating the ascendancy and stability of Reason, for it is in reality the most fragile and rudimentary element in our mortal fabric. A heavy blow on certain parts of the skull, or a bullet in certain parts of the brain, can destroy in an instant all the accumulated intellect which aeons of heredity have bestowed, depressing the victim from the zenith ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... that neither the doctor nor Cutler knew, that to avoid falling under the circumstances I was placed in, and to escape without capsizing the canoe, was a feat that no man, but one familiar with the management of those fragile barks, and a good swimmer, too, can perform. Peter was aware of it, and appreciated it; but the other two seemed disposed to cut their jokes upon me; and them that do that, generally find, in the long run, I am upsides ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... his presence. This man, Wickham by name, managed to pick up an acquaintance with Cressley, and soon they spent a good deal of time together. They made a contrast as they paced up and down on deck, or played cards in the evening; the Englishman being slight and almost fragile in build, the German of the bulldog order, with a manner at once curt and overbearing. I took a dislike to Wickham, and wondered what ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... weld again into a vast unhappy whole its former constituent republics of Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Esthonia, Tauride, and White Russia. There seemed every chance that it would shortly succeed in doing so. The nations growled everywhere like sullen dogs on fragile chains. Never had the League of Nations, in all its brief career, been more necessary, never less available. Not a grievance could be given that public airing from what is called a world platform, which is so beneficial to the airers, so apt at promoting fraternal feeling, so harmless to ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... thought and feeling were rare because there was no time for revery. Milly was determined to get the most out of her triumph, and drove the peaceable Clarence Albert rather hard. All women, he had supposed in his ignorance, were more or less fragile. But it was astonishing what an amount of nerve-racking gayety Milly could get through in a day and come up smiling the next morning for another sixteen-hour bout with pleasure. Sometimes Clarence protested that he was a working man and must be at his office by nine. But Milly had slight ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... they build, which bent On hides of oxen, bore the weight of man And swam the torrent. Thus on sluggish Po Venetians float; and on th' encircling sea (8) Are borne Britannia's nations; and when Nile Fills all the land, are Memphis' thirsty reeds Shaped into fragile boats that swim his waves. The further bank thus gained, they haste to curve The fallen forest, and to form the arch By which imperious Sicoris shall be spanned. Yet fearing he might rise in wrath anew, Not on the nearest marge ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... dapicho two feet in diameter and four inches thick, eight feet distant from the trunks. Sometimes the Indians dig in vain at the foot of dead trees; at other times the dapicho is found beneath the hevea or jacio still green. The substance is white, corky, fragile, and resembles by its laminated structure and undulating edge, the Boletus ignarius. The dapicho perhaps takes a long time to form; it is probably a juice thickened by a particular disposition of the vegetable organs, diffused and coagulated in a humid soil secluded from the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... handicaps—the patched and greasy dress, the big rough hands, the shoes worn sideways. But even so, she realised that "Red Mary" had a quality which she lacked—that beside this wild rose of a mining-camp, she, Jessie Arthur, might possibly seem a garden flower, fragile ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... Charlotte Bronte was a quiet, thoughtful girl, nearly fifteen years of age, very small in figure—stunted was the word she applied to herself—fragile, with soft, thick, brown hair, and peculiar eyes. They were large and well shaped, their colour a reddish brown, and if the iris was closely examined, it appeared to be composed of a great variety of tints. The usual expression was of quiet, listening intelligence, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... his resistance and kept it aloof. This strong man whose gaze was sustainedly calm and his finger-nails pink with health, who was exercised in all questioning, and accused of excessive mental independence, still felt a subduing influence over him in the tenacious certitude of the fragile creature before him, whose pallid yellow nostril was tense with effort as his breath labored under the burthen of eager speech. The influence seemed to strengthen the bond of sympathetic obligation. In Deronda at this moment the desire to escape what might turn into a trying ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... fragile stalk Beneath a crown of ripened grain; The birch and oak and maple blazed The Autumn's glory forth, and set aflame With red and gold, the northland pines, Perennial green. The light wind's voice Was muffled in requiem, mournful, low,— A parting song ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... Too fragile in his anatomy for fighting, in the ordinary sense of the word, when molested, he will "snap" at his opponent with such celerity as to take even the most watchful by surprise; while his strength of jaw, combined with its comparatively great length, enables him to inflict severe ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... could be both eat and felt, and the damp struck through their clothes in the most summary manner. "This is bad," said Mr. Jorrocks, coughing as he turned the corner by Drury Lane, making for Catherine Street, and upset an early breakfast and periwinkle stall, by catching one corner of the fragile fabric with his toe, having ridden too near to the pavement. "Where are you for now? and bad luck to ye, ye boiled lobster!" roared a stout Irish wench, emerging from a neighbouring gin-palace on seeing the dainty viands rolling in the street. "Cut away!" cried Jorrocks ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... heroines always are—a class, representing no social grade, but coming from all—belonging to no rank or age of life in particular; sometimes young and sometimes old, sometimes refined and sometimes rude; now of fragile physical aspect and then of extraordinary robustness—but in all cases, women with a mighty love and earnestness in their hearts—a love and pity, and an ability to show it forth and to labor in ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... springwood-smells that wandered here and there in the careless irresponsibility of forest spirits off duty. This was Bobby's first experience with woods; and his keenest perceptions were alive to them. The tall trunks of trees rising from the graceful, fragile, half-translucence of undergrowth; little round tunnels to a distant delicate green; lights against shadows, and shadows against lights; the wing-flashes of birds hidden and mysterious; and above all the marvellous green transparence of all the shadows, which tinted the very ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... America, was composed of short inflammable shingles of pine. The superior height of the tower was some little protection, but as the flames rose roaring above the buildings of the court, and waved in wide circuits around the heated area, the whole of the fragile covering of the block was often wrapped in folds of fire. The result may be anticipated. Content was first recalled from the bitterness of his parental regret, by a cry, which passed among the family, that the roof of their little citadel was in flames. ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... to the sphere of religious thought and speculation and to the unlocking of metaphorical prison-gates, was displayed in the case of Mullā Ḥuseyn both in voyages on the ocean of Truth, and in warfare. Yes, the Mullā's fragile form might suggest the student, but he had also the precious faculty of generalship, and a happy perfection ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... form, color, and force in the same species of animals and men. But a century does not afford a period long enough for the production of great changes. That length of time could not transform the sturdy German fraulein and robust English damsel into the fragile American miss. Everybody recognizes and laments the change that has been and is going on. "The race of strong, hardy, cheerful girls, that used to grow up in country places, and made the bright, neat, New-England kitchens of olden ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... to say good-night To such a host of peerless things! Good-night unto the fragile hand All queenly with its weight of rings; Good-night to fond uplifted eyes, Good-night to chestnut braids of hair, Good-night unto the perfect mouth And all the sweetness nestled there,— The snowy hand detains me,—then I'll have to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... an imperial spiny oyster, brightly colored, bristling with thorns, a specimen rare to European museums, whose value I estimated at 20,000 francs; a common hammer shell from the seas near Queensland, very hard to come by; exotic cockles from Senegal, fragile white bivalve shells that a single breath could pop like a soap bubble; several varieties of watering-pot shell from Java, a sort of limestone tube fringed with leafy folds and much fought over by collectors; a whole series of top-shell snails—greenish yellow ones fished up from American seas, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... pressure, and the splintered fragments heaped up one above another in the wildest confusion, to a height of from fifty to eighty feet above the surface of the floe. The ice, which was about fifteen feet thick, crumbled away like fragile glass, and it was only by observing the manner in which masses weighing hundreds of tons were wildly tossed hither and thither like corks that even an approximate idea of the tremendous power at ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... young friend," observed the School-master, "is as fragile as this cup"—tapping his coffee-cup. "The countryman of whom you speak is up and doing long before you or I or your successful merchant, who has waxed great on noise as you put it, is awake. If the early bird catches the worm, what becomes ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... De Craye remarked. "The luck may be with you, though. I wouldn't handle the fragile ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... A universal and comprehensive knowledge of human nature must also be his, for not only has he to be capable of judging and humouring the overstrung men and women of talent with whom he deals—those fragile, sensitive flowers from whom he extracts the honey wherewith to gratify the palate of a journalistically epicurean public—but he must also have a thorough knowledge of that public to enable him to direct those who work for him, for they, shut up in their studies and studios, may not ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... who had thus intruded on his privacy. A scarf of black lace was twisted, hood-like, about her head, and beneath its fragile drapery was revealed the beautiful face and haunting, mysterious eyes of Elisabeth Durward. She had flung a long black cloak over her evening gown, and where it had fallen a little open at the throat her neck gleamed privet-white ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Bronte. In 1831, she was a quiet, thoughtful girl, of nearly fifteen years of age, very small in figure—"stunted" was the word she applied to herself,—but as her limbs and head were in just proportion to the slight, fragile body, no word in ever so slight a degree suggestive of deformity could properly be applied to her; with soft, thick, brown hair, and peculiar eyes, of which I find it difficult to give a description, as they appeared to me in her later life. They ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... butterflies out of reach before he could seize them, calling with voices like the cuckoos, themselves all the time just out of sight. Who ever saw a cuckoo when it's talking? Who ever foretold the instant when a butterfly would shoot upwards and away? Such darting, fragile thoughts they were, like hints, suggestions. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood |
