"Frail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but her whole frame was the prey of a hereditary disease. The tears in her eyes glistened like small specks. Her balmy breath was so gentle. She was as demure as a lovely flower reflected in the water. Her gait resembled a frail willow, agitated by the wind. Her heart, compared with that of Pi Kan, had one more aperture of intelligence; while her ailment exceeded (in intensity) by three ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... gospel. "If I am considered worthy, there is no vocation I would so gladly follow," was dear Herbert's answer. Those who knew him best would most assuredly have said that he was worthy, compared to the usual standard of frail human nature. ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... trappers, sad at the loss of one of their number, started down the Platte, with their boat-load of furs, but finding the river too shallow to navigate their frail craft, they were compelled to abandon it. They themselves carried what they could of its contents and made the best of their way on foot, two hundred and fifty miles, to the nearest settlement. In a few days their provisions began to run short, and as game became scarce, they separated, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... charm, if not their colour) were among the most victorious in that time of the "raining" and reigning influence of such things: and somehow one succumbs a little even now to her as the Queen of that bevy of fair, frail, and occasionally rather ferocious ladies of the Fronde feminine. (The femininity was perhaps most evident in Madame de Chevreuse, and the ferocity in Madame de Montbazon.) Did not Madame de Longueville—did not they all—figuratively speaking, draw that great philosopher Victor Cousin[152] ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... more cheerful and natural since our conversation. He no longer seemed so worried; and once or twice I had caught in him a look of great gentleness and loving-kindness, almost of pity, as towards some young and very frail thing, as ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... saint of Poitiers, Sainte Radegonde, who is reported to have brought the great stone on her head, and the pillars which support it in the pockets of her muslin apron: one of these pillars fell from its frail hold to the ground, and the devil instantly caught it up and carried it away, which satisfactorily accounts for the stone being elevated only at one end. Unfortunately the same legend is so often repeated ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... half-submerged man parted company. The former was steered for the open sea; the latter drifted and tossed helplessly to and fro, growing hourly weaker and more and more benumbed, but always hanging on with convulsive tenacity to the friendly timber that buoyed him up, and was his last frail ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... "primitive man," according to Mr. Spencer, "the need for explanations about surrounding appearances does not occur to him". We have disclaimed all knowledge about "primitive man," but it is easy to show that Mr. Spencer grounds his belief in the lack of speculation among savages on a frail foundation of evidence. ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... well-attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears: Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, To strow the laureate hearse where Lycid lies. For so to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise. Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurled, Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou, perhaps, under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world; ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... brilliant attainments. She remembered perfectly the customs of the Ancien Regime, and she enjoyed telling about them, as well as about the Revolution, the Reign of Terror, and the times that followed. Her family was ruined by the Revolution and the slight, frail, young girl undertook to earn her living by giving lessons in French, on the pianoforte—the instrument was a novelty then—in singing, painting, embroidery, in fact in everything she knew and in much that she did not. If she did not know, she learned ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... Seduce them to our party, that their God May prove their foe, and with repenting hand Abolish his own works. This would surpass Common revenge, and interrupt his joy In our confusion, and our joy upraise In his disturbance; when his darling sons, Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall curse Their frail original, and faded bliss— Faded so soon! Advise if this be worth Attempting, or to sit in darkness here Hatching vain empires." Thus Beelzebub Pleaded his devilish counsel—first devised By Satan, and in part ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... throne of England, turning against her from that new point of vantage all the energies of his unconquerable genius. An invalid built the Bourbon monarchy, and another invalid battered and defaced the imposing structure: two potent and daring spirits in two frail bodies, Richelieu and William ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... female unadorn'd and plain, Secure to please while youth confirms her reign, Slights every borrow'd charm that dress supplies, Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes: 290 But when those charms are pass'd, for charms are frail, When time advances, and when lovers fail, She then shines forth, solicitous to bless, In all the glaring impotence of dress. Thus fares the land, by luxury betray'd, 295 In nature's simplest charms at first array'd; But verging to decline, its splendours rise, Its vistas strike, its ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... gain a chance to struggle out of water. Indeed, he might very well have hung in that equilibrium of forces until tired out, had not a slender, water-washed alder root offered itself to his grasp. This frail shrub, but lightly rooted, nevertheless afforded him just the extra support he required. Though he expected every instant that the additional ounces of weight he from moment to moment applied to it would tear it away, it ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... "that the spectators for a moment came under the spell of the hour, and were awed by something supernatural in the endurance of that frail girl." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... no longer. Thou wilt indeed render me a service in depriving me of this wretched head, hideous without, and I must fear, empty within, seeing that it hath not prevented me from wasting my life in the service of vanity and luxury. Woe to the sage who trusts his infirm wisdom and frail integrity within the precincts of a court! Yet can I foretell a time when philosophers shall no longer run on the futile and selfish errands of kings, and when kings shall be suffered to rule only so far as they obey ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... not deserve it, and that Heaven was punishing her for her error in yielding to the entreaties of the commander. One would have sworn she was sincere and that the words came from her heart. If Maitre Quennebert had not witnessed the scene with Jeannin, if he had not known how frail was the virtue of the weeping damsel, he might have been affected by her touching plaint. The chevalier appeared to be deeply moved by Angelique's grief, and while his, uncle was striding up and down the room and swearing ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... is needless to do more here than briefly recapitulate. The letter then went on: "While thus kindly treated by the family with whom nominally a governess, I was on the terms of a friend with Signor Ludovico Cicogna, an Italian of noble birth. He was the only man I ever cared for. I loved him with frail human passion. I could not tell him, my true history. I could not tell him that I had a child; such intelligence would have made him renounce me at once. He had a daughter, still but an infant, by a former marriage, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... niche some five feet from the ground, its splintered portions bearing decided witness to the dreadful struggle I had made to obtain my freedom. I advanced and examined it closely. It was a frail shell enough—unlined, unornamented—a wretched sample of the undertaker's art, though God knows I had no fault to find with its workmanship, nor with the haste of him who fashioned it. Something shone at the bottom of it—it was a crucifix of ebony and silver. That good ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... personal contrast confronted him, in the face of the lady who was dispensing the hospitalities of the table. Mr. Le Frank's plump cheeks were, in colour, of the obtrusively florid sort. The relics of yellow hair, still adhering to the sides of his head, looked as silkily frail as spun glass. His noble beard made amends for his untimely baldness. The glossy glory of it exhaled delicious perfumes; the keenest eyes might have tried in vain to discover a hair that was out of place. Miss Minerva's ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... and stiff and silent, while the other looked about her in a despairing helplessness. She was a frail-looking woman, worn with fatigue and the excited emotions with which timidity spurs itself to action. She looked as if she longed to sit down somewhere, and as if perhaps she could have more courage seated, but Charlotte made ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... time to escape another sea, which came rolling in, and committed further damage, sending fragments of the wreck floating about in the comparatively smooth water between us and the shore. We had great difficulty in avoiding the pieces of timber which were driven towards our frail raft. Every moment it seemed as if we were about to be overwhelmed. On looking towards the beach, we found that the blacks had disappeared, with the exception of one man, who stood ready to assist us in getting on shore. A few more hauls on the raft, and we, with our packs, were able to spring on ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... to touch the bloom of youth Spoils its frail complexion; Let the young grape gently grow Till it reach perfection; Hope within my heart doth glow ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... she saw him there, a straight, slim, handsome figure, with the very vanity of proud health upon him, and ambition and passionate purpose in every line of his figure, every glance of his eyes. Now—there he was, bent, frail, and thin, with restless eyes and deep discontent in voice and manner; the curved shoulder and the head grown suddenly old; the only thing, speaking of the past, the graceful hand, filled with the illusory courage of a declining vitality. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... lawful profession, and that we need only sanctify our employments by a perfect spirit, and the fervent exercises of religion, to become saints ourselves, without quitting our state in the world. When we behold others, framed of the same frail mould with ourselves, many in age or other circumstances weaker than ourselves, and struggling with greater difficulties, yet courageously surmounting, and trampling upon all the obstacles by which the world endeavored to obstruct their virtuous choice, we are secretly stung ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... that wing Rich regions of Romance; Love waking when the Spring Begins its first wild dance, Love redder than the rose, Love paler than the snows, Love frail as corn that tilts With morning ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... an idea of the letters that spell the word,—or, at the most, the image of a little newspaper picture of a man with a stick and bundle, with 'Ran away from the subscriber' under it. The magic of the real presence of distress,—the imploring human eye, the frail, trembling human hand, the despairing appeal of helpless agony,—these he had never tried. He had never thought that a fugitive might be a hapless mother, a ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... I gathered that they had been, that morning, seized from their chteaux and were being led away to the prisons of Souilhac. They were old men, women and children, and I was wondering to myself how these frail people could present any danger to the country, when I heard several of the children asking for food. One lady begged a national guard to let her get out to go and buy something to eat. He refused her, rudely, and when the lady produced an "assignat" and pleaded with him to go ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... snow. Without some such help we could not have kept our footing for a moment, and as long as I live I shall never forget the sensation of leaving my friendly Alpenstock planted in the snow, and of seating myself on that frail sledge. Perhaps I ought to describe it here. A board, about six feet long by one foot broad, with sheet-iron nailed beneath it, and curved upwards in front; on its upper surface a couple of battens were fixed, one quite at the foremost end, and one half-way. That was F——'s ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... for the qualities of her heart than for the beauty of her person. "She was extremely good-humoured, charitable, and humane," continues Brantome "The people of France ought to pray to God that the female favourite of every chief magistrate of their country may resemble this amiable frail one." ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... thou not that the River of Death, toward which thou art rapidly moving, cannot be crossed in a bark so frail? I have seen millions who tried in vain to ride its angry currents, but they sank beneath its dark waters. Come, O mortal man, if thou hast nothing better on which to depend, listen to the voice of wisdom and come, without delay, to the ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... whether, mounted on cherubic wing, Thy swift career is with the whirling orbs, Comparing things with things, in rapture lost, And grateful adoration for that light So plenteous ray'd into thy mind below From Light himself—oh! look with pity down On human kind, a frail, erroneous race! Exalt the spirit of a downward world! O'er thy dejected country chief preside, And be her Genius called! her studies raise, Correct her manners, and inspire her youth; For, though deprav'd and sunk, she brought thee forth, And glories in thy name. She points thee out To all her ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... from the pursuing machine. A man leaped suddenly to his feet, shaking the frail craft violently as he did so, waved his arms once, twice, and ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... something superhuman. There was sufficient light to discern a being of earthly mold stealing from among the graves, apparently with a design to enter the highway. It is in vain that philosophy and reason contend with early impressions, and poor Caesar was even without the support of either of these frail allies. He was, however, well mounted on a coach horse of Mr. Wharton's and, clinging to the back of the animal with instinctive skill, he abandoned the rein to the beast. Hillocks, woods, rocks, fences, and houses flew ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... prevailed there both for and against Napoleon, but without the name of the Bourbons ever being pronounced. They were almost unknown to the new generation, forgotten by many of the old, and feared by the conventionalists; at that time they possessed only the frail support of the coteries of the Faubourg St. Germain, and some remains of the emigration. But as it is certain that the emigrants could offer only vain demonstrations and wishes in support of the old family of our Kings, they did ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... enjoyable and successful meeting. This was my introduction to Mt. Byrd, which has since afforded me a home, has stood by me through good and evil fortune, has never wavered in its devotion and fidelity, and among whose good members my frail body will rest, till it rises in the ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... ear, Each clamors for the bigger share; And whilst they clamor, climb—and, lo! Upon the margin, to and fro, Unsteady poised, one wavers slow. Stay, stay! the parents anguished shriek, Too late; for venturesome, yet weak, His frail legs falter under him; He falls—but from a lower limb A moment dangles, thence again Launched out upon the air, in vain He spread his little plumeless wing, A poor, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... from insult to protect, Some frail memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd, Implores the passing tribute ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... Lake Michigan, and from this led the two routes to the Mississippi: one by way of Green bay and the Fox and Wisconsin, and the other by way of the lake to the Chicago river. But if the trader chose to go from the Huron islands through Sault Ste. Marie into Lake Superior, the necessities of his frail craft required him to hug the shore, and the rumors of copper mines induced the first traders to take the south shore, and here the lakes of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota afford connecting links between the streams that seek Lake Superior and those that seek ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner
... wind finds lodgment in some small crevice of a rock which has stood for thousands of years, a rock so big and strong that men choose it as an emblem of the Everlasting. Soon the warm caresses of the sun and the rain wake the latent life in the acorn; the shell breaks and a frail little shoot of vegetable life appears, so small that an infant could crush it. Yet that weak and puny thing grows on unobserved, striking its rootlets farther into the crevice of the rock. And when there is no more room for it to ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... then the hope I shall forget At length, my lord, Pieria?—put away For your so passing sake, this mouth of clay These mortal bones against my body set, For all the puny fever and frail sweat Of human love,—renounce for these, I say, The Singing Mountain's memory, and betray The silent lyre that hangs upon me yet? Ah, but indeed, some day shall you awake, Rather, from dreams of me, that at your side So many nights, ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... day. I think she would scarcely recognise it at the present. Modern art has done its best, and over the whole yet lingers the mysterious charm of the Past; the dark historical legends connected with the palace and its quondam frail, fair, and, I regret to add, ferocious mistress, its—But what has all this to do with "Saint or Satan," you will ask? Where ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... a young man slipped from your memory when you became an old one. Some we have lost, some we have thrown away, some have by degrees passed out of our sight, to some we have wilfully shut our eyes. If I am to make excuses for your weakness, I must say in the first place that human memory is a frail vessel, and is not large enough to contain the mass of things placed in it; the more it receives, the more it must necessarily lose; the oldest things in it give way to the newest. Thus it comes to pass that your nurse has hardly any influence with you, because the lapse of time has set the ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... it would be hard to find the men who would venture off in such a sea as that; but if, as I believe, the wind is falling, there is yet some hope; if it goes down as rapidly as it sometimes does in summer, frail as are our boats, we may be able ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... who caused a diversion in this group of lay figures by walking to the table and helping himself to a whisky-and-soda. Austin bore very little resemblance to his grim and dominant elder brother. He had a slight frail figure, very carefully dressed, and one of those thin-lipped faces which seem, to wear a perpetual sneer of superiority over commoner humanity. The movements of his white hands, the inflection of his voice, the double eyeglass which dangled from his vest by a ribbon of black silk, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... crimp-haired. She appeared not to have comprehended what I had said. Her lips trembled and she attempted to say something to me, but the words stuck in her throat. Then, dropping her head on the piano, she began to weep with great sobs that shook her frail body. I tried to console her, and blurted out incoherent words of love, but this seemed only to increase her distress, and when I left her, she was ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... no return; and then feeling that it was the last, that the parting was over, she stood again by the side of the bed as she had done a few minutes before, in a convulsion of grief, her face bowed down and her little frame racked with feeling too strong for it; shaken visibly, as if too frail to bear the trial to which it ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... didn't know him, but, as you are aware, there was hardly a personality of mark or position that hasn't been talked about in the Pavilion before me. Of him I had only heard that he was a very austere and pious person, always at Mass, and that sort of thing. I saw a frail little man with a long, yellow face and sunken fanatical eyes, an Inquisitor, an unfrocked monk. One missed a rosary from his thin fingers. He gazed at me terribly and I couldn't imagine what he might ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... singularly expressive face, Antoinette, without possessing any of those charms which imparted such an incomparable splendor to the beauty of Dolores, was very attractive. She was a brunette, rather frail in appearance and small of stature; but there was such a gentle, winning light in her eyes that when she lifted them to yours you were somehow penetrated and held captive by them; in other words, you were compelled to ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... opened, while he was staying with the daughter of an old friend at Hampton Falls, in New Hampshire—that saintly woman whom we associate with one of the most spiritual and beautiful of his poems, "A Friend's Burial." After a serious illness in the winter of 1892 he was almost too frail for any summer journeying; but with his usual wisdom and instinctive turning of the heart towards old familiar places, he thought of this hospitable house where he seemed to gain strength, and where he found much happiness and the quietness that he loved. His last ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... sweet service and the sermon was on hidden sins. Lilian wondered if hers was undue pride, the desire to rise above her station? She glanced at her mother. The tears were coursing silently down her sunken cheeks. Was she missing the love a daughter ought to give? She looked so frail and delicate that the girl's heart went out to her as it ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... of dust, and feeble as frail, In thee do we trust, nor find thee to fail; Thy mercies, how tender! how firm to the end, Our Maker, ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... is frail. That seems to me a sufficient explanation of how such a proposal came to be laid before us. But honestly—for we all ought to be honest!—it seems to me that any material advantage it might bring would be more than counterbalanced by loss of esteem. (Uproar.) There has been quite a different ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... abundantly with young trees, of light wood. These they cut down, stripped off their bark, collected them by fives, and, lacking ropes, fastened them together with lianas and a tenacious kind of gum which the forest provided. A large number of small, frail, basket-like contrivances were thus made, each large enough to carry two men, with whom they would sink in the water as deep as the waist. Piperies, Lussan called them, but his description does not make it clear just ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... waves broke with ever-increasing violence on the frail bulwark the two bodies offered to their impetuous course, and it was only a question of moments when they would both be beaten down. Grylls's knees weakening under him first, down they went, Garth uppermost; and, the water seizing them, still gripped together, they were ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... James continued to prosper; he rose to be cashier in the bank, and he won a calm but certain place in Christine's regard. She had never quite recovered the shock of her long illness; she was still very frail, and easily exhausted by the least fatigue or excitement. But in James' eyes she was perfect; he was always at his best in her presence, and he was a very proud and happy man when, after eight years' patient waiting and wooing, he won from her the promise to be his wife; ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... joined by Italy—a surprising development which can only be explained on the ground of Italy's feeling that she could not hope for security at home, or for colonial expansion in the Mediterranean, so long as she remained in isolation. The Triple Alliance so constituted had a frail appearance, and it was hardly to be expected that Italy would receive strong support from partners in comparison with whose resources her own were insignificant. But the Triple Alliance has endured to the present day, the ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... friend, we return, with an air as busy and important as if we were engaged in the grave office of measuring the Pyramids, or settling the antiquity of Stonehenge, to converse with this jovial, this fat, this roguish, this frail, but, I think, ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... their ruin with large checks and sharp reproofs. She had saved many homes and covered many scandals. For girls she had a special tenderness. She had never been a beautiful young girl, and she had a pathetic reverence for what was frail and fair. For them she had no reproofs, only vast mercy, and patient skill in releasing them from the traps which had caught their flurried young senses; but for those who had set the traps she ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... gloomy aisles. The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine boughs, was set apart for the ladies. As the lovers parted, they unaffectedly exchanged a kiss, so honest and sincere that it might have been heard above the swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother Shipton were probably too stunned to remark upon this last evidence of simplicity, and so turned without a word to the hut. The fire was replenished, the men lay down before the door, and in a few minutes ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... philosophy of success, Phoebe proceeded to initiate me into the first process of my job, which consisted in pasting slippery, sticky strips of muslin over the corners of the rough brown boxes that were piled high about us in frail, tottering towers reaching to the ceiling, which was trellised over with a network of electric wires and steam-pipes. Two hundred and fifty of these boxes remained to be finished on the particular order upon which Phoebe was working. Each must be given eight muslin ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... suitors; one quarrel already having occurred; a meeting in the dark; a renewal of the quarrel; an attack by the weaker with a cane; the blow that turned the stronger into a maddened beast and prompted him to grasp his frail rival and throw him into the sea. What was more possible? What was more probable? Jealousy had caused thousands of similar tragedies in the history of ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... to speak I had been called out of the room. It was the servant from Devonshire-terrace to tell me his child Dora was suddenly dead. She had not been strong from her birth; but there was just at this time no cause for special fear, when unexpected convulsions came, and the frail little life passed away. My decision had to be formed at once; and I satisfied myself that it would be best to permit his part of the proceedings to close before the truth was told to him. But as he went on, after the sentences I have quoted, to speak of actors having to come from scenes ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... bones from insult to protect Some frail memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd, Implores the ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... indeed, if the bold Norsemen, the bold buccaneers who in their frail craft pillaged the west coasts of Europe and extended their voyages into the Mediterranean, should have omitted to pay a visit to the shores of the Baltic Sea. We know that they settled in England and France, and it causes no surprise when we read that the Slavs in the neighborhood ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... But his frail bark was speedily filled with water; the waves swept over it with a wild roar, and covered the whole form of the emperor with foaming, hissing spray. He still kept himself erect by dint of almost superhuman efforts; but now another even more terrible wave approached and swept, thundering and with ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Jel[vs]a, in the time of the other commandant, some of the people were interned; the young captain assured us that he would do no such thing. And one could see that he would never imitate the brutality of his predecessor, who had caused a frail old man of sixty-six, Professor Zari['c], to be pulled out of his bed in the middle of a winter's night and taken across the hills on a donkey to Starigrad, afterwards on a destroyer to Split, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... Leona by the hand, and retreated inside. She shut the door, and bolted it. If it were a jaguar, what protection would that be? Such a creature could dash itself through the frail bamboo wall, or tear the door to pieces with his great claws in a moment. "If it be a jaguar," thought she, "we ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... that my husband has a younger brother, Clement, who was a brilliant scholar and a fine musician. His health had always been frail, and he overstudied in college, with the result that in the middle of his junior year he broke down altogether and was ill for a long time. Worry about his condition finally affected his mind and he became quite ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... had so long preyed on her frail body, that her end was visibly approaching; and the council, being assembled, sent the keeper, admiral, and secretary, to know her will with regard to her successor. She answered with a faint voice, that as she had held a regal sceptre, she desired no other than a royal successor. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... who leave it for the turbulent city, in the same light, half wondering, half compassionating, as that in which the ancients regarded the hardy adventurers who left the safe land and their happy homes, voluntarily to expose themselves in a frail vessel to the dangers of an uncertain sea? Here, when I look out on the green fields and the blue sky, the quiet herds basking in the sunshine or scattered over the unpolluted plains, I cannot but exclaim ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... relatives filled the vessel, while a great number of boats, of every description that could be assembled, either on Loch Tay itself or brought by land carriage from Loch Earn and otherwise, followed in the rear, some of them of very frail materials. There were even curraghs, composed of ox hides stretched over hoops of willow, in the manner of the ancient British, and some committed themselves to rafts formed for the occasion, from the readiest ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... had been accompanied throughout by dramatic action. That mixture of simplicity and refinement which he was surprised to find in a composition of the thirteenth century, is shown sometimes in the turn given to some passing expression or remark; thus, "the Count de Garins was old and frail, his time was over"—Li quens Garins de Beaucaire estoit vix et frales; si avoit son tans trespasse. And then, all is so realised! One still sees the ancient forest, with its disused roads grown deep with grass, and the place where seven roads meet—u a forkeut set cemin qui s'en vont ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... our friend. We bless and thank thee for the comfort we have found in each other, for the worldly prosperity to which virtue, trustfulness, and faith in thy care have conducted us; for the mutual esteem, confidence, and affection that sway and direct our frail natures, but, above all, for the sure and certain knowledge that when our mortal shall have put on immortality, we shall ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... with pain when he told her mother the meaning of the flushed cheeks and laboured breathing. She had been doing so well, too, and seemed in a fair way to win against the relentless foe, but now, restlessly tossing on her pillow, with a deadly catch in her breathing, what chance had such a frail little spar of ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... American union has a history of more intense interest than our own. Its early chapters, indeed, savor of the romantic rather than of the real. I do not speak of the long-ago time when Illinois forest and prairie were the house and hunting-ground of the red men, and his frail bark the only craft known to its rivers. That period belongs to the border-land age of tradition rather than of veritable history. It is of Illinois under the domination of civilized ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... outlook on life was a comfortable one, born of her own sunny nature. Its foundation was love, the keystone of its arch peace. The blood of a gentle mother had effectually subdued in her the fierce impetuosity of her father—as in life the frail little wife had dominated the boisterous husband. Tressa wanted most to be loved. It was food to her self-respect, to her easy and appealing ways, even to the laugh bubbling so readily to her rosy lips. Most of all she wanted to be loved by Adrian Conrad; her father—well, ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... sea formed lines of rocks, hardly rising above the water-level, which fringed the headlands with perilous reefs, against which the waves broke continuously at the slightest wind. It required some bravery to approach them, and no little skill to steer one of the frail boats, which these people were accustomed to employ from the earliest times, scatheless amid the breakers. The coasting trade was attracted from Arvad successively to Berytus, Sidon, and Tyre, and finally to the other towns of the coast. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... seems to destroy a woman's finer intuitions. If you feel that you must marry again, go slowly, and wait until the bruised tendrils of your heart have healed and are rooted in healthy soil. Do not let them twine about any sort of a dead tree or frail reed. Run no chance ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to her was small and delicate, it lacked the sturdiness of its father and of the mother. So frail, indeed, did the little life seem at first, that grave doubts were entertained whether the babe would live to be taken ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... they are so, because they rest not on a mind consolidated by principles, and a heart glowing like a furnace with corresponding feelings. When resting on such a mind and heart, resolutions are not frail; but ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... they will drag away a corpse, and that they will scarcely care to present to Ithobal. See, I have hidden poison in my breast, and here at my girdle hangs a dagger; are not the two of them enough to make an end of one frail life? Should they dare to touch me, I shall tell them through the bars that most certainly I shall drink the bane, or use the knife; and when they know it, they will leave me unharmed, hoping to starve me out, or trusting to chance ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... precious bit o' fluff! Me own true weddid wife!...An' we're alone! She seems so frail, an' me so big an' rough— I dunno wot this feelin' is that's grown Inside me 'ere that makes me feel I own A thing so tender like I fear to squeeze Too 'ard fer fear she'll break...Then, wiv a groan I starts to 'ear a coot call, ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... haunts in my olden sprightly Hours of breath; Here I went tempting frail youth nightly To their death; But you deemed me chaste—me, a tinselled sinner! How thought you one with pureness in her Could pace this street Eyeing some ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... sure of victory. But this was very odd about the affair, that the stiffer Virginia grew, as I saw her there, the more indurate, the more ruggedly of the soil, declining battle, the more Aurelia shrank in my eyes, the less confident her call to me, the more frail her hold of my heart. Virginia stood apart like a rock and turned away her eyes from me. "Thou shalt seek me out of thine own will, Francis, for I will never come to thee again of mine!" But Aurelia's halo had slipped; her wings drooped lifeless, her glitter was ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... had fled from her frail body, they who came to prepare her for the grave looked at her face and ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that seemed like death, which had been creeping languidly through his veins for some time, darkened his eyes and sealed his lips. He could not see her, and her voice sounded far away. She called again and again upon him, but there was no answer. The deep roar of the storm on the other side of the frail wooden walls thundered continuously, and the groan of the straining planks grated upon her ear as she listened intently for one or more word from him. Was she then alone with him, dying? Was there no help, nothing that could be at least attempted for his ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... some changes. Little John's place was vacant. A sudden sharp illness, and the frail life went out, leaving a sweet and gentle memory, for John had helped in ways he did not dream of. Every one of those merry girls and boys was more thoughtful and tender for the association with him. Seeing the pleasure their companionship gave him, they learned the value of simple friendliness. ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... disgrace—of seeing the town which looked to them for help fall beneath their very eyes. That this did not occur is entirely due to the fierce tenacity and savage endurance of the disease-ridden and half-starved men who held on to the frail lines ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sung, and moralists and sages have taught, that for the frail woman there was nothing left but to die; or if more remained for her to suffer, there was at least nothing left for her to be or do—no choice between sackcloth and ashes and the livery of sin. The beatified penitents of the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... glance told the captain that the mud-bespattered figure that lay before him as if dead was none other than his own son! The great wave had caught the frail craft on its crest, and, sweeping it along with lightning speed for a short distance, had hurled it on the deck of the Sunshine with such violence as to completely stun the whole crew. Even Spinkie lay in a melancholy little heap in the ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... propped on her hands, while, so malicious was fate's decree once more to Royson, that he was then hastening through malodorous lanes and crowded slums in order to save from threatened peril the very man whose downfall offered the only visible means by which he could bend his own frail fortunes in the direction that looked best ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... the tides of possibility that flow through this great city; I look at the symbols of this Republic; and I cannot believe that such is to be the result. I look back upon our history, and cannot argue such a future from such a past. A great light lay upon the wake of those frail ships that bore our fathers hither; the wake of past ages, the following of good men's prayers and brave men's deeds, the mingling currents of martyr-blood and prophet-fire. And methinks, as they struck the shore, and met the savage wilderness, a Voice saluted them; a voice not ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... don't know just what Pa could do if he were home, he seems so frail, But every time the skies grow black I notice Ma gets rather pale. An' when she's called us children in, an' locked the windows an' the doors, She jumps at every lightnin' flash an' trembles when the thunder roars. An' when the baby starts to cry, ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... in navigation. As he drew near, he found it was a large vessel, or rather raft, called balsa by the natives, consisting of a number of huge timbers of a light, porous wood, tightly lashed together, with a frail flooring of reeds raised on them by way of deck. Two masts or sturdy poles, erected in the middle of the vessel, sustained a large square-sail of cotton, while a rude kind of rudder and a movable keel, made of plank inserted between the logs, enabled the mariner to ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... no easy journey, for storms swept the lake. The waves tossed their frail canoes hither and thither so that they were often in danger of drowning. They were harassed, too, by unfriendly Indians. At length, worn out by fatigue, starving with cold and hunger, they reached the appointed place to await the ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... of Katy looking so frail and delicate, but so beautiful withal, had awakened all the olden intense love she had felt for her darling, and she could not wait much longer without seeing her "in her own home ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... original, her freshness, frankness, and truthfulness impressed me much, and after much experience since in the ways of frail ones, I believe now that what she told me was mainly true, and am sure she was delighted to get a confident in me, to whom she could unbosom ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... fruit of their good and evil deeds! Do thou listen to the regulations on this subject! Man with his subtle original body created by God lays up a great store of virtue and vice. After death he quits his frail (outer) body and is immediately born again in another order of beings. He never remains non-existent for a single moment. In his new life his actions follow him invariably as shadow and, fructifying, makes his ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... was the last thing for a man held by the leg in several ways to contemplate. And yet there it was. He had entered again into youth and was rushing along on the river that buoys up even a leaf for a time and feels so strong against the leaf's frail texture that every voyaging fibre trusts it joyously. The summer air felt sweet to him. There were wild perfumes in it and the smell of water and ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... a curve, that curve does not deepen itself into a vast abyss as it does at the horseshoe up above. This smaller fall is again divided; and the visitor, passing down a flight of steps and over a frail wooden bridge, finds himself on a smaller island in ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... F. Robinson. Attracted by her lovely verse, the intellectual companionship ripened into love, and for his half-dozen final years he enjoyed her wifely aid and sympathy in what seems to have been an ideal union. The end, when it came, was quick and painless. Always of a frail constitution, stunted in body from childhood, he died in harness, October 19th, 1894, his head falling forward on his desk as he wrote. The tributes that followed make plain the enthusiastic admiration James Darmesteter awakened in those who knew him best. The leading Orientalist of his generation, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... over me, a terror froze my veins; I reeled back, and leaned for support against the wall. Roland had passed his arm round Fanny, and she, frail and trembling, clung to his broad breast, looking fearfully up to his face. And never in that face, ploughed by deep emotions and dark with unutterable sorrows, had I seen an expression so grand in its ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... would have furnished, if she had dared; but the Judge looked sternly at her, and unwilling to incur his resentment, yet unable to contain her anger, she threw herself out of the room with a toss of the body that nearly separated her frail ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... her rheumatic old feet resting on the warm brick hearth, sits Aunt Betty Cofer. Her frail body stoops under the weight of four-score years but her bright eyes and alert mind are those of a woman thirty years younger. A blue-checked mob cap covers her grizzled hair. Her tiny frame, clothed ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... made her start and then turn away quickly from the sight of a mother's grief as she clung to a frail daughter for support, sobbing with utter abandon, while the daughter kept begging her to "be ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... was now becoming quite frail. She had in the early part of the winter contracted a severe cold, which, having settled on her lungs, congestion had ensued. She, after a protracted illness, was now convalescent, yet it was evident she was not ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... injurious to her honour and {158} subversive of all her rights.[15] The solicitation remained fruitless. The great American Republic was too intimately connected with France and England to intervene on behalf of Greece. The small states knew too well from their own experience how frail are the foundations upon which rest the honour and the rights of weak ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... between the penitent, sinner and his God, and the priest is elevated to the position of the dispenser of pardon, holding in his hand the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Now it is indeed flattering to the frail heart of the minister (for we are all mere men) to find himself elevated to such an exalted post, to stand (as the Papists say of their priest) in the place of God, and have his whole congregation look to him for the pardon of sin, in private confession and the sacraments; and this may possibly ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... attention to his daughter Clara, who was his only child. Throughout her childhood she was under the care of one of his five sisters, all of whom except the one who lived with him and managed his household being comfortably married. His own wife had been a somewhat frail woman, but his daughter had ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... upon Shaw and his school which it would require a separate book adequately to study. By descent Nietzsche was a Pole, and probably a Polish noble; and to say that he was a Polish noble is to say that he was a frail, fastidious, and entirely useless anarchist. He had a wonderful poetic wit; and is one of the best rhetoricians of the modern world. He had a remarkable power of saying things that master the reason for a moment by ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... little distance is as primeval as when the first humans climbed in their frail canoes through the unknown and terrible stretches of ocean, and saw Tahiti shining in the sunlight. A mile or two from the lagoon the fertile land extends as a slowly-ascending gamut of greens as luxuriant as a jungle, and forming a most pleasing foreground ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... driven, they make rapid progress, and before midnight the Milky Way is behind them and out of sight. But, though they breathe more freely, they are by no means out of danger—alone in a frail skiff on the still turbulent ocean, and groping in thick darkness, with neither moon nor star to guide them. They have no compass, that having been forgotten in their scramble out of the sinking ship. But even ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... laughing when he came by, the maids of Springhaven smiled at him. This quite righted him in his own opinion, yet leaving him the benefit of the doubt which comes from a shake in that cradle lately. He made a good dinner, and shouldered his adze, with a frail of tools hanging on the neck of it, and troubled with nothing but love—which is a woe of self-infliction—whistled his way to the beach, to let all the women understand that he was not a bit ashamed. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... limply into the rawhide-bottomed chair under the awning in front of the big board shanty which was on stilts beside the airy flume, and gazed on down the long, gleaming, tragic, watery way to the next steep slide. Then I looked at the frail little flume-boat which had borne Oram Sheets and me thus far on our hazardous journey to the valley. Perhaps I shivered a bit at the prospect of more of this hair-raising adventure. At any rate, Oram, the intrepid flume-herder, laughed, dug his picaroon ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... in one corner of the room a little rosewood-table, so frail that it could be crushed by the weight of a man's hand. On this table was a piece of embroidery and a crystal vase filled with flowers. Suspended over this table was a copy of Camille Roqueplan's picture: "The Lion in Love." In the recess near the window was a piano open, and ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... saint, and he's getting old and frail; and I've got a sister engaged; and three little sisters to whom I'm supposed to set a good example. Then, I've no money, and I can't do anything for a living, except serve in a shop. I shouldn't ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... have had reason for, had she been prevailed upon by giddy or frail motives, for which one man, by importunity, might prevail, as well ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... heads up one by one, he kissed them o'er and o'er; And aye ye saw the tears run down, I wot that grief was sore. He closed the lids on their dead eyes, all with his fingers frail, And handled all their bloody curls, and kissed ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... temptation she had felt to lead him back to their past memories, and feel for some means of putting him in possession of the truth. As the tension of her mind grew less, she became aware this would have been no easy thing to do. Then, as she sat holding the old hand, and wondering that anything so frail could still keep in bond a spirit weary of its prison, drowsiness crept over her once more, all the sooner for the monotonous rhythm of the heavy breath. Consciousness gave place to a state of mysterious discomfort, complicated with intersecting ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... appearance when he grew up, but at this time of his life the historians and biographers who saw and knew him say that he was quite a pretty boy, though puny and weak. His face was handsome enough, though his form was frail, and not perfectly symmetrical. Those who had charge of him tried to strengthen his constitution by training him to the martial exercises and usages which were practiced in those days, and especially by accustoming him to wear the ponderous armor ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... as so hideous, so degraded, and sometimes so vicious and criminal, do they gain their end, and is that end as salutary as they would wish? We dare not pronounce judgment. They may answer that they terrify the unjust rich man by pointing out to him the yawning pit that lies beneath the frail covering of wealth; just as in the time of the Dance of Death, they showed him his gaping grave, and Death standing ready to fold him in an impure embrace. Now, they show him the thief breaking ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... explained; and Marie's earthly fate lay in Don Luis Garcia's hands! The Grand Inquisitor read in that glance that he was known; and for a brief minute a strange, an incomprehensible sensation, thrilled through him. It could scarcely have been fear, when one gesture of his hand would destine that frail being to torture, imprisonment, and death; and yet never before in his whole life of wickedness, had he experienced such a feeling as he did at that moment beneath a woman's holy gaze. Anger at himself for the sensation, momentary as it was, increased the virulence of other passions; but ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... have gone especially well with me for many years, indeed, much more so perhaps than I really deserve. Though this world often requires much care and toil from us frail mortals, it also yields many blessings for which ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... beforehand, across the opening through which the animals had entered, and over these poles hung robes, so as entirely to close the opening. The buffalo will not dash themselves against a barrier which is entirely closed, even though it be very frail; but if they can see through it to the outside, they will rush against it, and their great weight and strength make it easy for them to break down any but a heavy wall. Mr. Hugh Monroe tells me that he has seen a pis'kun built of willow brush; ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... likely spot where the captain thought that the precious shells might be found; here we anchored, and the divers quickly got to work. I ought to have mentioned that we carried a large whale-boat, and about half-a-dozen frail little "shell" boats for the use of ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... suits him. He has his own theory about inspiration which will not always come,—especially will not come if wine-cups overnight have been too deep. All this has ever been odious to me, as being unmanly. A man may be frail in health, and therefore unable to do as he has contracted in whatever grade of life. He who has been blessed with physical strength to work day by day, year by year—as has been my case—should pardon ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... was that, try as she might, she could not make Switzerland a success. When she went down to the table d'hote, people saw that instead of growing stronger she was growing more frail, and the exertion of coming down the long flight of stairs tried her more than it had seemed to do that first day. Sometimes she had a soft, lovely, dangerous color on her cheeks, and her eyes looked almost translucent; and then again the color was gone, her skin was ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... as they have to kites and fisticuffs. I should have remembered that girls—" His memory gave up the stories of his mother's precocity. But this child, who was so startlingly like the dead woman, was far less fitted to carry such burdens. So sensitive an intelligence in so frail a body might suddenly flame too high and fall to ashes. He resolved to place her in classes of other little girls at once, and to keep her in the fields as much as possible. None knew better than he how close the highly strung unresting brain could ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... eh?" cried Merrill, looking at him. "Look at him vaunting his beastly fitness over the frail and weak. I say, men, did you ever behold such condition! See that clear eye, that velvety skin, that—Oh, I ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... to the top of the enclosing levee-rim, the flat country behind it lies low—representing the bottom of a dish— and as the boat swims along, high on the flood, one looks down upon the houses and into the upper windows. There is nothing but that frail breastwork of earth between the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that spread out in ceaseless rotation, forming floating, fiery rings. His wrath had set his nerves on edge; the final thrust made sleep impossible. He felt restless, wide-awake after this cruel shock to his pride. He thought that in his bed, close to him, he had his worst enemy. He hated that frail form that he could touch with the slightest movement, as if it contained the rancor of all the adversaries he ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... has a frail child, with which the ordinary milk in the market does not agree. To build up its health, he buys a country place and a good cow. The child thrives. In his practice, he sees many other frail children, and it occurs to him that they, too, can be benefited ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... had explained it by saying it was "when his heart was bad." And now it seemed, by these gloomy abstractions, that "his heart was bad" very often. And then the long withheld rains came one night on the wings of a fierce southwester, beating down their frail lodge and scattering it abroad, quenching their camp-fire, and rolling up the bay until it invaded their reedy island and hissed in their ears. It drove the game from Jim's gun; it tore the net and scattered the bait of Li Tee, the fisherman. Cold and half starved in heart and body, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... all it entails, Chopin might have been moderately happy, perhaps even have continued to enjoy moderately good health, if body and soul had been well matched. This, however, was not the case. His thoughts were too big, his passions too violent, for the frail frame that held them; and the former grew bigger and more violent as the latter grew frailer and frailer. He could not realise his aspirations, could not compass his desires, in short, could not fully assert ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... That our young Edward might bequeath the crown Of England, putting by his father's will. Yet I stood out, till Edward sent for me. The wan boy-king, with his fast-fading eyes Fixt hard on mine, his frail transparent hand, Damp with the sweat of death, and griping mine, Whisper'd me, if I loved him, not to yield His Church of England to the Papal wolf And Mary; then I could no more—I sign'd. Nay, for bare shame of inconsistency, She cannot pass her traitor ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... and, shaking her hand, paddled his frail craft out into the stream. Looking up, she saw Jim coming down the bank, with the ax swinging in one hand and a new pole over his shoulder. He unfastened the ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... creatures birds, bees, butterflies—give glad animation and help to make all the air into music. Down through the middle of the Valley flows the crystal Merced, River of Mercy, peacefully quiet, reflecting lilies and trees and the onlooking rocks; things frail and fleeting and types of endurance meeting here and blending in countless forms, as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures, to draw her lovers into close ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... women with frail bodies, like Rose Standish and Katherine Carver, but there were strong physiques and dauntless hearts sustained to great old age, matrons like Susanna White and Elizabeth Hopkins and young women like Priscilla Mullins, Mary Chilton, Elizabeth Tilley ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... Bromo at the narrow rail. They called them "Night-Blooming Lilies," and sure enough they blanketed the rugged pathway that night like so many tiny white Fairies. Indeed there was something beautifully weird in their white wonder against the night. They looked like frail, earth-angels playing in the star-light, sending out a sweet odor which mingled strangely with the odor of sulphur ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... amid the dead leaves that had lain there all the winter through—the first harbinger of spring, smiling up at her a friendly greeting, despite the wintry cold of February. She knelt down and gently cleared away the dry leaves and grass about it, carefully broke the frail little stem, and returned to de Sigognac's side with her treasure—more delighted than if she had found a precious jewel lying hidden among ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... the floor; there was a rusty stove at one end, but no lamp or fuel, and the hay and blankets had been removed from the wooden bunk. Still, as George was warmly clad and had space to move about, he could pass the night there. The roar of the wind about the frail building rendered the prospects of the return journey strongly discouraging. He might, however, be detained all the next day by the snow; but what chiefly urged him to face the risk of starting for the homestead was his inability to read his letters. ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... perhaps, or among the hills where Bruenhild lay sleeping in her large bright halo of fire. How could it be that he and Helena were two children of London wandering to find their lodging in Freshwater? He sighed, and looked again over the hills where the moonlight was condensing in mist ethereal, frail, and yet substantial, reminding him of the way the manna must have condensed out of the white ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... this dream of lustrous blue. Slowly we advanced towards the Muir; very slowly, for these shining bergs carried death with them if they should graze hard against the steamer's side, and, cautiously, steered with infinite pains, the little boat crept on, zigzagging between them. A frail little toy of man, it seemed, to venture here alone; small, black, impertinent atom forcing its way so hardily into this magnificence of colour, this silent splendour, this radiant stillness of the North. Into this very fastness of the most gigantic forces ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... sputtered protestingly and Val thought of trying to leap ashore. But stubbornly the outboard fought on. If there ever were a sturdy ship, fit to be named with Columbus' gallant craft or Hudson's vessel, it was that frail outboard which buffeted the rising waters of a Louisiana bayou ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... [Fr.]. Adj. weak, feeble, debile^; impotent &c 158; relaxed, unnerved, &c v.; sapless, strengthless^, powerless; weakly, unstrung, flaccid, adynamic^, asthenic^; nervous. soft, effeminate, feminate^, womanly. frail, fragile, shattery^; flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, gimcrack, gingerbread; rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky; craichy^; drooping, tottering &c v.. broken, lame, withered, shattered, shaken, crazy, shaky; palsied &c 158; decrepit. languid, poor, infirm; faint, faintish^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... soldiers exhausted itself, the violence of the tempest increased. The floods of rain and the blasts of the hurricane at last terminated the affray. The Spaniards, fairly conquered, were compelled to a retreat, lest the rapidly rising river should sweep away the frail and trembling bridge, over which they had passed to their unsuccessful assault. The English and Netherlanders remained masters of the field. The rising flood, too, which was fast converting the meadows into a lake, was as useful to the conquerors as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a search immediately. When Andy and his followers had removed this cover, to substitute the frail one of slender sticks, quilted with dead leaves and a scattering of soil to deceive the eye, they could not have ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... worst of it. I want her, Grant. When I'm with her I can't tolerate the idea of giving her up. But how in the mischief can I marry HER? I'm too strong a dose for a frail, delicate ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... will never be upright, unless I bend his legs." A fifth said—"He will not be able to think, unless I press his brain." "Stop!" said the traveller. "Whatever God does, is well done; do not pretend to know more than He; and as He has given organs to this frail creature, allow those organs to develop themselves, to strengthen themselves by ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat |
