"Frail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these scenes by whatever name it will; we have no desire to change the appropriateness, nor to lessen the moral tenor of southern society. It nurtures a frail democracy, and from its bastard offspring we have a tyrant dying by the hand of a tyrant, and the spoils of tyranny serving the good growth of the Christian church. Money constructs opinions, pious as well as political, and even changes the feelings of good men, who invoke heaven's ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... was much in Eva's room. The child suffered much from nervous restlessness, and it was a relief to her to be carried; and it was Tom's greatest delight to carry her little frail form in his arms, resting on a pillow, now up and down her room, now out into the verandah; and when the fresh sea-breezes blew from the lake,—and the child felt freshest in the morning,—he would sometimes walk with ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Frith, and soon left the Bass and the May behind us. I must confess, I was a little afraid, when, for the first time, I was out of sight of land. It is a dismal thought to have nothing but sea and sky around, and only a frail plank between us and the fathomless depths of ocean. This was my first voyage; but many a day and month and year have I spent on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... to me as it came to you; but I had married before that day; married, not, like the rest of you, for what a wife could bring, but for sentiment and true passion. This, in my case, meant a loving wife, but a frail one; and while we lived a little while on the patrimony left us, it was far too small to support us long without some aid from our own hands; and our hands were feeble and could not work. And so we fell into debt for rent and, ere long, for ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... wisdom. I erred in breaking the whip. I erred in doubting my own prescience, which told me that the smiles I could not woo were given freely to another ... and perhaps the kisses. At least I can set these poor frail human doubts at rest." ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... dimpled cheeks. She was beautiful, 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 degrees ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... mother will have neither house nor hame. I'm crying to you for't, Kaytherine; hearken and you'll hear my cry across the cauldriff sea." It was a call from the heart which transported Katherine to Thrums in a second of time, she seemed to see her mother again, grown frail since last they met—and so all was well for Meggy. Tommy did not put all this to himself but he felt it, and after that he could not have written the letter differently. Happy Tommy! To be an artist is a great ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... the West Abbey! there we see How frail a thing is royalty! Where crowns and sceptres worms supply, And kings and queens, like lumber lie. The Tombs themselves are worn away, And own the empire of Decay, Mouldering like the royal dust, Which to preserve they have in trust. Nor has the Marble ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... spiritual crown which men put on when they go into the kingdom of heaven. This is what we urge as the last and finishing excellency of the youthful female character. The cultivation of this is what we press as conferring mortal perfection of character, or as great perfection as frail, sinful creatures can put on below ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... travelling companion, of course, having failed to get my dear old lady to undertake the voyage, so I thought it could do no harm. I went to see her, and found her pretty and frail and sad. She made a piteous appeal to me, and though I was not greatly taken with her, I decided she would do as well as any one for ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... escape, The tall ships passed the stormy cape; For thee in foreign lands remote, Beneath a burning, tropic clime, The Indian peasant, chasing the wild goat, Himself as swift and wild, In falling, clutched the frail arbute, The fibres of whose shallow root, Uplifted from the soil, betrayed The silver veins beneath it laid, The buried treasures ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... New France, had he been honest as he was clever; but he was unprincipled and corrupt: no conscience checked his ambition or his love of pleasure. He ruined New France for the sake of himself and his patroness and the crowd of courtiers and frail beauties who surrounded the King, whose arts and influence kept him in his high office despite all the efforts of the Honnetes Gens, the good and true men of the Colony, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... others of less note, came one frail Form, A phantom among men, companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm, Whose thunder is its knell. He, as I guess, Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray With feeble ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... were reported concerning you at that time,' said I, 'and all were astonished that a man of your wisdom, the Locman of his time, the Galenus of Persia, should have embarked in so frail and dangerous a commodity as a Curdish maid, one of the undoubted progeny of the devil himself, whose footsteps could not be otherwise than notoriously unfortunate; who, of herself, was enough to bring ill luck to a whole empire, much more to a ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... her has a mother of little girls! And there is no escape, not even in common sense. A woman considered sensible in the very highest degree will dress her little girl like other little girls, or perish in the attempt. How many do thus perish, or are helped to perish, we shall never know. A frail, delicate woman said to me one day, "Oh, I do hope the fashions will change before Sissy grows up, for I don't see how it will be possible for me to make her clothes." You observe her submissive, law-abiding ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... care what they'd think," she returned feverishly, her frail fingers plucking nervously at the arms of her chair. "I must go—I ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... bubble endure so long as earth; and shall I leave the rocks about me silent on the King of Glory, at whose word they were, and at whose breath they shall be dust? Nay, but these stones shall speak to weary wayfarers of eternal peace, and of the Lamb, whose frail and afflicted yet ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... childless; and no great political sagacity was required to foresee the probable fate of the country if such a moment was chosen for a French and Scottish invasion. The very worst disasters might be too surely looked for, and the hope of escape, precarious at the best, hung upon the frail thread of a single life. We may therefore imagine the dismay with which the nation saw this last hope failing them—and failing them even in a manner more dangerous than if it had failed by death; for ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... and sentiment in the other. Both are absent and self-involved, both live out of themselves in a world of imagination. Hamlet is abstracted from everything; Romeo is abstracted from everything but his love, and lost in it. His 'frail thoughts dally with faint surmise', and are fashioned out of the suggestions of hope, 'the flatteries of sleep'. He is himself only in his Juliet; she is his only reality, his heart's true home and ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... was soon dashing in fury against the roof of the hut. The frail structure trembled beneath the blows of the wind, and the clamor of the beating rains made all interior sounds inaudible. The prisoner knew that the outlaws were sitting before the fire in the outer room, probably jesting and ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... deepest slumber, Evil thoughts may come in dreams; And the senses list the murmur, Though the frail ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... the necessity of lightness, the weight of the various elements had to be kept at a minimum, and the factor of safety in construction was therefore exceedingly small, so that the machine as a whole was delicate and frail and incapable of sustaining any unusual strain. This defect was to be corrected in later models by utilising data gathered in ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... against the ship. The sailors were already lowering the boats, and she could hear the sound of the captain's speaking-trumpet as he shouted his orders above the noise of the storm. Were they indeed to trust themselves to the mercy of that terrible sea? Gipsy watched with alarm as the first frail-looking boat was successfully ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... mosquitoes from far inland is based on the supposition that these insects are capable of long-sustained flight, and a certain amount of battling against the wind. This is an error. Mosquitoes are frail of wing; a light puff of breath will illustrate this by hurling the helpless creature away, and it will not venture on the wing again for some time after finding a safe harbor. The prevalence of mosquitoes during a land breeze is ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... of a London boarding-house in the neighborhood of Russell Square—one of those grim shelters, the refuge of Transatlantic curiosity and British penury. The girl—she represented the former race was leaning against the frail palisading, with gloomy expression and eyes set as though in fixed contemplation of the uninspiring panorama. The young man—unmistakably, uncompromisingly English—stood with his back to the chimney a few feet away, watching his companion. The silence between them was as yet unbroken, ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Squire, I can take freedoms with you; but perhaps the concomitant gentleman, your friend here, would be pleased to take my stool. Indeed, I always use a chair, but the back of it, if I may, be permitted the use of a small portion of jocularity, was as frail as the fair sect: it went home yisterday to be mended. Do, sir, condescind to be sated. Upon my reputation, Squire, I'm sorry that I have not accommodation for you, too, sir; except one of these hassocks, which, in joint considheration with ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... promise of a good third. Yet hardly could a slighter person display to advantage the famous Gwilt-Athelstan jewels. The rope of pierced diamonds with pigeon-blood rubies strung between them, which she wears wound over her corsage, would assuredly overweight the frail Fidelia Oldaker; the tiara of emeralds and diamonds was never meant for a brow less majestic; nor would the stomacher of lustrous grey pearls and glinting diamonds ever have clasped becomingly a figure that was svelte—or "skinny," as the great lady herself is frank enough ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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; ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... charge to be partial for republics, avows that despotism is incompatible with the Christian religion, because the Christian religion commands meekness, and despotism claims arbitrary power to the whims and passions of a frail mortal; and still it is more than 1,500 years since the Christian religion became dominant, and through that long period despotism has been pre-eminently dominant; you can scarcely show one single truly democratic republic ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... alert he hovered behind the counter, his coat shabbily buttoned over his narrow chest, his face agitated. He had shaved his side-whiskers, so that they only grew becomingly as low as his ears. His rather large, grey moustache was brushed off his mouth. His hair, gone very thin, was brushed frail and floating over his baldness. But still a gentleman, still courteous, with a charming voice he suggested the possibilities of a pad of green parrots' tail-feathers, or of a few yards of pink-pearl trimming or of old chenille fringe. The women would pinch the thick, exquisite old ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... so he could watch the other without cramping his neck, for he saw that something like a struggle was taking place, the masked man seemingly holding some object helpless in the bottom of the frail craft. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... senses were aware of what was at my feet, kneeling there, face buried in clasped hands, too soft, too small, too frail to hold a man's whole destiny. And, as I bent to kiss them, I scarce dared clasp them, scarce dared lift her to my arms, scarce dared meet the frightened wonder in her eyes, and the full sweetness of them, and the love breaking ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... ill, unsound, worn, diseased, fainting, sick, wasted, worn down, emaciated, fragile, unhealthy, weak, worn out. exhausted, frail, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... found. We approached the range just before sunset, much tired, with two Wonga-Wongas and three iguanas at our saddles. I had just informed my Blackfellow, that I wished to encamp, even without water, when some old broken sheets of bark, remains of the frail habitations of the natives, caught my eye; a dry water-hole, though surrounded with green grass and sedges, showed that they had formerly encamped there, with water. This water-hole was found to be one of a chain of ponds extending along the edge ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... was but just after nine, the early omnibus had gathered its tribute of toiling or shopping worms, and was too prevalent in Park Lane for my peace of mind. There were also enormous drays, which looked, as our frail bark passed under their bows, like huge Atlantic liners. The hansoms were fierce black sharks skimming viciously round us, and there were other monsters whose forms I had no time to analyse: but into the midst of ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... a distant course, Filled full of far-fetched wares his frail ship's hold: At home, the strong bull stood unyoked; the horse Endured no bridle in the age ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... frail that he was frightened. Surely, too, she'd be very angry with him for letting her ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... by one frail woman, a woman not of noble birth, with only beauty, sweetness of disposition, amiability, goodness, and brilliant accomplishments as her weapons! It was not a case of the moth and the flame, but the operation of a wise philosophy, the precepts of which were decently, moderately and carefully ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... qualities can be proved, any more than the nature of a man can be ascertained if all goes smoothly and easily with him. Therefore, let no one venture to put confidence in himself, till he has been tossed about by the storms of life, and by that time he will have learned that he is weak and frail under all circumstances, unless sustained by the power of the Holy Spirit, who is alone able to keep him from falling. Ben and Tom had crept up to near where Mr Martin was standing. He saw them ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston
... during all this period was so frail, and his mind, especially at certain times, was so feeble, that he was almost as helpless as a child. There was an hereditary taint of insanity in the family, which made his case still ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... people describe only the weak, surly and frail as sinners? And every one when he advises others to describe only the strong, healthy, and ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... does not greatly trouble me, senor. I am no frail reed fearing a puff of air. I merely seek that duty which seems most fair to all concerned. Pray tell me then what it is you would ask at my hands. Nay, wait; before we go into this business be seated here, so we may ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... and in an Instant put out the Candles. But he cry'd to her, 'In vain, O too indiscreet Fair One, in vain you put out the Light; for Heaven still has Eyes, and will look down upon my broken Vows. I own your Power, I own I have all the Sense in the World of your charming Touches; I am frail Flesh and Blood, but—yet—yet I can resist; and I prefer my Vows to all your powerful Temptations.—I will be deaf and blind, and guard my Heart with Walls of Ice, and make you know, that when the Flames ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... they carried the frail craft to a place of safety, each fellow proud to be counted ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... dear father's a 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 be free, either; so what's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... permanent, and which swept the finest and most beautiful things away the soonest. The garland that blooms at night withers by morning; and the strength of man and the beauty of women are no longer-lived than the frail anemone, the lily and violet that flower and fall.[2] Sweetness is changed to bitterness; where the rose has spread her cup, one goes by and the brief beauty passes; returning, the seeker finds no rose, but a thorn. ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... was perfect union. We were no longer two. Therese had disappeared like a drop of water lost in the immensity of the ocean; Jesus alone remained—He was the Master, the King! Had not Therese asked Him to take away her liberty which frightened her? She felt herself so weak and frail, that she wished to be for ever united ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... to all, his love of his own fatherland, and that you would not disgrace him. Besides, Charley, there's not an humble hearth for many a long mile around us, where, amidst the winter's blast, tempered not excluded, by frail walls and poverty,—there's not one such but where poor Godfrey's name rises each night in prayer, and blessings are invoked on him by those who never ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... The De Peyster people, by reason of the advantage of their placid lagoon, had no reason to risk their lives in the surf in this manner, and so, naturally enough, they were not nearly as skilful in the management of their frail canoes when they had to face a sweeping sea on ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... flutingly sang of his experience. The wonders of this morning's wind and sun and clouds were expressed in a flow of words so right and sentences so perfectly balanced that they would have seemed pedantic had they not been clearly as spontaneous as the wordless notes of a bird in song. The frail, sweet voice rose and fell, lingered, quickened, in all manner of trills and roulades. That he himself could not hear it, seemed to me the greatest loss his deafness inflicted on him. One would have expected this disability to mar the music; but it didn't; save that now and again ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... national treasury, and they are in evidence at official dinners and all palace entertainments. They read and recite; they dance and sing; they become accomplished artists and musicians. They dress with exceptional taste; they move with exceeding grace; they are delicate in appearance, very frail and very human, very tender, sympathetic, and imaginative." But though they are certainly the prettiest women in Korea, move in the highest society, and might become concubines of the Emperor, they are not allowed to marry men of good class (Angus ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... into praise of my lover. However, I will not attempt to complete my argument; for if you do not understand me from what I have already said, the further you follow the wider you will wander. The truth, in short, is this: I practically believe in the doctrine of heredity; and as my body is frail and my brain morbidly active, I think my impulse towards a man strong in body and untroubled in mind a trustworthy one. You can understand that; it is a plain proposition in eugenics. But if I tell you that I have chosen this common ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... certainly no hint of things oriental about her—an English woman and of the people, in dull homely clothing, grave of aspect and of bearing; yet behind whose statuesque and sternly patient beauty a great flame seemed to quiver, offering sharp enough contrast to the frail glintings of the rain-washed sunset amid ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... 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, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... resign to lawless power, Nor think it worth the purchase of an hour; But Envy ne'er shall fix so foul a stain On the fair annals of a Brunswick's reign. 340 If, slave to party, to revenge, or pride; If, by frail human error drawn aside, I break the law, strict rigour let her wear; 'Tis hers to punish, and 'tis mine to bear; Nor, by the voice of Justice doom'd to death Would I ask mercy with my latest breath: But, anxious only for my country's good, In which my king's, of course, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... the enthusiasm, what use in imposing on the whole body a task which the vast majority are not qualified to perform? Would it not be well to recognise the fact which we cannot alter, and to abstain from demanding from frail human nature what human nature cannot render? Would it not be well for the Church to impose upon its ordinary members only ordinary duties? When the Bernard or the Whitefield appears let her by all means find occupation for him. Let her in such cases boldly ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... Mrs. Donegan's troubles this time which summoned her, although that excitable old woman met her, crying and wringing her hands. It was for a neighbor's misfortunes that she invoked Mary's aid. Dena Barowsky, a frail girl in the room above hers, who supported a family by her work in the factory, had had a ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of woman and of her equal powers. Ariosto treated women like spoiled children; the humanists delighted to rake up the old jibes at them in musty authors; the divines were hardest of all in their judgment. "Nature doth paint them forth," says John Knox of women, "to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble and foolish, and experience hath declared them to be unconstant, variable, cruel and void of the spirit of council and regimen." "If women bear children until they become sick and eventually die," preaches Luther, "that does no harm. Let them bear children till ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Assured that the frail wooden fortress is provided with water, wood and food, he gives himself up to the indolences of winter quarters, smoking pipes innumerable while the women-folk are busy with the evening meal. The cold snaps the nails in the plank walls with reports like pistol-shots; the stove crammed with ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... Tacitus sublimely expresses himself at the close of his admired biography of Agricola: "I do not mean to censure the custom of preserving in brass or marble the shape and stature of eminent men; but busts and statues, like their originals, are frail and perishable. The soul is formed of finer elements, its inward form is not to be expressed by the hand of an artist with unconscious matter; our manners and our morals may in some degree trace the resemblance. All of Agricola that gained our love and raised our admiration ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... was kept a close prisoner by the Inquisition, and not allowed either to set foot outside his own door, or to receive visits from non-Catholics. In the spring of 1639, however, he was allowed to go back to his villa at Gioiello, near Arcetri, and Milton obtained admission to him, old, frail, and blind, but in full possession of his mental faculty. There is observable in Milton, as Mr. Masson suggests, a prophetic fascination of the fancy on the subject of blindness. And the deep impression left by this sight ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... bar at its best was never very safe for navigation, and this evening it was in its element, as with every storm it presented one boiling, seething mass of foam. The inhabitants of the island saw the frail small boat from the ship securely inside the bar, and prophesied some dire calamity should the captain and the two sailors venture to return to the ship that night. But the captain and his companions, having secured sufficient provisions, decided (as far as I can remember the story), ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... terrify them on the earth, without troubling themselves about the sky. No man's property, liberty, or life was safe for a moment unless he were a devout servant of holy Church; and even in that case he held them by a frail tenure, for private spite might accuse him of heresy, and then for him there was little hope of mercy. One after another, the few who had hitherto remained staunch either fled from England, fell from the faith, or suffered at ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... in the form of amiable prepossessions. A vast mass of mystic and traditional lumber still enters into the foundations of Conservatism, and if all this "wood, hay, and stubble" were to be burnt up it would fare ill with the frail fabric overhead. The practical policy of Conservatism would not alter, and could not be altered much, but its pretensions would have to be pitched in a lower key, and the excessive modesty of the part which alone remains ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... hairy backwoods person quite wretchedly gotten up, even for a wilderness. Our host himself, I was quick to observe, was vogue to the last detail, with a sense of dress and equipment that can never be acquired, having to be born in one. As he stepped from his frail craft I saw that he was rather slight of stature, dark, with slender moustaches, a finely sensitive nose, and eyes of an almost austere repose. That he had much of the real manner was at once apparent. He greeted the Flouds and ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... say, had birth In that blest ground but it was play'd about With its peculiar glory. Then I rais'd My voice and cried "Wide Afric, doth thy Sun Lighten, thy hills enfold a City as fair As those which starr'd the night o' the Elder World? Or is the rumour of thy Timbuctoo A dream as frail as those of ancient Time?" A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light! A rustling of white wings! The bright descent Of a young Seraph! and he stood beside me There on the ridge, and look'd into my face With his unutterable, shining orbs, So that with hasty motion ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... start to tears a female auditor, than any preacher in the land. From boyhood he seemed to have the key to every heart he desired to unlock. Fatal gift! and terribly fatal did it prove to many a victim, and especially to that gifted but frail girl—Margaret Moncrief. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... the chain. The club rose as Miki's head came through. In another instant it would have beaten his head to a pulp—but Nanette was between it and the dog like a flash, and the blow went wild. It was with his fist that Le Beau struck out now, and the blow caught Nanette on the shoulder and sent her frail body down with a crash. The Brute sprang upon her. His fingers gripped ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... man in the eye, secretly idolise the men of masterful qualities. It is like the sick man Stevenson writing stories of rugged out-door activity. I heard a student say once that he was sure Marlowe was a little, frail, weak man physically, and that he poured out all his longing for virility and power in heroes ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... of the assembled craft, and leisurely pulled her way in and out amongst them. The decorated boats delighted her, some agleam with Chinese lanterns—giant glow-worms floating on the water, others with phantom sails of frail asparagus fern lit by swaying lights like dancing will-o'-the-wisps—dream-boats gliding slowly over ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... placed; and in this I fear I have sometimes, perhaps often, been mistaken. I am sure it is well to have this sifted and searched into, and none of the pains which must attend such a process are in vain. When we have learned more fully what and how frail we are, then we can better appreciate the help that is offered, and the abundant blessing of peace when it does come. The depth of our own capacity for suffering is known to few of us; and when we have ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... that thought should sustain a person," she remarked; "yet all tortures must be hard for poor, frail human bodies to bear." ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... wooden frame and osier work lined with leather, after the model of those used in the Channel among the Britons and subsequently by the Saxons, to be prepared in the camp and transported in waggons to the point where the bridges had stood. On these frail barks the other bank was reached and, as it was found unoccupied, the bridge was re-established without much difficulty; the road in connection with it was thereupon quickly cleared, and the eagerly-expected supplies were conveyed to the camp. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... bed I watch the moonbeams cast a trail So bright, so cold, so frail, That for a space it gleams Like hoar-frost on the margin of my dreams. I raise my head, — The splendid moon I see: Then droop my head, And sink to dreams of thee — ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... to her feet, but the unwonted strain upon her nerves and frail body had been greater than she knew. She made a step forward, felt the room whirl round her and then seem to collapse beneath her feet, and, clutching at her chair, sank back ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... said Harry; but Fred felt nervous; it was all new to him, and he could hardly summon up courage to cross the frail bridge over the foaming waters that rushed down the sluice, and formed a cataract on the other side—the waters plunging down in a muddy torrent, and then boiling up in the maddest way. But he grasped his cousin's hand tightly, and, crossing the bridge, walked round the mill to the other side. ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... for some lazy assistance from her father's other foot. She further brought a pair of her uncle's furred slippers, while Reiter Hugh proceeded to dangle one of the boots in the air, expatiating on its frail condition, and expressing his intention of getting a new pair from Master Matthias, the sutor, ere he should leave Ulm on the morrow. Then, again, came the dreaded subject; his daughter must go ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Love retained me at his hest, And to his sway hath so accustomed me, That as at first he cruel used to be, So in my heart he now doth sweetly rest. Thus when by him my strength is dispossessed, So that the spirits seem away to flee, My frail soul feels such sweetness verily, That with it pallor doth my face invest. Then Love o'er me such mastery doth seize, He makes my sighs in words to take their way, And they unto my lady go to pray That she to give me further grace would please. Where'er she sees me, this to me ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... Would it be believed, said Sir Robert to the House, that one chain fixed round her body, had been weighed, and was found no less than twenty-eight pounds weight!"—From what I have heard of the generous turn of the Prince Regent, his sympathetic heart would be moved to compassion for these two frail mortals, the one very old, the other very young. But what are we to think of his master, the magnanimous John Bull? I believe a soldier feels more of the martial spirit when in uniform, than in a loose drab coat. The same feeling may extend to a judge in his robes, and to a parson ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... "civilization"—there is surely nothing quite so "poor," so woefully devoid of practical protection, and, in its exceptional helplessness, so weakly gushed over and little understood as the child of frail humanity. ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... upon the face and become the pupil of that illustrious Chinese pilgrim, who had seen Buddha Land. Later on, other monks crossed to the land of Sinim, until we find that in this and succeeding centuries, hundreds of Japanese in their frail junks, braved the dangers of the stormy ocean, in order to study Sanskrit, to read the old scriptures, to meet the new lights of learning or revelation, and to become versed in the latest fashions of religion. We find the pilgrims returning and founding new sects or sub-sects, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... view to westward, I thought of Dante. For Dante in this castle was the guest of Moroello Malaspina, what time he was yet finishing the "Inferno." There is a little old neglected garden, full to south, enclosed upon a rampart which commands the Borgo, where we found frail canker-roses and yellow amaryllis. Here, perhaps, he may have sat with ladies—for this was the Marchesa's pleasance; or may have watched through a short summer's night, until he saw that tremolar della marina, portending dawn, which afterwards he ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... ancient people, With the happy harmless faces, Dreaming till the purple twilight In their flowery garden-places, Finding every year the sunshine And the wind a little colder, Growing, tho' they hardly guessed it, Very gradually older, Till at last they grew so frail That to their gardens they were carried, Very feeble and exhausted, Weak ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... 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 ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... hail, And our cedars proudly wave; We forget their tenure frail, With the bounteous hand ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... wiser than he, early determined the future course of Master William Cullen Bryant. He was not to be a doctor, but a poet. A poet, that is, if he lived to be anything; for the chances were against his living at all. The lad was exceedingly frail, and had a head the immensity of which troubled his anxious father. How to reduce it to the normal size was a puzzle which Dr. Bryant solved in a spring of clear, cold water, which burst out of the ground on or near his homestead, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... from a 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 to the startling amphitheater ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the cold glimmering sun sank behind the Pentlands. The trees had been shorn of their frail leaves, and the misty night was closing fast in upon the dull and short day; but the candles glittered at the shop windows, and leery-light-the-lamps was brushing about with his ladder in his oxter, and bleezing flamboy sparking out behind ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... post-horses was at the door, and a servant, who looked like a foreigner, was in waiting with his master's cloak. As I saw Lord Castleton step into the street, and wrap himself in his costly mantle lined with sables, I observed, more than I had while he was in the room, the enervate slightness of his frail form, and the more than paleness of his thin, joyless face; and then, instead of envy, I felt compassion for the owner of all this pomp and grandeur,—felt that I would not have exchanged my hardy health and easy humor and vivid capacities of enjoyment ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... future years, thy babes Should o'er this frail memorial bend, (For first affection rarely fades!) And boast that I was once ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... instead of 'have went?'" As she talked Agatha rumpled Adam's hair, pulled off his string tie, upon which she insisted, even when he was plowing; laid her hard little face against his, and held him tight with her frail arms, so that Adam being part human as well as part Bates, held her closely also and said these words: "You bet your sweet life I will!" And what is more he did. He followed a furrow the next day, softly muttering over to himself: ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Island (Naura), two isolated spots just under the equator, surpass them all in the art of catching jackshark. It was the fortunate experience of the writer to live among these people for many years, and to be inducted into the native method of shark-catching. In frail canoes, made of short pieces of wood, sewn together with coco-nut fibre, the Ocean Islanders will venture out with rude but ingeniously contrived wooden hooks, and capture sharks of a girth (not length) that no untrained European would dare to attempt to kill from a well-appointed ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... right, my son. She won't refuse to meet a friend of yours." He led the way as he spoke to the point of vantage occupied by Mrs Crow, followed, with plain reluctance, by her son. She was a frail-looking old woman, with a knitted shawl pinned tightly across her chest, and her bonnet, in the course of commercial activity, pushed so far back as to be ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... than those that have vanished, but all in the green quiet of the untested future. They shall be standing by the time the captive sons come back. It is a game at which they play for the sake of the blinded mother; she listens smilingly, nodding her old head, her frail ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... was more grinding of the gunwale of the boat amongst the boughs, the water came swishing in over the side, and directly after the frail vessel partly turned over, with her keel lying sideways ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... your heart would break in this way. You are a strong-minded young woman with proper principles. I do not venture to say that mine would; it has suffered, and, it must be confessed, survived. But there are some souls thus gently constituted, thus frail, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... challenged his right to live. But in that tense moment when he thought that it was all over, the lithe form of Thalma reached his side and in a frenzy of terror pulled him away. But even then the sloping belly of the onrushing beast tore him from her frail hands and ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... her in time, his strong arms grasping the frail, bent figure as it sank to the floor. As he lifted her bodily from her feet, intent upon carrying her to the open air, her bony fingers sank into his arm with the grip of death, and—could he believe his ears!—a low, mocking laugh came ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... obliterate the difference between them, so as to reduce them to one absolute essence? Then the whole superstructure of Pantheism falls along with the Idealism on which it depends; and it is found to be, not a solid and enduring system of truth, but a frail edifice, ingeniously constructed out of the mere ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... remained in the service of the Lord; you have understood the divine mission which had been reserved for you; you have been unwilling to step over the profane threshold and to enter the world, that cavern, I ought to say, in which I am now assailed, tossed about like a frail bark during a tempest. Nay, the anger of the waves of the sea compared to that of the passions is mere child's play. Happy friend, who art ignorant of what I have learned. Happy friend, whose eyes have not yet measured the abyss into which ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... since you saw her," answered the priest; "she was always rather frail, but I do not see that ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... you mean to say that you do all your travelling on these crooked cow paths? Why, it is a matter of scientific observation that even on the open prairie a cow path loses nearly a quarter of its headway by constant winding in and out, merely to avoid frail bushes and infinitesimal stones. Now if you and Jeff would spend a little of your leisure in cutting trails, as they do in forestry, you would more than save yourselves the time and ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... 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 ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... from insult to protect, Some frail memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd, Implores the passing tribute of ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... pale-faced, beautiful girl, with black brows arching in a thin line, with purple-black eyes like somber pools. She was no more than five feet tall, and slim and frail. But, like her companion, there was about her a queer aspect of calm, quiet power and force of personality—physical vitality merged with ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... behind, Frail bark! I loose my anchored mind And large, before the prosperous wind Desert the strand - A new Columbus sworn ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... relation of things to the empire of thought." Religion and ethics agree with all lower culture in degrading Nature and suggesting its dependence on Spirit. "The devotee flouts Nature."—"Plotinus was ashamed of his body."—"Michael Angelo said of external beauty, 'it is the frail and weary weed, in which God dresses the soul, which He has called into time.'" Emerson would not undervalue Nature as looked at through the senses and "the unrenewed understanding." "I have no hostility to Nature," he ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... daughter Nora; but at the present moment he was in danger. In the barn, too, he was in much greater danger than he had been when in the safe seclusion of the Castle. It would be possible for any one to creep up to the barn at night, to push open the somewhat frail windows or equally frail door, and to accomplish that deed which had already been attempted. Nora knew well that she must act, she must do something—what, was the puzzle. Squire O'Shanaghgan was one of the most generous, open-hearted, and affectionate of men. ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... as she had perceived Robert Browning's poetic greatness, Elizabeth Barrett discerned his personal worth. He was essentially manly in all respects: so manly, that many frail souls of either sex philandered about his over-robustness. From the twilight gloom of an aeesthetic clique came a small voice belittling the great man as "quite too 'loud,' painfully excessive." Browning was manly enough to laugh at all ghoulish cries of any kind whatsoever. Once in a way the lion ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... wear when he plays king, is not difficult to grant. At the present writing crowns in the Orient are not fashionable. As I look out of my window, the salmon-pink walls of the Forbidden City rise in the dusty distance. Under the flaming yellow roof of the Palace is a frail and frightened little six-year-old boy—the ruler of millions—who, if he knew and could, would gladly exchange his priceless crown for freedom and a bag ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... marble statue, Valentine stood on the bank of the river, watching the frail bark which was carrying her lover away. It flew along the Rhone like a bird in a tempest, and after a few seconds appeared like a black speck in the midst of the heavy fog which floated over the water, then was ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... to get in. It rushes across the turnpike road, where there is no gate, no policeman, no signal: nothing but a rough wooden arch, on which is painted 'WHEN THE BELL RINGS, LOOK OUT FOR THE LOCOMOTIVE.' On it whirls headlong, dives through the woods again, emerges in the light, clatters over frail arches, rumbles upon the heavy ground, shoots beneath a wooden bridge which intercepts the light for a second like a wink, suddenly awakens all the slumbering echoes in the main street of a large town, and dashes on haphazard, pell-mell, neck-or-nothing, down the middle of the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... see before you a frail sinner, who will soon appear before a greater and more awful tribunal than yours. I am not here, my Lord, to defend an act to which I was prompted by—may I be permitted to say so—by my very virtues. Some men, my Lord, we ruined by excellent qualities, and some by those which ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... clearly, We're frail backsliding mortals merely, Eve's bonny squad, priests wyte them sheerly For our grand fa'; But stilt, but still, I like them dearly— ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... publisher. The book sold, sold every copy of the small first edition, and in due time the publisher's statement came. I did not think my half of the profits was very great, but it seemed a fair division after every imaginable cost had been charged up against my poor book, and that frail venture had been made to pay the expenses of composition, corrections, paper, printing, binding, advertising, and editorial copies. The wonder ought to have been that there was anything at all coming to me, but I was young and greedy then, and I really thought ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sin and pain Her pure, exalted soul, Unjustly, for thy partial good detain? No—rather strive thy grov'ling mind to raise Up to that unclouded blaze, That heav'nly radiance of eternal light, In which enthron'd she now with pity sees, How frail, how insecure, how slight, ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Groups—are all expert shark fishermen; but the wild people of Paanopa (Ocean Island) stand facile princeps. I have frequently seen four men in a small canoe kill eight or ten sharks (each of which was as long as their frail little craft) within ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... night, wherewith now ariseth The red moon through the garden boughs frail, overladen, O faint murmuring tongue of the dream-tide triumphant, That wouldst tell me sad tales in the times long passed over, If somewhat I sicken and turn to your freshness, From no shame it is of earth's tangle and trouble, And deeds done for nought, and change that forgetteth; But ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... have contracted in the midst of this miserable and naughty world, through the lusts of the flesh or the wiles of Satan, being purged and done away, it may be presented pure and without spot before thee. And teach us who survive, in this and other like daily spectacles of mortality, to see how frail and uncertain our own condition is; and so to number our days, that we may seriously apply our hearts to that holy and heavenly wisdom, whilst we live here, which may in the end bring us to life everlasting, through the merits of Jesus Christ, thine ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... himself, but for his wife, who was very frail and delicate in health, and ill fitted to bear ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... woeful sight indeed—frail cab- bages all rent, Turnips mangled, little carrots all in one red burial blent, Parsnips ruined, lettuce shattered, torn and wilted beet and bean, And a black and grinning gap where once ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... breathing that it seemed as if she were already dead. Martin removed the covering, and one glance at that gentle, care-worn countenance sufficed to convince him that his old aunt lay before him! His first impulse was to seize her in his strong arms, but another look at the frail and attenuated form caused him to ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Locker, for it is by this name, and as the author of 'London Lyrics,' that he will be best remembered, devoted his attention almost exclusively to English literature, although of late years he had devoted as much attention as his frail health would allow to the formation of a section of rare books in French literature. It would be impossible to describe in this place all the many book rarities at Rowfant; we must be content, therefore, with indicating a few of the more interesting ones: Alexander ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... heard of the couple there during this brief absence. In the course of a few hours some young men testified to having seen such a man and woman rowing in a frail hired craft, the head of the boat kept straight to sea; they had sat looking in each other's faces as if they were in a dream, with no consciousness of what they were doing, or whither they were steering. It was not till late that day that more tidings ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... correct, I could never under any imaginable circumstances marry my cousin, Bishop Douglass. Although I trust and reverence him beyond all other men, 'I love my cousin cousinly, no more,' and he is too much absorbed by his holy office and its solemn responsibilities, to waste thought on the frail, sweet, rosy garland of any woman's love. Fret yourself no longer in casting ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... wanted to meet him. But I never could. The youths used to murmur: "Oh! It's no use you meeting him." They were afraid he was not spectacular enough. Or they desired to keep him to themselves, like a precious pearl. I pictured him as very frail, and very positive in a quiet way. He was only about thirty when ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... heard on the stairs, and an old man, tall and frail, odorous of pipe smoke, with shaggy, unkept grey hair and a dingy beard, tobacco stained about the mouth, entered uncertainly. He went slowly up to the coffin and stood rolling a blue cotton handkerchief between his hands, seeming ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... wisdom—when the art of healing shall be lost and absorbed in the one universal medicine when sages shall become monarchs of the earth, and death itself retreat before their frown,—if this blessed consummation of all things can be hastened by the slight circumstance that a frail, earthly body, which must needs partake corruption, shall be consigned to the grave a short space earlier than in the course of nature, what is such a sacrifice to the advancement ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Middleton. He was not afraid of a burst of helpless weeping when she came. She was gentle, yielding, delicate, but there was something of the old squire's obstinacy in her, and in a supreme emergency it came out as firmness. She looked old and frail as she stepped into the passage and closed the door after her. Her hand shook, but her eyes met his bravely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... of the "Spell of Cadboll" Norman received the hearty and unanimous congratulations of the circle. The frail old bard, pulling himself together, got up, went across the room, and shook him heartily with both hands. This special honour was a most unusual one. It was clear that Alastair was just in the mood when a little persuasion would suffice to ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... will suffice. Scurvy, which often claimed a death-roll of from forty to eighty per cent in a single winter; famine such as that which followed the failure of ships from home to arrive at the opening of navigation; the storms which drove the frail shallop on the rocks and shoals of Norumbega; the risk of mutiny; the chances of war, whether against the Indians or the English; the rapids {145} of the wilderness as they threatened the overloaded canoe on its swift descent; the possible treachery of Indian guides—such is a partial catalogue ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... sight to see that fair young mother, still a child in years, and in her exhausted state of wavering consciousness, alive only through her fond affections; gleams of perception, and momentary flashes of life, called forth only by her husband, or by the moanings of the little frail babe, which seemed to have as feeble and precarious a hold of life as herself. The doctors told John that they were haunted through the day by the remembrance of her face, so sweet, even in insensibility, and ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forever, like coral reefs encircling a lagoon in the Pacific seas. Only by remembering the years that had been before, and the years that should follow after, could the reluctant mind convince itself that this seeming eternity was frail; that whoso lingered too long among the splendors of September would be surely overtaken by treacherous frost, and biting winter winds; that there was but one way to escape the revolting decline from this pinnacle of life—to die. That was my secret. I alone, of all who shivered at approaching ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... already too late; and the invalid herself opposed the project with gentle obstinacy. Thin and pale in the great armchair, where the insidious and obscure nervous malady made her appear smaller and more frail every day without effacing the smile of her eyes or the charming grace of her wasted face, she clung to her native land and wished to breathe her native air. Nowhere else could she expect to get well so quickly, nowhere else would it be so easy for ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... the delicate fibre of woman's heart, ye will not in very sooth believe that such events as those we have described—such tempests of passion—fierce winds of woe—blinding lightnings of tremendous joy and tremendous grief—could pass over one frail flower and leave it all unscathed. No! Grief kills as joy doth. Doth not the scorching sun nip the rose-bud as well as the bitter wind? As ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... Here along the beach were shells, exquisitely tinted like a sunset sky, cast on shore by the cruel waves. Tender mosses and fragile sea-weed lay upon the sand revealing the infinite tenderness of these frail children of the boundless deep. Looking upon the seething, surging mass of water that rolled on the troubled sea only last night, who would have thought it the home of such delicate beauty? "Truly," we said, as we gazed in admiration and wonder at the fair scene before us, "the sea as well ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... at Lad's first charge, had stepped back. But, at once she had caught up again the stick and belabored the sow with all her frail muscular might. She might as well have been beating the side of a concrete wall. Heedless of the flailing, the sow ignored her; and continued her maddened assault on Lad. The maids, attracted by the noise, crowded ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... to Mr Brandram telling of his arrival in Madrid, "begging pardon for all errors of commission and omission," and confessing himself "a frail and foolish vessel," that had "accomplished but a slight portion of what I proposed in my vanity," Borrow proceeded to disprove his own assertion. He found the affairs of the Bible Society in a far ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... was in your place," I tells her, "I'd drink coffee, and if your furnishings is all as frail as that chocolate set you're featurin', you better grab hold of the ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... himself on the St. Andrew's cross, asking with a resigned smile that they would make his sufferings as short as possible. As soon as his head was covered, the executioner gave the signal. One would have thought a very few blows would have finished so frail a being, but he seemed as hard to kill as the venomous reptiles which must be crushed and cut to pieces before life is extinct, and the coup de grace was found necessary. The executioner uncovered his head and showed the confessor that the eyes were closed ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... over-bold, they may say that I was frail; They may tell I dared too much and was doomed at last to fail; They may talk my battle o'er and discuss it as they choose, But I did no brother wrong—I'm the ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... journey for you,' said the landlady, compassionately regarding my diminutive stature and frail aspect. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... very great. But beyond any other sensation, came the thought that Starr, his beautiful Starr, was out there on that wide vast ocean, tossing in a tiny boat. For now the great steamer that had seemed so large and palatial, had dwindled in his mind to a frail toy, and he was filled with a nameless fear for her. His little Starr out there on that fearful deep, with only that cold-eyed mother to take care of her. A wild desire to fly to her and bring her back possessed him; a thrilling, awesome something, he had ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... hither Having neither wit nor wisdom, Having neither art nor power, Wanting in ancestral knowledge, Lacking prudence of the fathers, That thy watch-dogs may devour me. "My devoted mother washed me, When a frail and tender baby, Three times in the nights of summer, Nine times in the nights of autumn, That upon my journeys northward I might sing the ancient wisdom, Thus protect myself from danger; When at home I sing as wisely ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... "It looks a little frail, compared to the big RED CLOUD, Tom," answered the eccentric man, "but I'm going up in her just the same; bless my ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... that were glad and fleet and strong, Shall Silence take you in her net? And shall Death quell that radiant song Whose echo thrills the meadow yet? Burst the frail web about you clinging And charm Death's cruel heart with singing Till with strange ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... cakes, the said shepherds courteously entreated them to give them some for their money, as the price then ruled in the market. For here it is to be remarked, that it is a celestial food to eat for breakfast hot fresh cakes with grapes, especially the frail clusters, the great red grapes, the muscadine, the verjuice grape, and the laskard, for those that are costive in their belly, because it will make them gush out, and squirt the length of a hunter's staff, like the very tap of a barrel; and ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... some shape is clearly seen. The curtains were not quite drawn, and a plane-tree branch with leaves still hanging, which had kept them company all the fifteen years they had lived there, was moving darkly in the wind, now touching the glass with a frail tap, as though asking of him, who had been roaming in that wind so many hours, to let it in. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... manage that, now. But, Lord bless 'ee! thee'll never make no hand of it." He chose out saw, hammer, plane and auger, and packed them up in a carpenter's frail, with a few other tools. "Don't 'ee talk about payment, now; naybors must be nayborly. Only, you see, a man must ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... those who contend that the United States is so far from Europe as to be safe from attack by a European fleet; because the intervening distance was frequently traversed then by British and French fleets of frail, slow, sailing ships, which were vital factors in the war. Without the British war-ships, the British could not have landed and supported their troops. Without the French war-ships the French could not have landed and supported their troops, ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... thrown a little pale blue shawl round her shoulders, and held the pretty baby in her arms. She was a remarkably good-looking woman, a really young-looking woman for her age, but weakness was written all over her—the weakness of a frail although loving spirit, and the weakness of extreme bodily illness, for she was ill, far more ill than her children knew. The greatest anxiety of the honest doctor's life was connected with his ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... frail hope now left of seeing the Red Indians, lay on the banks of the River Exploits, on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... and climbed out onto the vault. Never before had Bobby failed to hear that well-known tap-tap-tapping on the graveled path, nor failed to trot down to meet it with friskings of welcome. But now he lay very still, even when a pair of frail arms tried to lift his dead weight to a heaving breast, and Tammy's cry of woe rang through the kirkyard. In a moment Ailie and Mistress Jeanie were in the wet grass beside them, half a hundred casements flew open, and the piping voices of tenement ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... could carry her when empty for three or four miles without resting. They had no small canoe on this voyage. Their hopes, and, it may be truly said, their lives, were dependent on this solitary and frail conveyance. ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... an angry flush upon her face. Betto gently drew me into an adjoining bedroom, and, with a troubled face, implored me not to give way to angry feelings. 'Be gentle to her,' she said; 'poor thing, she's as frail as an eggshell. Wait till she is well, master, and then—I pray God may bring some ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... pale, and in poor health. Still, his eyes retained all their lustre. My affection for him was increased by a knowledge of his extreme weakness and sufferings. He felt for me in the same manner; we saw by how frail a tenure hung the lives of both, and that one must ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... for sick and dying, Knew neither friend nor foe, She spent her strength in trying To heal a neighbor's woe. For deeds by love inspired The Kaiser's vengeance fell On form so frail and ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... an American and an Englishman had visited 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, from where—but for the intervention of the American ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein |
