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More "Fragile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... faces of that packed mass of humanity lighted up with interest, and with what intensity all eyes gazed upon this fragile girl! And how natural it was; for these people realized that at last they were looking upon that person whom they had so long hungered to see; a person whose name and fame filled all Europe, and made all other names and all other renowns insignificant ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in the light, four-wheeled vehicle, and found it difficult to keep it, for the trail was villainous, and Stirling drove rapidly. Their way led between shadowy colonnades of towering firs, and the fragile, two-seated frame bounced and lurched into and out of deep ruts, and over the split trees that had been laid flat-side downward in the quaggy places—like a field gun going into action was the best comparison Weston could think of. The horses, however, kept their feet, and the ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... he watched, and in the course of that time saw the process of filling the small boxes which formed his barrier and hiding-place with the sealed tubes. He observed the care with which the fragile tubes were placed in their beds of cotton wool, and had a glimpse of the lined interior of one of the boxes. He was on the point of lifting down a box to make a more thorough examination when he heard ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... There were some that resembled gigantic snail shells, and others shaped like the cornucopias, used to hold sugar-plums for children. One species, the most remarkable of all, was composed of a substance, resembling mother-of-pearl, exquisitely beautiful, but very fragile, breaking easily, if you but set foot on one of them: they were changeable in colour, being of a dazzling white, a pearly blue, or a delicate pale green, as viewed in different lights. Scattered here and there, among these deserted tenements of various ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... was a cold, keen night; the full moon rode high in a starless sky, and there must have been ten or twelve degrees of frost. We had left far behind us the diaphanous veils of mist hovering above river banks, out of which the poplars stood argent and fragile, as though the landscape were a Japanese print. Through the open door of the horse-box I saw a soldier stretched upon his straw, with a red gaping wound in his half-naked body. Over him stooped a nurse, improvising with delicate ministries a hasty dressing. In the next carriage the black face of ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... been saved by feminine tact. There was the cabinet-member's wife who drank out of her finger-bowl because her guest, a senator, had done so. And the general's wife who, when a clumsy tea drinker smashed a priceless cup, picked up another of the fragile affairs and crushed it between her fingers with a "They do break easily, don't they?" And the woman who, when M. Blanc was mistaken at an English garden party for a page, replied, "Well, M. ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... wave of protest swept over him, of tender protectiveness. He had to fight down an impulse to catch her close, to cry out that thenceforth he would assume her burden. He rejoiced intensely that he had found so rare a spirit, fragile yet brave and equal to all the hard emergencies ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... navaja in his hand. Suddenly with a quick jerking movement he sent it flying through the air, and it struck into the wooden door, just over Chiquita's head. As it darted by, like a flash of lightning, the spectators had involuntarily closed their eyes for a second, but the fragile child's long dark eyelashes did not even quiver. The brigand's wonderful skill elicited a loud burst of admiration and applause from an audience not easily surprised or pleased, in which even the man ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Occasionally it became a trifle rough or rude; but you always knew where you had him. With special ardor he saluted Frau Kahle, and it looked almost droll to watch the contrast between him, a burly, corpulent fellow, and this tiny, fragile figure that resembled ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... to be easily forgotten, and yet eyes, hair, expression, combined to remind him of some one whom he had seen but could not bring definitely to mind. There were no names on the locket, no marks of identification of any kind, yet realizing the sacredness of it, Keith slipped the fragile gold chain about his neck, and securely hid the ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... "Bug-eyed Monsters" coming to Earth, that the idea of beings from other worlds looking and acting human seems fantastic. It should not. There is good sound scientific reason to believe that there is little chance of it being any other way. Life is a delicate and fragile thing when compared to cosmic extremes of temperature and environment in our universe. If life formed on earth as science now believes that it did, we must have had just the right size planet at just the right ...
— The Four-Faced Visitors of Ezekiel • Arthur W. Orton
... a wonderful day," said Archie. "I think I will remember it years and years until I come to die. On days like this - I do not know if you feel as I do - but everything appears so brief, and fragile, and exquisite, that I am afraid to touch life. We are here for so short a time; and all the old people before us - Rutherfords of Hermiston, Elliotts of the Cauldstaneslap - that were here but a while since riding about and keeping up a great noise ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me to them, And tell them that, to ease them of their griefs, Their fears of hostile strokes, their aches, losses, Their pangs of love, with other incident throes That nature's fragile vessel doth sustain In life's uncertain voyage, I will some kindness do them: I'll teach them to prevent wild ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... kindness. But these fluctuations shook to its depths the soul of the sensitive youth; he no longer deemed the world subject to him, because he possessed Evadne's love; he felt in every nerve that the dire storms of the mental universe were about to attack his fragile being, which quivered at ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... fingers; he looked very much aware of them. "Let me carry at least one," she begged. "I can perfectly with my parasol hand;" but he refused her even one. "If I may be permitted to take the responsibility," he said, happily, and she rejoined, "Oh, I would trust you with things more fragile." At which, such is the discipline of these orders, he looked steadily in front of him and seemed ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... happy; she was inspired by an unreasoning joy. She was happy because she was so young and fragile and inexperienced, and he so much older, and more powerful and more capable. She was happy because she was a mere girl and he a mature and important male. She thought their relation in that moment exquisitely beautiful. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... blackened rafters; he looked out at either door and frowned perplexed, first at the hills, then at the valley. He raised his head and dropped it suddenly with great amazement and much weariness. Finally he ventured to lift a wilted and fragile hand and looked at it. It was not white; but it was unsteady as a laurel leaf beside a waterfall. After a moment's rest from the exertion he parted his lips to speak, but a whisper faint as the sound of the air in the shrubs issued from them. He listened but there was no answer. There was ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... at the sight of metre or at the sound of rhyme whenever I am at the priory or Sir Philip at Fieldhead. Harmony, indeed! When did I whip up syllabub sonnets or string stanzas fragile as fragments of glass? and when did I betray a belief that ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... felt about ye, and all my dreams which have often strangely deformed thee, will die with me. You will exist to reflect other images in other minds, and ever will remain the same, although your reflected semblance vary in a thousand ways, changeable as the hearts of those who view thee. One of these fragile mirrors, that ever doted on thine image, is about to be broken, crumbled to dust. But everteeming Nature will create another and another, and thou wilt ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... encircled the small cottage-bonnet, and a long white veil half concealed in its ample folds the fragile form, which, if it had lost the roundness of early youth, still retained the most delicate symmetry of outline; upon her breast lay, half hidden, a withered rose, fit emblem, methought, for her who wore it. Oft-times her pale thin hands were clasped, and once, when our ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... attended to her usual task with the papers of the day's lessons and the marking of the morrow's work before she glanced up at the five girls she had detained. They sat in widely separated sections of the room. Rose Clymer, pretty, fragile, curly-haired, occupied the front seat of the end row. Her face had no color and her small mouth was set in painful lines. Four seats across from her Bessy Bell leaned on her desk, with defiant calmness, and traces of scorn still in her expressive ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... women." Why does the husband, thus neglected, get out of going to the occasional party whenever he can, and when he does allow himself to be dragged thither, why does he sulk, leaning against a chilly mantel-piece, eying his fragile coffee cup with disdain, and enacting the role of martyr generally, until he can persuade his wife to go home again? Why, indeed; but because he feels out of place. His rare and incidental appearance is ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... at once, he hastily summoned Kesiah from the storeroom, and between them, with several solicitous maids in attendance, they carried the fragile little lady up to her chamber, where a fire of resinous pine was burning ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... going up a huge staircase, of which the lower steps still remained, as did the balustrade, rusty, split, and in places twisted. Then suddenly they turned off by a fragile wooden bridge, resting on the supports of the staircase, between high walls on which were dimly visible the remains of huge frescoes, cracked, decayed, and blackened with soot, the hind legs of a horse, a woman's torso undraped, with inscriptions almost illegible ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Governor's morning stroll to the post-office. How much more magnificent, impressive, and spectacular, then, was the scene at public functions when the General would lead forth the silver-haired relic of former greatness, like some rare and fragile waxwork figure, and trumpet his pristine eminence to his ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Limestone and sandstone compose the secondary formations of a large portion of Canada, and of nearly all that vast extent of country in the United States drained by the Mississippi. At Niagara the interposing structure of slate is nearly forty feet thick, and fragile, like shale crumbling away from under the limestone, thus strengthening the opinion that there has been for many ages a continual retrocession of the Great Falls. Around Lake St. Clair, masses of granite, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... to Our Lady of the Trenches, was blessed by the chaplain of the French regiment. The 9th Squadron of the 6th Company recommends its care and preservation to their successors. Please do not touch the fragile statue ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... softly on the lips. She opened her eyes and smiled at me without speaking. I felt an almost uncontrollable desire to take her in my arms, and clasp her to my heart; but, latterly, I had hardly dared press her hand, she seemed so fragile ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... up through deep, powdery snow that was unmarred by sled-track or moccasin impression. Smoke, in the lead, pressed the fragile crystals down under his fat, short snow-shoes. The task required lungs and muscle, and he flung himself into it with all his strength. Behind, on the surface he packed, strained the string of six dogs, the steam-jets of their breathing attesting ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... higher in the cathedral, without pausing to note a thousand barbarous acts of every kind, what has become of that delightful little steeple which rested upon the point of intersection of the transept, and which, no less fragile and no less daring than its neighbor, the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, (also destroyed), rose yet nearer heaven than the towers, slender, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... Odjard and Lieut. Mead with two platoons arrived opposite a village named Gorka when suddenly without any warning the enemy, concealed in the woods on both sides of the river, opened up a heavy machine gun and rifle fire. Our fragile boat was no protection from this fire. To attempt to run around and withdraw in the shallow stream was next to impossible, so after a hasty consultation the commander grasped the horns of the dilemma by running the boat as close to the shore as possible, ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... the quality of nails leads to the conclusion that there is a thorough disturbance of the process of nutrition. If they are fragile and brittle, there is no question but that there is lack of certain nutritive salts in the blood. Swollen and deformed nails indicate special disturbances in circulation, ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... good, with a goodness which, though limited, is pure and perfect in nature. Nay, we may even admit that such lives are frequently the most complete and beautiful, just as the fairest flowers grow, not on the tallest trees, but on the fragile plants at their foot. Nevertheless, even in the case of those persons who have never broken from the traditional faith of the past, or felt it to be inadequate, that faith has been silently reconstructed in a new synthesis of knowledge. Spiritual life cannot come by ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... The unique cultures, fragile economies, and locations of our Caribbean and Pacific Islands are distinct assets to the United States which require the sensitive application of policy. The United States Government should pursue initiatives begun by my Administration and the Congress to stimulate ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... longest roots, for we found masses of dapicho two feet in diameter and four inches thick, eight feet distant from the trunks. Sometimes the Indians dig in vain at the foot of dead trees; at other times the dapicho is found beneath the hevea or jacio still green. The substance is white, corky, fragile, and resembles by its laminated structure and undulating edge, the Boletus ignarius. The dapicho perhaps takes a long time to form; it is probably a juice thickened by a particular disposition of the vegetable organs, diffused and coagulated in a humid soil secluded from the contact ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... is the Brat at last! Owing, I suppose, to the slenderness and fragile tenuity of his own charms, the Brat is a great admirer of fine women, the bigger the better; quantity, not quality; and, true to his colors, he now arrives with a neighboring cook, a lady of sixteen stone, on ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... there was a specimen, with the scuta, broad, smooth, thin, and fragile, without any ridge running from the umbo to the apex, and with the occludent margin reflexed. This seemed caused by the shell having been attacked by some boring animal, and from having supported Balani. In the same specimen the first cirrus ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... any leaves. Another was a yellow flower, with four petals, a pale miniature California poppy. Still another was a purple-red flower, almost as large as a buttercup, with dark green leaves. Last and tiniest of all were infinitely fragile pink and white blossoms, on very flat plants, smiling wanly up from ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... things, For our adoring hearts had turned within from all their wanderings: For beauty called to beauty and there thronged at the enchanter's will The vanished hours of love that burn within the Ever-living still. And sweet eternal faces put the shadows of the earth to rout, And faint and fragile as a moth your white hand fluttered and went out. Oh, who am I who tower beside this goddess of the twilight air? The burning doves fly from my heart and melt within her bosom there. I know the sacrifice of old they offered to the mighty queen, And this adoring love has brought us back the ...
— The Nuts of Knowledge - Lyrical Poems New and Old • George William Russell
... thy rest. Thy flesh shall rest in hope, till that great day When He who once endured far greater woes Than mortal man can know; who when on earth Received such little children in his arms, Graciously blessing them, shall come again; Then like the glorious body of thy Lord Who wakes thy dust, this fragile frame shall be. Then shalt thou mount with him on angels' wings Be freed from sorrow, sickness, sin and death. And in ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... it come to pass that solitude itself becometh fragile and breaketh open, like a grave that breaketh open and can no longer hold its dead. Everywhere ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... So fragile a membrane scarcely possesses the reliability which should be possessed by a structure whose presence or absence has often meant so much. Its absence by no means necessarily signifies that a woman has had intercourse with a man. Its presence by no means signifies ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the glory of the first aerial navigators? Immense courage was necessary to ascend by means of those fragile envelopes which contained only warm air. Besides, has not aerostatic science made great progress since the ascensions ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... secret suffocated him. He was in one of those crises in which a man, however strong he may be, totters and seeks some support, however fragile. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... down and the leg gradually revealed. And the sight of the little soft leg, so fragile and defenceless, really did touch Edward Henry. It made him feel more like an authentic father than he had felt for a long time. And the sight of the red wound hurt him. Still, it was a beautifully clean wound, and it was ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... overflowing horn of plenty, blooming Futurity; show him in your mirror the joys of Paradise, while with fleeting foot you elude his eager grasp. Thus will I work my battery of death, stroke after stroke, upon his fragile body, until the troop of furies close upon him with Despair! Triumph! triumph!—the plan is complete—difficult and masterly beyond compare—sure—safe; for then (with a sneer) the dissecting knife can find no trace of wound or of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... girl shook her head, smiling. She looked less tired now. She was pretty and fragile, with fair hair and blue eyes. She was very pale and was rather shabbily and ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... workers sought more diverting labor; at any rate the futile chopping was abandoned. Instead, several long ladders were hooked together and the synthesis lowered from the curb to the edge of Dinkman's roof. It seemed remarkably fragile, but it reached and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... me?" Margaret said. In spite of her anger, the humility of the fragile figure brought a suggestion of pity into her voice. The radiant beauty whom she had steeled her nerves to meet had given place to this meek, formless penitent. "Please put up your veil—I can't see you." She knew that she could not trust the woman's words; she wished ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... to a vital point, which Europeans have seemed determined not to comprehend—that of the extremely artificial and fragile character of the political structure which our architects of national ruin are laboring to construct. Mr. Chancellor Gladstone is pleased to favor us with his opinion that Slavery cannot long survive the recognition and perfect establishment of the Southern Confederacy. I beg leave to assure ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... explanation, other than Aunt Victoria's gracious nod of dismissal, they moved on to the enchanted cave where, under the stare of innumerable electric lights, evening wraps were exhibited. The young woman who served them held the expensive, fragile chiffon of the garments up in front of her black uniform, her eyes wistful and unsatisfied. Her instant of glory was over when Aunt Victoria bought one of these, exclaiming humorously about the quaintness of going from Paris to Chicago to shop. It was of silver tissue ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... sky as black as pitch, the ocean a mass of foam, and with the wind howling and whistling as if eager to carry the masts out of her, I was born. My poor mother had a heavy time of it, and it was a mercy she did not die. But oftentimes delicate, fragile-looking women go through far more than apparently strong and robust persons. She had a fine spirit and patient temper, and what is more, she put a firm trust in One who is all-powerful to save those who have faith in him, both for this life ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... little stone out of the mountain would roll down on the feet of clay and break them, and then the great image, golden head, and silver breast, and brazen body, and iron legs, would all go to pieces—they rested on an infirm footing, fragile clay. ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... mother, and daughter,—standing side by side and dressed each like each as nearly as was fitting, had awaited their guests. Three high-born fragile natures, solitary each on the stem of its generation; not made for blasts and rudeness. They had received their guests with the graciousness of sincere souls and not without antique distinction; for in their veins flowed blood which ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... the flavour of its juices. Every angle of the rail fences became a parterre with golden-rod, cat-brier, and the red-and-yellow pied leaves of blackberries, while a fringe of purple and white asters thrust fragile fingers through the rails below, or the stout iron-weed pushed its purple-red blooms into view at the ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... but curling tight in rings wherever it had the chance. Her eyes were black and her cheeks and lips a deep permanent red. She looked the picture of health and strength, and Marjorie felt like a toy beside her—fragile to the breaking-point. She seemed much better educated than her mother, and evidently on a footing of perfect equality ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... about 90% of the population engaged in (mainly subsistence) agriculture. It is the most densely populated country in Africa; is landlocked, and has few natural resources and minimal industry. Primary exports are coffee and tea. The 1994 genocide decimated Rwanda's fragile economic base, severely impoverished the population, particularly women, and eroded the country's ability to attract private and external investment. However, Rwanda has made significant progress ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... perhaps, be permitted to suggest the following leading principles; but we do so with diffidence. Rich colours harmonize with rich brunette complexions and dark hair. Delicate colours are the most suitable for delicate and fragile styles of beauty. Very young ladies are never so suitably attired as in white. Ladies who dance should wear dresses of light and diaphanous materials, such as tulle, gauze, crape, net, &c., over coloured silk slips. ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... of its own making, and swallowed it with them hastily while the dogs were uncoupling for the hunt, it was received as a grace of Heaven. (Campan, i. 11-36.) Poor withered ancient women! in the wild tossings that yet await your fragile existence, before it be crushed and broken; as ye fly through hostile countries, over tempestuous seas, are almost taken by the Turks; and wholly, in the Sansculottic Earthquake, know not your right hand from your left, be this always an assured place in your ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... on her way, down the forest road. She was very old and exceeding fragile, but she was one of those who hold themselves erect and firm, however much old age may try to bend them. She had a sweet face and soft white hair. She looked so mild and gentle that it was surprising to hear her speak with a voice that was as ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... as sleighs breaking through, on our New York lakes and rivers, happened almost every winter, and horses were often drowned; though it was seldom the consequences proved so serious to their owners. I recalled to mind the fragile nature of ice, the necessary effects of the great thaw and the heavy rains, remembering that frozen water might still retain most of its apparent thickness, after its consistency was greatly impaired. ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... "I am your husband. I protect, surround, defend, cherish you, and house you, you poor fragile Dust. You are my wife. You fill all the vacant space of my heart. I adore you. I ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... not wish our readers to infer from this that a humming-bird might be captured or kept alive, for of all birds, they are the most fragile and delicate, and would die of fright, if from nothing else. They are chiefly used for ornamental purposes, and may be caught in a variety of ways. A few silk nooses hung about the flowers where ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... wrapped in her first tender gladness over her new treasure, God called her to come away to Him. So she left the little children who would never call her "mother," left the husband who was all the world to her; and—fragile White Rose as she was—Anne Mortimer "perished with the flowers." She died "with all the sunshine on her," aged only twenty-one years. Perhaps those who stood round her coffin thought it a very sad and strange dispensation ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... hold on the more tightly to things that are slipping away from us in a vain effort to keep them, so to save ourselves from utter sorrow, we build up in the imagination a fair image of what we have lost, free of the dust of the world. This makes the peculiar charm of the delicate and fragile, of weak things and little things, of the transient and perishable; they awaken in us the tender, protective impulse while they last, and when they are gone they suffer at our hands an idealization which the strong and enduring can never receive. Our pity for them mediates ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... The fragile article fell into sticks beneath her, and Lin leaped to her assistance. He placed her upon a firmer foundation. Mrs. Taylor brought a basin and towel to bathe the dust from her face, Mr. Taylor produced ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... Inhabitant was at once settled when I looked at them. For upwards of twenty years before this epoch, the independent position of the Collector had kept the Salem Custom-House out of the whirlpool of political vicissitude, which makes the tenure of office generally so fragile. A soldier—New England's most distinguished soldier—he stood firmly on the pedestal of his gallant services; and, himself secure in the wise liberality of the successive administrations through which he had held office, he had been the safety of ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... if she had not been sustained by the power of love, and a hopeful looking forward to other scenes, she must have herself gone crazy during that and the other evil days that were upon them. To some of the prisoners, the most fragile and sensitive ones, even the hour of their execution seemed to come as a relief. Anything, to get outside of those close dark cells—and to make ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... Field-Marshal of the Prussian Armies, the foremost man in war-matters with this new King; and well worthy to be so. He is inventing, or brooding in the way to invent, a variety of things,—"iron ramrods," for one; a very great improvement on the fragile ineffective wooden implement, say all the Books, but give no date to it; that is the first thing; and there will be others, likewise undated, but posterior, requiring mention by and by. Inventing many things;—and always well ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... exclaimed cheerfully, "my reputation still continues. Wonderful, is it not, how durable a bad reputation is, and how fragile a good one. One bounds back like a rubber ball. The other shatters like a lustre punch bowl. And did the same young man—I presume he was young—enlighten you about this, the most ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... conversion challenge of all. Thus, the genesis of the Workshop, which reflects the problems faced by AM. These problems include physical problems. For example, those in the library and archive business deal with collections made up of fragile and rare manuscript items, bound materials, especially the notoriously brittle bound materials of the late nineteenth century. These are precious cultural artifacts, however, as well as interesting sources of information, and LC desires to ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... epicea wood, and those of Arizona utilize for the same purpose the long spikes of the cactus. It is very probable that European as well as American races knew how to use wood in the same manner. During the lapse of centuries, however, these fragile objects have been reduced to dust, and we are unable to make any further ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... her in an age. She was down among us in the autumn, but left town for the holidays, for them she insisted on keeping at Clawbonny, where she said the family had always kept them, and away she went. Since then, she has not returned, but I fear she is far from well. You know what a fragile creature Grace ever has been—so American!—Ah! Wallingford! our females have no constitutions—charming as angels, delicate as fairies, and all that; but not to be compared to ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... mistaken. Nothing rattled; there was not a sound; the box was as empty as before. I gave a smart tap with the hammer, as Pugh had done. Then there certainly was a curious sound. To my ear, it sounded like the smashing of glass. "I wonder if there is anything fragile inside your precious puzzle, Pugh, and, if so, if we ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... their ambling horse-cars, and their hideous slums, seemed appropriate settings for the unformed social life and the rough-and-ready political methods of American democracy. The railroads, with their fragile iron rails, their little wheezy locomotives, their wooden bridges, their unheated coaches, and their kerosene lamps, fairly typified the prevailing frontier business and economic organization. But only ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... up and looked around him on the pitiable ruins of the camp on which a tornado could not have wrought more destruction. Something lay glittering in the moonlight close to him. He picked it up. It was his shaving-glass, the most fragile thing in all their belongings, yet unbroken. Tent-poles had been smashed to matchwood, cooking utensils trodden flat, guns broken to pieces; yet this thing, useless and fragile, had been carefully preserved, watched over by some god of ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... now on, to make up for all you've gone through. I'm going to be awfully good to you, Eve. You sha'n't ever have any more worries, poor old thing." He looked at her affectionately. "I wonder why it is that large men always fall in love with little women. There are you, a fragile, fairy-like, ethereal wisp of a little creature; and ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... rear of a line of scrapping, frantic mail orderlies, each one trying to corner all the packages marked "Tobacco" and "Chocolate" for his particular outfit, the reporter, by standing on a box marked "Fragile—This Side Up," was able to see the scene depicted above, and to hear, above the din, the Postal Clerk's ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... stature and very thin. Not even the nurse's flowing garb could conceal the angularity of her figure. One wondered how so fragile a frame could have survived the crashings and shakings of war. What secret of yielding and resisting was hers? The tension, nevertheless, had left its mark upon her young face; had drawn the skin over the aquiline profile, ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... to another—as performed by a child who was being educated for the profession. Although so young she knew accurately upwards of sixty dances, and the pick of these she executed for a few spectators, in a little fragile paper-walled house outside Yokohama, while her adoring aunt played ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... difficult one. When they are born they possess nothing but potentialities; they have to do everything in a world which, as even adults admit, is full of difficulties. What is done to help these frail pilgrims in an unknown world? They are born more fragile and helpless than an animal, and in a few years they have to become men, to be units in a highly complicated organized society, built up by the secular effort of innumerable generations. At a period ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... foliage; by mountains, cedar-tipped and mossy-green; by rolling meadows, where the velvet softness of the blue-grass enriches this idyllic picture—this stream that is famed in song and story, a perfect Switzerland of enrapturing and delicious beauty. Here a thundering waterfall and fragile foliage bending over the foam. Here cool and shady ravines leading up to tranquil Edens, the voluptuous bends through an enchantment of bloom and wildwood, losing themselves among the rock-ribbed hills. ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... neutral or alkaline conditions (see acid rain). acid rain - characterized as containing harmful levels of sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxide; acid rain is damaging and potentially deadly to the earth's fragile ecosystems; acidity is measured using the pH scale where 7 is neutral, values greater than 7 are considered alkaline, and values below 5.6 are considered acid precipitation; note - a pH of 2.4 (the acidity of vinegar) has been measured in rainfall in New England. aerosol - a collection ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... control In their shut breasts their petty misery. What are our woes and sufferings? Come and see The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, ye! Whose agonies are evils of a day— A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... delicate and slight when compared with the gigantic inclines below, seemed like the little vertical flame of a taper set in the midst of the vast landscape, those endless waves of valleys and mountains. By the side, too, of the dense greenery of the Calvary hill, it looked fragile and candid, like childish faith; and at sight of it you instinctively thought of the little white arm, the little thin hand of the puny girl, who had here pointed to Heaven in the crisis of her human sufferings. You could not see the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... greatly changed in his bearing toward his daughter, the which, indeed, he had already told me, and that he seemed to understand, as it were, for the first time, how precious a life hers was, and how lovely and how fragile. Severo believed that Messer Folco would now be willing, if only he could liberate his child from the weight of the Bardi name, to leave her all liberty of choice as to the man she would wed, even if that man had neither wealth nor fame to ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Recamier and M. de Latouche. A letter written by her to Antoine de Latour (October 15, 1836) gives a general idea of her life: "I do not know how I have slipped through so many shocks,—and yet I live. My fragile existence slipped sorrowfully into this world amid the pealing bells of a revolution, into whose whirlpool I was soon to be involved. I was born at the churchyard gate, in the shadow of a church whose saints ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... meadows, nor blue-bells lifting their baby-blue eyes out of the grain. All the land was green. Fields, meadows, forests, plains—all were green, green, green. The features of the landscape had changed with this change in coloring. The slim, fragile grace of slim trees and fragile cliffs had been replaced by trees of heroic proportions, and by outlines nobly rounded and full—like the breasts of a mother. The whole country had an astonishing look of vigor—of the vigor which comes with rude strength; and it had that charm ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... came here some time ago. She was very pale and fragile when she came. She was in sore distress, too. But she received the consolation of the Church, ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... potent possibility. He did not know it then, but now he knew that on the occasion of his smashing a magnificent porcelain vase the forgiving kiss that Mrs. Tresslyn bestowed upon his flaming cheek was not due to pity but to farsightedness. Somehow he now felt that he could smash every fragile and inanimate thing in sight, and still escape ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... dream arose—a dream of you ... I frighten you, child?" His tone was contrite. "I do not mean to do that. I am too hasty. Queer, isn't it, that I can make men, nations, worlds, obey me—but I have to bide my time with a fragile ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... away!" said Stenio. "Look at the sun, and the earth, and the beautiful sky, and these green hills; and even that ice, winter's fragile edifice, which has withstood the rays of summer for centuries. Even so man's frail power will prevail! What matters the fall of a few generations? Do you weep for so slight a thing, Lelia? Do you deem it possible a single ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... the grace of life. The husband is not to dwell on this, that the wife is weak and fragile, but on this, that she also is baptized, and has the same that he has,—all blessings in Christ. For inwardly we are all alike, and there is no difference between man and woman, but as to the outward condition, it is God's pleasure that the husband rule, and ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... Lena's attractions, none was more marked than her smile. It was frequent and unaffected, almost maternal in its good nature and indulgence, and disclosed two rows of little teeth, pure and fragile in appearance as porcelain. Yet this smile, so inviting to those who wished to be invited, was disillusioning to cooler and more discriminating observers, for in it her ordinary quality was disclosed, her redundancy of sweetness, her lack of that intellect which enables a woman to triumph ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... certain sort fragile is written all over our colony; as far as the visible body of it is concerned it is inexpressibly perishable; a fire and a high wind could sweep it all away; and one of the most American of all American things is the least fitted among them to survive from the present to the future, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... with his low chuckle, and Nelly came up, and sitting down by me, put her hand on mine caressingly. 'You look as white and fragile as a piece of china, Hilda. I am so glad you are better. You don't know how we have missed you, and when I thought we were going to lose you altogether I was miserable. I thought over all the nasty things we had said to you, and how you had borne it like ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... indeed, with the sleazy, clinging, white draperies wound around her slender form, then the wings of golden maline pinioned on either softly rounded shoulder. Sally was a perfect little beauty, and also possessed that whimsical manner so attractive in this delicate, fragile type. ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... its nature, writhing in the conqueror's cold embrace—rigid, creaking, ready to snap in twain rather than bend, as the red oak or sugar maple, or else meekly, submissively curving to the earth its tapering, frosted limbs, like the silver birch— elegant, though fragile, ornament of the Canadian park, or else, rearing amid air a graceful net-work—waving, transparent sapphire-tinted arabesques, stretched on amber pillars; witness the Golden Willow. Each gleam of sunshine investing this gorgeous tapestry with all the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... meridian—or you can stroll in the moonlight on the long white beaches with lithe brown beauties who wear passion-flowers in their raven hair. Or, should you weary of so dolce far niente an existence, you can sail across to Java with the opium-runners in their fragile prahaus, or climb a two-mile-high volcano, or in the jungles at the western extremity of the island stalk the clouded tiger. And you can wear pajamas all day long without apologizing. Everything considered, Bali offers more inducements than any place I know to the tired business man ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... as he entered a room, small, and with all the contents faded and worn, but with an air of having been once tasteful, and still made the best of. Contents we say advisedly, meaning not merely the furniture but the inmates, namely, the pale wan fragile mother, working, but with the baby on her knee, and looking as if care and toil had brought her to skin and bone, though still with sweet eyes and a lovely smile; the father, tall and picturesque, with straight handsome features, but with a hectic colour, wasted cheek, and lustrous ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... yielded up old cotton cards, and horns that had been used to call the slaves. Finally the "robe-tail muslin" came to light. The soft material, so fragile with age that a touch sufficed to reduce it still further to rags, was made with a full skirt and plain waist, and still showed traces of a yellow ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... friend," observed the School-master, "is as fragile as this cup"—tapping his coffee-cup. "The countryman of whom you speak is up and doing long before you or I or your successful merchant, who has waxed great on noise as you put it, is awake. If the early bird catches the worm, what becomes ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... oft 'tis said in Lapland's chill domain, Where dreary winter holds a lengthen'd reign, What time the Runic drum and magic spell Evoke the rapt soul from its fragile cell, Attendant spirits, won by charms and prayer, In gliding motion float upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... son vin[Fr]. Adj. weak, feeble, debile|; impotent &c. 158; relaxed, unnerved, &c. v.; sapless, strengthless[obs3], powerless; weakly, unstrung, flaccid, adynamic[obs3], asthenic[obs3]; nervous. soft, effeminate, feminate[obs3], womanly. frail, fragile, shattery[obs3]; flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, gimcrack, gingerbread; rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky; craichy[obs3]; drooping, tottering &c. v.. broken, lame, withered, shattered, shaken, crazy, shaky; palsied &c. 158; decrepit. languid, poor, infirm; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... "Je t'aime"—which means, "I love you so!" Her hair—her hands—her lips, Red as a sunset cloud when daytime slips Into the night. No, redder! Like a flower That blooms upon the earth for just an hour; A poppy flower, fragile, soft.... HER LIPS Red as the heart-blood of a man, that drips Into eternity.... Jean ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... is it decreed to attain the neighborhood of the three-score and ten years—the span of life. I am to speak of one who died young. Very awkward was his childhood—but most fragile and sensitive! So delicate a nature may exist in a rough, unnoticed plant! Let the boy rest;—he was not beautiful, and dropp'd away betimes. But for the cause—it is a singular story, to which let crusted worldlings ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... dark hair which harmonized with the brown eyes and the general gaiety of her expression. A certain daintiness of feature was misleading as to her true character and her almost virile decision. She had small hands and small feet; in fact, there was something fragile about her whole person which excluded the idea of vigor and determination. Having always lived beside her mother, she had a most perfect innocence of thought and behavior and a really remarkable piety. This young girl, like her mother, was fanatically attached to the Bourbons; ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... to grow up in country places, and made the bright, neat New England kitchens of olden times;" and adds, "This race of women, pride of olden time, is daily lessening; and in their stead come the fragile, easily fatigued, languid girls of a modern age, drilled in book-learning, ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... demanded Scott, ramming down the moist earth around a fragile rootlet from which trailed a ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... to four times the diaphragm, will be only 4 centimeters, while the corresponding aperture behind the lens must be 16. The dimensions of the first will be practical, and those of the second will give too cumbersome and too fragile an apparatus. But why must the aperture be larger than the diaphragm employed? This is what we are going to demonstrate. Let us make the aperture equal to the diameter of the objective, and see what occurs at the different periods ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... hotel" called up the idea of two separate systems of life. Acquaintances showed signs of developing into friends, for that one tie to Mrs. Parry's drawing-room had inevitably split into many other ties attached to different parts of England, and sometimes these alliances seemed cynically fragile, and sometimes painfully acute, lacking as they did the supporting background of organised English life. One night when the moon was round between the trees, Evelyn M. told Helen the story of her life, and claimed her everlasting friendship; or another occasion, merely because of a sigh, or a ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... scent, And rosemary, dear ornament, Sword-lilies proud, unfurled, And basil, quaintly curled, And fragile violet blue— He soon will seize you ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... for that to which it was the necessary preliminary and introduction, the bestowment on humanity of the gift of the Divine Spirit. The old Greek legend of the Titan that stole fire from heaven tells us that he brought it to earth in a reed. Our Christ brings the heavenly fire in the fragile, hollow reed of His humanity, and the reed has to be broken in order that the fire may blaze out. 'How I wish that it were kindled! but I have a baptism to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... blossoms upon the pear trees, called out the sour Puritan courage of the currant-bushes, taught a reckless native grapevine to wander and wanton over the southern side of the fence, and decked the banks with violets as fearless and as fragile as New England girls, so that about the end of June, when the heavens relented and the sun blazed out at last, there was little for him to do but to redden and darken the daring fruits that had attained almost their full growth ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... caught Gilbart's eye, and somehow it seemed to lift and remove her and the house she was entering—the lit windows, the guests, the Admiral himself—into another world. If it were real, then (like enough) this fragile thing, this Dresden goddess, owned a brother, perhaps a lover, on board the Berenice. If so, here was another world waiting to be shattered—a world of silks and toys and pretty uniforms and tiny bric-a-brac—a sort of doll's house inhabited ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... trouble and dismay, In the stern agony of civil war, When she, a woman, helpless and hemmed in By a rude crowd of rebel vassals, sought Protection in a powerful chieftain's arms. God knows what arts were used to overcome her! For woman is a weak and fragile thing. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... two people; two small strips of bark, five or six inches square, serves the double purpose of paddling and for baling the water out, which they are constantly obliged to do to prevent their canoe from sinking; in shoal water the paddles are superseded by a pole, by which this fragile bark is propelled. We endeavoured to persuade them to bring off some spears to barter, for they had no weapon of any description with them, but they evidently would not understand our meaning. In the evening our gentlemen proceeded to return these visits, at the spot which was pointed out by ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... a distinct pattern of pipe; those of the Bari have wide trumpet-shaped mouths; the Latooka are long and narrow; and the Obbo smaller and the neatest. All their pottery is badly burned, and excessively fragile if wet. The water jars are well formed, although the potter's wheel is quite unknown, and the circular form is obtained entirely by the hand. Throughout the tribes of the White Nile, the articles of pottery are limited to the tobacco-pipe and the water-jar: all ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... particular martyr because she was so wondrously dressed, and also perhaps a little because she was so young. As she lay on the cabin sofa she looked still younger; she looked a child. Yet when Miss Ingate removed her gloves in order to rub those chill, fragile, and miraculously manicured hands, a wedding ring was revealed. The wedding ring rendered her intensely romantic in the eyes of Audrey and Miss Ingate, who both ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... of that packed mass of humanity lighted up with interest, and with what intensity all eyes gazed upon this fragile girl! And how natural it was; for these people realized that at last they were looking upon that person whom they had so long hungered to see; a person whose name and fame filled all Europe, and made all other names ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thoughtfully at his brown bottle, shook his head and returned it to its drawer. He looked at a desk watch. "Don't read into the United Planets organization more than there is. It's a fragile institution with practically no independent powers to wield. Every member planet is jealous of its prerogatives, which is understandable. It's no mistake that Articles One and Two are the basic foundation of the Charter. No member ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... before her—hardly moulded into recognisable form by the clinging bedclothes—was a reinforcement to Sally's good will. His position appealed to the pity she felt—the pity and the contempt. He was so thin and weak, so exceedingly fragile, that Sally could not deliberately have hurt him. Instead, she was bent upon ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... it were to fall in pieces? His brain reeled with the thought. He doubted his own identity. The very light of heaven had altered its hue. Was the firm ground on which he stood after all no solid reality, but a fragile shell which covered—what? ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... walking into the room after his fragile wife and gracious sister-in-law, and Carl drank tea (with lemon instead of milk in it!) and listened to bewildering talk and to a few stanzas, heroic or hauntingly musical, by a new poet, W. B. Yeats, an Irishman associated with a thing called the Gaelic ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Wee Jaikie, who was having the red-letter hour of his life. His fragile form moved like a lizard in places where no mortal could be expected, and he varied his duties with impish assaults upon the persons of such as came in his way. His whistle blew in a man's ear one second and the next yards away. Sometimes he was moved to song, and unearthly fragments of ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... but a day; A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way From a tree's summit; a poor Indian's sleep While his boat hastens to the monstrous steep Of Montmorenci. Why so sad a moan? Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown; The reading of an ever-changing tale; The light uplifting of ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... veined and fragile hand, and touched the baby's toes. "He is flying; he is everywhere; he is close to the sun—Little brother!" And turning on ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... stood still and faced her companion with kindling eyes. "At this moment, my dear, the spirit of Hercules is within me—I feel as if I could lift mountains, and look at that." She held out her hand, staring with intense disfavour at the fragile little wrist. "That's my weapon! If I tried to lift that bench, I should sprain my wrist. If I work my brain for several hours on end, I have a sick headache I'm a lion in a cage, dear; a little, miserable, ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... delicate colors, whilst a stout, florid person looks best in dark or gray. For young as well as old, the question of color must, however, be determined by complexion and figure. Rich colors harmonize with rich brunette complexions and dark hair; delicate colors are the most suitable for delicate and fragile styles of beauty. ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... noticeable bracelet, the gold setting being a mere feather-weight piece of native filigree work—almost too fragile to trust on the wrist—and the pearl being, as I have said, of a size and quality not often seen. Well, Heath and his wife arrived late one evening, and after lunch the following day, most of the men being off by themselves—shooting, I think—my daughter, my sister ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... bound hand and foot and carried off to the boats. I would have given much to have allowed one young man, especially, to escape. He had been aroused by the noise in the street, and was sitting up dressed when we entered his house, holding his wife in his arms. She was a fragile, delicate-looking girl, soon about to become a mother. I felt almost sure when I saw the couple that ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... remained to them. They have not accepted life as it is, and Mr. Yeats could not paint like Reynolds or Romney the beauty of every day in its best attire. He is like the Irish poets who have rarely left a complete description of women, but who speak of some transitory motion or fragile charm—"a thin palm like foam of the sea," "a white body," or in such vague phrases, until it seems a spirit is praised and not flesh and blood. I remember the faces of women and children in his pictures where everything is blurred or obscured, save ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... life, displayed itself from infancy; from the age of three years, she was almost constantly under the care of some physician, and, by their advice, annually spending the summer months by the sea, in the hope of rousing and strengthening a naturally fragile constitution. This want of physical energy was, however, in direct contrast to her mental powers, which developed early, and readily. She learned to read with scarcely any trouble, and when once that knowledge was gained, her answer when asked what she ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... observed the School-master, "is as fragile as this cup"—tapping his coffee-cup. "The countryman of whom you speak is up and doing long before you or I or your successful merchant, who has waxed great on noise as you put it, is awake. If the early bird catches the worm, what becomes ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... approach of any man, even the thought of such contact, turned her deadly faint, checked her pulses, stopped her breath. At picnics and parties and dances to which the Mayor's wife or the mothers of some of the pupils would invite or chaperon her, her vivid, delicate, fragile beauty would draw, first men's eyes, and then their owners, not all unhandsome or undesirable; while showier girls looked in vain for partners or companions. The little triumph, the consciousness of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... opposites, All balanced in accord so rich Who may determine which is which? Chiefly God's Love does in it live, And nowhere else so sensitive; For each is all that the other's eye, In the vague vast of Deity, Can comprehend and so contain As still to touch and ne'er to strain The fragile nerves of joy. And then 'Tis such a wise goodwill to men And politic economy As in a prosperous State we see, Where every plot of common land Is yielded to some private hand To fence about and cultivate. Does narrowness its praise abate? Nay, the infinite of man is found But in the beating of its ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... felt again the strange stir of emotion he had experienced when he looked at her the evening before under the lamplight in his study. In a single vivid instant he saw her winking diamonds, her rouged cheeks, the nervous flutter that shook her fragile figure, and the consuming fire which was destroying the appealing prettiness of her face. Then he looked deeper still to the naked terrified soul of her, caught in a web from which, because of her weakness, there could ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... Rulers (who are not human Nor yet divine like the gods above) Poured all their gifts in the soul of woman, That fragile vessel meant only for love. Still more they taught her, Still more they brought her, Till they gave her the world for a harp one day: And they bade her string it, They bade her ring it, While the stars all wondered to hear ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of structure so soft as brain, a substance which is on the dividing-line between liquids and solids, must be of the gravest form from the first: grave because so fragile, grave because the sick centres cannot rest as the broken arm, the sick body: these centres, regardless how sick, must continue to serve, ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... street, in a very large crinoline, and a very long dress of pale silk, which floated after her along the dirty pavement, much, I remember, to my admiration. Above this was some tight-fitting thing with a good deal of lace about it, which was crowned by a fragile and flowery bonnet, and such a tuft of white lace at the end of a white stick as just sheltered her nose, which was aquiline, from the sunshine. She was prettily dressed for an open carriage, a flower-show, or a wedding breakfast; for walking ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of a perfectly different type from Ibrahim's. He was excessively slight, almost fragile, with little bones, delicate hands and feet, small shoulders, a narrow head, and a face that was like the face of a beautiful bronze, grave, still, enigmatic, almost inhuman in its complete repose and watchfulness—a face that seemed to take all and to give absolutely nothing. As Mrs. Armine ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... stairway. In another moment Edward Macleod was bending profoundly over the hand of his hostess. The aristocratic, little old lady, with her delicate faded face, always seemed to him like some rare piece of porcelain or other fragile, highly-finished object. He led her to the easiest chair, and drew his own close beside her, only interrupting the absorbed attention which he gave to her remarks by soft inquiries regarding her health, or compliments upon the way in which her not very vigorous ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... his favourite topic of science. "As I felt, in truth, but a slight interest in the subject of his conversation, I had leisure to examine, and I may add, to admire, the appearance of my very extraordinary guest. It was a sum of many contradictions. His figure was slight and fragile, and yet his bones and joints were large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much, that he seemed of a low stature. His clothes were expensive, and made according to the most approved mode of the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... fear of discommoding him. All artists—by which I mean, of course, all good artists—are shy. They are trustees of something not entrusted to us others; they bear fragile treasure, not safe in a jostling crowd; they must ever be wary. And especially shy are those artists whose work is apart from words. A man of letters can mitigate his embarrassment among us by a ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... repelled it rather as a mockery. He described for my benefit the process of reasoning, the art of thinking. I listened more attentively still, resolving to profit by his words.... Then he turned the conversation on quite another theme. Health was the subject. He delicately alluded to my fragile appearance, and spoke of the necessity of a strong constitution to sustain a vigorous mind. If the mind prevailed over the weak body, in its turn it became affected by decay, and would eventually lose its ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... her tea with a steady hand. And what made her situation harder was that two of the party, Larry and Hunt, were treating her with the charmed deference they might accord a charming stranger, when a word from either of them might destroy the fragile edifice of ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... meaning of what Satan showed me in the vision! You are like her at last!' And clutching the bare arm of the younger woman, she pulled her unresistingly back against the wall. Immediately Brook had loosened her hold the fragile young Gertrude slid down against the feet of her husband. When he lifted her up ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... prosperous, or at ease, is sure to drop into the notion that 'to-morrow will be as this day, and much more abundant,' unless he keeps up unslumbering watchfulness against the insidious illusion of permanence. If he yields to the temptation, in his foolish security, forgetting how fragile are its foundations, and what a host of enemies surround him threatening it, then there is nothing for it but that the merciful discipline, which this Psalmist goes on to tell us he had to pass through by reason of his fall, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... annoying!" she cried. "I must go. I have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to some absurd meeting at Willis's Rooms, where he is going to be in the chair. If I am late, he is sure to be furious, and I couldn't have a scene in this bonnet. It is far too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it. No, I must go, dear Agatha. Good-bye, Lord Henry, you are quite delightful, and dreadfully demoralising. I am sure I don't know what to say about your views. You must come and dine with us some night. Tuesday? ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... near the old church—a strange contrast after the home on the blue waters of the Mediterranean, but a very nice contrast withal. And it seemed, at last, as if poor Mrs Campbell had found a climate that suited her, and that put new life and strength into her failing, fragile form. For those happy and treacherous nights, spent in looking over the bay at Malta for her husband's home-coming, had sown the seeds of a consumption, that each month now seemed to be increasing its wasting, ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... your meerschaum is a fragile thing, and eminently frangible. This present writer once did see four beauties break within a single moon. And when they break, what previous joy of coloring can over-top the sorrow of their dire ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... boyish. The clearness of it reminded him of her face, of her cleanly stencilled brows, her straightly chiselled nose, the very clearness of the gaze of her eyes, the firmly yet delicately moulded lips, and the throat, neither fragile nor robust, but—but just right, he concluded, an adequate and beautiful pillar for ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... but for the political troubles of the period. Eulalie was a graceful creature, slenderly and symmetrically formed, with soft blue eyes, and an exceedingly gentle expression, which was indicative of her character. She seemed too fair and fragile to buffet with the storms of life, and ill fitted to endure its troubles, created to be the idol of a drawing room, the ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... divined it was the Jewish girl of the grey eyes, and now I saw her hair was like a fair cloud, and her face fragile as a flower. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... room in silence, and no one could have recognized in this pretty, fragile creature the pitiful wreck of the juvenile court. And when Alma Pflugel saw the face of the little sister—the poor, marred, stricken face—her own face became terrible in its agony. She put Bennie down very gently, rose, and took the shaking little figure in her strong arms, and held it as ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... sort fragile is written all over our colony; as far as the visible body of it is concerned it is inexpressibly perishable; a fire and a high wind could sweep it all away; and one of the most American of all American things is the least ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... singularly expressive); "it is good to see your pretty face again. This is Aunt Meg," pointing to the invalid. "I do not think you have ever met her before." Then Winnie was obliged to cross over to the sofa and shake the thin white hand that looked so small and fragile. ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... most exquisite flowers. She always had things dainty and fragrant about her, and one had a vision of pale blue ribbons, and soft laces, and lovely flowers, and then one forgot everything else as one looked at the dear face framed in such soft grey hair. She looked so fragile that one fancied she might be wafted away by a summer breeze, and I have never seen anyone so pale. There was not a tinge of colour in face or hands, and one kissed her gently for fear that even a caress might be too much for ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... of the rowlocks, spun it in the air, but unfortunately did not catch it when it fell, and consequently it went through the bottom, starting two of the planks of the fragile-built boat, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... "You are—delicious," said she. "You state the exact situation. Only I don't think Rita is quite so fragile as you fancy. Like all persons of common origin, Mr. Craig, you exaggerate human differences. They are not differences of ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... People, or the Good People, are a race of tiny beings who domesticate themselves in a house of which some grown-up human being pays the rent and taxes. They are like small editions of men and women, they are too small and fragile for heavy work; they have not the strength of a man, but are a thousand times more fresh and nimble. They can run and jump, and roll and tumble, with marvellous agility and endurance, and of many of the aches and pains which men and women groan under, they do not even know the names. They have ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Ellersly. Her face was full toward me; she was not aware that I was looking at her, I am sure, for she did not once lift her eyes. As I sat studying her, everything else was crowded out of my mind. She was indeed wonderful—too wonderful and fine and fragile, it seemed to me at that moment, for one so plain and rough as I. "Incredible," thought I, "that she is the child of such a pair as Ellersly and his wife—but again, has she any less in common with them than she'd have with any other pair of human creatures?" Her slender white ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... and the cook were called, and afterwards Ethelwynn, who, dressed in black and wearing a veil, looked pale and fragile as she drew off her glove in order to take ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... was a fragile piece of bric-a-brac, and that I might need him for future study, I bethought me of the banker down the street. Bankers are bound to be broad-gauged, intelligent, and conservative, so I would go to him and get at the ancient history of this neck of woods. I introduced ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... the fair Lindaraxa passed away, yet how much of the fragile beauty of the scenes she inhabited remained! The garden still bloomed in which she delighted; the fountain still presented the crystal mirror in which her charms may once have been reflected; the alabaster, it is true, ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... stifling cabin was one whose appearance arrested Captain Wylie's attention, as he took his constitutional in the lightest of light flannels. He could not but be struck by the appearance of the young man. He had never seen him before, but he looked so fragile that the young officer's kind heart went out to him. He was lying in an uncomfortable position, his head all twisted and half off ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... could recline with the minimum of discomfort—and in that position he firmly lashed the two together with the lashings still attached to them. Then he helped Miss Trevor to get out of her life-buoy and clamber up on the top of the fragile structure; finding, to his satisfaction, when he had done so, that the raft possessed just enough buoyancy to support her comfortably, when reclining at full length upon it, although, unfortunately, not enough to keep her dry, since even in such quiet weather as then ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... concerned it was exactly as if nothing at all had happened. Exactly as before, I was your little skylark, your doll, which you would in future treat with doubly gentle care, because it was so brittle and fragile. (Getting up.) Torvald—it was then it dawned upon me that for eight years I had been living here with a strange man, and had borne him three children—. Oh! I can't bear to think of it! I could tear myself ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... punishment, and death to the enemies of his long and noble line. In these secret charnel houses were buried the bodies of the oppressed, while in the haughty tombs around and above them lay the bones of their oppressors. The unfortunate and fragile boy, the last sole scion of a long line of ancestry, had there met the thronging and complaining ghosts of past generations. Burdened with these dreadful secrets, when his vanquished father seeks him to embrace him for the last time, he shudderingly hints ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... vanity or advantage, and was not Love the nearest thing to God? And if those two souls were destined lovers, COULD they be divided, even by their own rashness? These questions were curiously urged upon my inward consciousness as I looked again upon the poor fragile corpse among the reeds and palms of the sluggishly flowing river, and heard the clamorous despair of the man to whom she might have been joy, inspiration and victory had not the world been then as it is not now—the ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... "Good-night" to him, and turned to go, candle in hand, looking pathetic and fragile, with that ugly contour of shoulder, which Deroulede assured ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... round her. She could not see me, and I ought to have spoken and let her know I was there, but I was startled at first by her sudden appearance, and afterwards I was afraid of startling her. She was so nervous and fragile then that a very little might have led to serious consequences. I did not like to play the spy, but it was a choice of two evils, and I thought she had come for a book or something, and would go directly, and if she did discover me she would suppose me to be asleep. She walked about the room, however, ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... turned and looked on his fragile frame with eyes full of a great pity. "You do not understand, you say, sir that's just it; and I am too foolish and ignorant to be able to explain things rightly to a gentleman like you; but the Lord will explain it to you when He thinks fit. You are young yet, sir, ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... teeth, wore the sort of fixed smile which we often see on the lips of the dying. His hands, white as those of a woman, were remarkably handsome. The habit of meditation had taught him to droop his head like a fragile flower, and the attitude was in keeping with his person; it was like the last grace that a great artist touches into a portrait to bring out its latent thought. Etienne's head was that of a delicate girl placed upon the weakly and ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... perched in a mere heron's nest, formed of light wood arranged upon most fragile boughs; this wretched contrivance has swayed before the wind to an extent that would have rendered accurate aim impossible; fortunately upon such occasions I have never ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... of conditions, as in some medicated air, exotic flowers of sentiment expand, among people of a remote and unaccustomed beauty, somnambulistic, frail, androgynous, the light almost shining through them. Surely, such loves were too fragile and adventurous to last ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... passed had made her delicate beauty more exquisite from contrast. It was as if a rare tropical bird had followed the wake of summer and graced for a time a region from which it must fly with the first breath of autumn. In distinction from all they saw and met she appeared so fragile, such a charming exotic, that he felt an overpowering impulse to cherish and shelter her from every rude thing in the world. With a nice blending of reserve and complaisance she appeared to yield to his mood and yet to withhold herself. ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... in practice, Corinnas into courtezans. Thus a refined and permanent individual attachment is intended to supply the place and avoid the inconveniences of marriage; but vows of eternal constancy, without church security, are found to be fragile. A member of the ideal and perfect commonwealth of letters lends another a hundred pounds for immediate and pressing use; and when he applies for it again, the borrower has still more need of it than he, and retains it for his own especial, which is tantamount to the public ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... truth they were not an imposing couple—the elder a slim, fragile youth, whose eyes were already tearful at the prospect of confronting his uncle's captor; while the younger was a mere boy, sanguine and ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... avaricious mother coveted. She was among the first to offer her services, and those of her daughter, to Lady Moncton. The pretty young wife of the huntsman attracted the attention of the lady of the Hall, and she employed her constantly about her person, while in cases of sickness, for she was very fragile, ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... with the Queen, men noted curiously the look of the young king whose fortunes were to be so closely linked with those of England for fifty years to come. Far younger than his bride, for he was but twenty-six, there was little of youth in the small and fragile frame, the sickly face, the sedentary habits, the Spanish silence and reserve, which estranged Englishmen from Philip as they had already estranged his subjects in Italy and his future subjects in the Netherlands. Here however he sought ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... sailed the seas of life, like one of those fragile argonauts in their shells of foam and rainbow-mist which will withstand the rude surge of winds and waves. But slowly, gradually, the spirit was o'erfretting its tenement. With the waning of her strength ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... genius had taken London by storm. At seventeen or eighteen this auburn-haired, blue-eyed, fragile looking youth had reached maturity with his astounding talent, a talent which would have given him position and wealth in any other country. In perfection of line his drawings were superior to anything we possess. But the curious thing about the boy was that ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... canvas swelling above them, and shooting them along as if by magic, when every other vessel is lost in the calm, and when even taunt-masted ships can barely catch a breath of air to fill their sky-sails and royal studding-sails. They are truly "water-witches;" for, while they look so delicate and fragile that one feels at first as if the most moderate breeze must brush them from the face of the ocean, and scatter to the winds all their gay drapery, they can and do defy, as a matter of habit and choice, the most furious ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... shorter. I am giving these details so that the size of this little floating world which holds twenty-two men may be appreciated. It is a very little world, a mote, a speck, and I marvel that men should dare to venture the sea on a contrivance so small and fragile. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... this time was suffering as much as any one. He was too faithful a servant of the great Hanbury family, though now the family had dwindled down to a fragile old lady, not to mourn acutely over its probable extinction. He had, besides, a deeper sympathy and reverence with, and for, my lady, in all things, than probably he ever cared to show, for his manners were always measured and cold. He suffered from sorrow. ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... his unaffected, frank demeanor. Occasionally it became a trifle rough or rude; but you always knew where you had him. With special ardor he saluted Frau Kahle, and it looked almost droll to watch the contrast between him, a burly, corpulent fellow, and this tiny, fragile figure that ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... suddenly, he knew not why, perhaps it was the thought of hitting her or the recollection of her tiny, beautiful ears, he was seized by an uprush of emotion. He yearned for her. He thought of taking her in his arms, the thin, fragile body, and kissing her pale mouth: he wanted to pass his fingers down the slightly ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... was a pile of square cards with scalloped edges, upon which the columbines were to be affixed; at her right was a small glass window-pane smeared with what she called "stickum." As she deftly lifted the flowers, one by one, without ever breaking a fragile petal, she laid each first upon the "stickum"-covered square of glass and then upon the Bristol-board. She was skilful in always placing the flower precisely where it was to remain upon the page, so ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... do, but gentleman withal, Took out the note;—held it as one who feared The fragile thing he held would slip and fall; Read and re-read, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... meritorious in the eyes of Mrs. Beckett, who, unlearned herself, thought any book better than 'gadding about,' and, after hearing her daily portion of the Bible, listened to the most adventurous romances, with a sense of pleasure and duty in keeping the girl to her book. She loved the little fragile orphan, taught her, and had patience with her, and trusted the true high sound principle which she recognised in Charlotte, amid much that she could not fathom, and set down alternately to the score ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their back fins out of water, that the boys had no difficulty in startling a few of them into a knowledge of their danger by gently placing a hand under and hoisting them suddenly into the boat, where they displayed their alarm by leaping vigorously and beating the fragile ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... occupied a tiny tenement on one end of the dock, supplied us with a bubbling samovar, sugar, and china, since we were not traveling in strictly Russian style, with a fragile-nosed teapot and glasses. We got out our tea, steeped and sipped it, nibbling at a bit of bread, in that indifferent manner which one unconsciously acquires in Russia. It is only by such experience that one comes to understand the full—or rather ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... with figures, conjures forth a blue print, and sends an army of workmen against the forces of Nature. If his mind blundered, he would waste millions in money and perhaps destroy thousands of lives. But Man can trust his mind; fragile though it is, he knows it can bear the strain of ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... all her best things in ceramics before she was able to make a porcelain teacup. He may find room for improvement in material too. Pottery is the most durable of fabrics so long as it is not broken. But it is fragile, as bronze is not. Why may not that defect be remedied, as other defects have been by the Japanese and our bank-note printers in that particularly evanescent texture, paper? Some day, perhaps, burnt clay will be held together by threads of asbestos as greenbacks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... this building is composed, though seemingly so fragile, is a non-conductor of thought, and while detained within it the inmates gradually free themselves from their ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... he entered a room, small, and with all the contents faded and worn, but with an air of having been once tasteful, and still made the best of. Contents we say advisedly, meaning not merely the furniture but the inmates, namely, the pale wan fragile mother, working, but with the baby on her knee, and looking as if care and toil had brought her to skin and bone, though still with sweet eyes and a lovely smile; the father, tall and picturesque, with straight handsome features, but with a hectic colour, wasted cheek, and lustrous eye, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the shore beside a birch-bark canoe, so fragile and unstable that the slightest imprudence on the part of its ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... in this fragile existence, we should hate and destroy one another. There are possibilities enough for all who will abandon mastery over others to pursue mastery over nature. There is world enough for all to seek their ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... "I can perfectly with my parasol hand;" but he refused her even one. "If I may be permitted to take the responsibility," he said, happily, and she rejoined, "Oh, I would trust you with things more fragile." At which, such is the discipline of these orders, he looked steadily in front of him and seemed ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... wind-wilted thorns, now in young leaf of a pure rich green, with thickly-clustered buds just breaking into a dense snow of blossom. Periwinkles trailed down upon the turf, and the closely set stonecrop made a reddish bloom on the lower boulders, amidst bronze-hued moss, pale fragile scales of lichen, and glossy leaved fibrous-rooted ivy, that all went to pattern their sullen grey with delicate arabesques. The strongest note of colour was in the wild hyacinths, that, where the earth had been disturbed ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... possibility of a continuous deformation under the constant action of the same strain. This particular condition is only realized with very malleable or plastic bodies; and it may even be regarded as characteristic of such bodies, since its absence is noticeable in all non-malleable or fragile bodies, which break without being deformed. It is already known that the period of altered elasticity for hard or tempered steel is much less than for iron. In 1871 the author showed that steel or iron rails that had acquired a permanent set were at the same time perfectly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... was elected guider of the united caravans now travelling through Ugogo, was of such a fragile and small make, that he might be taken for an imitation of his famous prototype "Dapper." Being of such dimensions, what he lacked for weight and size he made up by activity. No sooner had he arrived in camp than his trim dapper form was seen frisking about from side to ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... a hairpin on the end and let it down. All right. I've got it. Wait!" The fragile line of communication twitched for a moment. "Haul, ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the Crouched Venus to a little tea-table with all its fragile and exquisite accessories, and to a shining copper kettle and copper chafing-dish. Chafing dishes were not unknown to him, and he wondered if she concocted suppers on this one for some of those University young men he had heard whispers about. One or two water-colors on ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... carried away with it," with the result that at night she was down with fever. This kept recurring every alternate night. It was the harmattan season, in which she always wilted like some delicate flower in the sun, and she grew so limp and fragile that she could not sit up. She felt that she would be compelled to go home in the summer with the Macgregors, but the idea frightened her, chiefly because of the stir that had been caused by the honour she ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... chide the raging tempest, when the waves with foaming crest Leaped about the fragile vessel, buffeted and sore distressed; Wind and wave, their fury stilling, sank ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... while, by the light of flaming oil-cans, they gamble for match boxes filled with gold-dust; in others they gather to drink the liquors illicitly sold by the "sly grog shops". Many of the diggers betake themselves to the brilliantly-lighted theatres, and make the fragile walls tremble with their rough and hearty roars of applause: everywhere are heard the sounds of laughter and good humour. Then, at midnight, all to bed, except those foolish revellers who have stayed too late at the ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... lady regarded Garth with a sharp scrutiny; and Garth looked with interest at her. She was a fragile, elegant, plaintive little person of the old "lady-like" regime; but for all her gentleness, Garth was somehow conscious that he faced a woman of an iron will. She had the impatient, inattentive manner of one possessed ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Anti-Revolutionists and Roman Catholics entertain entirely different political ideals, but they agree upon this, that the modern Liberal State is not really neutral in religions matters, but is 'Modern Protestant,' and 'Modern' Protestantism spells atheism in their eyes; and both regard a weak and fragile Christian as a better citizen than the best atheist or agnostic. For this reason they are combined in hostility to the existing System of elementary education, which they suspect of an atheistic tendency. These two questions, religion ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... burned their great exposed stars. And she felt like going down on her knees and bending her forehead to the earth in an oriental submission, they were so royal, so lovely, so supreme. She came again to them in the morning, when the sky was grey, and they were closed, sharp clubs, wonderfully fragile on their stems of sap, among leaves and old grass and wild periwinkle. They had wonderful dark stripes running up their cheeks, the crocuses, like the clear proud stripes on a badger's face, or on some proud cat. She took a handful of the sappy, shut, striped ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... Alban during this part of the entertainment, nor did he repulse her. Moments there were undeniably when he had a great tenderness toward her; moments when she lay in his embrace as some pure gift from this haven of darkness and of evil, a fragile helpless figure of a girlhood he idolized. Then, perchance, he loved her as Lois Boriskoff hungered for love, with the supreme devotion, the ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... burdens that the porters carry on their heads. It is not unusual to see them walking at a rapid pace, with one or two trunks, weighing fifty or eighty pounds each, upon their heads. Occasionally, we meet an itinerant toy-man, with his tray of fragile merchandise upon his head, walking with as much apparent security, as though his toys, or images, were in his hands. This is the easiest method of carrying burdens, because the position of the head and ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... While thus engaged he had heard the shot which von Staden fired at the captain, and forthwith had run across the top of the house and peered over to discover what was happening on the deck below. Discovering the captain in the act of kicking a distinguished son of the Fatherland in that fragile section of the human anatomy frequently referred to as the "slats," the second mate had stood a moment, immobile with horror, the while he gazed upon the fearful scene. Then the captain walked to a spot on the deck directly beneath the position occupied ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... frame the words. His lips refused to move. Not only that, but, facing her here, it seemed a grossly brutal thing to do. She looked so gentle and fragile this morning as, picking up the violets, she half ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Having taken the inner life for their study they sought to lay bare its very foundations. Nowadays, if we are so minded, we dictate to machines which write our words curiously enough in shallow lines upon wax cylinders and when the cylinders are full shave off the fragile record and ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... to which neither Max nor Lulu could ever be made to submit; but Grace, the youngest, a delicate, fragile child, with little force of will, had no strength or power to resist, so fell a victim to the theory; each night went supperless to bed, and each day found herself too feeble and languid to take part in the active sports in ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... consultation over them seemed to be prolonged by her because, even now, she could not resolve to go below the surface. It lasted until her father came to ask whether she were ready to go with him to Mrs. Poynsett's sitting-room. She looked very fragile and childish as she stood up, clinging to his arm to help her wavering, uncertain step, holding out her hand to Julius and saying, "I ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Knight, as his thoughts travelled heavily along the past, that no other woman but Annesley Grayle, this fragile white rose that had freely given its sweetness, could have turned him from the vow of vengeance for his parents' fate which as a boy he had sworn against the world. Day by day, week by week, month by month, the fragrance of the white rose had so changed him that ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... and even more his own; And as he left it every night he prayed A moment by the archway in the shade, Kneeling once more within the sacred gloom Where the White Maiden watched upon her tomb. His hopes of travel and a world-wide fame, Cold Time had sobered, and his fragile frame; Content at last only in dreams to roam, Away from the tranquillity of home; Content that the poor dwellers by his side Saw in him but the gentle friend and guide, The patient counsellor in ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... miles from my residence, a District Inspector named ——, with whom I enjoyed a friendship of the most intimate and fraternal kind. At the time I write of, Mrs. —— was expecting the arrival of their third child. She was a particularly tiny and fragile woman, and much anxiety was felt as to the result of the impending event. He and she had very frequently spent pleasant days at my house, with all the apartments of which they were thoroughly acquainted—a fact of importance in ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... him at that moment other foolish blithe little loves, like faded flowers with the sweetness gone out of them. They had been so innocent, so fragile, so free from blame; all but the last; and this last it was that threatened to rise like a shadow perhaps, and defeat his winning the only woman he ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... brow and full jaw he was more of the German or Belgian than French. Black hair thrown off his broad forehead accented this resemblance; a composer rather than a prose-poet and dramatist, was the rapid verdict of Ermentrude. She was not disappointed, though she had expected a more fragile type. The weaver of moonshine, of mystic phrases, of sweet gestures and veiled sonorities should not have worn the guise of one who ate three meals a day and slept soundly after his mellow incantations. Yet she was not—inheriting, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Bernard. She was the dove that on the flood of grief Brought to my window there love's olive spray. From college to the farm-house where I dwelt I took my books, friends who are never cold, With fragile instruments of chemistry, And cabinets of mineral and rock With limestone encrinites; asterias Old as the mountains, or the sea's white lash Wherewith he smites the shoulders of the shore; Tarentula and scarabee I brought, And, too, I brought my diamond microscope Which ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... that moment, Mulcachy entered the arena through a door on the opposite side. No bars stood between Ben Bolt and this creature, and Ben Bolt charged him. Even as he charged he was aware of suspicion in that the small, fragile man-creature before him did not flee or crouch down, but ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... the torn leaves when he reached her. It had been one of the old textbooks, printed on real paper, and it was fragile with age. She had been trusted by the librarian to take good care of it. Now, page after page was ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... original crime for which he had been sent forth, an outlaw from his country, was the source of all his subsequent mistakes and misfortunes. France was open to him; Scotland was closed; and England was a scene of peril to one who trod on fragile ice, beneath which a deep ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... the warmth and preciousness of the surpassing friendship, but no idea of the high and varied range of intellectual and religious interests that entered into it. "I always," Madame Swetchine writes, "have your little ring on my finger. This symbol, fragile as all symbols, will outlive me; but I grieve not for that, since I am sure that the sentiment which makes me prize it so highly will survive it in turn." Dora Greenwell says, "The letters of Madame Swetchine ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... rooms Banneker was introduced to a fragile, desiccated-looking man languidly engaged in scissoring newspaper after newspaper which he took from a pile and cast upon the floor after operation. The clippings he filed in envelopes. A checkerboard lay on the table ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... white-faced, he thought she was like a moth herself, fragile and impalpable in the gloom, a moth motionless on a flower, and when he saw her smile he thought the moth was making ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... flower!—And see that other bed of them springing from the rich moss in the roots of that old beech-tree! Pray, let us gather some. Here are baskets.' So, quickly and carefully we began gathering, leaves, blossoms, roots and all, for the plant is so fragile that it will not brook separation;—quickly and carefully we gathered, encountering divers petty misfortunes in spite of all our care, now caught by the veil in a holly bush, now hitching our shawls in a bramble, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... of which reappeared on the next opportunity for a search.[1333] A week later, however, one similar object was discerned by Mr. W. R. Brooks, in the opposite direction from the comet. Thus space appeared to be strewn with the filmy debris of this beautiful but fragile structure all along the track of its retreat from ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... a woman is not a vase;—more beautiful even than this, certainly more precious, perhaps almost as fragile, but still not a vase; and she shows as little taste in making herself look like a vase as some potters do in making vases ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... not, if I could, record the bitter miseries of the last dreadful winter—paint the gaunt and ugly outlines of womanhood, squalid, famished, dying—but triumphant still. One case only will tell the tale for all the rest. A poor, fragile creature, still girlish and refined under the pinched and pallid features of starvation, tottered to me one ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... sphere. When Jove looked down and saw the heavens figured in a sphere of glass, he laughed and said to the other gods: "Has the power of mortal effort gone so far? Is my handiwork now mimicked in a fragile globe?" An old man of Syracuse had imitated on earth the laws of the heavens, the order of nature, and the ordinances of the gods. Some hidden influence within the sphere directs the various courses ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... kind is extremely bad for Evie," said Meta. "She had a nervous fever four years ago, and has been so fragile and highly-strung ever since. She was sent to Chessington because we hoped the bracing air might do her good. I remember she used to have night terrors when she was a wee child, but we thought she had ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... rope-guarded inclosure in front of the committee tent, round which the people were now packing. In the door of the tent stood the secretary, various stewards, and members of the committee. In front, alone in the roped-off space, was Lady Eleanour, fragile, dainty, graceful, waiting with a smile upon her face to receive the winner. And on a table beside her, naked and ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... dress, her steel-rimmed spectacles, her black-sateen apron, Smalley might have passed for a Bird Center home dressmaker. Yet, given a yard or two or three of satin and a saucer of pins, Smalley could make the dumpiest of debutantes look like a fragile flower. ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... and delicate; she seemed almost fragile. She did everything daintily—like a little girl playing tea-party. Her hands and feet were exquisitely small, her features childlike and indefinite, except her little coral mouth, which was as clearly outlined with color as a doll's and as mobile as a fluttering leaf. She had wide blue eyes and ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... air? It would require a power equal to 400 horses for the sails of a ship to struggle on equal terms with the wind. Suppose an impossibility, namely, that a balloon could carry with it a force equal to 400 horse-power; this result would be of little use, for under the immense weight the fragile covering of the balloon would instantly collapse. If all the horses of a regiment were harnessed to the car of a balloon by means of a long rope, the result would be that the balloon would fly into shivers, being too fragile to withstand these two ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... child's face was bright with anticipation, as the woman wrapped her in a warm shawl and carried her fragile weight down the staircase. The cobblestones hurt the poor sempstress's feet, and she staggered under the light burden, but she persevered, for the child's murmurs of delight rang ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... a strange thing it is that men should have all these, and more, and yet never see that they have the simple elements of earthly happiness, if they would but use them. And we, outcasts and wanderers, children of sin and darkness, in whose hands one commandment seems hardly less fragile than another, would give anything—had we anything to give—for the happiness of a home, to call our own. How strange it is that what I said to Isaacs should be true. "Do not marry unless you must depend on each ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... looking younger from her fragile form and the extreme delicacy of her complexion. The reader knows how winsome and playful her manners were; how she was loved and cherished by her brother, and it seemed hard that a creature like her, so innocent and winsome, should ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... am without a son and too badly dressed to go before the banker in the very likely case of his arrival here. Send me my baggage at once with the first steamer, and mark each piece "fragile." This is all. My regards to Madame Lapierre and your son. I am cordially yours, squeezing ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... dwell upon these crepuscular stirrings of popular Latin poetry in the earlier Middle Ages. To indicate their existence was necessary; for they serve to link by a dim and fragile thread of evolution the decadent art of the base Empire with the renascence of paganism attempted in the twelfth century, and thus to connect that dawn of modern feeling with the orient splendours of the fourteenth and fifteenth ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... be elected President. A former newspaper publisher and Governor of Ohio, the President-elect rode to the Capitol with President Wilson in the first automobile to be used in an inauguration. President Wilson had suffered a stroke in 1919, and his fragile health prevented his attendance at the ceremony on the East Portico of the Capitol. The oath of office was administered by Chief Justice Edward White, using the Bible from George Washington's first inauguration. The address to the crowd at the Capitol was broadcast on a loudspeaker. A simple ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
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