"House of cards" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the same funnel as the one above it. On each side of these spacious saloons were small staircases leading to blocks of sleeping-cabins, scarcely one of which would have been without its two or more occupants a few hours later in the evening. They were now blown down like a house of cards. The furniture which they contained formed heaps of dislocated chairs, and wash-stands, and basins; the doors were off their hinges, the partitions were forced outward, the staircases leading to them had to be sought in the splinters ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... gave the affair large attention, and the net results were surprisingly fine. The house of cards so lovingly built up by Livingstone and his friends tumbled in a morning never to rise again. All the little plans failed like kites snipped of their tails. Fritters went home, because the public lost interest in his lectures. The ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... history as well as any of his people, and incomparably better than his English, French, or American critics. He knows that only twenty years after the death of Frederick the Great, the Prussian power went down before Napoleon like a house of cards, and that the country's humiliation was stamped in bold outlines when Napoleon was received in Berlin with the ringing of bells, the firing of cannons, and he himself greeted as a savior and a benefactor. That was only a hundred years ago. Is it an indiscretion, then, when ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... woman who has everything to offer to the one man in her life. She had felt as she had looked: almost a girl, with music on her lips and joyous things in her heart, nursing that wonderful gift to her sex,—the hopeless optimism begotten of love. And her little house of cards had tumbled so quickly to the ground, the little denouement on which she had counted had fallen so flat. They two were there alone. The little dinner which she had planned was as near perfection as possible. The champagne bubbled in their glasses. The soft light, the solitude, ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a moment. Tatham and Lydia were looking into each other's faces; the girl's soul, wounded and fluttering, was in her eyes. Tatham felt a sudden and choking sense of catastrophe. Their house of cards had fallen about them, and his stubborn hopes with it. She, with her high standards, could not possibly defend—could not possibly plead—for a man who was behaving so shabbily, so dishonourably, except—for one reason! He leapt indignantly at certainty; although it was a certainty ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
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