"Flimsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your own necessities! Why don't you pluck up the nerve to shoot, and be done with it? I'll make it still more binding upon you: if you don't kill me now, while you have the chance, as God is my witness I'll hang you both for those murders last night at Silver Switch. I know you, in spite of your flimsy disguise: I can call you both ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... said Porthos, while the comte was looking about, "are constructed in a ridiculously flimsy manner. In my early days, when I used to sit down with far more energy than is now the case, I do not remember ever to have broken a chair, except in taverns, with ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... know; a man's friends don't last long after his money is gone. Besides, nobody wants to buy now. Raphael himself couldn't sell a picture here till times improve. A painter is a pretty butterfly for fine weather; what is he to do with his flimsy wings in such a hurricane ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... pirate vessels, which are intended to prey on our commerce. How long will it be before retaliation on England begins, and, when it begins, how will it end? Ay—how will it end? It is not to be supposed that we can long be blinded by such a flimsy humbug as a transfer to Southern possession of these vessels 'for the Chinese trade!' Are the English mad, demented, or besotted, that they suppose we intend to endure such deliberate aid of our enemies? When those vessels 'for the Chinese' are afloat, and our merchants begin ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of Japan, though interesting for its arrangements, and for its sensible and artistic use of the most flimsy materials, is too trivial in scale, detail, and construction to receive more than passing reference. Even the great palace at Tokio,[28] covering an immense area, is almost entirely composed of one-storied buildings ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... think not," he said, drily, as he looked about him. "The other morning finished up the rags on hand—but you are doing your best, with flimsy finery, to ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... whose imagination was of a more flimsy texture, formed a thousand chimerical conjectures, which he communicated to Pickle, in imperfect insinuations, hoping, by his answers and behaviour, to discover the truth: but the youth, in order to tantalise him, eluded all his inquiries, with such appearance of industry and art, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... so odd a name, Madame, that everyone remembers, because it means nightingale," said Leontine, gingerly tearing off an end of the flimsy ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and the product of many silk dresses ("scarcely soiled") in furnishing that objectionable and disreputable suitor of hers with funds for his extravagance. He has beggared two or three of her acquaintance already, under the same flimsy pretense of intended marriage, that scarcely deludes poor Abigail; she has sore misgivings as to her own fate. Alternately he bullies and cajoles, but all the while she knows that he is lying, deliberately ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... table near us two men had sat and were talking even as we, but one had a half-penny paper, and turned the flimsy thing about, I fancy in search of ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... of junior members of the bar who were in court watching his conduct of the case in order to see if they could pick up a few hints, he intimated that his case was closed. It seemed to them that the great K.C. had put up a very flimsy case for the defence, and that in spite of the fact that the prosecutor's case rested mainly on the evidence of a tainted witness Holymead would be very hard put to it to get ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... which she separated with her finger-nail. She had caught a cold, her eyes were frightfully swollen and her chest was shaken with fits of coughing, which doubled her up beside the work-table. With all that she had not even a handkerchief round her neck and she was dressed in some cheap flimsy woolen stuff in which she shivered. Close by, Madame Putois, wrapped up in flannel muffled up to her ears, was ironing a petticoat which she turned round the skirt-board, the narrow end of which rested on the back of a chair; whilst a sheet laid on the ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... honour, it is true, not overmuch valued by its recipients, for Mrs. Gurley's bedroom lay just above, and that lady could swoop down on whoever was weak enough to take a little rest. But Laura snapped her fingers at such a flimsy objection; for this was the wonderful room round the walls of which low, open bookshelves ran; and she was soon bold enough, on entering, hastily to select a book to read while she played, always on the alert to pop it behind her music, should ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... house was roomy and comfortable, as I have said, it was not, by any means, a handsome one. It was composed of dark red brick, with small windows, and thick white sashes; a porch, too—none of your flimsy trellis-work, but a solid projection of the same vermillion masonry—surmounted by a leaded balcony, with heavy, half-rotten balustrades, darkened the hall-door with a perennial gloom. The mansion ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... It's a pity somebody don't tell her how it looks to be seen going about with him as she does. She hardly lets him get out of her sight when he's in town. I invited them to tea the last time they were here and she wouldn't let him come; kept him at her house, made some flimsy excuse, and had the evening with him to herself. She's tried her ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... trivial in relation to pending issues; and on the 8th he wrote that some changes of officers and crews, incidental to the absence of a particular captain, would detain him a few days longer.[301] These were flimsy reasons for inactivity at a moment of great national interest, and when the operations in progress had been begun absolutely upon the presupposition of naval control and co-operation, for which he had undertaken to provide the means, even if not pledged as to ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... no time for debate. The blue line led by Bennett flung itself upon the dark-brown mass of Rebels like an angry wave dashing over a flimsy bank of sand, and in an instant there was nothing to be done but pursue the disrupted and flying ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... pulled harder, and still nothing. I smiled at Callahan, got a better grip, and gave it a yank. Then I twisted opposite corners around my fingers and frankly pulled at it. The absurd sheet refused to tear, and I realized how ridiculous I must look to Callahan to be unable to tear a flimsy sheet of paper. I suppose I lost my temper a little. I gathered as much of the paper as I could in each hand, bent over to put my hands on the inside of my knees, and pulled until I heard my back muscles ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness
... here have we a government insisting upon extending, without a moment's hesitation, this system which has already so deeply injured us, to three-fourths of the commercial marine of this country. And what are the flimsy pretences in addition? Why, that Prussia has threatened on one hand, and the United States coaxed on the other, and that British masters and mates are intemperate, and British seamen insubordinate. I will take the libel first, and ask Mr. Labouchere and the whig government how it happens that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... involved in the present case belongs to this list of incredible patents which the Patent Office has spawned. The fact that a patent as flimsy and as spurious as this one has to be brought all the way to this Court to be declared invalid dramatically illustrates how far our patent system frequently departs from the constitutional standards which are ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... my own story was written by unknown hands. The epilogue remained, in which I was to go on seeking what contentment I could find in action. But my whole story was not written on these flimsy pages. It was before me always and always I was turning to it, always asking myself how it would have run had this not happened or had that occurred. Studying it over and over again in my room at night and on my long walks up-town, I found that I could not think ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... stillness so complete, so final as this. Nor was there any fresh lightness in the morning air. It seemed to press downward like an enormous invisible bat; or like the shade of buried cities, vain outcroppings of a vanished civilization, brooding menacingly over this recent flimsy accomplishment of man that Nature ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... yet the subject not be dealt with sectionally, for that is not the way in which the things occurred. The historian must, therefore, beware that those divisions of the subject which he makes for our ease and convenience, do not induce him to treat his subject in a flimsy manner. He must not make his story easy where it ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... (Life, p. 91) places the scene of such a conversation in the house of the Bishop of Salisbury. 'Boscovitch,' he writes, 'had a ready current flow of that flimsy phraseology with which a priest may travel through Italy, Spain, and Germany. Johnson scorned what he called colloquial barbarisms. It was his pride to speak his best. He went on, after a little ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... pressed it. Still holding her with one arm, pressed to him as though the two young bodies were gripped together by a vice, he loosened the other arm and thrust it at the back of her dress, through the flimsy gauze of her scarf, down next her body. His stiff cuff caught on the edge of her dress, and his sleeve slid up—it was his bare arm against her naked flesh. He gave a savage, smothered, gasping exclamation, pressed his fingers ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... Descent. In the morning, when we went down for our animals, we found that they had broken through the flimsy fence of the Navaho, and had worked considerable havoc in his corn-patch. The Navaho grumbled and gesticulated, and showed unmistakable anger, but I took the matter coolly and, after seeing the extent ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... of the world, mankind is supposed to have worn very little or no clothing. Then leaves and the inner bark of trees were fashioned into a protection from the weather. These flimsy garments were later replaced by skins and furs. As man advanced in knowledge, he learned how to twist wool and hairs into threads and to weave these into durable garments. Still later, perhaps, he discovered that some plants conceal under their outer bark soft, ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... before served with success in that capacity, to command the combined fleets. The Lacedaemonians, to gratify their allies, and yet preserve the semblance of an adherence to their ancient institutions, had recourse to the flimsy subterfuge of investing Lysander with the real power of admiral, under the nominal title of vice-admiral. This instance is selected from among a multitude that might be cited to confirm the truth already advanced and illustrated by domestic examples; ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... disdain Flimsy safeguards raised by man, Struck a blow more swift and sure In that I ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... it. If a State is sufficiently strong and well organised, its control over the money power is unlimited. If it can rule its people, and if it has the necessary resources of men and material within its borders, it can go on in a state of war so long as these things last, with almost any flimsy sort of substitute for money that it chooses to print. It can enrol and use the men, and seize and work the material. It can take over the land and cultivate it and distribute its products. The little man ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... note: The original text refers to "vitres epaisses", thick panes, without specific dimensions. Glass only a millimetre thick would have been rather flimsy.] ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... up here in the mountains—why are you not at your station? The potato-sack story is pretty flimsy. Do better than ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... upon the sidewalk. There was a flimsy piece of paper fluttering about impelled by the wind. He ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... is perhaps the only real enemy he has to fear. How his heart and his flimsy paper must flutter in the unruly gusts of a March wind! We only imagine him pasting up a "Sale of Horses," in a retired nook, and seeing his bill carried away on ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... fluttered uselessly down and fire showered thick upon it. Timbers and beams crumbled like paper things and were no more. The whole flimsy structure ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... all these became easily apparent. With difficulty Ranald restrained his indignation. He let him talk for some time and then opened out upon him. He read him no long lecture, but his words came forth with such fiery heat that they burned their way clear through all the faults and flimsy selfishness of the younger man till they reached the true heart of him. His last ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... invasion of Mexico by any such allegation as that she has received Napoleon's assurances that he does not intend to make a French province of Mexico. She must know, that no confidence can be placed in his veracity. She must know, that such assurances are but a flimsy veil to deceive her and other nations. They are designed to meet the contingency—of Federal success in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... "Alexandre et Napoleon," p. 519. Welschinger, "Le Divorce de Napoleon," ch. ii.; he also examines the alleged irregularities of the religious marriage with Josephine; Fesch and most impartial authorities brushed them aside as a flimsy excuse.] ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... in his heart knew that Lanyard didn't exaggerate. The murder of the inventor had exasperated all France; and though tonight's weather kept a third of Paris within doors, there was still a tide of pedestrians fluent on the sidewalk, beyond the flimsy barrier of firs, that would thicken to a ravening ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... undoubting confidence, that it will on all hands be admitted that we have not sought to evade the difficulties of our position; that we have not concealed those difficulties, either from ourselves or from others; that we have not attempted to counteract them by narrow or flimsy expedients; that we have prepared plans which, if you will adopt them, will go some way to close up many vexed financial questions—questions such as, if not now settled, may be attended with public inconvenience, and even with public danger, in future years and ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... "criticism is a kind of brush which must not be used upon flimsy stuff, or it carries it all away with it. That is enough of the craft, now listen! Do you see that mark?" he continued, pointing to the manuscript of the Marguerites. "I have put ink on the string and paper. If Dauriat reads your manuscript, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... some very pretty faces; oval faces with large dreamy black eyes, and a flush of warm sunset on brownish cheeks. The indoor costume of Persian women is but an inconsiderable improvement upon the costume of our ancestress in the garden of Eden, and over this they hastily don a flimsy shawl-like garment to come out and see me ride. They are always much less concerned about concealing their nether extremities than about their faces, and as they seem but little concerned about anything on this occasion ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... advance here before they found their retreat was cut off. They have thrown up some shelters. We noticed from afar off several very conspicuous stone sangars, but coming close, we were surprised to find that they were made of stones loosely put together with big chinks, very flimsy and frail, and much too high for their purpose, too. They evidently were not intended for shelters at all. What were they there for? We looked carefully round, and at last the meaning of the device struck us. A hundred yards to the right the ground dropped sharp, leaving an edge; ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... stopped. The women were eating the dulces passed by the Indian servants. The men had not yet gone into the dining-room. Valencia dropped her handkerchief; Reinaldo, stooping to recover it, kissed her hand behind its flimsy shelter. ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... by Solange's dramatic entrance, noises of the camp could be heard through the flimsy walls. Far down the canyon faint shouts could be heard. Some one was calling to animals of some sort, apparently. A faint voice, muffled by ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... but an atom of sense, He ne'er would have woman from Paradise driven, But instead of his Houris a flimsy pretence, With woman alone, he had ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... his hand on the cloth, and drew forth a flimsy pair of tights of carmine hue—part of the Mephistophelian costume that Theodore had worn on the night of the party next door. With this in his hand, and a clearer understanding of the house, with its staircase at the rear. Garrison comprehended the ease with ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... of the native Prince, whom they had always been accustomed to respect, than to that of a rival trading corporation. This policy may, at that time, have been judicious. But the pretence was soon found to be too flimsy to impose on anybody; and it was altogether laid aside. The heir of Meer Jaffier still resides at Moorshedabad, the ancient capital of his house, still bears the title of Nabob, is still accosted by the English as "Your Highness," ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... public opinion. The guarantees for the future given by our own brethren, that we shall be permitted the free and unrestricted exercise of our religious observances as well as the right to worship God according to the dictates of our own consciences, are of more endurable texture than the flimsy promises of the enemy. Our noble and generous ally, France, already has procured for us that respect and recognition so indispensable to our safety and, contrary to the opinion already expressed here tonight, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... in range with the fire and lamplight, Paul saw a most extraordinary person. The man, although very old, was tall and dignified in appearance, with deep-set, mysterious eyes, and flowing white moustache and hair. The top of his head was lightly bound in a turban of some flimsy material, and a loose robe of crimson silk hung from his shoulders, gathered together with a cord about the waist. As he advanced Henley observed that the bones of his cheeks were high and prominent, ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... from her bedroom between the red trunks of the bird-haunted Scotch firs in the Wilderness. First thing, on clear mornings, the sunlight glittered on the glass of their small windows. Last thing, at night, the dim glow of lamp-light showed through open doorway, or flimsy curtain from within. They stood alone, but curiously united and self-sufficing, upon the treeless inhospitable piece of land, ringed by the rivers, the great whispering reed-beds and the tide. Their life was strangely apart from, defiant of, that of the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... of more or less undressed dancing girls; nondescript packages in wrappers like patent medicines; closed yellow paper envelopes, very flimsy, and marked two-and-six in heavy black figures; a few numbers of ancient French comic publications hung across a string as if to dry; a dingy blue china bowl, a casket of black wood, bottles of marking ink, and rubber stamps; a few books, with ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... forgotten and neglected. It is still less pleasant to walk home alone along a country road, at one o'clock in the morning, wearing a pale green voile. Lucinda was not prepared for such a walk. She had nothing on her feet save thin-soled shoes, and her only wraps were a flimsy ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... deliberate acceptance of wild improbability as historic basis, all unite to give it special place in the regard of readers. The theme is of course familiar. It is that of a small Chinese boy playing with fire who burnt down his father's flimsy hut so that a whole litter of piglings was roasted in the conflagration. The boy touched one of the incinerated little ones to feel if it were alive; burnt his fingers and applied them to his mouth. His father returned and did the same, and thus roast sucking-pig ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... made you the object of his unrepressed admiration, was your father? Why, that man was not old enough to be your father,—and if ever profligacy was written on a human countenance, its damning lines were traced on his. Your father! Away with a subterfuge so vile and flimsy, a ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... planned. Indeed, under the name of "peonage" the work of re-establishing a system of slaveholding that is barbarous in the extreme is already begun. Men and women have been seized upon by force, and upon the most flimsy pretexts have been subjected to a bondage that in its inhumanities may easily equal even the slavery of the olden time. The number of victims is undoubtedly much larger than the general public has ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... knife-stroke across the throat, which was, however, a mere matter of butcher-craft. He was proud of the good strong bay horse that he rode, which so easily carried double, and proud of his big boots and long spurs; and he scorned flimsy town clothes, and thought that good home-woven blue jeans was the gear in which a man who was a man should clothe himself withal. He glanced more than once at the different toggery of his companion, evidently a man of cities, whom he had chanced to meet by the wayside, and with ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... periods; the heroine excels in cheap but glittering repartee, wears "spangled muslin," and has "practised tripping, gliding, flitting, and tottering, with great success." Shreds and patches torn with a ruthless, masculine hand from the flimsy tapestry of romance, fitted together in a new and amusing pattern, are exhibited for our derision. The caricature is entertaining in itself, and would probably be enjoyed by those who are unfamiliar with the romances ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... the interview had told on him. This was the first actual buffet of the beast's paw. He led the way to his son's room and watched Barrant go through his intimate belongings with the feeling that intelligence was a flimsy shield against the brutal force of authority. The law in search of prey cared nothing for such civilized refinements as intellect or self-respect. As well try to stop ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... with her on the subject of education, she observed that 'all Misses now-a-days, wrote so like each other, that it was provoking;' adding, 'I love to see individuality of character, and abhor sameness, especially in what is feeble and flimsy.' Then, spreading her hand, she said, 'I believe I owe what you are pleased to call my good writing, to the shape of this hand, for my uncle, Sir Robert Cotton, thought it was too manly to be employed in writing like ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... a corner, we came to a white wooden house on the Rue Royale, with a flight of steps leading up to the entrance. In place of a door a flimsy curtain hung in the doorway, and, pushing this aside, we followed Xavier through a darkened hall to a wide gallery that overlooked a court-yard. This court-yard was shaded by several great trees which grew there, the house and gallery ran down one other side of it; and the two remaining sides ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... contour of the shore. High in the colourless sunshine a solitary bird, all black, hovered, dropping and soaring above the same spot with a slight rocking motion of the wings. A ragged, sooty bunch of flimsy mat hovels was perched over its own inverted image upon a crooked multitude of high piles the colour of ebony. A tiny black canoe put off from amongst them with two tiny men, all black, who toiled exceedingly, striking down at the pale water: and the canoe seemed to slide ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... with little clothing on, and plenty of flies about. Then we would see if he wouldn't sympathize with the poor, dumb beast. It's the most senseless thing in the world, this docking fashion. They've a few flimsy arguments about a horse with a docked tail being stronger-backed, like a short-tailed sheep, but I don't believe a word of it. The horse was made strong enough to do the work he's got to do, and man can't improve on him. Docking is a cruel, wicked thing. Now, there's a ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... call. On leaving the country you should write the initials P. P. C. (pour prendre conge) in the right-hand corner. In New York many men send cards by mail, offering the excuse that the city is too large to get about to make personal calls. This is only a flimsy pretext, ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... The Commandant took the tools from him and easily pried open the lid, for the scantling was light, almost flimsy. Within lay an object in an oilskin case, by the shape of it, apparently a violin; and yet ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Note.) He tells us how a Mason-bee's nest was enclosed in a glass funnel, the mouth of which was covered merely with a bit of gauze. From it there issued three males, who, after vanquishing mortar as hard as stone, either never thought of piercing the flimsy gauze or else deemed the work beyond their strength. The three Bees died under the funnel. Reaumur adds that insects generally know only how to do what they have to do in the ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... the Montagne de la Cour, who is willing to take my sketches at a decent price. Look here, Clary, how do you like this little bit of genre? 'Forbidden Fruit'—a chubby six-year-old girl, on tiptoe, trying to filch a peach growing high on the wall; flimsy child, and pre-Raphaelite wall. Peach, carnation velvet; child's cheek to match the peach. Rather a nice thing, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... them mighty everlastin' waves, forever flowin' back and forth, forth and back, the world of the flimsy and the false seemed to pass away and the Real more nigh to me than it did in the painted land of shams and onreality I had been passin' through. And as I meditated on the disgraceful sight I had seen—that gaudy, guilty creeter with ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... from one side of the table to the other, shaking the flimsy sheets in an angry hand, and scattering pins and needles broadcast on the carpet, while Eunice, like the tortoise, toiled slowly away, until bit by bit the puzzle became clear to her mind. She discovered ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... of winter there were five thousand people in the valley to be fed with miraculous loaves and fishes. Half of these were without decent shelter, dwelling under wagon-covers or in flimsy tents, and forced much of the time to be without fuel; for wood had to be hauled through the snow from the distant canons, and so was precious stuff. For three months the cutting winds came down from the north, and the pitiless winter ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... talk in that way before Sally, father, for her head is full of all sorts of vanity now; and as to Mara, I never did see a more slack-twisted, flimsy thing than she's grown up to be. Now Sally's learnt to do something, thanks to me. She can brew, and she can make bread and cake and pickles, and spin, and cut, and make. But as to Mara, what does she do? Why, she paints pictur's. Mis' Pennel was a-showin' on me ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... less brains, my jolly Jack, then I have given you credit for," said the other. "The story you speak of is somewhat too flimsy to serve us long. We must have a better claim to the lands than can come of possession in trust for an heir not to be produced, till we can find the way to Abraham's bosom. We have now obtained it: the younker, thanks to your Piankeshaw cut-throats, is on the path ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... December was truly appalling. All trenches were knee-deep and more in mud and water, and it is on record that the B.G.C., 19th Infantry Brigade, had his boots sucked off by the mud and went round trenches without them. Parapets would not stand and were so flimsy that many men were shot through them. But the weather eventually improved, material for revetment began to appear, and by the commencement of 1915 it was possible to move in the trenches in ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... to him as she could, sheltering him in the crevice of the cliff. Her one flimsy petticoat was soaked, and her legs felt like ice; but those little choking snores filled her with a joy almost too great ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... lines—even had One-Eye and Big Tom known how to wage such a bout; and both men knew little concerning the science of self-defense. What happened—without any further abusive language—was this: the longshoreman and the cowboy (while using due caution against coming too close to the flimsy railing of the stairs) each ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... absurd that I should array myself in these gorgeous gowns to compete with that Indian in her few flimsy calicoes and silks? The contrast is out of all proportion. It's the sublime and the ridiculous. And yet she looks well in anything! Dress her in rags and she is picturesque; robe her in silks ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... masterpieces of his skill? 'Intellectual ability wasted' among a people whose scholars smile inwardly at the ignorance of the average Western! Brothers, if God is calling you, be not deterred by flimsy subterfuges such as these. You will need the power of God the Holy Ghost to make you an efficient missionary. You will find your reputation for scholarship put to the severest test in India. Here is ample scope alike for men ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... the unutterable scoundrel, set himself up as Don Luis Montez. He imposed on the nurse, and took her away with my infant child whom I had never seen after she was three months old. Rabasco went to the United States as soon as he had established a flimsy title to my modest property. In after years he returned, an older and more successful impostor. Yet he feared to live on my estate, dreading that some day his treachery might be discovered. So, still calling himself ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... town, to which I made my first voyage. And I think that with regard to a matter, concerning which I myself am wholly ignorant, it is far better to quote my old friend verbatim, than to mince his substantial baron-of-beef of information into a flimsy ragout of my own; and so, pass it off as original. Yes, I will render unto my honored guide-book ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... than his judgment. I could say a great deal more upon this subject to your Lordship, but I am afraid I have already said too much. I would rather, for my own part, have the solid reputation of your most respectable president, though exposed to the insults of a brutal mob, than all the vain and flimsy applause that has ever yet been bestowed upon either or both the other two.—I have the honour to be, with the highest esteem and regard, my Lord, your Lordship's most obliged ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... their source of nourishment is partly explained by the nature of the remains of the victims they had brought with them as provisions from Mars. These creatures, to judge from the shrivelled remains that have fallen into human hands, were bipeds with flimsy, silicious skeletons (almost like those of the silicious sponges) and feeble musculature, standing about six feet high and having round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets. Two or three of these seem to have been brought in each cylinder, and all were killed ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... understanding nothing of Sirens or of Odysseys, hold their own theory with regard to the disputed name, which they connect with the construction of a harbour at distant Salerno, and though this legend sounds foolish enough, it is scarcely less flimsy than the notions already quoted. A certain enchanter, one Pietro Bajalardo, undertook—in modern parlance, contracted—to build in a single night the much needed breakwater at Salerno on the strange condition that all cocks in the neighbourhood should first be killed; for the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... being almost openly built to the order of the Confederacy in the port of Liverpool, in the very shipyards whence the Alabama had gone to sea, were approaching completion. Other iron-clads, not less powerful, were under construction in France, with the personal connivance of the Emperor, under the flimsy pretence that they were intended for the imperial government of China. Finally, on the 10th of June, casting all promises and pretexts to the winds, the French troops had marched into the capital of Mexico, ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... none shall dare to come in between woman and her Maker, and with unhallowed hands attempt to plant their shallow posts and draw their flimsy cords around the Heaven-wide sphere of an immortal spirit! We maintain that God has not so failed in His adaptations as to give powers to be wasted, talents to be wrapped in a napkin; and that the possession of faculties and capabilities is the warrant ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... not matter what one believes if one is only sincere," are more despicable than the Yankees who burned witches in Salem. Better that a man be "narrow" than that he be so "broad" as to take in "the devil and all his angels." Out upon our folly when we barter away the truth of God for a flimsy, tissue-paper bond of ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... "sailorising," not then on account of his nerves, but because ambition to possess a sweet-potato patch, pumpkins and a few bananas, melons, mangoes, had got hold of him. He had taken up a piece of land, but having no money his flimsy fencing was no barrier to the wallabies, and he abandoned the enterprise to them. Now he had abandoned his beche-de-mer project, had bought wire netting to keep out the wallabies, and would make a second effort ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... her husband left for the day I should go around half-naked, washing and dressing myself, in the same crowded little room in which she was then doing her work, as scantily clad as I was and with the sleeves of her flimsy blouse rolled up to ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... entirely to ask about the little shoe, or the tall gentleman of the attic. Nevertheless I did, as I went out, throw a glance up to the window of the court—alas! there were more panes broken, the placard was gone, the veil was gone—there was nothing but a flimsy web which a bold spider had stretched across one of the comers. I felt sure that the last six months had brought its changes to other houses, as well as the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... earnest that in spite of herself a little unacknowledged comfort comes into her heart. She feels it is no flimsy passion of an hour he is giving her, but a true affection that will ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... figure in a pier-glass? Was but the lovely H—k as much enamored, you would not sigh, my gentle swain, in vain. But your vanity is preposterous. How will this same bard of Bedlam ring the changes in the praise of Goldy! But what has he to be either proud or vain of? The Traveler is a flimsy poem, built upon false principles—principles diametrically opposite to liberty. What is The Good-Natured Man but a poor, water-gruel dramatic dose? What is The Deserted Village but a pretty poem of easy numbers, without fancy, dignity, genius, or fire? And, pray, what may be the last speaking ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... embankments, where building was unhandy and streets almost impossible, to be convenient to the mills. Six big factories in all, some on one side of the state line and some on the other, daily breathed in their live current of operatives and exhaled them again to fill the litter of flimsy shanties. ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... swarms with errors. The Duke of Nevers was not absent. He gave his opinion at the council before the feast of St. Bartholomew, and Henry of Navarre did not follow the procession four days after. Henry III. did not come back from Poland so quickly. Besides, how many flimsy devices! The miracle of the hawthorn, the balcony of Charles IX., the poisoned glass of Jeanne d'Albret—Pecuchet no longer had any confidence ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... production. In this he addressed the author under the title of 'your lordship', with such solemnity, that the public swallowed the deceit, and bought up the whole impression. The wise politicians of the metropolis declared they were both masterly performances, and chuckled over the flimsy reveries of an ignorant garreteer, as the profound speculations of a veteran statesman, acquainted with all the secrets of the cabinet. The imposture was detected in the sequel, and our Hibernian pamphleteer retains no part of his assumed importance but the bare title of 'my lord', and the upper ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... themselves but loud enough for her to catch a word now and then, made her wonder if the town was really safe for her father, or for herself. A storm was coming up, and the rising wind whipped the flimsy lace curtains of the windows and kept them fluttering like flags. The distant muttering of the thunder and an occasional sharp flash of lightning wore on her tired nerves until she could sit ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... rubber plantations of to-day from the life of the gatherer of wild rubber in the jungle. In Brazil, the solitary workers have to plunge at dawn into the perilous forest, with its lurking wildcats and jaguars, its coiled and creeping serpents. The dwellings are flimsy huts, food is scarce and expensive, and disease and fever cause ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... of whose white splendour and inward preciousness, the innocence thou hadst lost was but a bauble, being but a thing that turned to dross in the first furnace of its temptation? Innocence is indeed priceless—that innocence which God counteth innocence, but thine was a flimsy show, a bit of polished and cherished glass—instead of which, if thou repentest, thou shalt in thy jewel-box find a diamond. Is thy purity, O fair Psyche of the social world, upon whose wings no spattering shower has yet cast an earthy ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... at the fingers for signs of force and suddenly caught his breath. Under the woman's flimsy sleeve was a wrought gold bracelet, smaller than that one he himself had worn in Delhi and up the Khyber—exactly like the little one that Yasmini wore on her wrist in the Cavern of Earth's Drink! He raised the loose sleeve to look ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... intense as I passed from northwest Iowa into southern Dakota. The houses, bare as boxes, dropped on the treeless plains, the barbed-wire fences running at right angles, and the towns mere assemblages of flimsy wooden sheds with painted-pine battlement, produced on me the effect of an almost helpless ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... simultaneously in France. As it was evident that the Spanish children could not be disposed of in both markets at the same time, it was plain to the dullest comprehension that either the brokerage of Toledo or of Girono was a sham, and that a policy erected upon such flimsy foundations would soon ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... prophecy' to 'unawakened earth.' Shelley had sat at the feet of Godwin, and represented that vague metaphysical dreaming to which the Utilitarians were radically hostile. To the literary critic, Shelley's power is the more remarkable because from a flimsy philosophy he span an imaginative tissue of such magical and marvellous beauty. But Shelley dwelt in an ethereal region, where ordinary beings found breathing difficult. There facts seemed to dissolve into thin air instead of supplying ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... was ordered to be taken to the village square, where a dozen old men of the village were being held by the Germans under sentence of death on the flimsy charge of having resisted the Prussians. One by one these unhappy Frenchmen were being lined up before a firing squad and shot down. The sergeant, who, of course, was to share a like fate, was reserved for the last that he might have more ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... of the trunk; there were one or two little drizzly fountains, with the water dripping over the rock-work, of which the English are so fond; and the buildings for the animals and other purposes had a flimsy, pasteboard aspect of pretension. The garden was in its undress; few visitors, I suppose, coming hither at this time of day,—only here and there a lady and children, a young man and girl, or a couple of citizens, loitering about. I take pains to remember ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and horses, or mules, servants, etc.; our vehicles from the United States not having yet arrived,—nor is it difficult to foresee, even from once passing through the streets, that only the more solid-built English carriages will stand the wear and tear of a Mexican life, and that the comparatively flimsy coaches which roll over the well-paved streets of New York, will not endure ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... have disappointed all men's expectations by your old wives' fables, and the fire kindled by your accusations has burned itself away. I ask you, Maximus, have you ever seen fire spring up among the stubble, crackling sharply, blazing wide and spreading fast, but soon exhausting its flimsy fuel, dying fast away, leaving not a wrack behind? So they have kindled their accusation with abuse and fanned it with words, but it lacks the fuel of facts and, your verdict once given, is destined to leave not a wrack of calumny behind. The whole of Aemilianus' ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... to be, are as unlike as are the hastily constructed bulwarks of the savage tribes as compared with a solid British fortress; we soldiers know this, and that Major Delrose. should still entrench himself behind the flimsy seeming of days of yore, where he was safe through my careless good-nature (we shall call it), in allowing it to be supposed that I had robbed Colonel Clarmont of his wife, submitting to the stigma so that his act would not stand in the way of his promotion ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... There were no other lights burning downtown after nine o'clock. On starlight nights I used to pace up and down those long, cold streets, scowling at the little, sleeping houses on either side, with their storm-windows and covered back porches. They were flimsy shelters, most of them poorly built of light wood, with spindle porch-posts horribly mutilated by the turning-lathe. Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappiness some of them managed to contain! The life that went on in them seemed to me made up of evasions ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... had finally been appeased. The place was deserted and lay bare and ugly in the dull light. The gallant ship of the night before was seen to be a poor, flimsy make-shift. No wonder Mr. Rosenblatt had wished billows to engulf it and mist to shroud it. He sat on a beam lying at the ship end of the pool and stared moodily at the ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... disappeared. Pete heard a faint shuffling sound in the hall outside. Before he could turn the door crashed inward. He leapt to his feet. With the leap his hand flashed to his side. Unaccustomed to a coat, his thumb caught in the pocket just as the man who had shouldered the flimsy door down, reeled and sprawled on the floor. Pete jerked his hand free, but in that lost instant a gun roared in the doorway. He crumpled to the floor. The heavy-shouldered man, followed by two officers, stepped into the room ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... of the Society," he said, "and never perhaps in the history of astronomy, had an alleged discovery of such magnitude and consequence been promulgated on the strength of such flimsy evidence;" and after traversing in detail all the arguments of his opponent, he declared it his firm conviction that the effects which Professor Gazen had thought fit to advance as a "discovery," were neither more nor less than ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... away the bars at the window. When this was done, the prisoners helped him and his companions to throw over their bridges. The first man got out upon this flimsy bridge and when he was half way over, the inner end of the board was pushed out farther and farther until it touched the outer fence. Reaching the end, the man sprang to the ground, the inner part of the bridge was drawn ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... talent for arranging, for reckoning and recording, in brief for controlling finance, as more and more charmed the royal mind. [Mauvillon ("Elder Mauvillon," ANONYMOUS), Histoire de Frederic Guillaume I., par M. de M—(Amsterdam et Leipzig, 1741), i. 47. A vague flimsy compilation;—gives abundant "State-Papers" (to such as want them), and echoes of old Newspaper ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... suitable lads. Each case is strictly investigated when it arrives, with the result that about one-third of their number are restored to their parents, from whom often enough they have run away, sometimes upon the most flimsy pretexts. ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... I sombrely, and began to search my luggage thoroughly for my missing inheritance. But it was all to no purpose. The papers were not there. I could not have lost them. They had been stolen. I saw my always-flimsy inheritance melt away. I had been, I thought, on the edge of success, but I now had nothing but my name, a successful duel, and a few pieces of gold. I was ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... Hawkins, if you were to give out that you composed my speech, you know very well that people would say it was only your raillery, your fondness for putting a victim in the pillory and amusing the public at his expense. It is too flimsy, Miss Hawkins, for a person of your fine inventive talent—contrive an abler device than ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... would lie awake, hearing through the flimsy walls their passionate tones, now rising high, now fiercely forced into cold whispers; and then their words to ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... thing which struck me was the utter absence of all the mock-modesty, and the pretended self-underrating, conventionally assumed by persons expecting to be complimented upon their sayings or doings. Jasmin seemed thoroughly to despise all such flimsy hypocrisy. 'God only made four Frenchmen poets,' he burst out with, 'and their names are, Corneille, Lafontaine, Beranger, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... is to it," he easily proceeded. "I knew Miss Challoner and I have already said how much and how little I had to do with her death. The other woman I did not know at all; I did not even know her name. A prosecution based on grounds so flimsy as those you advance would savour of persecution, ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... had no pressing invitation to come back and has not been away long; after all, she and Lucy Foster are not great friends. Now she has only a flimsy excuse for the visit—I've seen her letter. Why should the woman force herself into Hazlehurst, unless it's to be within ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... her sounded a faint patter of crinoline coming down the hall stairs. And then there came into view from the porch, bending forward with caressing arms, a slim, lithe negress of about nineteen years. Her flimsy dress was torn by thorns, and her hands were pitifully scratched. Her skirt was gone, the petticoat bemired, and her naked feet ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable |
