"Fragile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... fragile little body whose life should have been and could have been divided between her bed and a bath chair. She was, however, as she said, "always on her legs." And she was always on her legs and always doing what she had not the strength to do, because, as she said, ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... 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 |
