"Fall flat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... band lying against the boy's back causes the feathers to stand out and not fall flat and spoil the effect, as they otherwise might do. The photograph of the boy chieftain standing was taken expressly that you might see exactly how the newspaper costume of the Indian brave ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... Tayoga bringing up the rear. It was hard and painful work for Grosvenor, but again he succeeded in advancing without noise, and he began to think they would elude the vigilance of the savage scouts, when a sibilant whisper from Willet warned them to fall flat again. His command was just in time as a rifle cracked in the bushes ahead of them, and Grosvenor distinctly heard the bullet as it hissed over their heads. Willet threw his rifle to his shoulder but quickly took it down ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... not know much about bookkeeping and accounting, but I can add—and two and two, when the same man but different women compose each two, do not make four, according to my arithmetic, but three, from which,"—she finished almost hysterically the little speech she had prepared, but it seemed to fall flat before the man's curiously altered manner—"from which ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... adored music, and, more than most, understood it. Suppose—just suppose—she were to sing Tosti's "Good-bye!" He shuddered. Yet, if she did not sing something of that sort, it would fall flat, and she would be disappointed. So he tortured himself all through dinner, at which he did not see her, for he had been unable to get his place changed to the first sitting with hers. He longed to keep away from the concert, yet knew that he could not. At last, leaving his dessert ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... Parliamentary career, this was the first time he had been called upon to immediately follow a speech of Mr. Gladstone. He would willingly have abandoned the opportunity, for it was a speech which no man in the House of Commons was capable of confronting. After it, everything else was bound to fall flat, dull, and unimpressive. Lord Randolph had the misfortune of having prepared a speech of considerable length—going into the dead past, forgotten things, and found himself—almost for the first time in his life—incapable of holding ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... with a shudder of when he dabbled in the funds, and often told him to look sharp, and get a crossing. And lo! one day when he was cleaned out, and desperate, and hovering with the other ghosts of little capitalists about the tomb of their money, he saw his countryman fall flat, and the broom fly out of his hand. Instantly he made a rush, and so did a wooden-legged sailor; but he got first to the broom, and began to sweep while others picked up his countryman, who proved dead as a herring; and he succeeded to his broom, and it made money by ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... occasionally maintaining their upright position after sinking far below the level of the water, and rising again a hundred feet or more into the air with water streaming like hair down their sides from their crowns, then launch forward and fall flat with yet another thundering report, raising spray in magnificent, flamelike, radiating jets and sheets, occasionally to the very top of the front wall. Illumined by the sun, the spray and angular crystal masses are indescribably beautiful. Some of the discharges pour in fragments from clefts ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... a couple of the enemy dashed at him spear in hand, when there was a sharp double report from a rifle, and one leaped in the air to fall flat on the deck beside his intended victim, the other staggered back and retreated to ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... expected that the dragon would fall flat on the ground at the mention of such an important name as his; but the dragon did nothing ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... of "King Street" to "Lanwick Street," and several times we had to fall flat in the trench bottom to escape being hit by shells. They seemed at times to burst almost overhead. The "whizz-bangs" which Fritz puts over are rather little beggars; you have no time to dodge them. They come with a "phut" ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... creature, disturbed by the noise, would desist and look about in tranquil fashion like a cormorant on a rock, and would then again thrust in its hideous, yellow beak, while the man, in despair, would fall flat on his face in the dust. Some succeeded in discovering chameleons and serpents. But it was the love of life that kept them alive. They directed their souls to this idea exclusively, and clung to existence by an effort of the ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert |
