"Flimsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... England were still very numerous, and had become bolder in their advocacy of such principles. A fierce war was carried on by the newspapers of the day against Burke's "Reflections," and pamphlets and volumes of all sizes were published, in order to show that it was a mere flimsy piece of rhetoric and fine writing. The most conspicuous of these volumes were the "Vindictae Gallicae;" or "Defence of the French Revolution," written by Sir James Mackintosh; the "Rights of Man," written by that fierce democrat, Tom Paine; and "Letters to the Right Honourable Mr. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... have imagined us to be a buccaneer. Captain Palmer stated next day that he was afraid we would board him in boats, when asked the meaning of his threatening manoeuvres; but it was difficult to believe that the commander of a ship of war would make such a flimsy excuse; and let us hope for his own credit that he did not really believe his own statement. The demeanour of the crew was most satisfactory. No noise or bustle could be noticed; but a quiet, firm determination was expressed in the countenance of each man to defend our noble little ship to the ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... 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 wizard, so the story ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... schismatics had already disturbed the peace of his country. The funeral of the late emperor was accelerated with singular and even suspicious haste: the claim of Demetrius to the vacant throne was justified by a trite and flimsy sophism, that he was born in the purple, the eldest son of his father's reign. But the empress-mother, the senate and soldiers, the clergy and people, were unanimous in the cause of the lawful successor: and the despot Thomas, who, ignorant of the change, accidentally returned to the capital, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... the tall standing clock in the front room of Pemberton's Hotel, and Pemberton's stands by the highway that runs by the coast of Long Island Sound. It is near the western edge of the village of Greenough, the gilt cupola of whose eminent steeple is noted by far-passing ships. On the beach are flimsy summer cottages, and hard beside them is the old harbour, guarded by its stone pier. Whalers and merchantmen used to tie up there a hundred years ago, where now only fishing boats come. The village lies back from the shore, and has three divisions, Newport Street, the Green, and the West End; of ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... is that the Great man abides by what is solid, and eschews what is flimsy; dwells with the fruit and not with the flower. It is thus that he puts away the one and ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... jerked the book away and with a screwed up face and many gestures toward the kitchen recalled to them that a flimsy partition, though it may shut out the vision, is hardly to be counted on to stop the ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... Plymouth, receiving an extraordinary ovation by the sober English people, who seemed temporarily to have gone wild with enthusiasm. Back of that demonstration was the conviction that blood had proved thicker than water and that the apparently flimsy ties that bound the colonies to the empire were bonds that were unbreakable. The German conviction that the British colonies would fall away and the British Empire disintegrate upon the outbreak of a great war had proved fallacious. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... cool off and then you'll feel better after such a long ride. Shall I send Polly to the spring-house for some cold milk?" asked the lady of the house, folding the flimsy crepe token of ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... them what was the matter. One of the balls of fire had struck a curtain and ignited the flimsy material. The fire was now dropping down on some fireworks Tom had left on a chair. Just as they entered a pinwheel, lying flat, began to fizz, sending a shower of sparks across ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... may mention, without offending delicacy, the well-known name of SIR GEORGE FLIMSY, of the firm of FLIMSY, DIDDLER AND FLASH) smilingly asked MR. JAMES what was the amount of his savings, wondering considerably how—out of an income of thirty guineas, the main part of which he spent in bouquets, silk stockings and perfumery—MR. PLUSH could ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... vulgar, and another for themselves; or in an easy-chair, in the study, whither my lord retires every Sunday for his devotions. It dealt in private scandal and ribaldry, only the more piquant for its pretty flimsy veil of double-entendre. It was a fortune to the publisher, and it became a necessary to the reader, which he could not do without, any more than without his snuff-box, his opera-box, or his chasse after coffee. The delightful novelty could not ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... use imagination to feed life. In these sad weeks I have been like a sleeper awakened. The world of imagination, in which I have lived and moved, has crumbled into pieces over my head; the wind and rain beat through the flimsy dwelling, and I must arise and go. I have sported with life as though it were a pretty plaything; and I find it turn upon me like a wild beast, gaunt, hungry, angry. I am terrified by its evil motions, I sicken at its odour. ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stumbled, sprawling headlong and carrying the lamp down with him. For a moment he lay where he had fallen, too dazed and befuddled to rise, but presently he clambered up, his eyes wide and terrified, for his rising was Phoenix-like—mantled in flame. With incredible swiftness the flimsy coverings of his bed had burst into a crimson glare and even his clothing ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... showed to their hawk-like eyes, their rifles cracked sharply, to be generally rewarded with a howl of pain from some cutthroat who had been winged. But there could be but one end to such a battle. The convicts were well protected behind big trees, while the flimsy sides of their canoes afforded the brave little band of Seminoles almost no protection. Still they fought stubbornly on, answering shot with shot until the point and canoes were shrouded in ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... groaned and shuddered, and now a mass of plaster from the wall would slide and smash, and now some loosened tile would rattle down the roof and crash into the empty greenhouse below. Elizabeth shuddered, and was still; Denton wrapped his gay and flimsy city cloak about her, and so they crouched in the darkness. And ever the thunder broke louder and nearer, and ever more lurid flashed the lightning, jerking into a momentary gaunt clearness the steaming, dripping room in ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... hands, but he had neither the height nor the weight, being a flimsy creature alongside a man like me, and, besides, I was blazing to that height of wrath that I could have bit into a chisel. I gave him first the one and then the other, so that I could hear his head rattle and crack, and he went ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... repairs, to start once more on its erring course, or, perhaps, to go forth unfinished, remanded just there to death. The ten-thirty express was now pulling out through the yards in a powerful clamor of clattering switches and hearty pulsations that shook the flimsy walls of St. Isidore's, and drew new groans from the man on the chair. The young nurse's eyes travelled from him to a woman who stood behind the ward tenders, shielded by them and the young interne from the group about the hospital chair. This woman, having no uniform of any sort, must ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... 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
... carefully inspected the door, its fastenings and the strength of its hinges. The iron of the hinges was flimsy. The fastening was the old-fashioned wooden shutters hung outside and closed with a single slide. He noted with a quick glance that there was no cross bar of heavy wood nor any sockets in which such a ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... 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 ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... tinkers?" "Why, Gypsies, without a doubt," answers the reader, and makes no struggle to escape the conclusion thus skilfully sprung upon him. Will it be credited that the inventor of this theory was denied admittance to the columns of the religious newspapers in this country, on the flimsy pretext that the editors could not afford the space for a disquisition on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... doth disdain Flimsy safeguards raised by man, Struck a blow more swift and sure In that I ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... Harrison than from Ward or Cardinal Manning. In the arguments at the 'Metaphysical Society' he was on the left wing as against both Catholics and the more or less liberal theologians, whose reasoning seemed to him hopelessly flimsy. His first principles in philosophy were those of the agnostics, and in discussing such principles he necessarily took their part. He once told Mr. Harrison that he did not wish to have any more controversies with him, because dog ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... was undoubtedly right for that matter; but then—the Zu-Zu was the rage, and if ever she should be sold up, great ladies would crowd to her sale and buy with eager curiosity at high prices her most trumpery pots of pomatum, her most flimsy gew-gaws of marqueterie! ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... into the corral at the ranch he saw that another sign had been put on the corral wall. He had destroyed the first, speaking his mind in full at the time. He swept his gloved hand upward with a rush, tore the flimsy board from its fastenings, broke it to pieces across his saddle, and tossed the fragments from him. He was angry, for he had warned the outfit that they were carrying the joke too far, that Johnny was giving way to hysterical rage more frequently, and ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... frock!" cried his daughter, lifting out the top garment and holding it up before them both. "Oh, what a dress to send a poor country cousin! Fluff and flimsy, trimmed with sparklers; cut frightfully low, no sleeves, and a draggly train. Doesn't it look suitable for me?" She flung it aside with a gesture of scorn. "Ah, here's something a shade better! A little dancing frock of rose-coloured ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... you have received no benefit? If a house were given you, bright with marble, its roof beautifully painted with colours and gilding, you would call it no small benefit. God has built for you a huge mansion that fears no fire or ruin, in which you see no flimsy veneers, thinner than the very saw with which they are cut, but vast blocks of most precious stone, all composed of those various and different substances whose paltriest fragments you admire so much; he has built a roof which glitters in one ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... Madam, if her Ladyship's a'ground, your Face may put both Sexes out o'Countenance. [Exeunt Lady Toss-up, and Mrs. Flimsy. ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... reciprocity of ignorance. All this makes for better social and intellectual relations, good understanding and friendship, and so for political relations much more substantial in the case of many of the republics than the rather flimsy Pan-Americanism celebrated in eloquent speeches ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... look! and listen!" He caught up the day's issue from the floor and flaunted it, riddling the flimsy surface with the stiffened finger of indictment. "Look at it! Look at this ad.—and this—and this." The paper was rent with the vehemence of his indication. "Put my copy next to that, and it'd come to life and squirm to ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 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 set about throwing ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... "Lone Cypress." We paused yet another time down where the marsh reeds lined the way. Grasping handfuls of the coarse grass, the Commodore started to illustrate how the colonists bound thatch, doubtless from that very marsh, to make roofs for their flimsy cabins. But the marsh furnished something besides grasses; and before the Commodore's explanation had gone far, his auditors had gone farther. He valiantly slew the snake, the whole six inches of it, and hastening forward found those more progressive houseboaters ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... wailing sigh, Sad as the gust that sweeps the clouded sky. Ask him his griefs; what midnight demons plough The lines of torture on his lofty brow; Unlock those marble lips, and bid them speak The mystery freezing in his bloodless cheek. His secret? Hid beneath a flimsy word; One foolish whisper that ambition heard; And thus it spake: "Behold yon gilded chair, The world's one vacant ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Indian copartners. Of course, the white men themselves were satisfied with such deals, as were also the Indian men for that matter. Having sold their daughters and sisters for cotton blankets and obsolete rifles and traded their warm furs for flimsy calico and bad whisky, the sons of the soil promptly and cheerfully succumbed to quick consumption and other swift diseases correlated with the ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... can wait!" This was the dictum of those in authority and the underlings were only too eager to fulfil it to the letter. If there were the slightest opportunity to deprive us of our food, on the flimsy pretext that we had not answered the summons with sufficient alacrity, it was eagerly grasped. Under these conditions we had to go supperless to bed, unless we could procure something at the canteen or our more fortunate comrades came to our assistance ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... Tazewell, that the lyric to which you have reference is celebrated, both for its antiquity, and the pleasing harmonies that must ever commend it to the taste of the true lover of music; although I allow that to a disciple of the modern and more flimsy school of this glorious art, it may seem puerile and ridiculous," he remarked, in grandiose patronage. Then, again to Mabel, "There were four of us—as I said—all students. What is ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... warehouse, which was empty now and silent, the mere ghost of what it had been, he seemed in no hurry to show me. On the contrary, he went back to the ledgers of his earliest years in business, on the flimsy pretext of looking up certain figures and dates. He did not need me here, the work he gave me was absurd, I was simply taking the musty books from their piles in the closet and arranging them by years on the floor. "To save time," he said. But he himself was still on that first ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... kicked, brought out his chariot and others shut the gate behind it. Commodus admired the team a minute, then examined the new high wheels of the gilded chariot, that was hardly wider than a coffin—a thing that a man could upset with a shove and built to look as flimsy as an egg shell. Suddenly he seized the reins and leaped in, throwing ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... of her pocket. Nora clutched it very hard, but her trembling fingers could scarcely take the little flimsy pink sheet out of its envelope. At last she had managed it. She spread it before her; then she found that her dazed eyes could not see the words. What was the misery of the morning to the agony of ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... they 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
... truths of mortal nature. So true and real a book is it, he once said,—such a record of practical humanity and of the discipline of the soul amidst its wonderful poetical intensity and imaginative power. In him this meant no spurious revivalism, no flimsy and fantastic affectation. It was the real and energetic discovery in the vivid conception and commanding structure of Dante, of a light, a refuge, and an inspiration in the labours of the actual world. 'You have been good enough,' he once wrote to an Italian ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... would all be interesting enough, if properly remembered and ably told. But it was all too much like a dream—anybody's dream—not one of mine—all too slight and flimsy to have left an abiding remembrance, or ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... will have no effect, for they already know all that I can say. On what ground do they pretend to deprive America of the service of any of her citizens without assigning a cause, or only the flimsy one of my being born in England? Gates, were he here, might be arrested on the same pretence, and he and Burgoyne be ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... kicks and blows upon Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to give his companion the slip; but the spectre started full jump with him. Away, then, they dashed through thick and thin; stones flying and sparks flashing at every bound. Ichabod's flimsy garments fluttered in the air, as he stretched his long lank body away over his horse's head, in the eagerness of ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... peculiar to this country; for, although France, England, Italy, and even Germany, annually produce much music which is not worth the printer's ink, yet in comparison with ours it might almost be called classical. And the melancholy thing about it is, that specimens of these flimsy productions may be seen lying about freely on the pianos of people who would blush at the mere thought of having books of the same intellectual and aesthetic level lying on their parlor-tables for general inspection and for the entertainment of guests. For, while the corrupting influence of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... in, "I like 'em fine—like 'em better than those flimsy danged skirts! But if you're too good ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... Vining's room opened. It was a low, wainscoted apartment, and its deep-set window, revealing the thickness of the wall, looked out upon a dismal yard littered with brooms and buckets. Opposite the foot of the bed—a modern French bedstead, by the bye, whose brass fittings and somewhat flimsy hangings were strangely incongruous with their venerable surroundings—was an ingle, containing the smouldering relics of what had doubtless been intended for a fire, but which needed considerable coaxing before it ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... put one hand—one broad, brown, steel-strong hand with its broken discoloured nails—on Miss Ahearn's arm, in its flimsy georgette sleeve. Miss Ahearn's eyelids would flutter and close, and a little shiver would run with icy-hot feet all ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... a beard of flies' legs, a flimsy, old, grey, ruined, shaggy beard—beard without comprehension, beard without shame, without any feminine respect—beard which pretends neither to feel nor to hear, nor to see, a pared away beard, a beaten down, disordered, gutted beard. May the Italian ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... appearance and deportment than Pelagie and Suzette, but in character genuine Parisian coquette, perfidious, mercenary, and dry-hearted. A fourth maitresse I sometimes saw who seemed to come daily to teach needlework, or netting, or lace-mending, or some such flimsy art; but of her I never had more than a passing glimpse, as she sat in the CARRE, with her frames and some dozen of the elder pupils about her, consequently I had no opportunity of studying her character, or even of observing her person much; the ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... 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 time for fear to sink ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... moments the place was invested, with riflemen on every side except the south, which fronted on the bay. The steel-jacketed bullets from the high-power guns tore through and through the flimsy walls. Nevertheless the defenders replied pluckily, and the siege might have dragged on for hours had it not been for the courage and resource of Kuroki. Gaining the stable, Kuroki found an old pushcart there. He piled three bales of hay upon it, and then ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... another. Then there is the friendship based on a purely personal attraction, with mutual respect and self-respect as its dedicated corner-stone. This does not mean that one cannot see any faults in the friend, or know that one's own are seen, without losing affection. There is always something flimsy and insecure about a friendship that simply idealizes. Any relation should be all the stronger for a frank acknowledgment of its imperfections. If a girl cares enough she will be willing to admit her own faults and wish to make herself more ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... unrolled the boat and tied them in, lashing poles for gunwales at the sides, and in a short time our canvas canoe, buoyant as a cork, was floating on the water. The guides, who had been unable to believe that the flimsy bag they carried could be used as a boat, were in ecstasies. Rude but efficient paddles were hastily hewn from the nearest tree, and soon we were all gliding in our ten-pound boat over the waves of Ampersand, which glittered in the morning sunlight. To the guides the boat ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... which, as is plain from the Preface to the Miscellanies, were among his earliest attempts. In the little farce of Miss Lucy in Town, 1742, he had, he says, but "a very small Share." Besides these, there are three hasty and flimsy pieces which belong to the early part of 1737. The first of these, Tumble-Down Dick; or, Phaeton in the Suds, was a dramatic sketch in ridicule of the unmeaning Entertainments and Harlequinades of John Rich at Covent Garden. This was ironically dedicated ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... the pretence that they were engaged in bringing him negroes to work on his plantations; although, were his island ten times the size that it really is, he could not have employed one-tenth of the blacks carried off to slavery. On this flimsy pretext they might therefore find a dhow full of blacks, and yet not be able to capture her. This, of course, was often the cause of great disappointment to the crews engaged in the suppression ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... he probably proposed to make the great military triumph of his reign came in 1870, when, on a flimsy pretence, a misunderstanding which called only for diplomatic adjustment, he suddenly declared war against Germany and rashly put his armies into the field to cope with that powerful rival. Never had there been a more unwise or suicidal proceeding. In shameful ignorance of the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... the scent of the foe that killed his "Silver-brown," and would have followed, but it ceased at a place where a horse-track joined. Yet he found it again that night, mixed with the sheep smell so familiar once. He followed this, sore and savage. It led him to a settler's flimsy shack, the house of Tampico's parents, and as the big Bear reached it two human beings scrambled ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... passage divided into two equal portions, one of which leads to the editor's room, and the other to the grated counter where the clerk sits to receive subscribers. Everybody knows the appearance of these old houses, these staircases, these flimsy partitions, with their bad light coming through a window whose panes are veiled with a triple coating of dust, smoke, and soot,—the whitewashed walls bearing innumerable traces of fingers covered with ink, mingled with pencil-caricatures ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... offensive. Again, we find the Tojin baka often fail to discriminate between different classes of females. Discovering that the Japanese were lewd beyond all other people, with institutions fostering vice, without even the flimsy pretext of hygienic considerations, they take liberties which rouse the vindictive rage ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... said that the repertory is at fault; but I am convinced that if there were plenty of good singers in the field, many of the operas that were formerly in vogue might be revived successfully—always excepting the flimsy productions of Bellini and Donizetti. It was formerly believed for years that "Lohengrin" was the only one of Wagner's early operas that American audiences cared for. But "Tannhaeuser" has, in a few years, become more popular than "Lohengrin," thanks largely to ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... enough to turn away from excitement offered on any terms, or that their position was less desperately tantalising than his; and the latter explanation is the more probable one, since few lads in and about Kilmacrone can have had their martial aspirations baulked by an impediment so flimsy and ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... on the petition of his friends, he was respited and deported to France; he died at Orthez early in the following year. His verses are modelled on those of Melendez Valdes; though not deficient in technique or passion, they are often disfigured by spurious sentimentality and by the flimsy philosophy of the age. Cienfuegos was blamed for an unsparing use of both archaisms and gallicisms. His plays, Pitaco, Zoraida, La Condesa de Castilla and Idomeneo, four tragedies on the pseudo-classic ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... whom Adele's charities have flowed with a profusion that has astounded the Doctor, repays some new gift by placing in her hands a little embroidered kerchief, "too fine for such as she," which had belonged to Madame Arles. A flimsy bit of muslin daintily embroidered; but there is a name stitched upon its corner, for which Adele treasures it past all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... compounded of powders while the customer waited—there seemed to be a brisk demand for these—fish, presumably from the lake, alive and swimming about in a large tank from which they were withdrawn as required by means of a hand net; light flimsy muslins, white or dyed in a number of brilliant colours; lengths of exquisite embroidery in gold, silver, or silk thread, and in some cases studded with what looked very much like uncut gems; saddlery ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... before I have vented a note of my most sincere concern for your bad account of your health. I feel for it heartily, and wish your frame were as sound as your soul and understanding. What can I recommend? I am no physician but for my own flimsy texture; which by studying, and by contradicting all advice, I have drawn to this great age. Patience, temperance, nay, abstinence, are already yours; in short, you want to be corrected of nothing but too much piety, too much rigour towards yourself, and too ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... logic-chain, with some pretty flimsy strands in some places, but I'm afraid I'm stuck with it. King was greedy and hungry when I first talked to him, but I think I scared him off. I think, left to himself, he would ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... authors we had studied, I had the audacity to produce a composition in which I weighed Homer against Ariosto, and pronounced him wanting in the balance. I supported this heresy by a profusion of bad reading and flimsy argument. The wrath of the Professor was extreme, while at the same time he could not suppress his surprise at the quantity of out-of-the-way knowledge which I displayed. He pronounced upon me the severe sentence—that dunce I was, and dunce ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... picnic, completely overgrown with wild grape, and still gay with bloom. The habitations on the way are mostly board shanties and mean frame cabins, but the railway is introducing ambitious architecture here and there in the form of ornamental filigree work on flimsy houses; ornamentation is apt to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... had a transitory look; two light wicker arm-chairs by the fire, the two frail stands of dark, polished wood, the couple of flimsy chairs, and the case of books in the recess—all seemed uneasy, as if they might be tossed out to leave the room clear, with its green floor and walls, and its white ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... quickly extricated himself from this difficulty. He fell back upon the corrupt judiciary. Upon various flimsy pretexts, he and Fisk, in a single day, procured twelve sweeping injunctions and court orders. [Footnote: Gold Panic Investigation, etc. 18.] These prohibited the Stock Exchange and the Gold Board from enforcing ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... 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 ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... is an absurd position—for man, the heir of all the ages: hag-ridden by the flimsy creatures of his own brain. If a pebble in our boot torments us, we expel it. We take off the boot and shake it out. And once the matter is fairly understood it is just as easy to expel an intruding and obnoxious thought from the mind. About this there ought to be no mistake, ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... South, a great fleet of iron-clad 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 ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... dead. We can bear the pain in silence, if our hearts are strong enough, while the nations of the earth stand afar off. I have no word of this To-Day to speak. I write from the border of the battlefield, and I find in it no theme for shallow argument or flimsy rhymes. The shadow of death has fallen on us; it chills the very heaven. No child laughs in my face as I pass down the street. Men have forgotten to hope, forgotten to pray; only in the bitterness of endurance, they say "in the morning, 'Would God it were even!' ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... falling upon the floor, which shook beneath me as I lay. I sprang to a sitting posture and groped at my side for my gun; my notion was that some wild beast had leaped in through the open window. While the flimsy structure was still shaking from the impact I heard the sound of blows, the scuffling of feet upon the floor, and then—it seemed to come from almost within reach of my hand, the sharp shrieking of a woman in mortal agony. So horrible a cry I had never ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... this founded upon a few "sports" from one species of plant, itself of doubtful origin (variety or hybrid), and offering phenomena in no way different from scores of other cultivated plants. Never, I should think, has such a vast hypothetical structure been erected on so flimsy a basis! ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... it," said Miss Dorothy. "Well, dear, I hope your grandmother will not be very hard on you. The only point I can see that needs blame, is your wearing that flimsy delicate frock, but as you had never been blackberrying before, you couldn't know the unkindness ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... them I thought that Mrs. L'Hommedieu might be the Mrs. Helmuth in whose history I was so interested, but from all I could learn she was a very different sort of person. Mrs. L'Hommedieu was gay, dashing, and capable of making a show out of flimsy silk a shopgirl would hesitate to wear. Yet she looked distinguished and wore her cheap jewelry with more grace than many a woman her diamonds. I would, consequently, have dropped this inquiry if some one ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... extenso to the reporter, who took it down in shorthand, and promised to let him have a copy to lecture from next morning. But the fair copy did not come till the last moment. To his horror he found this was written out upon "flimsy," from which it would be impossible to read properly. Again he turned it down on the desk and boldly trusted to memory. This second version was taken down verbatim by the Baltimore reporters in their turn. What if it ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... ne'er adorn The flimsy robe by pleasure worn; Its feeble texture soon would tear, And give those jewels ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... locked up in the flimsy jail without breakfast. He was furious, but as he paced up and down the narrow beat beside the bed his anger gave way to anxiety. Surely the Pagets could not believe he had done such a thing. And Sheba—would she accept as true this weight of ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... than that to honor and truth, that the baser impulses are quicker with their response? It was a great bubble upon credit, and carried with it the seeds of self-destruction. True, the bank held mortgages on rows of flimsy-built houses where walls were cracking apart, foundations settling, plumbing in such a condition that it was a hotbed of disease. They would not cover the indebtedness. The available cash had been drawn out by large depositors, the best bonds ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... make some flimsy excuse for going to war. The truth of the matter is that men go to war because they want to go to war. They can't help themselves. They are impelled by forces over which they have no control. By forces outside ...
— Disturbing Sun • Robert Shirley Richardson
... baron will not cry abroad the cause of the meeting," said the soldier, gravely. "These fashionable affairs need but flimsy pretexts." ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... butchery was going on, numbers were observed pushing off in the barks that lined the shore, and making the best of their way across the lake. They were constantly intercepted by the brigantines, which broke the flimsy array of boats, sending off their volleys to the right and left as the crews of the latter hotly assailed them. The battle raged as fiercely on the lake as on the land. Many of the Indian vessels were shattered and overturned. Some few, however, under cover of smoke, which rolled ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... means averse from the imposition of such fiscal burdens as might be necessary for raising the amount of revenue required for State exigencies. The difference between one sort of impost and the other, would seem little more than a change of name—a flimsy juggle of words—"a rose by any other name would smell as sweet;" and, to the consumer, it matters little whether the tax he pay is levied for protection or finance, the sum being equal. It is, and it has been objected against various ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... him—at least in discreet outline—of their conversation. She also saw that if she reopened the subject she would find herself straightway whirled out upon a stormy sea of danger that might easily overwhelm her flimsy boat. She silently and sullenly dropped into her place; she ministered to the general's pleasure in packages of finery. But she did not exclaim, or admire, or respond in any way. The honeymoon was over. Her dream of ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... the age is to be complied with. M.B. will tell you the sort of girl I request the ten lines for. Somewhat of a pensive cast, what you admire. The lines may come before the Law question, as that can not be determined before Hilary Term, and I wish your deliberate judgment on that. The other may be flimsy and superficial. And if you have not burnt your returned letter, pray re-send it me, as a monumental token of my stupidity. 'Twas a little unthinking of you to touch upon a sore subject. Why, by dabbling ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... them, I say, each or all of these, or a hundred more like them, and to any one you so speak, the answer is—"Pooh, pooh, my dear fellow, never fear—don't fuss yourself —take it easy—to-morrow will do just as well." If, on the other hand, however, you reject such flimsy excuses, and simply say, "I'm booked in the mail," the opposition at once falls to the ground, and your quondam antagonist, who was ready to quarrel with you, is at once prepared to assist in ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... Malcolm came in, in a flimsy dressing gown of yellow, with blue ribbons in it, her hair wet and still done up in a towel. Superbly she trusted to her big eyes of limpid brown, and to the marble-like pallour of her complexion, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... dark, and I made haste to make up my flimsy little tent. The ground was desperately rocky. I made out, however, to level down a strip large enough to lie on, and by means of slim alder stems bent over it and tied together soon had a home. While thus busily engaged ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... time as a partial background for their contents; while portieres are not only aesthetic but useful in deadening sounds, cutting off draughts, and screening one room from another. "Drapes," those flimsy, go-as-you-please looking bunches of poor taste knotted, cascaded, and festooned over mantels, pictures, and chair backs, we have outgrown, confining our efforts in this line to the silk draught curtain to conceal the inelegant yawn of an open grate; and ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... decently, as you see us do. How will you manage when a regular storm comes? Take it from me, the wind shakes the tree-tops finely! He has many a time come whistling through my old branches; and how do you think that you'll come off, with that flimsy finery which you ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... thoughtfully, taking down a flimsy yellow book rather tattered. "I've heard of him; if his novels are as bad as his reputation I ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... obtained a glimpse of 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 save the bicycle, after riding for them I have to congratulate ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... his officers were sentenced to imprisonment in Holloway jail, the rumors died out. They revived again as one man after another was released from jail before his time was up. The various excuses offered were so flimsy that the public began to think that it was true that they had powerful ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 34, July 1, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... his face, of his clothes, of his dull severity, of his solemn grief, repeated the wide gesture that in its comprehensive sweep indicated an infinity of moral sweetness, embraced the walls, the hangings, the whole house, all the crowd of houses outside, all the flimsy and inscrutable graves of the living, with their doors numbered like the doors of prison-cells, and as impenetrable as the granite ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... than the West Indies. The Spanish ladies in the Philippines are dressed as in the ancient cities of their own renowned peninsula. The Filipinos are of the varied styles that adorn Africans and the Asiatics. They are gay in colors and curious in the adjustment of stuffs, from the flimsy jackets to the fantastic skirts. The first essential in the dress of a Filipino is a jacket cut low, the decolette feature being obscured to some extent by pulling out one shoulder and covering the other, taking the chances of the lines that mark the concealment and disclosure of breast and ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... Carty and the telephone business have grown up together, he always a little distance in advance. No other man has touched the apparatus of telephony at so many points. He fought down the flimsy, clumsy methods, which led from one snarl to another. He found out how to do with wires what Dickens did with words. "Let us do it right, boys, and then we won't have any bad dreams"—this has been his motif. And, as the crown and climax of his ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... ago. She admired with all her soul the hard, staring flowers which these colors produced. They looked, she said, substantial and durable. They looked like artificial flowers; nobody could mistake them for the real article, which was occasionally known to be the case with that flimsy, in her opinion, ugly, art embroidery. No, no, Mrs. Cameron would not be smitten by the art craze. "Let nature be nature!" she would say, "and worsted work be worsted work, and don't let us try to clash the poor things into one, as that wretched art-school is always ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... religious duties; but, like other unwise human inventions, which do not take into consideration the evil tendencies of the human mind, they have led to a system of degrading idolatry, while the simple truths of Christianity have been superseded by a flimsy tissue of falsehoods. Although the members of the Greek Church are iconoclasts, or image-breakers, and allow no actual images to be set up on their altars, it must be owned that they pay just as much adoration to the pictures of their saints ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... was the conviction that she was made for love, as he had said to himself while he listened to her at Mrs. Burrage's. She was profoundly unconscious of it, and another ideal, crude and thin and artificial, had interposed itself; but in the presence of a man she should really care for, this false, flimsy structure would rattle to her feet, and the emancipation of Olive Chancellor's sex (what sex was it, great heaven? he used profanely to ask himself) would be relegated to the land of vapours, of dead phrases. The ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... the byways leading to the abbey from the north of the Tweed were not very practicable for motors and we therefore approached it from the other side. This made it necessary to cross the river on a flimsy suspension bridge for foot-passengers only, and a notice at each end peremptorily forbade that more than half a dozen people pass over the bridge at one time. After crossing the river it was a walk of more than a mile to the abbey, and as we were tempted to linger rather ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... possible to serve mammon with impunity, and for as long as it suited him. He knew better now. At this moment he was undergoing the sensations of one who, having taken shelter in what he thinks a light and flimsy structure, finds that it is built of the solidest stone. Worse still: that he has ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... how they feel about taking up a proposition that may mean war. May I ask you to come at once to me with their answer. It is possible that they will call for a consultation with the ministers, nobles and high officers. Still, I fear they will be unwilling to risk much on the rather flimsy proof you can give. Gabriel is powerful and we do not seek a war with him. There is another foe for whom we are quietly whetting our swords." The significant remark caused both listeners to prick up their ears. But he disappointed, ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... more stairs. At the top he found another room exactly similar to the one below, furnished in the same bare way. In one corner he saw something gray. Examining it, it proved to be a flimsy gauze-like wrap; it was not old, nor torn. There was a white cloth, also a ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... are built on the same plan. There is one guest-room, a bare carpetless apartment, with a rough wooden bench, a table, and two straight-backed wooden chairs, and the room is heated to suffocation by a huge stove, which occupies a corner of the room. The flimsy plank partition is unpapered, but generally plastered with the cheap, crudely coloured prints sold by pedlars. Some of these depicted events connected with our recent war in South Africa, and it is needless to add that the English troops were invariably depicted in the act of ignominious ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... one hears the song of a shell. One day just before tea we were treated to a Jack Johnson, and during our meal in the tent those of us who had not made off to our funk holes ducked at every sound under the table, or behind a biscuit tin or any other flimsy object utterly useless to give cover. Each time we raised our heads we had a good laugh at ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... there is a low, momentary rumble, and you are assured that the swift, delightful, dangerous shower, that cools the earth without interrupting our pleasures for dreary days, is approaching. No one whose dwelling is not better protected than most of those which bear the vain and flimsy decorations called "lightning-rods" can know whether his own house may not in a few moments receive a ruinous stroke, or that it may not be his lot to enter eternity with the first flash from that dark, towering ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... his associates having possession of the other end. Suddenly a most wonderful reform was apparent, as rats disappear from view after a few have been captured. Those who were at Invincible Club hall, and made secession speeches, declared they were all drunk, or were not in earnest, and other equally flimsy excuses;—these are the apologies members made to each other, presuming they were addressing the party who had surrendered them to the government. It was amusing to notice their trepidation. They were variously affected. ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... ears there has come a rumor at some time that his claim to the mine in Mexico is a very flimsy one and that he may ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... he swallowed his thumping heart. It couldn't be serious, not as far as he personally was concerned anyway. If that had been the case, a squad of monitors would have been at the door. Not this message tube.... He broke the seal and unfolded the flimsy with elaborate care. Slowly, he scanned it. Underneath the official letterhead, the words were curt. "Dis iz A matr uv urjensE and iz top sEkret. destrY Dis letr and Du tUb kontAniN it. tUmOrO, 15 jUn, at 2130 ourz, U wil gO tU Du obzurvatOrE, A nIt klub ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... the first stanza is quite too much in the flimsy strain of our ordinary street ballads; and on the other hand, the second distich is too much in the other extreme. The expression is a little awkward, and the sentiment too serious. Stanza the ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... like her. I pitied her. I always thought her a poor, flimsy little thing. But that ought n't to make any difference, if ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... end she would go into Parliament. It would be bound to come soon, the woman's vote. And after that the opening of all doors would follow. She would wear her college robes. It would be far more fitting than a succession of flimsy frocks that would have no meaning in them. What pity it was that the art of dressing—its relation to life—was not better understood. What beauty-hating devil had prompted the workers to discard their characteristic costumes that had been both beautiful and serviceable for these ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome |
