"Flimsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the hostile machinations of Dost Mohammed, and the philanthropic and disinterested wishes of the Indian Government for (to quote a notable phrase to which we have more than once previously referred) "the reconstruction of the social edifice" in Affghanistan. But now that all these subterfuges, flimsy as they were at best, have been utterly dissipated by this undisguised declaration of Lord Palmerston, that the real object of the war was to seize and hold the country on our own account, the attempt of the Globe to claim for Lord Auckland the credit of having ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... you best." Mrs. Ericson had dropped into a blandly agreeable tone which Nils well remembered. It seemed to amuse him a good deal and his white teeth flashed behind his pipe. His mother's strategies had always diverted him, even when he was a boy—they were so flimsy and patent, so illy proportioned to her vigor and force. "They've been waiting to see which way I'd jump," he reflected. He felt that Mrs. Ericson was pondering his case deeply as she ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... of them couldn't after the boys began to shoot. Soon as the Toltecs broke away a little, Nebraska and Taylor made for where we stood. I saw them coming and told the girl to lead us. The three of us—the girl, Taggart, and me—got to the bridge, which was a light, flimsy, narrow affair made of two long, straight saplings lashed together with vines, with a couple of strips of bark for a bottom—and crossed it. Then we stood on the ledge in front of the mouth of the cave, watching Nebraska and Taylor. They were coming for all they were worth, ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... incorrect and antiquated piece of information respecting this library in a flimsy work, published in 1850, entitled, A Graphic and Historical Sketch of the Antiquities of Totnes, by William Cotton, F.S.A., note, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... It wasn't easy to criticize that figure, lifeless though it was. "On a planet like this, with such slight gravitation, there is no need for such huge strength. The typical Mercurian should be tall and flimsy in build, ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... than the king's, and words were assuredly at a discount just then. A perusal of the international correspondence of the period leaves the reader marvelling why time was wasted in covering paper, with flimsy, insincere phrases, mendacious sign-posts which gave no true indication of the road to be travelled. There are, however, differences in the art of dissimulation and Charles never attained a mastery ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... present, was incontinently discarded. In its stead Victor favoured Karslake with a slow smile of understanding that broadened into an insuppressible grin of successful malice, a grimace of crude exultation through which peered out the impish savage mutinously imprisoned within a flimsy husk of ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... was lit, and the papers burned, and Alfy waved the flimsy, flaming torch bravely for a minute or so, that the watchers in the island house might just catch a glimpse of them ...
— The Island House - A Tale for the Young Folks • F. M. Holmes
... government land, but Austin established the shadow of a claim under mineral regulations, and, by obstructionist tactics, had prevented all the red tape from being unwound. His mineral claim was flimsy; he knew it, and everybody else knew it. But until the case should be reported back, he remained where he was. It was up to Plant; and Plant had been lenient. Probably Austin could have ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... be at his work," said Constans to himself. "Wait until his teeth show through that flimsy ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... ashore, she discovered the first of the series of tilts which Bob and Shad had built, and, immediately pushing aside the flimsy bark door, entered the tilt and struck a match. Its flare disclosed a half-burned candle on a shelf near the door, and lighting it she held it aloft for a survey of the interior of ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... grudging boundaries all about it, but with everything worse excluded, being of course the most insolently-pleasant thing in the world. In addition to which, when the garden is in the Italian manner, with flowers rather remarkably omitted, as too flimsy and easy and cheap, and without lawns that are too smart, paths that are too often swept and shrubs that are too closely trimmed, though with a fanciful formalism giving style to its shabbiness, and here and there a dusky ilex-walk, and ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... (Vol. iii., p. 181.).—Cordially do I agree with every word of your correspondent LAUDATOR TEMPORIS ACTI, and especially as to the prayer-books for churches and chapels, printed by the Universities. Experto crede, no solicitude can preserve their "flimsy, brittle, and cottony" leaves, as he justly entitles them, from rapid destruction. Might not the delegates of the University presses be persuaded to give us an edition with the morning and evening services printed on vellum, instead of the miserable ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... invariably one runs to the right and one to the left, so that the driver cannot favor them at all, but has to crowd between them, and drive both into the mud. That is palpably interested false witness. He thinks it is fine fun to push women into the mud, and frames such flimsy excuses. But as a woman's thoughts about women, this woman's utterances are deserving of attention; and she says that women are not to be depended upon. She is never sure that they will not turn out on the wrong side. They are nervous; ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... you less brains, my jolly Jack, then I have given you credit for," said the other. "The story you speak of is somewhat too flimsy to serve us long. We must have a better claim to the lands than can come of possession in trust for an heir not to be produced, till we can find the way to Abraham's bosom. We have now obtained it: the younker, thanks to your Piankeshaw cut-throats, is on the path to Paradise; ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... to feed the imagination, not to 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. That is the deep mystery and horror of life, that one ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to follow the Tressidys into the country on a pretence of hunting, or some other flimsy pretext of the sort, I would be near her. I had luckily kept my head sufficiently to breathe no word of love to Karine. I had even dwelt with some emphasis upon my "friendship," as though to assure her that she need fear no ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... once have drawn at will. Like a fool he had believed it 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 been ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... doubt, though, on the point, no possible doubt. Sabellius states it plainly. Artemidorus Minor, I grant you, holds the question debatable, but his reasons for doing so are tolerably notorious. Besides, what does all his flimsy sophistry avail against Nicanor's fine chapter on this very subject? Crushing, I consider it. His logic is final and irrefutable. What can anyone say against Saevius Nicanor?—ah, what indeed?" ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... it is when it is itself corrupted! The taste of our times, with all our glorious Christian literature, and our public libraries, our lecturers, our preachers, our professors, and our standard classical authorities, is scarcely kept from being perverted by the flimsy literature which has inundated us, and the newspaper platitudes which we devour with our breakfast. With every effort of true and Christian philanthropists, it is questionable whether there is any moral progress among us. There is a material growth; but does the moral correspond, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Peter seized on this flimsy excuse with a wave of relief and thankfulness to Cissie. He had to restrain himself as he strode across the room and swung together the two halves of the somber curtains in order to preserve an appearance of an ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... only amongst many—soon disillusioned Hyde. The great hopes which he had formed from estimating the splendid chances opened by the Restoration, were grievously dispelled. He learned how selfish and how flimsy was much of the noisy loyalty. He soon learned, also, to take a just estimate of the character of the King. During the time of exile he had formed a high opinion of Charles's abilities, and had frequent cause to appreciate his tact and abundant fund ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... at once he remembered one of Rebecca's early confidences,—the little pink sunshade that had given her the only peep into the gay world of fashion that her childhood had ever known; her adoration of the flimsy bit of finery and its tragic and sacrificial end. He entered the shop, bought the extravagant bauble, and expressed it to Wareham at once, not a single doubt of its appropriateness crossing the darkness of his masculine mind. He thought only of the joy in Rebecca's eyes; ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the other room being occupied by an Italian. We had to make a flying start for Naples at 5 A.M., and I got up at 4, in order to shave, dress and breakfast in time to catch the train. I opened the proceedings by starting to strop my razor on a big leather strop; the door being quite flimsy, my Italian neighbor heard me distinctly, and as he was trying to fall asleep he became very angry, jumped out of bed and protested in loud and profane language. I paid no attention to his protest and then he rang his bell long and violently. As I wanted to make a respectable ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... seclusion. The softest music breathes from a full orchestra. Gold is everywhere, in slugs, doubloons, and heaps of nuggets. Gold reigns here. Silver is a meaner metal hardly attainable. Bank notes are a flimsy possibility of the future. Piles of yellow sovereigns and the coinage of every land load the tables. Sallow, glittering-eyed croupiers sweep in, with affected nonchalance, this easy-gained harvest ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... But The Bottle Imp is perfectly constructed: the last page ends the tale, and the tale is told with a light grace, sportive within restraint, that takes nothing from the seriousness of the subject. Some may think this extravagant praise for a little story which, after all (they will say), is flimsy as a soap bubble. But let them sit down and tick off on their fingers the names of living authors who could have written it, and it may begin to dawn on them that a story has other dimensions ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the Neapolitan dialect that his notion of happiness was to stroll up and down the Toledo ogling the girls. When he had finished acknowledging the applause he departed and his place was taken by a lady no longer young, in flimsy pale blue muslin, a low neck and sham diamonds. There lingered about her a hungry wistfulness, as though she were still hoping to get a few more drops of enjoyment out of the squeezed ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... This was easy, as we have said, so long as his goddess smiled, even though it were as a goddess indeed,—as a creature unattainable. But when she frowned, and the heavens grew dark, Richard's sole dependence was in his own will,—as flimsy a trust for an upward scramble, one would have premised, as a tuft of grass on the face of a perpendicular cliff. Flimsy as it looked, however, it served him. It started and crumbled, but it held, if only by a single fibre. When Richard had cantered fifty yards away from Gertrude's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... 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 its better staging and interpretation. ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... had set fire to his imagination. It had to do with the lives of the men, the engineers who dared to deal with the wild and terrible power of the western hills, who harnessed and conquered roaring rivers, and sent the power hundreds of miles over the wilderness, by flimsy wires, to turn the wheels of industry and light the dark places of the cities. And, like all men who came into touch with elemental mysteries, they had their moments of pure ecstasy, gaining a tingling, intenser life from the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the lift in silence for a little while. Then Bates caused it to descend again, and Theydon examined the rather flimsy device which fastened ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... me awake, and a worse came to keep it company. The men from the next room came home—students, I suppose. They talked gaily enough, their remarks interspersed by the thuds of falling boots and the other incomprehensible noises of the night. Through the flimsy partition I caught half sentences in that sort of French intonation that is so impossible to attain. It reminded me of the voices of the two men at the Opera. I began to wonder what they had been saying—what they could ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... There is, shall we say, no science of sociology—merely a heap of vague, empirical observations, too flimsy to be useful in strict logical inference? I should, I confess, be apt to say so myself. Then, you may proceed, is it not idle to attempt to introduce a scientific method? And to that I should emphatically reply, No! it is of the highest importance. ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... building, it 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 ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... a little circuit because the water was coming up further in some of the town streets all the tune, with a rather swift current that threatened to undermine the foundations of numerous flimsy buildings, if ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... the morning when the terrific earthquake shook San Francisco and the surrounding country. One shock apparently lasted two minutes and there was an almost immediate collapse of flimsy structures all over the former city. The water supply was cut off and when fires broke out in various sections there was nothing to do but to let the buildings burn. Telegraphic and telephone communication ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... Rowdy, from wondering what had made Pink change his attitude so abruptly, began to plan industriously the next meeting with Jessie Conroy, and to build a new castle that was higher and airier than any he had ever before attempted—and perhaps had a more flimsy foundation; for it rested precariously ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... permit me to turn my face towards this stone wall, for I cannot bear to look at the flimsy piece of wire, which is the only battlement of defence that interposes betwixt me and the precipice." He spoke of the bronze balustrade, six feet high, and massive in proportion. Thus saying, and holding fast by the physician's arm, Ursel, though himself a younger and more able man, trembled, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... "It is my destiny. And yet," said she, after a pause, "I would not have you remember me by that flimsy thing. Let me sing you a song your mother loved; let me be remembered in this house, as a singer, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... at all inferior to those of the Kayans, and very similar to them in general plan. But in this as in all other respects the Klemantans exhibit great diversities, some of their houses being built in a comparatively flimsy manner, light timber and even bamboos being used, and the roof being made of leaves. The houses of the Muruts are small and ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... the present case belongs to this list of incredible patents which the Patent Office has spawned. The fact that a patent as flimsy and as spurious as this one has to be brought all the way to this Court to be declared invalid dramatically illustrates how far our patent system frequently departs from the constitutional standards which are supposed ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... in the group. Mr. Craske had caught sight of Lady Ostermore and Mistress Winthrop, and he fell to giggling, a flimsy handkerchief to his painted lips. "Oh, 'Sbud!" he bleated. "Let me die! The audaciousness of the creature! And behold me the port and glance of her! Cold as a ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... but they are not meant for self-respecting American women. I fancy my sister-in-law may not wholly approve of it, but I don't know. I shall take pleasure in showing her and the rest that it would be wicked as well as foolish to let a flimsy suggestion of evil interfere with the happiness of two people situated ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... much to be attended to. But here, also, you are to discriminate carefully between true desire and false. The medical men tell us we should eat what we truly have an appetite for; but what we only falsely have an appetite for we should resolutely avoid. It is very true; and flimsy, desultory readers, who fly from foolish book to foolish book, and get good of none, and mischief of all—are not these as foolish, unhealthy eaters, who mistake their superficial false desire after spiceries ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... it is, I call that very flimsy evidence; and I again warn you to be careful how you ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... island do not speak to the other half. And, worse than all, religious differences have been brought up as engines wherewith to wreak political animosities. I never saw a community in which people appeared to hate each other so cordially. The flimsy veil of etiquette does not conceal the pointed sneer, the malicious innuendo, the malignant backbiting, and the unfounded slander. Some of the forms of society are observed in the island—that extreme of civilisation vulgarly ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... great camp, and had caused temporary bridges to be built over all the streams on the way. Owing to the convenient bamboo, this is fairly easy of achievement, for the bamboo is at the same time tough and pliable, and bamboo bridges, in spite of their flimsy appearance, can carry great weights, and can be run up in no time, and kindly Nature furnishes in Bengal an endless supply ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... the Khedivial Palace near Cairo "Kasr al-Nuzhah;" literally, "of Delights;" one of those flimsy new-Cairo buildings which contrast so marvellously with the architecture of ancient and even of mediaeval Egypt, and which are covering the land with modern ruins. Compare Mohammed Ali's mosque in the citadel with the older Sultan ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... 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, the twin laughing dimples in her cheeks ... she added her welcome to the others ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... in the lock. Kronberg, huddled in a corner, stirred and cunningly hid the flimsy coverings of chintz he had unearthed from an ancient trunk. For three days he had not spoken, three days of bitter, biting cold, three days of creaking, lonely quiet, of mournful wind and shifting lights ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... uselessly down and fire showered thick upon it. Timbers and beams crumbled like paper things and were no more. The whole flimsy ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... many modern aspects of Nagasaki, the residences almost without exception were of flimsy, typical Japanese construction, consisting of wood or wood-frame buildings, with wood walls with or without plaster, and tile roofs. Many of the smaller industries and business establishments were also housed in wooden buildings or flimsily built ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... repeated, in short, the thousand incidents of the fusion of two hearts long separated—stand out in bright array upon the sombre background of the actual scene. Our souls knew each other to their depths under this test, which many a warm affection is unable to bear, finding life too heavy or too flimsy in the close ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... made them seem still more exasperating, and bewildering. Newsboys with shrill voices rasped the air with invitations to buy, and everywhere eager, nervous hands held out their half-pennies for the flimsy sensational rags. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... powers of apprehension were so uncommonly quick as almost to resemble intuition, and the chief care of his preceptor was to prevent him, as a sportsman would phrase it, from over-running his game—that is, from acquiring his knowledge in a slight, flimsy, and inadequate manner. And here the instructor had to combat another propensity too often united with brilliancy of fancy and vivacity of talent—that indolence, namely, of disposition, which can ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... up here in the mountains—why are you not at your station? The potato-sack story is pretty flimsy. Do better than that ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... the residence of a landholder. A huge palace of pine boards immediately springs up in the midst of the wilderness, large enough for a parish church, and furnished with windows of all dimensions, but so rickety and flimsy withal, that every blast gives it ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... is being repaired by the present Rana, under the superintendence of our host and a party of native workmen. Masons and most skilful carvers in stone were busily engaged in the restoration of parts that had fallen into dangerous decay—an extremely flimsy-looking scaffolding, made apparently of light bamboos, tied together in wisps, and forming a fragile-looking ramp, wound spirally up the outside of the tower. My host seemed to consider it a perfectly safe means of ascent, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... twelve years' imprisonment. When he arrived at the penitentiary, he answered the customary questions. "What occupation?" "Statesman." "What religion?" "None." He served one year and was then released on a flimsy technicality by the Court of Appeals. Civil suits were now brought, and, unable to obtain the $3,000,000 bail demanded, the fallen boss was sent to jail. He escaped to Cuba, and finally to Spain, but he was again arrested, returned to New York on a man-of-war, and put into Ludlow Street jail, ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... didn't seem to give comfort, either. And as the boiler was moaning with excess of heat, Lucille dashed for the bathtub. She talked to Marjorie through the flimsy door as she splashed, to the effect that Marjorie had much better let her call up another man and go out on a nice little foursome, instead of staying at home. But there Marjorie was firm. She would have preferred anything to her own ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... Tell 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 packing ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... sequence, and with development passages, etc.—of these there were none. Some composers were groping blindly after a something they wanted, but they did not hit on it. Self-sustaining musical structures, independent of words, were poor and flimsy. The form of the music that matters was determined by the words. From beginning to end of each composition voice followed voice, one singing, higher or lower, what had been sung by the others, while those others added melodies that made correct harmony. Thus a web ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... had followed for a time the straight road along the sea on that level plain which is the Condamine, the girl turned up a side street. "We live here," she said, and stopped before a structure of white stucco, rococco decoration, and flimsy balconies. Large gold letters, one or two of which were missing, advertised the house as the Hotel Pension Beau Soleil; and those who ran might read that it would be charitable to describe its ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... would have time to make another one. If it proved to be a success, he would be able to warm it up on the following morning. But, just as he began to read the recipe, he noticed that the fire had burnt low and needed instant attention. In his anxiety to prevent it from going out, he put down the flimsy little book and began shovelling coals on the fire. While he was doing that a gust of wind swept through the galley, and carried the recipe-book out through the porthole and into ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... the piano, 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 ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... the Pope was supported by French bayonets, but his light coinage would not pass in Paris. Now Papal zouaves are killing the citizens of Paris, and we take light silver and lighter paper. The piece is flimsy enough. It is not its political significance that makes it diverting, but the double-entendre therein. One must laugh a little, you understand. Men are dying out yonder, we might as well laugh a little here. Low whispers in the baignoires, munching of sugared ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... the flimsy railing, a slender body cut through the moonlight, parted the water with a clean sush! and bobbed up almost immediately, within three feet of the boat. Jerry Ring did not have the reputation of being the best diver in Watertown ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... But I am half inclined to believe it because it is so flimsy. I watched him very carefully, as you no doubt did. I was impressed with the belief that the charge of murder surprised him. And it did not appear the surprise of a murderer who thought he had his ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... became so jealous of WILSON, that he took every opportunity of depreciating his singular excellence. Stung by the madness of jealousy, BARRY one day addressing Sir Joshua on his lectures, burst out, "Such poor flimsy stuff as your discourses!" clenching his fist in the agony of the convulsion. After the death of the great artist, BARRY bestowed on him the most ardent eulogium, and deeply grieved over the past. But the race of genius born too "near the sun" have ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... men's expectations by your old wives' fables, and the fire kindled by your accusations has burned itself away. I ask you, Maximus, have you ever seen fire spring up among the stubble, crackling sharply, blazing wide and spreading fast, but soon exhausting its flimsy fuel, dying fast away, leaving not a wrack behind? So they have kindled their accusation with abuse and fanned it with words, but it lacks the fuel of facts and, your verdict once given, is destined to leave not a wrack of calumny behind. The whole of Aemilianus' calumnious accusation was centred ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... his mother, all these became easily apparent. With difficulty Ranald restrained his indignation. He let him talk for some time and then opened out upon him. He read him no long lecture, but his words came forth with such fiery heat that they burned their way clear through all the faults and flimsy selfishness of the younger man till they reached the true heart of him. His ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... name, Madame, that everyone remembers, because it means nightingale," said Leontine, gingerly tearing off an end of the flimsy yellow envelope. ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... doubt, about himself, about his way of living, about all his persuasions. It was a general doubt. It was not a specific suspicion upon this point or that. It was a feeling of detachment and unreality at once extraordinarily vague and extraordinarily oppressive. It was as if he discovered himself flimsy and transparent in a world of minatory solidity and opacity. It was as if he found himself made not of flesh and blood ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... alone to carry on the difficult enterprise of civilizing the natives. In 1830 he wrote to the Secretary of War telling of the progress he had made and of his plans for a log village in which the Indians could live, instead of in the flimsy bark houses, and a log house for the protection of the Indians' property. He begged for financial aid, saying that "Six or eight hundred dollars would mature what has happily been begun, and this sum from the Civilization fund would ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... it. That was brought home to Sir Isaac, very suddenly and disagreeably, while he was lunching at the Climax Club with Sir Robert Charterson. A man named Gobbin, an art critic or something of that sort, one of those flimsy literary people who mar the solid worth of so many great clubs, a man with a lot of hair and the sort of loose tie that so often seems to be less of a tie than a detachment from all decent restraints, told him. Charterson was holding forth upon ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... age, have imitated, if not surpassed, all the excesses of riot, and lust and rapine, ever practiced under the barbarism of the ages of antiquity? Do not the women of this age go lower in shamelessness than the women of ancient times? Here we see them veiling their faces with the flimsy gauze of artifice, and befouling the pure waters of life with the turbulent stream of their own vanity. They pollute the purity of real beauty by the foul arts of beautifying, and cry out in loud rude voices in every assembly ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... impose on me in the least. I was too much accustomed to analytical labors to be baffled by so flimsy a veil. I determined to probe the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... places with the affairs of the Roman Empire, of which we have several credible histories. Now, there are two modes of investigation open to us, the dogmatic and the inductive. We may take either. We may construct for ourselves, from the most flimsy suppositions, a metaphysical balloon, inflated with self-conceit into the rotundity of a cosmogony, according to which, in our opinion, the world should have been made, and we may paint it over with the figures ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... sleepless, smoked on; he was thinking of Evelyn Langham. After his interview with her husband that afternoon he had gone to his own apartment. His bedroom adjoined North's parlor and through the flimsy lath and plaster partition he had distinctly heard a woman's voice. The sound of that voice and the suspicion it instantly begot added to his furious hatred of North, for he had long suspected that something ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... he took a firmer hold, in one hand seizing my arm above the elbow, and gripping my shoulder with the other so tightly that, through my flimsy covering, his strong fingers bruised me so severely that in a calmer moment I would have squirmed and ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... Mutiny in a Madhouse. Dressgoods was being looted by a howling mob of women, who were pulling bolts of material from shelves and fighting among themselves over them. Somebody had turned on the electric fans, and long streams of flimsy fabric were blowing about like a surrealist maypole dance. Somebody in Household Furnishings had turned on a couple of fans, too, and a mob of hoodlums were opening cans of paint and throwing them into the ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... works. It would be tedious to both the reader and author, here to repeat what has been before written of Sir Thomas More—whose memory lives in every cultivated bosom. Of this edition of the Utopia there appeared a flimsy and tart censure in the Edinburgh Review, by a critic, who, it was manifest, had never examined the volumes, and who, when he observes upon the fidelity of Bishop Burnet's translation of the original Latin of More, was resolved, from pure love of ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... without wondering which dead Caesar my saucy Burt boot No. 2 is walking over. I shouldn't mind trampling old Caligula, but I don't like the thought on general principles. I feel all out of place, so modern and fixed up and flimsy. If I could get into old picturesque clothes and out of the English-speaking quarter, I should not be so oppressed and might worship Rome. But I seriously think I shall die if I stay here much longer. There's a spirit-malaria that eats into my life. I feel as if all the volumes of Roman ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... and the Italian Republics, the gradual liberation of Russia the use made of the caravan routes by some of the most active of the Western clergy, are the chief notes of the time between the Polos and Prince Henry; and the flimsy fabrications of Mandeville—"of all liars that type of the first magnitude"—would be fairly left without a word even in a minute history of discovery, if he had not, like Ktesias with Herodotus, won a hearing for himself and drawn men's minds away from the truth-telling original ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... readers as take interest in genuine records of glowing patriotism, to turn to general Miller's "Memoirs"—for such volumes of exhaustless variety and importance are seldom met with in these days of flimsy literature. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... tale, and Spiridion thought exactly like him. As for the innocent Pascalon, he was horribly afraid of women, and reddened to the ears when the name of the Little Scheideck was uttered before him, thinking some lady of flimsy morals was referred to. The poor lover was therefore reduced to keep his confidences to himself, and console himself alone—which, after all, is the ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... pomp of words to raise A courtly monument of empty praise, Where self, transpiring through the flimsy pile, Betrays the builder's ostentatious guile, Accept, oh West, these unaffected lays, Which genius claims and grateful justice pays. Still green in age, thy vig'rous powers impart The youthful freshness of ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... 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
... tapestry, preserved by the careful mending of many hundreds of needles worked by hands long ago mingled with the dust of the grave, and, strange as it may seem to those who are only acquainted with the flimsy manufactures of to-day, the same stout hand-wrought linen, which, mended and replenished each year, lasted so long because never washed by modern methods, but always by hand in clear cold running water. There were presses full of this linen, deliriously scented with lavender, and there were also ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... downtown after nine o'clock. On starlight nights I used to pace up and down those long, cold streets, scowling at the little, sleeping houses on either side, with their storm-windows and covered back porches. They were flimsy shelters, most of them poorly built of light wood, with spindle porch-posts horribly mutilated by the turning-lathe. Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappiness some of them managed to contain! The life that went ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... leave strong memories behind him. Yet Rex knew well by what strange accidents the deceit of an assumed identity is often penetrated. Some old comrade or companion of the lost heir might suddenly appear with keen questions as to trifles which could cut his flimsy web to shreds, as easily as the sword of Saladin divided the floating silk. He could not afford to ignore the most insignificant circumstances. With consummate skill, piece by piece he built up the story which was to deceive the poor mother, and to make him possessor ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... wire in silence. Her face turned a shade whiter than before, if that were possible, and there was a smouldering anger in her eyes as she crushed the flimsy sheet in suddenly tense fingers and tossed it into ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... was to suppress disorder, maintain the public peace, and protect persons and property of loyal citizens—all simple police duties. For issuing his proclamation without consultation with the President, he could offer only the flimsy excuse that it involved two days of time to communicate with Washington, while he well knew that no battle was pending and no invasion in progress. This reckless misuse of power President Lincoln also corrected with his dispassionate prudence and habitual courtesy. He immediately ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... to get up a sensation in the interest of their own flimsy sheets. There is some disturbance, but nothing like what people are made believe by ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... of Sirens or of Odysseys, hold their own theory with regard to the disputed name, which they connect with the construction of a harbour at distant Salerno, and though this legend sounds foolish enough, it is scarcely less flimsy than the notions already quoted. A certain enchanter, one Pietro Bajalardo, undertook—in modern parlance, contracted—to build in a single night the much needed breakwater at Salerno on the strange ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... But, by the way, my dear, did you introduce any real proof that he is the scoundrel you say he is? Seems to me the poor girl is right in the stand she takes. She wants proof, and positive proof, you know. I don't blame her. How the deuce can she break it off with the fellow on the flimsy excuse that Phil Quentin and Lady Saxondale say he is a rascal? You've all been acting like a tribe of ninnies, if you'll pardon my ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... certain bad issue. The moral of the Jesuit's story I think as wholesome a one as ever was writ: the artfullest, the wisest, the most toilsome, and dexterous plot-builders in the world—there always comes a day when the roused public indignation kicks their flimsy edifice down, and sends its cowardly enemies a-flying. Mr. Swift hath finely described that passion for intrigue, that love of secrecy, slander, and lying, which belongs to weak people, hangers-on of weak courts. 'Tis the nature of such ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you want a drink of milk," said the visitor. In comparison with the dwellings of small farmers in Eastern France or in Southern Italy this Donegal cabin was not only clean but attractive. It was more squalid perhaps, but less dreary than the extemporised and flimsy dwellings of settlers in the extreme Far West of the United States, and I should say decidedly a more wholesome habitation than the hermetically sealed and dismal wooden houses of hundreds of struggling farmers in the older Eastern States. I am ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... previous instructions, promptly seized a helmet and poleaxe and made his way to the front. The fire had started in one of many flimsy wooden buildings, and had rapidly spread to threaten a whole district. Men from the hook and ladder companies were already at work on some of the hopeless cases. A fireman or two mounted ladders to ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... American federal republic. He decorates it with "social institutions"; he would regulate the property relations "according to rational principles," and the seven great measures wherewith he would abolish the old bourgeois society are by no means wretched flimsy recipes collected from modern, objectionable ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... wealth.' What contempt is expressed in putting the two side by side! It is as if the author had said, 'Look on this picture and on that!' Two fortresses! Yes! The one is like Gibraltar, inexpugnable on its rock, and the other is like a painted castle on the stage; flimsy canvas that you could put your foot through—solidity by the side of nothingness. For even the poor appearance of solidity is an illusion, as our text says with bitter emphasis—'a high ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... initials P. P. C. (pour prendre conge) in the right-hand corner. In New York many men send cards by mail, offering the excuse that the city is too large to get about to make personal calls. This is only a flimsy pretext, and should have ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... 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 as the Roman Catholics ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... four walls of London. Howsomever, what I principally notised was, that the tea and coffee is not made by the lady of the house, but out of the room, and brought in without sugar or milk, on servors, every one helping himself, and only plain flimsy loaf and butter is served—no such thing as shortbread, seed-cake, bun, marmlet, or jeelly to be seen, which is an okonomical plan, and well worthy of adaptation in ginteel families with narrow incomes, in ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... Rosenblatt had finally been appeased. The place was deserted and lay bare and ugly in the dull light. The gallant ship of the night before was seen to be a poor, flimsy make-shift. No wonder Mr. Rosenblatt had wished billows to engulf it and mist to shroud it. He sat on a beam lying at the ship end of the pool and stared moodily ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... Shreds of the wreck flapped wildly in its eyes. Spider-like ribs clung to its massive limbs and poked its reeking sides, while the swaying handle kept tapping its cheeks and ears and nose, as if taunting the creature with being held and badgered by a thing so flimsy and insignificant! ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... the last words, when a startling interruption led to consequences which the persons present had not foreseen. A shrill, wailing voice suddenly pierced through the flimsy partition which divided the front room and the back room. "Bread!" cried the voice in French; "I'm hungry. ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... would my greenhouse be? And where would this house be, for that matter? and the furniture in it? and how should we all dress? Your mother wouldn't wear velvet dresses, that you like so much; and mine wouldn't wear that flimsy muslin stuff that she likes so much; and grandmamma's lace shawl would never have been mended, for it never would have been here to get burnt. It's all a lot of nonsense, that's ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... with a mind suddenly swept into a new atmosphere, and opened the flimsy cover. Shutting her eyes, she lay still for a moment —still and vague; she was only conscious of one thing, that a curtain had dropped on the terrible pictures she had seen, and that her mind was in a comforting quiet. Presently she roused herself, and turned the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... confidence, that it will on all hands be admitted that we have not sought to evade the difficulties of our position; that we have not concealed those difficulties, either from ourselves or from others; that we have not attempted to counteract them by narrow or flimsy expedients; that we have prepared plans which, if you will adopt them, will go some way to close up many vexed financial questions—questions such as, if not now settled, may be attended with public ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... compromised, or rather sacrificed, by the treaty. She readily discerned in the provision for her marriage with an infant still in the cradle, only a flimsy veil intended to disguise the king of Portugal's desertion of her cause. Disgusted with a world, in which she had hitherto experienced nothing but misfortune herself, and been the innocent cause of so much to others, she determined to renounce ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... condemning the Puritans. The book speedily became famous and was the source of all Royalist arguments against the Commonwealth. In 1649 appeared Milton's Eikonoklastes (Image Breaker), which demolished the flimsy arguments of the Eikon Basilike as a charge of Cromwell's Ironsides had overwhelmed the king's followers. After the execution of the king appeared another famous attack upon the Puritans, Defensio Regia pro Carlo I, instigated by Charles ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... does not belong to a false man: the false man sees false shows, plausibilities, expediences: the true man is needed to discern even practical truth. Cromwell's advice about the Parliament's Army, early in the contest, How they were to dismiss their city-tapsters, flimsy riotous persons, and choose substantial yeomen, whose heart was in the work, to be soldiers for them: this is advice by a man who saw. Fact answers, if you see into Fact. Cromwell's Ironsides were the embodiment of this insight of his; men fearing God; and without any other fear. No more ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... very justice to the dead, to convince himself that the mother of his children was corrupt only at heart,—that the Black Horses had come to the door in time,—and, wretchedly consoled by that niggardly conviction, flinging into the flames the last flimsy tatters on which his honour (rock-like in his own keeping) had been fluttering to and fro in the charge of a vain treacherous fool,—envy you that mourner? No! not even in his release. Memory is not nailed down in the velvet ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the blaze Those bright burning-glasses contain, Whose lens with concentrated rays Proved fatal to old Drury Lane? 'Twas all accidental, they cry, - Away with the flimsy humbug! 'Twas fired by a flash from the eye ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... on it, and it was 'anything to take off her thoughts from that man.' So I went into her room, and oh! if you could have seen the poor thing, with her short breath and racking cough, her cheeks burning and her eyes glistening at that flimsy trumpery. One bunch of the silver flowers on my skirt was wrong; she spied it, and they would not thwart her, so she would have the needle, and the skeleton trembling fingers set them right. They said she would sleep the easier ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the auto had turned the bend in the river road, and the occupants saw the toll-bridge and the peaceful hamlet of Culm Falls. There was no stir there. The toll-bridge keeper was not even out of his cottage, and the light and flimsy gates were down across the driveway at either end of the bridge. The bend in the river hid the advancing wall of water. Perhaps, too, it deadened the sound of the bursting dam and ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... baby dolls with bodies made of grey cardboard, smiling after the manner of idols, monstrous and serene as they. Little six-penny dolls, dressed like servant girls, stretch out their arms, little stumpy arms so flimsy that the least breath of air sets them a-tremble. But the little maid whose hair is made of liquid light, has no eyes for these dolls and puppets. Her whole soul hangs upon the lips of a beautiful baby doll that seems to be calling her ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France
... which his honest heart would not let him believe. He stared stupidly at Vada's dirty face. Then, as the child withdrew to her play, he suddenly crossed the room to the curtained bedroom doorway. He passed through, and the flimsy ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... the land, they said, such things was happening all the time from the same cause. And we knew it well, we knew of the wide open pit, veiled with tempting covering, wove by Selfishness and Greed, scattered over with flimsy flowers of excuse, palliation, expediency that tempts and engulfs our brightest youth, the noblest manhood, old and young, rich ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... women were eating the dulces passed by the Indian servants. The men had not yet gone into the dining-room. Valencia dropped her handkerchief; Reinaldo, stooping to recover it, kissed her hand behind its flimsy shelter. ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... This rather flimsy piece of evidence rests upon a conclusion drawn from the end of my conversation with the spirit. I was still banging about the room, then, and I said that I had finished with psychical research, that never again would I make the least ...
— The Psychical Researcher's Tale - The Sceptical Poltergeist - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • J. D. Beresford
... who doth disdain Flimsy safeguards raised by man, Struck a blow more swift and sure In that I was ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... Fanny's second visit was not as her first. The first had seen the outraging and repelling of the nobler nature by the ignoble. Diana had frankly not been able to endure her cousin. There was not a trace of that now. Her father's papers had told her abundantly how flimsy, how nearly fraudulent, was the financial claim which Fanny and her belongings had set up. The thousand pounds had been got practically on false pretences, and Diana knew it now, in every detail. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... open range with nothing except the sky for shelter, so towns were knocked together—queer, greasy, ramshackle settlements of flimsy shacks—and so quickly were they built that they outran the law, which is ever deliberate. The camps of the black-lime district, which had been considered hell holes, were in reality models of order compared with these mushroom ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... this mars the effect. The work is carried out in a frame; it is quickly executed and economical, the thread being practically all upon the surface. Owing to the length of the stitches, this is not a very durable method, so it should not be subjected to hard wear. The work has sometimes a flimsy, unsatisfactory appearance, probably because of these long stitches. It will be seen that the silk passing through to the back, and then immediately to the front again, takes up very little of the material. A method in use for giving greater strength in this way is to lay ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... show," Mrs. Ladybug declared. "They're so flimsy and delicate that Betsy Butterfly never dares venture out in bad weather. Of what use would I be to Farmer Green if I had wings like hers? If I stayed under cover whenever the sun didn't shine, the orchard would ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... or putting final touches to their toilet in the broad light of day. The native officers alone aspired to a certain degree of privacy. Their huts were detached a little space from those that guarded the horses; and flimsy walls of grass matting, set around them, imparted a suggestion of dignity and ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... recommendation of the assembly by a similar resolution. From your own acknowledgment at the City Tavern, the resolution of the Council was never obtained, or even moved for, by you, and for this flimsy reason, that no formal information, of such resolution having passed, had been communicated to you; though known to all the world; and that it could not be expected that Council would "tag" after the assembly, in a measure relating to the public. Yet you had the effrontery ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... we 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 have ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... thing has happened!" exclaimed Matty, who was seated on a very flimsy chair, which she had purchased from Mr. Fiction. It gave such a loud crack as she leant back upon it, that Nelly expected to see it come to pieces beneath the weight ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... enough not to turn on full speed, knowing what a terrific strain this condition of affairs must be upon the entire fabric, flimsy at best; and if anything gave way it was all over with them; for if a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, a heavier-than-air flying machine certainly comes under ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... such a flimsy, round-about, unmeaning commencement as this, would expect the delightful, unexaggerated, home-felt descriptions of natural scenery, which are scattered in such unconscious profusion through this and the following cantos? For instance, the very next passage is crowded with a ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... Muller, his tall bearded son Rufus, and a thin but motherly-looking elderly woman, came forth to meet the travellers; and in the front, full stare, stood a trollopy-looking girl, every bar of her enormous hoop plainly visible through her washed-out flimsy muslin. This was Miss Ianthe, who condescended to favour the family with her assistance till she should have made up dollars enough to buy a new dress! The elder woman, who went by the name of Cousin Deborah, would have been a housekeeper in England—here she was one of the family—welcomed ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... experience of the Society," he said, "and never perhaps in the history of astronomy, had an alleged discovery of such magnitude and consequence been promulgated on the strength of such flimsy evidence;" and after traversing in detail all the arguments of his opponent, he declared it his firm conviction that the effects which Professor Gazen had thought fit to advance as a "discovery," were neither more nor less than an optical illusion, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... him—she did lead him in spiritual things; led him out of common circles of thought, into refreshing new spheres; he had reminiscences of his having relished the juices of the not quite obviously comic, through her indications: and really, in spite of her inferior flimsy girl's education, she could boast her acquirements; she was quick, startlingly; modest, too, in commerce with a slower mind that carried more; though she laughed and was a needle for humour: she taught him at times to put away his contempt of the romantic; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "MIMSY" is "flimsy and miserable" (there's another portmanteau for you). And a "BOROGOVE" is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round—something ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... body, pampered with easily obtained luxuries, instead of having to win the necessaries of life by heavy toil, loses its self-helpfulness; and with self-respect and self-help vanish all the savage virtues, few and flimsy as they are, and the downward road toward begging and stealing, sottishness and idleness, is ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... to me, with a full discharge on the back of it, to be shown on occasion, but to secure to him the benefit of my service, I was to sign new indentures for the remainder of the term, which were to be kept private. A very flimsy scheme it was; however, it was immediately executed, and the paper went on accordingly, under my name ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... the hill. The troopers who were left behind stacked their guns and sallied out after railroad ties with which to build defenses. Anderson, the scout, rode up the slope to a secluded point from which he was to keep watch. The women were instructed to stay inside the log cabin that adjoined the flimsy quarters of the engineers. Baxter, with his assistants, overhauled the guns and ammunition left; and Neale gathered up all the maps and plans and drawings and put them in a ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... Quarrier, showing the edges of his well-kept teeth. "Is this intimidation, Mr. Siward? Do I understand that you are proposing to bespatter others with scandal unless I am frightened into going to the governors with the flimsy excuse you attempt to offer me? In other words, Mr. Siward, are you bent on making me pay for what you believe you know of my private life? Is ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... heavy sash windows opening on a narrow brick-walled town-garden sloping down to a river, and neatly kept. The same might be said of the room, where heavy old-fashioned furniture, handsome but not new, was concealed by various flimsy modernisms, knicknacks, fans, brackets, china photographs and water-colours, a canary singing loud in the window ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... himself so well; he cut, capered, and set to his partner with unusual agility; we naturally participated in the admiration he excited, and in the fullness of our triumph, while brushing past the flimsy nankeens worn by Tibbins, I could not refrain from bestowing a smart kick upon his shins, that brought the tears to his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... 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 ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... style in the "Mekor Hayim" is against him. It is devoid of all merit whether of literary beauty or of logical conciseness and brevity. It is diffuse to a degree and frequently very wearisome and tedious. One has to wade through pages upon pages of bare syllogisms, one more flimsy than another. ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... houses are curious to look at, for they have neither windows nor doors; for the best dwellings are built round an open court, and the windows, or air-holes as they might more properly be called, open on to that. Instead of being light and built of some flimsy stuff, as you might expect, the houses are all put up 'on the heat-resisting principle,' as I heard an engineer describe them— just like the Irishman that wore his Connemara frieze coat in summer to keep out the ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... had the happiness of being recommended. She very obligingly presented me to some of the most distinguished of the Venetian families at their great casino, which looks into the piazza, and consists of five or six rooms, fitted up in a gay flimsy taste, neither rich nor elegant, where were a great many lights, and a great many ladies negligently dressed, their hair falling very freely about them, and innumerable adventures written in their eyes. The gentlemen were lolling upon the sofas ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... ever such an uproar!" exclaimed Martie, ceasing her operations at the machine and leaning back in her chair with a long sigh. The lengths of flimsy white curtaining she had been hemming slipped to the floor; she put her hands behind her head, and yawned luxuriously. The room was close, and even at four o'clock there was need of lights; its other occupants were only two, the child who played ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... flimsy sheet again and re-read the pitiful words. The letter could be answered easily enough. If she replied truthfully, she would relate a tragic history of a winter of lonely despair lived out in the ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... with too much money, more money than she could possibly have used for herself in any legitimate way. First, she got her father to give her all she could get out of him. Her second step would be to write to me for all I could spare, making flimsy excuses for her need ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... of the street. But not for a moment did he think of turning back, though he knew how awful the danger would be if he tried to go up that burning stairway. He cast about for some sort of protection. A flimsy curtain of cotton material was stretched across a doorway. This Hodge pulled down and wrapped round his head, protecting his hands with it also as well as he could. Then he measured the stairway and its direction with ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... from the neighbors that neither the two women nor the aged marquis had been abroad since the day upon which the duenna had surprised a glance between the young girl in her charge and Henri. The bond, so flimsy withal, which united the two lovers ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... edge of the table, produced a cigarette, lighted it, picked up the four pages of formulas, and held the burning match to their edges. The flame caught, flared up the flimsy paper. Darrow dropped the burning corners as it scorched his fingers. It fell to the floor, flickered, ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... grip, and gave it a yank. Then I twisted opposite corners around my fingers and frankly pulled at it. The absurd sheet refused to tear, and I realized how ridiculous I must look to Callahan to be unable to tear a flimsy sheet of paper. I suppose I lost my temper a little. I gathered as much of the paper as I could in each hand, bent over to put my hands on the inside of my knees, and pulled until I heard my back muscles crack. I let out my breath explosively ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness
... had told. The passion of investigation, which had grown lusty by long exercise, rose within him triumphing over his personal inclinations. Too much was at stake to miss a chance like this. Honour in this situation seemed like a flimsy sentiment. He waited for the answer of the girl's ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... sleeping-corner before her mother's return, when in his drunken helplessness he fell against the table, overturning the kerosene lamp, and the curtains were all aflame in an instant. It was just after taps—or ten o'clock—when Kate's shrieks aroused the inmates of Sudsville and started the cry of "Fire." The flimsy structure of pine boards burned like so much tinder, and the child and her stupefied father had been dragged forth only in time to save their lives. The little one, after giving the alarm, had rushed again into the house and was tugging at ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... no flimsy, transitory, noisy, ignorant, hysterical agitation. Smoke is not fire. If the temperature were higher, and the fire more wisely fed, there would not be any. But we do want a more obvious and powerful ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... soon ripened into friendship, leading to much personal intercourse and a variety of literary schemes. Mr. Gilchrist first started a proposal to publish a 'Select collection of Old Plays,' in fifteen volumes, and on the failure of this scheme, owing to the sudden appearance of a flimsy kind of work called 'Old Plays,' Mr. Taylor and he agreed to launch a new monthly publication, under the revived title of 'The London Magazine.' The negotiations for carrying out this work were pending between writer and publisher, when ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... degree. He planned, vaguely, to invite a friend who was skilled in the diagnosis of obscure mental disorders to spend a week-end with him, a little later on, and to ask him to observe his father closely. He did not doubt but that Anthony Dexter would see quickly through so flimsy a pretence, but, unless he improved, something of the kind would have ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... Code Schofield, I presume," he announced, thrusting his hand nervously into his pocket and bringing out a fistful of papers. So eager and excited was he that, unnoticed, he dropped one flimsy sheet, many ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... whisper be heard against his name. Under the coarse, rusty, one-pronged spur of sectarian or political rancor, or from the knawing consciousness of sterile inferiority to a creative mind, plenty of people are ready and eager to try, with their net-work of flimsy phrases, to cramp the play of a giant's limbs, or, with the slow slimy poison of envy and malice, to spot and deform his beauty and his symmetry. To such, to the half-eyed and the half-souled, to the prosaic and the unsympathetic, be left ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... always carried in the air, her light eyes unmeaning, her flaxen eyebrows heavy, her flaxen curls crowned by a pea-green turban. Her choice attire was generally composed, as to-day, of some cheap, flimsy, gauzy material bright in colour. This evening it was orange lace, all flounces and frills, with a lace scarf; and she generally had innumerable ends of quilted net flying about her skirts, not unlike tails. It was certain she did not spend much money upon her own attire; ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... 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 work, he mapped ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson |
