"House of cards" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the same funnel as the one above it. On each side of these spacious saloons were small staircases leading to blocks of sleeping-cabins, scarcely one of which would have been without its two or more occupants a few hours later in the evening. They were now blown down like a house of cards. The furniture which they contained formed heaps of dislocated chairs, and wash-stands, and basins; the doors were off their hinges, the partitions were forced outward, the staircases leading to them had to be sought in the splinters ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... gave the affair large attention, and the net results were surprisingly fine. The house of cards so lovingly built up by Livingstone and his friends tumbled in a morning never to rise again. All the little plans failed like kites snipped of their tails. Fritters went home, because the public lost interest in his lectures. The ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... history as well as any of his people, and incomparably better than his English, French, or American critics. He knows that only twenty years after the death of Frederick the Great, the Prussian power went down before Napoleon like a house of cards, and that the country's humiliation was stamped in bold outlines when Napoleon was received in Berlin with the ringing of bells, the firing of cannons, and he himself greeted as a savior and a benefactor. That was only a hundred years ago. Is it an indiscretion, then, when ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... woman who has everything to offer to the one man in her life. She had felt as she had looked: almost a girl, with music on her lips and joyous things in her heart, nursing that wonderful gift to her sex,—the hopeless optimism begotten of love. And her little house of cards had tumbled so quickly to the ground, the little denouement on which she had counted had fallen so flat. They two were there alone. The little dinner which she had planned was as near perfection as possible. The champagne bubbled in their glasses. The soft light, the solitude, ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a moment. Tatham and Lydia were looking into each other's faces; the girl's soul, wounded and fluttering, was in her eyes. Tatham felt a sudden and choking sense of catastrophe. Their house of cards had fallen about them, and his stubborn hopes with it. She, with her high standards, could not possibly defend—could not possibly plead—for a man who was behaving so shabbily, so dishonourably, except—for one reason! He leapt indignantly at certainty; although it was a certainty ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a "chetif chateau," and Saint-Simon referred to it as a "house of cards." Manifestly, then, it was no great thing. It was, however, a comfortable country-house, surrounded by a garden and a ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... tore off the layer roofing of the wigwam, plunged through the tapering pole frame, shaking the frail lean-to like a house of cards, and was beside Miriam. Again I heard Louis' whistle and again the squaw's angry scream; but Little Fellow had followed on my heels and stood with knife-blade glittering bare at ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... glowing red, and the ice flowers vanish from the windows. Here, where the winter cold is so piercing, it is oppressively hot in summer. Our little toy train crosses a river several times on fragile bridges of beams, which seem as though they might at any moment collapse like a house of cards. Small strips of tilled land, creaking ox-carts on the deeply rutted roads, tiny Buddhist oratories, primitive stations with long rows of trucks of fuel, a country house or two—that is all that is to be seen the whole day, until late in the ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... punishing crime, whereby they have helped to preserve the commonwealth, to alleviate suffering, and to cement that respect for law and order which is essential to the stability of society, and without which any community must fall to pieces like a house of cards. These great services have been rendered to the cause of civilisation and progress by the class of men who in primitive society are variously known as medicine-men, magicians, sorcerers, diviners, soothsayers, and so forth. Sometimes the respect ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... say that she felt as if she were living in a house of cards, although the Bolton household had no idea of the number of perils that hovered over them, any more than thousands of families in America have of the business risks and contingences upon which ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... altogether in my interpretation of what I was pleased to term in my mind the message from Francis. If I had read it falsely—if, perhaps, it were not from him at all—then all the hopes I had built on this mad dash into the enemy's country would collapse like a house of cards. Then, indeed, I should be in a ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... story. There was only one grain of consolation. It was in the last paragraph of the news item, and read: "There seems to be no trace of the man and woman who worked this clever swindle. As if by a telepathic message they have vanished at just the time when their whole house of cards collapsed." ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... ambitions as when a child she would instantly have dropped her most immersing game and run to a frightening cry from her mother; as once, in fact (and the incident and the parallel came back to her), she had been building a house of cards, holding her breath not to shake it, and her mother had scalded her hand and had cried out to her, frighteningly. "Oh, mummie, mummie!" she had cried, running to her; and flap! the house of cards had gone. Her inward cry was now, "The children! The children!" and what amiss the leaving of ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... little friend so wee; Joy thy joy is bringing. Clipped from paper thou shalt see A sleigh, and horses springing; Then a house of cards so tall We will build and see it fall, And ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... wages, was not, they thought, in the least likely to be smashed into small bits or carried off as loot. They could not conceive the idea of jerry-built walls which enshrined all the treasures of their life suddenly falling with a crash like a house of cards, and burying their babies. The British Expeditionary Force which they were asked to join was after all only a sporting party going out to foreign fields ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... sometimes, when she saw a certain expression that came oftener and oftener into Eve's face, that callous which served her for a heart turned harder than Nature had made it, and she saw all her schemes and all her long labors demolished like a house of cards. Even if Eve flung Fitz aside like an old glove, as inevitably she must, still Mrs. Burton's schemes would wear a tinge of failure. The girl had shown that the heart was not entirely educated out of her, and was frightening her mother. Even if ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... knows you so well as I. Your personal honor is beyond impeachment, but Russia is making vast efforts to speckle it. She will succeed. Yes, I could force you to marry me. With a word I could tumble your house of cards. I am a worldly woman, and not without wit and address. I possess every one of your letters, most of all have I treasured the extravagant ones. To some you signed your name. If you have kept mine, you will observe that my given name might mean any one of a thousand women who are named 'Grace.' ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... children boys to lecture and girls to spoil. Don't be jealous, George. I like your wife, I love your little ones, and you will inherit all I have to leave. But to an old bachelor, who would keep young to the last, there is no place so sunny as the hearth of an old school-friend. But my house of cards is blown down—talk of it no more—'tis a painful subject. You met Lionel Haughton here the last time you called—how did you ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... theory, to which he sticks like an express to the main line, whereas I find myself constantly called upon to readjust my perspective. Directly I can enjoy freedom of movement, however, I shall know whether my hypothesis is a house of cards or a serviceable structure." ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... town, and hasn't a virtue in the world but this honesty it is so celebrated for and so conceited about; and so help me, I do believe that if ever the day comes that its honesty falls under great temptation, its grand reputation will go to ruin like a house of cards. There, now, I've made confession, and I feel better; I am a humbug, and I've been one all my life, without knowing it. Let no man call me honest again—I will ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... are!" she exclaimed. "One needs but to cry, 'Your uncle the canon,' and down you all tumble like a house of cards. What! is ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... which he intended to use as his principal weapon against the enemies whom he suspected. That was the last great political venture in his life; it failed, but merciful Providence allowed him not to see the utter collapse of his latest house of cards. ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... he find so great variety of land over which to hunt on foot and horse-back, he bought a small piece of property at Versailles. Immediately afterwards he caused to be erected what Saint-Simon called "a little house of cards" on the isolated hill that rolled up in the heart of the valley, where the ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... so, too. It seemed to her they were both done for, but there was not much help in saying so. Diana's confession horrified her, and she saw that her own future at the Cape was knocked as flat as a house of cards that is demolished by the wayward hand of a child. Yet at that moment her principal feeling was one of compassion for the girl on the sofa, who alternately laughed and covered her eyes, and now with a pitiful attempt at bravado was attempting ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... chivalric edifice showed cracks and rents; it threatened to crumble like a house of cards; but only for a moment. For she merely considered the remark in reference to the future; she applied it to her present wish to exercise an influence over Julian. The issue of that, however, lay still in the dark, and was consequently imaginable as inclination prompted. A glance at ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... take this voyage?... Could I do otherwise? Can the river arrest its course and run up hill? My plan has come to nothing. That palace of theory which I reared, in pride and self-confidence, high above all silly objections has fallen like a house of cards at the first breath of wind. Build up the most ingenious theories and you may be sure of one thing—that fact will defy them all. Was I so very sure? Yes, at times; but that was self-deception, intoxication. A secret doubt lurked behind all ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... moment," he wrote, "should be lost in attacking the enemy; they will every day and hour be stronger." The best course, in his opinion, would be to take the whole fleet at once into the Baltic against Russia, as a "home stroke," which if successful would bring down the coalition like a house of cards. If the Danes must first be dealt with, he proposed, instead of a direct attack, which would be "taking the bull by the horns," an attack from the rear. In order to do so, the fleet could get beyond the city ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... now," she said; "wait a little, and time may show. One last question, ma'am, before I bid you good-by. When your pupil was a little innocent child, did she ever amuse herself by building a house of cards?" ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... reasons man took each upward step. So far only one writer has attempted, and that nearly thirty years ago, to trace the course of human development on the hypothesis of primitive promiscuity, and his scheme is a house of cards. ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... fields he was put in a house, three storeys high, all made of court-cards with the colored side turned in; both doors and windows were cut out in the waist of the Queen of Hearts. "I sing so well," he said "that sixteen native crickets who had chirped since they were born, and still had no house of cards to live in, grew thinner than they were before out of vexation when they heard ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... improvement. But it was still there in all its barbaric and provincial incongruity. Public opinion had evidently recognized that nothing save the absolute razing of its warped and flimsy walls could effect a change, and waited for it to collapse suddenly like the house of cards it resembled. Paul wondered for a moment if it were not ominous of its lodgers' hopeless inability to accept changed conditions, and it was with a feeling of doubt that he even now ascended the creaking staircase. But it was instantly dissipated ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... that, at Miss WEE-WEE'S urgent entreaties, I subdued my native funkiness so far as to make the revolution of the Gigantic Wheel, in spite of grave apprehensions that it would prove but a house of cards, or suddenly become totally immobile—though to pass interminable hours at a lofty attitude with such a lively companion might, on secondary thoughts, have possessed pleasing saccharine compensations. ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... were as the house of cards of fellowship: cards of glass, iridescent and brittle, mocking the idea that there could be oblivion of the scene in Lang's store, the crack of Leddy's pistol in the arroyo, or the pulse of Jack's artery under her thumb! She was sure that he could forget these experiences, ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... honesty, religion and patriotism, though firm as a rock, may lapse and fall. A man might have been counted on for one of these qualities ten times with safety, and on the eleventh, he might collapse like a house of cards. Count on egoism and laziness a hundred or a thousand times and they are as firm as ever. More simply, count on egoism—for laziness and conceit are only modifications of egoism. The latter alone then should be the one ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... of the robbery is out? What will happen? Do you want me to tell you, young lady?" she added, turning again to Maude Euston. "I'll tell you. The stock of the Continental Express Company will fall like a house of cards. And then? Those who have sold it at the top price will buy it back again at the bottom. The company is sound. The depression will not last—perhaps will be over in a day, a week, a month. Then the operators can send it up again. ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... wanted his boy and he wanted her. He knew that, whatever he pretended to himself, there was only one thing to do and that was to follow her. He could never live without her now. All his plans for the future were like a house of cards and he scattered them with angry impatience. He did not care whether he threw away his chances for the future, for nothing in the world mattered but that he should get Ethel back again. As soon as he could he went into Aberdeen and told the manager of his bank that he meant to leave ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... the corresponding note in nature bears to its fellows in its own corresponding but different scale. This is what Gerome has done in the "Eminence Grise"—a scene, it will be remembered, on a staircase in a palace interior. Manet inquires what would happen to this house of cards shored up into verisimilitude by mere correspondence, if Gerome had been asked to cut a window in his staircase and admit the light of out-of-doors into his correspondent but artificial scene. The ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... the end! How quickly his house of cards had fallen! How completely had the fabric of a wonderful dream vanished to nothing! It was all coming over him strongly now for the first time as he reacted from the absorbing incidents of the past ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... is laid! Well, I must tear myself away. Don't be too risky, for without you the whole thing will tumble about our ears like a house of cards." ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... as a house of cards, a frail edifice of laughter for laughter's sake. Or you might say that, in the literature of farce, it has a place as a "dainty rogue in porcelain." It is even lighter and more fragile than that. It is a bubble, or a flight of bubbles. It is the very ecstasy of levity. As ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... considered in the other division of the same court. The case itself was noted for the large quantity of remarkable and unusual evidence presented by the plaintiff's side—evidence that took the other party completely by surprise, and overthrew their case like a house of cards. The affair will, perhaps, be more readily recalled as the occasion of the sudden rise to eminence in their profession of Messrs. Crellan, Hunt & Crellan, solicitors for the plaintiff—a result due entirely to the wonderful ability shown in this case of building up, ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... intelligence and the dignity of the individual, by loving justice, right, and greatness, even to the extent of dying for them,—and when a people reaches that height God will provide a weapon, the idols will be shattered, the tyranny will crumble like a house of cards and liberty will shine out like ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... Like a house of cards his roseate dreams for the future had suddenly collapsed. There would be now no wonderful career for Bob, no bag of gold, no fairy fortune! Instead of being a hero he had again become a mere duffer, a blunderer, had ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett |
