"Eggshell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flew back at once to a corner cupboard in the parlour, inlaid with tulips in Dutch marqueterie, and containing the Major's priceless eggshell china. To be sure, if the French landed, she—weak woman that she was—could not defend this treasure. But might not the Major blame her for ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... popular amongst the poor in the neighbourhood early, for there was not a cabin at which he had not stopped some morning or other, along with the huntsman, to drink a glass of burnt whisky out of an eggshell, to do him good and warm his heart and drive the cold out of his stomach. The old people always told him he was a great likeness of Sir Patrick, which made him first have an ambition to take after him, as far as his fortune should allow. He left us when ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... shot. The whole charge took the canoe about six feet behind the bow, and doubled her up like an eggshell. Before the smoke had cleared she had foundered, and the second canoe had paused to pick up some of the wounded men. The others, as much at home in the water as in the woods, were already ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... from under the smack's keel. And he listened to something more—the whimpering of the baker's assistant in the next bunk. "Three inches of deck! What's the use of it! Lord ha' mercy on me, what's the use of it? No more than an eggshell! We'll be broken in afore morning, broken in like a man's skull under a bludgeon.... I'm no sailor, I'm not; I'm a baker. It isn't right I should ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... to lay them out before God, as we can do by praying about them. Hezekiah's trouble was great. His kingdom could be crushed like an eggshell by the grasp of Sennacherib's hand. But little troubles as well as great ones are best dealt with by being 'spread before the Lord.' Whatever is important enough to disturb me is important enough for me to speak to God about it. Whether the poison inflaming our blood be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... doctor in a low voice, "metaphors literally fail me. It is inadequate to say that the skull was smashed to bits like an eggshell. Fragments of bone were driven into the body and the ground like bullets into a mud wall. It was the hand of ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... are rough playmates! What do you say to my voice now? Do you see my foaming lips? Do you feel the rocks tremble as my huge billows crash against them? Is not my anger terrible as I dash your argosy, your thunder-bearing frigate, into fragments, as you would crack an eggshell?—No, not anger; deaf, blind, unheeding indifference,—that is all. Out of me all things arose; sooner or later, into me all things subside. All changes around me; I change not. I look not at you, vain man, and your frail transitory concerns, save in momentary glimpses: I look on the white ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... demanded and then, pushing the engineer aside, he flashed a torch on the wreck. Wedged in the gearing of the shattered gear-wheel was a pair of engineer's overalls. They had jammed tight in the teeth and the resistless driving of the engine had cracked the great gear-wheel like an eggshell. Held solid by its base in the bolted concrete there had not been a half-inch's play and, since something must give, and the opposing wheel had stood, the enormous casting had smashed. The engineer and his ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... and much interesting information are to be found. In order to understand many of them, however, it is requisite to have a more intimate acquaintance with the rules of English jurisprudence, and with the practice of the courts, than can be expected in a young man as yet hardly set free from the eggshell of school. Upon the subject of newspapers, however, I will say no more. I well know, that in merely touching upon it, I tread ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... effeminate. The factory of Sevres had lent Elegant boxes with ornament Culled from gardens where fountains splashed And golden carp in the shadows flashed, Nuzzling for crumbs under lily-pads, Which ladies threw as the last of fads. Eggshell trays where gay beaux knelt, Hand on heart, and daintily spelt Their love in flowers, brittle and bright, Artificial and fragile, which told aright The vows of an eighteenth-century knight. The cruder tones of old Dutch jugs Glared from one ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... vary in size from an eggshell holding a minute plant to boxes filling all the available space about the window. The soil may be in pots for individual plants or groups of plants or in boxes for collections of plants. You may ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... his eyes showed that he was alert and planning. But when the door behind Helen, urged by the wind through the broken casement, banged to, the man made his first lightning-like sign. He dashed the lamp to the floor, where it burst like an eggshell, and darkness leaped into the room as an animal pounces. Had she been calmer or had time for an instant's thought Helen would have hastened back to the light, but she was midway to her liberty and actuated by the sole desire to break out into the open air, so plunged forward. Without warning, ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... appointed night for certain mystic ceremonies. Several of them sowed hemp-seed to be reaped by their true lovers; and they even ventured upon the solemn and fearful preparation of the dumb-cake. This must be done fasting, and in silence. The ingredients are handed down in traditional form: "An eggshell full of salt, an eggshell full of malt, and an eggshell full of barley-meal." When the cake is ready, it is put upon a pan over the fire, and the future husband will appear, turn the cake, and retire; but if a word is spoken or a fast is broken during this awful ceremony, there is no ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... for good and all," he assured his wife. "But I know the man who could take up the whole jing-bang of that Crookes crowd in one hand and"—his large fist swiftly knotted as he spoke the words—"scrunch it up like an eggshell, by George." ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... incapable of breathing its air; for he will be drunken with it, maddened, morally slain. The man who guides his life by inner law, can no more live servile to outward authority than can the full-grown bird live imprisoned in the eggshell. But the man who has not yet attained to governing himself can no more live under the law of liberty than can the unfledged bird live without its protective covering. These things are terribly simple, and the series of demonstrations old and new that ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... came to port with its doleful tale of this vessel burned or that vessel scuttled, this one held by the pirates for their own use or that one stripped of its goods and sent into port as empty as an eggshell from which the yolk had been sucked. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston suffered alike, and worthy ship owners had to leave off counting their losses upon their fingers and take to the slate to ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... The two midshipmen trained the gun upon the nearest prahu, and aiming at the waterline, fired it when the craft was within twenty feet of them. A moment later its impetus brought it against the side of the launch, which was crushed like an eggshell between it and the captured prahu, the two midshipmen springing on board just in time. It was the Malays' turn to board now, that of the British to prevent them; the musketry of the sailors and marines for a time kept the enemy off, but they strove desperately to gain a footing on board, until ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... occasionally a flash of foreign individuality would break through the husk of satisfaction in which he had inclosed himself, compelling him to feel that another man might have claims. And hitherto he had been very successful in patching up and keeping entire his eggshell of conceit. But that affair with Alec was a very bad business. Had Beauchamp been a coward, he would have suffered less from it. But he was no coward, though not quite so courageous as Hector, who yet turned and fled before Achilles. Without the upholding sense of duty, no man can be sure of ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... for it later, never fear," said another. "When we have once beaten them, France will be ours, and England crushed like an empty eggshell." ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... the twelve-inch armoured conning-tower cracked like an eggshell; the barbette collapsed like the crust of a loaf, and the big 9.2 gun lurched backwards and lay with its muzzle staring helplessly at the clouds. The deck crumpled up as though it had been burnt parchment, ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... rolled forward. Somewhere beneath its crushing weight lay the control board and the swarthy operator. Then they saw Solino, still in his overturned wheelchair, the cloak drawn tightly about himself and it; but the top of his head was crushed in like an eggshell. Justus Miles had touched that head when he stretched out his hand ...
— The Heads of Apex • Francis Flagg
... the chilled grapefruit and the eggshell cup of morning coffee are a gastronomic feat not always easy to hurdle, raise not your digestive eyebrows. At precisely fifteen minutes past seven six mornings in the week, seven-thirty, Sundays, Mrs. Lipkind and her son sat down to a breakfast that ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... strong man, much stronger than myself, and if I am upon an equal footing with you, could crush me as easily as an eggshell.' ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... workingmen for revolt against the existing order of things; so galled are they by the heavy yoke laid upon them; so desperate have they become that it but needs a strong man to organize and lead them, and our present industrial system—perhaps our political, also—would crumble like an eggshell in the grip of an ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... tiger let out a yell that you would have heerd a mile off, and, afore Sam could get out of the way, the tiger smashed right out of the cage and was among the people, chawing them up. He had his well eye on Sam, and crushed his head like an eggshell, with one bite! Then he made a sweep with his paw, and knocked Jack Habersham clean out the tent. He must have gone a hundred feet through the air, for he come down on top of the steeple, and is there yet with the spire sticking ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... with the two mechanics I had brought with me from Patricroft to erect the steam hammer. I took share and share alike in the work. The Lords were introduced to me, and I proceeded to show them the hammer. I passed it through its paces. I made it break an eggshell in a wine-glass without injuring the glass. It was as neatly effected by the two-and-a-half ton hammer as if it had been done by an egg-spoon. Then I had a great mass of white-hot iron swung out of the furnace by a crane and placed upon the anvil ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... crumpled like an eggshell between the combined charges front and rear. It broke and rushed back in confusion on his center. The whole army floundered a moment in tangled mass. In vain their officers shouted themselves hoarse proclaiming their victory and ordering ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... in the gentlest and most melodious accents, and pronounced by the prettiest, gentlest, and most innocent-looking little person that a fairy wand ever drew from an enchanted eggshell. She had come up noiselessly, and they became aware of a slender, dainty figure, charmingly timid blue eyes, and white transparent brows. No ingenue among the naiads, a truant from her river spring, could have been shyer, whiter, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... have to do is to place the empty half-shell of your egg on the rim of the plate, and keeping this latter duly sloped, by a slight movement of the wrist as may be needful, you will see the eggshell begin to revolve rapidly on its own axis, at the same time traveling round the plate. It is hardly necessary to remark that the egg-shell will not travel uphill, and the plate must therefore be gradually shifted round, as well as sloped, so that the shell may always have an inch or two of descending ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... "there is not enough to blow a lady's curl aside. If you wait, sir, till the land-breeze fills your sails, you will wait another moon. I believe I've got my eggshell out of that nest of gray-caps; but how it has been done in the dark, a better man ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the thing broke like an eggshell. Sarah Brown turned back towards her bed. It was too early to get up. It was too late to go to sleep again. Eunice, her hot-water bottle, she knew, lay cold as a serpent to shock her feet if she returned. Besides, the Dog David was asleep on the ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... one sturdy badmash cracked like an eggshell under the butt of the bold tar's musket; a second received the terrible hook square in the teeth; and a third, no other than Parmiter himself, was caught round the neck at the next lunge of the hook, and flung, with a mighty heave, full into the midst of the ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... to the Cucumber; they attack the roots of Tomatoes and Melons, and the roots, stems, and foliage of many other plants. Our illustration shows some very small Cucumber rootlets, natural size, with the eelworms in the eggs, and also emerging from and free of the empty eggshell (enlarged ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... crossed the old man's face; then a flood of dull red blotted them all out and left only worshipful rapture. With a choking cry he took the slim little hand in both his rough and twisted ones much as if he were possessing himself of a treasured bit of eggshell china. ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... indolent to make successful shopkeepers—they much prefer to look on, and laugh, and bargain). In this and other emporiums of the same class were to be found rare embroideries, ivory carvings, eggshell china, Oriental draperies, jade, and piles of Chinese and Japanese silks of the most exquisite fabric and colour. Sophy liked to wander round, to marvel and admire, but soon discovered that to do the latter was to be immediately endowed with her fancy—be ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... wasted the heat. The sulphur comes in casks. A sulphur cask sawn down the middle, with a bit left by the head for cover, is often used by the hoppers as a cradle. Another favourite cradle is made from a trug basket, the handle cut off. It is then like half a large eggshell, with cross pieces underneath to prevent it from canting aside. This cradle is set on the bare ground in the garden; when they move one woman takes hold of one end and a second of the other, and thus carry the infant. If you ask ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... of them hits me the jig is up," Jet muttered, dodging his head barely in time to escape a huge fragment which would have crushed his skull like an eggshell. ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... plastering his patient's head in a workmanlike manner. "But you've a good, solid cranium as I've often told you. Not much to get hurt above the ears—mostly bone all the way through. Not easy to crack, like some of these eggshell heads." ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... sword was struck off some ten paces. The buccaneer threw himself upon the Gascon; raised his gun like a club; he seized the chevalier by the collar and cried, "Your life is mine; I am going to break your head like an eggshell." ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... bringing Blacksnake to his knees, groggy-headed and bleary-eyed. His hand closed over the whip. The stock was heavily loaded with lead, and it was a terrible weapon when held reversed. One blow from it could crush a skull like an eggshell. ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... had a row an' shot four iv his men? Wasn't I a-layin' on the Emma L., not three hundred yards away? An' there was a man the same year he killed with a blow iv his fist. Yes, sir, killed 'im dead-oh. His head must iv smashed like an eggshell. An' wasn't there the Governor of Kura Island, an' the Chief iv Police, Japanese gentlemen, sir, an' didn't they come aboard the Ghost as his guests, a-bringin' their wives along—wee an' pretty little bits of things ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... out at Lido. She was built for the race two years ago, but her owner fell sick and was unable to start. He has not got strong again, and wants to sell his boat, which is far too light for ordinary work. They say she is almost like an eggshell, and you and I will be able to send her along grandly. She cost four ducats, but he will ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... it was beginning to grow light, and everybody was still asleep, the cock waked up the hen, fetched the egg, and made a hole in it, and they ate it up between them, and put the eggshell on the hearth. Then they went up to the needle, who was still sleeping, picked him up by his head, and stuck him in the landlord's chair-cushion, and having also placed the pin in his towel, off they flew over ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... in a fast boat, we were soon opposite the town, when we were obliged to re-embark on board one of a fleet of Tanka boats, which put out from the shore as soon as our buttons were discovered. Tanka means eggboat; they resemble an eggshell divided longitudinally, and are peculiar to Macao, the shoalness of the water preventing a landing in larger vessels. Were captured by A-ti, a laughing Chinese nymph, with a splendid set of the whitest teeth, and landed safely on the Praya, after purchasing ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... furrow in the mountain. The gash was fringed by shattered trees, and here and there a giant splintered trunk rested precariously among stones ground to fragments. Far beneath, a vast pile of earth and snow dammed the river, and half-way up an overturned locomotive, with boiler crushed like an eggshell, lay among the wreckage. The end of a smashed box-car rose out of the boiling flood. For a hundred yards the track had vanished, but gangs of men were hurrying to and fro about the gap. Farther back, there was clang of flung-down rails and a ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... reproduction of form, outward and inner conformation of body, organs, and cells, but the habitual actions of the parent are also reproduced. The chicken on emerging from the eggshell runs off as its mother ran off before it; yet what an extraordinary complication of emotions and sensations is necessary in order to preserve equilibrium in running. Surely the supposition of an inborn capacity for the reproduction of these intricate actions ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... first prize with her own hand, which was a brave Ruby Ring set with Diamonds in a gold snuff-box. For the Second prize there was a little Cupid, very nicely done out of amethysts, and besides these a set of fine Porcelain, of the kind they call Eggshell (for its exceeding Tenderness and Brittleness), with some Japan trunks, feather-fans, and Whimwams of that order. All the men of quality in Vienna were spectators; but only the ladies had permission to shoot. There was a good background of burghers and strangers, and in the rear of all a Mob that ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... pauses between each dose. Whether they were really helping him against Time and Decay or not, they were making him pink and dropsical, and had not prevented, if they had not helped to produce, a baldness as of an eggshell. This he would cover in, to counteract the draughty character which he ascribed to all bar parlours alike, with a cloth cap having ear-flaps, as soon as ever he had hung up a beaver hat which he might have inherited ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Gracefully the little slave-girl eluded Piang and Sicto 149 Over and over they rolled, splashing and fighting 167 A shrill whistle echoed through the forest 210 "Juramentado! Gobernado!" faintly whispered Piang 227 The water spout caught the eggshell praus ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... to pass directly above their heads. His powerful tail was raised high to one side, and as he passed close above them he brought it down in one terrific sweep that crushed a green warrior's skull as though it had been an eggshell. ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Elkrig ate an empty Eggshell: Did Enoch Elkrig eat an empty Eggshell? If Enoch Elkrig ate an empty Eggshell, Where's the empty eggshell Enoch ...
— Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation • Anonymous
... decent meal since this changeling crept out of the eggshell," said one of them, and when the youngster heard that they were all of the same opinion, he said he was quite willing to go his way; "if they did not want him, he was sure he did not want them," and with that he left ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... simply reckless and heartless, it was impossible to tell. In any event, there was no shifting of the helm, no slackening of speed. Swift and relentless as doom the motor craft drove into the rowboat and crushed it like an eggshell. ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... of course. The contents had gone to the bottom, and near the center the frail sides, seen plainly in the torchlight, were actually crushed inward like a shattered eggshell. ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... perpetual solitude. A short time afterwards another ant got on the tree, and made the same journey and the same discovery, but she spoke of it cautiously and indefinitely, and as she was one of the superior ants and very much respected, they believed her, and when she died they erected an eggshell as a monument to her memory, for they cultivated a great respect for science. I saw," said the little mouse, "that the ants were always running to and fro with her burdens on their backs. Once I saw one of them drop her load; she gave herself a great deal of trouble in ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Frances lay smiling at the friendly universe, with her wet mouth wide open and her blue eyes, so like George's, sparkling with laughter. The down on her head, as fine and soft as spun silk, made tiny rings over her pink skull, which was as clear and delicate as an eggshell; and these golden rings filled Gabriella with a tenderness so poignant that it brought tears to her eyes. Whatever her mother may have thought about the world, it was perfectly obvious that Frances Evelyn considered her part in it remarkably jolly. To be a well ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... All the Texans are stubborn. But I do not need any information from you. I shall crush the Alamo, as my fingers would smash an eggshell." ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler |
