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More "Fragile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the little man who sat there so still, so fragile, with eyes which gleamed so fiercely and lips that trembled with emotion; and he shivered a little at the thought that here was the man who had struck a terrible blow ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... about myself. I went into the studio; there was nothing there but my canvases and some casts, except the marble of the Easter lily. I saw it on a table across the room. Then I strode angrily over to it. But the flower I lifted from the table was fresh and fragile and filled ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... toy animals. As he could not decide which he liked best, hideous pewter mugs or delicate china dishes, he "annexed" them indiscriminately, and stored them cheek by jowl, much to the annoyance of his more orderly wife. The old New England pie-plate was a dearer article of vertu to him than the most fragile vase, unless the latter was a rare specimen of a forgotten art. He had a genuine affection for clocks of high and low degree. He loved them for their friendly faces, and endowed them with personal idiosyncrasies, according to their tickings, by which he distinguished them. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... restore To thir inheritance, then, nor till then, Thou on the Throne of David in full glory, From Egypt to Euphrates and beyond Shalt raign, and Rome or Caesar not need fear. To whom our Saviour answer'd thus unmov'd. Much ostentation vain of fleshly arm, And fragile arms, much instrument of war Long in preparing, soon to nothing brought, Before mine eyes thou hast set; and in my ear 390 Vented much policy, and projects deep Of enemies, of aids, battels and leagues, Plausible to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... well recall his language, That he came to revenge a wrong, But a wronged man is a lazar,— No, he cannot be my son, Not the son of noble fathers. But if some great chance, which no one Can be free from, should have happened, Since the delicate sense of honour Is a thing so fine, so fragile, That the slightest touch may break it, Or the faintest breath may tarnish, What could he do more, do more, He whose cheek the blue blood mantles, But at many risks to have come here It again to re-establish? Yes, he ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... rule are wont to travel with numerous small parcels, and there was no exception in our party to this rule, while Mr. Sydney and myself were not without impedimenta as well. In all, there were about a dozen—to put a familiar figure—too small or too fragile to share the dangers of the luggage-van. These, three respective porters promised to bring to the train, but as every porter broke his word, they remained in statu quo. And we may here remark how noticeable it is, that whereas English porters are always on the alert ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... door for MRS. ELVSTED, and goes out herself. —MRS. ELVSTED is a woman of fragile figure, with pretty, soft features. Her eyes are light blue, large, round, and somewhat prominent, with a startled, inquiring expression. Her hair is remarkably light, almost flaxen, and unusually abundant and wavy. She is a couple ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... rise and strip, and, naked all from toe to lip, To wander where the dewdrops drip from off the silent trees, And where the hairy spiders spin their nets of silver, fragile-thin, And out to where the fields begin, like down upon ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... which often tapers abruptly below, containing reddish scales, color dull red. It has seldom any distinct evidence of a volva at the base but abundant evidence on the cap. Ring large, superior, white, and fragile. ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... looking very white and fragile, and with lines of suffering about her mouth; but, though physically weary, her mind seemed as vigorous as ever. She received him with her usual frankness, and with more animation in her look than he had seen ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... from tempest and change. Amaranthine flowers bloom only in heaven, and must be brought thence, if they are to garland earthly foreheads. If we take God for ours, then whatever tempests may howl, and whatever fragile though fragrant joys may be swept away, we shall find in Him all that the world 'fails to give to its votaries. He is 'a crown of glory' and 'a diadem of beauty.' Our humanity is never so fair as when it is made beautiful by the possession ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... like sisters. So she had brought from the depths of the Vosges a humble relation on her mother's side, a very pious and honest soul, who had been cook to the Bishop of Nancy. Fearing, however, her inexperience of Paris ways, and yet more the evil counsel which wrecks such fragile virtue, at first Lisbeth always went to market with Mathurine, and tried to teach her what to buy. To know the real prices of things and command the salesman's respect; to purchase unnecessary delicacies, such as fish, only when they were cheap; to be well informed as to the price ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... seemed as familiar as Gama himself with compass and astrolabe, he set out boldly across the Indian Ocean, and in May arrived at Calicut. When we consider that this latter part of the voyage was with a pilot accustomed to make the trip in the far more fragile crafts of the Arabs, the boldness of the undertaking does not seem so apparent to one of our day. Compared with the voyages of Columbus, Magellan, Vespucius, or Cabral over absolutely unknown seas, without pilots or charts of any kind, the passage from Aden ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... however, there mingled no desire or eager curiosity, on my part, to find out the secret reason of her solitude, or to break down the fragile barrier of our almost voluntary separation. What to me was this woman whom I had met by chance among the mountains of a foreign land, ill in health and sick at heart though she might be? I had shaken the dust from my feet, or at least I thought I had, and felt no wish to hold to the world once ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Hendrick brought him to a sounder judgment. Unlike Jim's youthful friends, who, partly animated by love of mischief and partly by youth's natural hopefulness, had encouraged him to indulge the most glowing fancies, Hendrick showed him gently, but plainly, how fragile was the foundation on which he had been building. The watch might have been stolen, or lost, or given away. There might turn out to be no direct or traceable connection between Lady Waterham and the unknown woman whose property it had been. ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... partially filled with only the casts of worms, whilst others contained more or less of a species of Conferva; and, lastly, I obtained some with the cavities partially or wholly filled up. The receptacles varied in shape, from a sphere to an oval, and were extremely thin and fragile. They also varied in size from a pea to a nut. Externally they presented an appearance so singularly contorted, that I could not help considering they were moulded from the casts of worms. They did not appear to have any attachment to ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... boy's delight, a boy's remorse. Friend Apollyon seemed able to draw the wild animals too, to share their sport, yet not altogether kindly. Tired, surfeited, he destroys them when his game with them is at an end; breaks the toy; deftly snaps asunder the fragile back. Though all alike would come at his call, or the sound of his harp, he had his preferences; and warred in the night-time, as if on principle, against the creatures of the day. The small furry thing he pierced with his arrow fled to him nevertheless caressingly, with broken limb, to die ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... reign a queen over fickle Paris. Does any one suppose that fortunes alone are risked in the great game? The winters are to fashionable women what a campaign once was to the soldiers of the Empire. What works of art and genius are expended on a gown or a garland in which to make a sensation! A fragile, delicate creature will wear her stiff and brilliant harness of flowers and diamonds, silk and steel, from nine at night till two and often three o'clock in the morning. She eats little, to attract remark to her slender waist; she ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... in such association. It sounds something too commercial for so fragile and fleeting a thing as love. And, too, it is an error to speak of a glove as though it were of less value than an automobile. In a lover's eyes the merest trifle is the most cherished token of love. Her carte des dances, for instance—for has not ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... warmth and preciousness of the surpassing friendship, but no idea of the high and varied range of intellectual and religious interests that entered into it. "I always," Madame Swetchine writes, "have your little ring on my finger. This symbol, fragile as all symbols, will outlive me; but I grieve not for that, since I am sure that the sentiment which makes me prize it so highly will survive it in turn." Dora Greenwell says, "The letters of Madame Swetchine are ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... of the inner rooms Banneker was introduced to a fragile, desiccated-looking man languidly engaged in scissoring newspaper after newspaper which he took from a pile and cast upon the floor after operation. The clippings he filed in envelopes. A checkerboard lay ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... here and there, underneath their spreading branches, were open spaces carpeted with wind-flowers and bluebells, primroses and wild orchids, while ferns, large and small, grew in glorious profusion, some as tall as Tony, others as fragile and tiny as a fairy fern might be. In other spots large lichen-covered rocks raised their heads out of a tangle of bracken and bushes, while here and there, down by the river's brink, gleamed little bays of ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... to take to heart the lesson that such deaths will teach, but let no man reject it, for it is one that all must learn, and is a mighty, universal Truth. When Death strikes down the innocent and young, for every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, to walk the world, and bless it. Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, some good is born, some gentler nature comes. In the Destroyer's steps there spring up ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... situated at the junction of the Bhagmutty and Bishmutty, and containing a population of 50,000 inhabitants, lay spread at our feet, and we could discern the passengers on the narrow fragile- looking bridges which span the two rivers, at this time containing scarcely any water. Innumerable temples, Bhuddist and Hindoo, and mixtures of both, occupied hillocks, or were situated near the sacred fonts or groves with which the valley abounds, and which ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... clearing was made of the articles of more fragile virtue, and Timothy, entering in state, was off-loaded from his nurse's arms ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... lightning against the chair John Kenyon occupied, and that tripping her up, flung her upon him with an unexpectedness that would have taken his breath away if the sudden landing of a plump young woman upon him had not accomplished the same thing. The fragile deck-chair gave way with a crash, and it would be hard to say which was the more discomfited by the sudden catastrophe, John ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... recover from the thrill of pain so as to speak, and Mrs. Finch rattled on. 'She was not in good looks when I saw her, poor thing, but she looked so soft and fragile, it quite went to my heart; though Jane will have it she is deep, and gets her own way by being meek and helpless. I don't go along with Jane throughout; I hate ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this moment you shall be one of my guard; my lieutenant will provide you with arms." He thanked me earnestly, and his countenance lit up with sudden joy. He was installed in my guard. Oh! human justice! how fragile, and how often unintelligible art thou! Some time after this event, I learnt that Bazilio de la Cruz—this was the name of the man—was innocent. The two wretches who had denounced him had fled, to avoid the chastisement they merited. ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... possible to "create a soul under the ribs of death." Unhappily, people in sickness too seldom repair to such aid as may here be found till the last chances of recovery are exhausted. I have never seen a spot where I thought the fragile and delicate in constitution might pass a winter, sheltered from every storm, more securely than in this place. Tie houses for accommodation are without end, both at the Hot Wells and at Clifton. This last place is on the high ground, ascending up to the summit of the rocks, where ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... of those pockets!" He emphasized the command with a jerk of his gun hand, and the arms of the schoolteacher flew up over his head. Lean, fragile hands, Riley saw them to be. Altogether it was the most disgustingly inefficient piece of manhood ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... ague behind an indomitable red nose—and they called him Captain Dickson. There was another captain, also of Native Infantry, with a fair mustache; his face was like white glass, and his hands were fragile, but he answered joyfully to the cry of Tertius. There was an enormously big and well-kept man, who had evidently not campaigned for years, clean-shaved, soft-voiced, and cat-like, but still Abanazar for all that he adorned the Indian Political Service; and there was a lean Irishman, his face ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... and from Thackeray. The great illustrators, too, of the forties, fifties, and sixties, from Cruikshank and Browne to Frederick Walker, were partly helped by the system, partly helped to make it popular. But the circulating libraries did not like it for obvious reasons, the parts being fragile and unsubstantial: and the great success of cheap magazines, on the pattern of Macmillan's and the Cornhill, cut the ground from under its feet. The last remarkable novel that I remember seeing in the form was The Last Chronicle of Barset. Middlemarch ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... There she sat, crouched in the farthest corner of the sofa, with her feet drawn up under her, as in old days when she was frightened. She did not stretch out her arms; she remained huddled together. But he bent over her, knelt down, laid his face on hers, wept with her. She had grown fragile, thin, haggard, ah! as though she could be blown away. She let him take her in his arms like a child and clasp her to his breast; let him caress and kiss her. Ah, how ethereal she had become! And those eyes, which at last he saw, now looked tearfully out from their ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... boy, than you think," said Cockrell, smiling a little, "and you're going to be better than you know how. Now you understand why you've got to keep on the side-lines this afternoon. You're too fragile ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... eyes fixed upon him. Yet the mother confided his whole instruction and moral education to Stepan Trofimovitch. At that time her faith in him was unshaken. One can't help believing that the tutor had rather a bad influence on his pupil's nerves. When at sixteen he was taken to a lyceum he was fragile-looking and pale, strangely quiet and dreamy. (Later on he was distinguished by great physical strength.) One must assume too that the friends went on weeping at night, throwing themselves in each other's arms, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ever and anon to her husband for confirmation, and O'Moy, who loved her with all the passionate reverence which Nature working inscrutably to her ends so often inspires in just such strong, essentially masculine men for just such fragile and excessively feminine women, afforded this confirmation with all the ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... is a true "Story of Pornic," which may be read in guide-books to the place. A young girl of good family died there in odour of sanctity; she seemed too pure and fragile for earth. But she had one earthly charm, that of glorious golden hair; and one earthly feeling, which was her apparent pride in it. As she lay on her deathbed, she entreated that it might not be disturbed; ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Lily, she felt a pang of pity for these people. She looked at this peculiar form of poverty and hardship much as the fragile, tender girl of the city looks upon the men laying a gas-main in the streets. She felt, sympathetically, the heat and grime, and, though but the faintest idea of what it meant to wear such clothing came to her, she shuddered. Her eyes had been opened to these things ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... of Northcote, that talking with him was like conversing with the dead: "You see a little old man, pale and fragile, with eyes gleaming like the lights hung in tombs. He seems little better than a ghost, and hangs wavering and trembling on the very verge of life; you would think a breath would blow him away, and yet what fine ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... German or Belgian than French. Black hair thrown off his broad forehead accented this resemblance; a composer rather than a prose-poet and dramatist, was the rapid verdict of Ermentrude. She was not disappointed, though she had expected a more fragile type. The weaver of moonshine, of mystic phrases, of sweet gestures and veiled sonorities should not have worn the guise of one who ate three meals a day and slept soundly after his mellow incantations. Yet she was ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... right, and it is clear there is no place where you can live—together. James, she is a fragile flower; transplanted to your sterile soil, she would soon wither and drop from the stalk. Clarice, he is fastidious, critical, and intense; made a part of the things he despises, the torturing contact ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... their dingy, flickering gaslights, their ambling horse-cars, and their hideous slums, seemed appropriate settings for the unformed social life and the rough-and-ready political methods of American democracy. The railroads, with their fragile iron rails, their little wheezy locomotives, their wooden bridges, their unheated coaches, and their kerosene lamps, fairly typified the prevailing frontier business and economic organization. But only by talking with the business leaders of that time could we have understood the changes that ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... was found a small box of metal covered with several thicknesses of tar and wax impregnated fabric which had been mostly destroyed. The metal itself was badly oxidized, but served to protect an inner wooden box that contained a number of thin sheets of a fragile substance composed mainly of cellulose which were brown and crumbling with age. The sheets were covered with runes of lingua antiqua arranged in regular rows, inscribed by hand with a carbon-based ink which has persisted remarkably well despite the degenerative processes of time. Although much ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone
... fragile attempt at browbeating a lover. Fearing more the issue of such an undertaking than what a gentle young man might think of her waywardness, she immediately afterwards determined to please ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the poorest countries in the world, landlocked Burkina Faso has few natural resources, a fragile soil, and a highly unequal distribution of income. About 90% of the population is engaged in (mainly subsistence) agriculture, which is vulnerable to variations in rainfall. Industry remains dominated by unprofitable government-controlled corporations. Following the African franc currency devaluation ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... yellow butterfly she was indeed, with the sleazy, clinging, white draperies wound around her slender form, then the wings of golden maline pinioned on either softly rounded shoulder. Sally was a perfect little beauty, and also possessed that whimsical manner so attractive in this delicate, fragile type. ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... and were almost too great a weight for her slim throat and drooping figure. Her complexion was transparently delicate, and she had dark blue eyes that looked almost preternaturally large. It seems strange to remember this ethereal vision of girlish fragile beauty as belonging to my dear cousin, who, having fortunately escaped the doom by which she then seemed threatened, lived to become a most happy and excellent wife and mother, and one of the largest women ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... description,—whereas this girl was simply fair, small, and delicate, with something wistful and pathetic in the lines of her sweet mouth, and shadows as of remembered sorrows slumbering in the depths of her serene, dove-like eyes. Her fragile figure drooped wearily as though she were exhausted by some long fatigue, ... yet, ... gazing down upon him, she smiled, ... and in that smile, the faint resemblance she bore to his Spirit-ideal ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Douglas lifted her up, set her on the firmest location he could see, adoring her with his eyes and reverent touch. Since that first rough grasp as he drew her to him, Leslie had felt positively fragile in his hands. She smiled at him her most beautiful ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... stretched, fifteen acres of regal chrysanthemums, roses pink, yellow, white and red, fragile lilies of the valley, carnations and vivid orchids, no two alike, yet all expressions of plant life. Skilled gardeners from England and Germany were busy with these exquisite flower children, watering, pruning and training upon ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... not so easily described! I can only appeal to your memory of other women like her, whom you must often have seen—women who are tall and fair, and fragile and elegant; who have delicate aquiline noses and melting blue eyes—women who have often charmed you by their tender smiles and their supple graces of movement. As for the character of this popular young lady, I must not influence you either way; ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... cables go guns and food, as well as timber for the huts in which the men live, and material for intrenchments. Down these come the wounded. The first sensation of a transit down these seemingly fragile tight ropes is much more curious than the first trip in a submarine or aeroplane, and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... a breaking voice. He had enjoyed a very bad night speculating on the probable course of events. Colette came in shortly, and greeted Arthur as brazenly as usual, but with extreme sadness, which became her well; so sweet, so delicate, so fragile, that he felt pleased to have forgiven her so early in the struggle. He had persecuted her, treated her with violence, and printed her history for the scornful pleasure of the world; he had come to offer her the alternative of public shame or public trial and jail; yet she had a ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... Carlovingians is that of the greatest of the barbarians taking upon himself to resuscitate the Roman empire, and of Charlemagne's descendants disputing amongst themselves for the fragments of his fabric, as fragile as it was grand. Amidst this vast chaos and upon this double ruin was formed the feudal system, which by transformation after transformation became ultimately France. Hugh Capet, one of its chieftains, made himself its king. The ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to-day decries the greatness of the campaign may perhaps no less hesitate to approve the fitness of its chosen annalist. His fame was due to the perfection of a single book; he ranked as a potentate in STYLE. But literary perfection, whether in prose or poetry, is a fragile quality, an afflatus irregular, independent, unamenable to orders; the official tributes of a Laureate we compliment at their best with the northern farmer's verdict on the pulpit ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... as the nearest of the soldiers reached out for them, the termite-ruler lay helpless on the backs of its living crutches, with its attenuated body quivering convulsively, and its balloonlike, fragile head cleft almost in two halves. It was possible that even that terrific injury might not be fatal to a thing so great and flexible of brain, and so divorced from the ills as well as the powers of the flesh. But for the moment at ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... the room after his fragile wife and gracious sister-in-law, and Carl drank tea (with lemon instead of milk in it!) and listened to bewildering talk and to a few stanzas, heroic or hauntingly musical, by a new poet, W. B. Yeats, an Irishman associated with a thing called the Gaelic Movement. Professor Frazer had a funny, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... were a pick of glass and a spade of earthenware. The boy commenced the work, but at the first stroke his fragile pick and spade broke into a thousand fragments. For the second time he sat down helplessly. Time passed slowly, and as before at midday the damsel in white brought him ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... greatly resembling it in appearance and plumage; these birds are very cautious and shy, and run rapidly through the underwood, rarely flying unless when closely pursued. The shell of the egg is thin and fragile, and the young are hatched entirely by the heat of the sun, scratching their way out as soon as they are born, at which time they are able to shift for themselves. [Note 25: For a further account of the LEIPOA, vide CHAPTER III. of ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... The fragile tenure of the sense of personal identity is illustrated by the ease and completeness with which actors can put themselves in the place of the characters they assume, so that even their instinctive demeanor corresponds to the ideal, and their acting ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... motioned to the nurse, who laid the piece of brown paper in Macavoy's hand. He held it for a moment as delicately as if it were a fragile bit of glass, something that his huge fingers might crush by touching. Then he reached over and laid it on the bed beside her and said, looking Hilton in the eyes, "Tell her, the slip av a saint she is, if the breakin' ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... her, Kingsnorth did not love her. He gave her a form of tolerant affection. Too fragile to mix with others, she was brought up at home. Tutors furnished her education. The winters she passed abroad with her mother. When her mother died she spent them with relations or friends. The grim dampness ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... more tender than the colour of a peach-flower. I have counted one by one the fair and golden lashes that threw their tremulous shade upon it. I have traced out with care in the subdued tone that surrounds her, the evanescent lines of her throat, so fragile and inclined so modestly. I have even lifted with an adventuring hand the folds of her tunic, and have seen unveiled that bosom, maiden and full of milk, that has never been pressed by any except divine lips. I have traced out the rare clear veins ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... means of Canadian travel; for he thought it strangely unbecoming that a lieutenant-general of the king should be forced to crouch on a sheet of bark, at the bottom of a birch canoe, scarcely daring to move his head to the right or left lest he should disturb the balance of the fragile vessel. ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... distinguishable by their color, namely, the white or medullary and the gray or cortical substance, enter into the formation of nervous matter. Both are soft, fragile, and easily injured, in consequence of which the principal nervous centers are well protected by bony coverings. The nervous substances present two distinct forms—nerve fibers and nerve cells. An aggregation of nerve cells constitutes a ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... stillness, and in this condition of passive gloom the House of Claes reached the first weeks of the year 1816. Pierquin, the lawyer, was destined, at the close of February, to strike the death-blow of the fragile woman who, in the words of the Abbe de ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... increased doses, was out of pain, and wished to make her toilet. Roma brought up the night-table and the mirror, the rouge-pot, the rabbit's foot, the puff, the pencil, and the other appurtenances of her aunt's toilet-box. And when the fragile thing, so soon to be swallowed up by the earth in its great earthquake, had been propped by pillows, she began to paint her wrinkled face as if going to dance a minuet with death. First the black rings about the languid eyes were whitened, then the earthen ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... the cheerful faith of the initiate in a future life, bearing him fearlessly through all dangers and through death to the welcoming society of Elysium, as when Danae and her babe, tossed over the tempestuous sea in a fragile chest, were securely wafted to the sheltering shore of Seriphus. No emblem of our human state and lot, with their mysteries, perils, threats, and promises, could be either more natural or more impressive than that of a vessel launched on the deep. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Hibbert about his own mother. The boy listened eagerly, with one hand resting in Paul's, a smile upon his lips. Suddenly he drew a deep sigh of content; the fragile head fell back upon the chair; the hand in Paul's grew ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... things that, although he was in the midst of many people, he saw nobody. He had taken his place unceremoniously beside one of the most fascinating women in Paris, a young and graceful dancer, with slender figure, a face as fresh as a child's, all pink and white, and so fragile, so transparent, that it seemed that a man's glance must pass through her as the sun's rays pass through flawless glass. They stood there before me, side by side, so close together, that the stranger rubbed against the gauze ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... quarter. Walked and walked and walked, thinking about Antwerp all the time. Through streets of grey-white and lavender-tinted houses, with very fragile balconies. Saw the two Cathedrals[6] and the Town Hall—refugees swarming round it—and the Rab—I can't remember its name: see Baedeker—with its turrets and its moat. Any amount of time to see cathedrals in and no Mrs. ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... wagon, mounted on wheels which had once been yellow, but were now almost gray through the accumulation of mud. The front wheels were very small, the back ones, high and fragile, carried the large body of the vehicle, which was swollen like the belly of an animal. Three white horses, with enormous heads and great round knees, were the first things one noticed. They were harnessed ready to draw this coach, which had something of the appearance of a ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... and crockery of the homestead, can be noticed toddling along on the Golahek road, dodging carriages and cavaliers in a most surprising manner. They are said never to break even the smallest and most fragile articles, but such is certainly not the case with the heavily laden donkeys and mules, which often collide or collapse altogether, with most disastrous results to the ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... her in the dim light. She looked very small and wistful and fragile. Suddenly an intense desire surged over him to pick her up and crush her to him. He fought against it. He tried to fix his thoughts on the girl at home, to tell himself that he was a man of honour. His fingers, gripping the edge of the seat, tightened till every muscle ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... by modern science, is one which ought to have great weight with the mother, her relatives and friends. The practical conclusion which it suggests is, that as during pregnancy there is unusual susceptibility to mental impressions, and as these impressions may operate on the fragile structure of the unborn being, this tendency should be well considered and constantly remembered, not only by the woman herself, but by all those who associate or are thrown in contact with her. Upon the care displayed in the management of the corporeal and mental health ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... on the left bank of the Meuse, the remains of at least three human individuals were disinterred. The skull of one of these, that of a young person, was embedded by the side of a mammoth's tooth. It was entire but so fragile, that nearly all of it fell to pieces during its extraction. Another skull, that of an adult individual, and the only one preserved by Dr. Schmerling in a sufficient state of integrity to enable the anatomist to speculate ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... story I am going to tell you happened, but that is all the more reason for telling it, lest it should be forgotten. The emperor's palace was the most beautiful thing in the world; it was made entirely of the finest porcelain, very costly, but at the same time so fragile that it could only be touched with the very greatest care. There were the most extraordinary flowers to be seen in the garden; the most beautiful ones had little silver bells tied to them, which tinkled perpetually, so that one ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... shall, though, or I'll strangle you! In my strong hands your slender neck would snap Like a fragile pipe-stem. ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... his face, though. He unrolled the handkerchief slowly, as if it contained something immensely fragile and valuable, and then, thrusting it back in his pocket, he faced Mr. Trimm. He was carrying in his hands a pair of handcuffs that hung open-jawed. The jaws had little notches in them, like teeth that could bite. The question that ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... S. AEthalium pulvinate, variable in form and size, covered with a thin, fragile, blackish, cortical layer. Walls of the sporangia violaceous, next the base with broad expansions, in places more thickly grown together, toward the surface becoming narrow with more abundant fibrous threads, sometimes presenting a loose irregular network, the whole ...
— The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio • A. P. Morgan
... Oliver," she said, preserving her self-possession, for she was no fragile flower to wilt and droop before the first breath ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... your meerschaum is a fragile thing, and eminently frangible. This present writer once did see four beauties break within a single moon. And when they break, what previous joy of coloring can over-top the sorrow of their dire destruction? It ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... case?" She was ready to weep; wearily she sat down on the old box. Then she heard Boris laugh softly, it was the quick, proud laugh with which he loved to conceal his agitation. Now he too sat down on the box, took Billy's hand, this cold girlish hand, into his own, as if it were something fragile and precious, and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... shaken Society long ago, when the mighty dame had asserted her right to be "Mrs. Devon," and the only "Mrs. Devon." He told them also about her wonderful dinner-set of china, which had cost thirty thousand dollars, and was as fragile as a humming-bird's wing. Each piece bore her crest, and she had a china expert to attend to washing and packing it—no common hand was ever allowed to touch it. He told them, also, how Mrs. Devon's housekeeper had wrestled for so long, trying to teach ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... strong can escape the clutch of the primitive, wherefore there can be no successful social order which does not conform in its essentials to the blind impulses of the natural man or man-ape. We are in danger of overestimating the ascendancy and stability of Reason, for it is in reality the most fragile and rudimentary element in our mortal fabric. A heavy blow on certain parts of the skull, or a bullet in certain parts of the brain, can destroy in an instant all the accumulated intellect which aeons of heredity have bestowed, depressing the victim from the zenith ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... that neither the doctor nor Cutler knew, that to avoid falling under the circumstances I was placed in, and to escape without capsizing the canoe, was a feat that no man, but one familiar with the management of those fragile barks, and a good swimmer, too, can perform. Peter was aware of it, and appreciated it; but the other two seemed disposed to cut their jokes upon me; and them that do that, generally find, in the long run, I am upsides ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... his presence. This man, Wickham by name, managed to pick up an acquaintance with Cressley, and soon they spent a good deal of time together. They made a contrast as they paced up and down on deck, or played cards in the evening; the Englishman being slight and almost fragile in build, the German of the bulldog order, with a manner at once curt and overbearing. I took a dislike to Wickham, and wondered what ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... weld again into a vast unhappy whole its former constituent republics of Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Esthonia, Tauride, and White Russia. There seemed every chance that it would shortly succeed in doing so. The nations growled everywhere like sullen dogs on fragile chains. Never had the League of Nations, in all its brief career, been more necessary, never less available. Not a grievance could be given that public airing from what is called a world platform, which is so beneficial to the airers, so apt at promoting fraternal feeling, so harmless to ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... thought and feeling were rare because there was no time for revery. Milly was determined to get the most out of her triumph, and drove the peaceable Clarence Albert rather hard. All women, he had supposed in his ignorance, were more or less fragile. But it was astonishing what an amount of nerve-racking gayety Milly could get through in a day and come up smiling the next morning for another sixteen-hour bout with pleasure. Sometimes Clarence protested that he was a working man and must be at his office by nine. But Milly had slight ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... they build, which bent On hides of oxen, bore the weight of man And swam the torrent. Thus on sluggish Po Venetians float; and on th' encircling sea (8) Are borne Britannia's nations; and when Nile Fills all the land, are Memphis' thirsty reeds Shaped into fragile boats that swim his waves. The further bank thus gained, they haste to curve The fallen forest, and to form the arch By which imperious Sicoris shall be spanned. Yet fearing he might rise in wrath anew, Not on the nearest marge ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... dapicho two feet in diameter and four inches thick, eight feet distant from the trunks. Sometimes the Indians dig in vain at the foot of dead trees; at other times the dapicho is found beneath the hevea or jacio still green. The substance is white, corky, fragile, and resembles by its laminated structure and undulating edge, the Boletus ignarius. The dapicho perhaps takes a long time to form; it is probably a juice thickened by a particular disposition of the vegetable organs, diffused and coagulated in a humid soil secluded from the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... handicaps—the patched and greasy dress, the big rough hands, the shoes worn sideways. But even so, she realised that "Red Mary" had a quality which she lacked—that beside this wild rose of a mining-camp, she, Jessie Arthur, might possibly seem a garden flower, fragile ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... Charlotte Bronte was a quiet, thoughtful girl, nearly fifteen years of age, very small in figure—stunted was the word she applied to herself—fragile, with soft, thick, brown hair, and peculiar eyes. They were large and well shaped, their colour a reddish brown, and if the iris was closely examined, it appeared to be composed of a great variety of tints. The usual expression was of quiet, listening intelligence, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... his resistance and kept it aloof. This strong man whose gaze was sustainedly calm and his finger-nails pink with health, who was exercised in all questioning, and accused of excessive mental independence, still felt a subduing influence over him in the tenacious certitude of the fragile creature before him, whose pallid yellow nostril was tense with effort as his breath labored under the burthen of eager speech. The influence seemed to strengthen the bond of sympathetic obligation. In Deronda at this moment the desire to escape what might turn into a trying ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Too fragile in his anatomy for fighting, in the ordinary sense of the word, when molested, he will "snap" at his opponent with such celerity as to take even the most watchful by surprise; while his strength of jaw, combined with its comparatively great length, enables him to inflict severe ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... could be both eat and felt, and the damp struck through their clothes in the most summary manner. "This is bad," said Mr. Jorrocks, coughing as he turned the corner by Drury Lane, making for Catherine Street, and upset an early breakfast and periwinkle stall, by catching one corner of the fragile fabric with his toe, having ridden too near to the pavement. "Where are you for now? and bad luck to ye, ye boiled lobster!" roared a stout Irish wench, emerging from a neighbouring gin-palace on seeing the dainty viands rolling in the street. "Cut away!" cried Jorrocks ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... heroines always are—a class, representing no social grade, but coming from all—belonging to no rank or age of life in particular; sometimes young and sometimes old, sometimes refined and sometimes rude; now of fragile physical aspect and then of extraordinary robustness—but in all cases, women with a mighty love and earnestness in their hearts—a love and pity, and an ability to show it forth and to labor in ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... springwood-smells that wandered here and there in the careless irresponsibility of forest spirits off duty. This was Bobby's first experience with woods; and his keenest perceptions were alive to them. The tall trunks of trees rising from the graceful, fragile, half-translucence of undergrowth; little round tunnels to a distant delicate green; lights against shadows, and shadows against lights; the wing-flashes of birds hidden and mysterious; and above all the marvellous green transparence of all the shadows, which tinted the very ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... America, was composed of short inflammable shingles of pine. The superior height of the tower was some little protection, but as the flames rose roaring above the buildings of the court, and waved in wide circuits around the heated area, the whole of the fragile covering of the block was often wrapped in folds of fire. The result may be anticipated. Content was first recalled from the bitterness of his parental regret, by a cry, which passed among the family, that the roof of their little citadel was in flames. ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... to the sphere of religious thought and speculation and to the unlocking of metaphorical prison-gates, was displayed in the case of Mullā Ḥuseyn both in voyages on the ocean of Truth, and in warfare. Yes, the Mullā's fragile form might suggest the student, but he had also the precious faculty of generalship, and a happy perfection ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... form, color, and force in the same species of animals and men. But a century does not afford a period long enough for the production of great changes. That length of time could not transform the sturdy German fraulein and robust English damsel into the fragile American miss. Everybody recognizes and laments the change that has been and is going on. "The race of strong, hardy, cheerful girls, that used to grow up in country places, and made the bright, neat, New-England kitchens of olden ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... to say good-night To such a host of peerless things! Good-night unto the fragile hand All queenly with its weight of rings; Good-night to fond uplifted eyes, Good-night to chestnut braids of hair, Good-night unto the perfect mouth And all the sweetness nestled there,— The snowy hand detains me,—then I'll have to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... an imperial spiny oyster, brightly colored, bristling with thorns, a specimen rare to European museums, whose value I estimated at 20,000 francs; a common hammer shell from the seas near Queensland, very hard to come by; exotic cockles from Senegal, fragile white bivalve shells that a single breath could pop like a soap bubble; several varieties of watering-pot shell from Java, a sort of limestone tube fringed with leafy folds and much fought over by collectors; a whole series of top-shell snails—greenish yellow ones fished up from American seas, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... pressure, and the splintered fragments heaped up one above another in the wildest confusion, to a height of from fifty to eighty feet above the surface of the floe. The ice, which was about fifteen feet thick, crumbled away like fragile glass, and it was only by observing the manner in which masses weighing hundreds of tons were wildly tossed hither and thither like corks that even an approximate idea of the tremendous power at ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... young friend," observed the School-master, "is as fragile as this cup"—tapping his coffee-cup. "The countryman of whom you speak is up and doing long before you or I or your successful merchant, who has waxed great on noise as you put it, is awake. If the early bird catches the worm, what becomes ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... De Craye remarked. "The luck may be with you, though. I wouldn't handle the fragile ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... A universal and comprehensive knowledge of human nature must also be his, for not only has he to be capable of judging and humouring the overstrung men and women of talent with whom he deals—those fragile, sensitive flowers from whom he extracts the honey wherewith to gratify the palate of a journalistically epicurean public—but he must also have a thorough knowledge of that public to enable him to direct those who work for him, for they, shut up in their studies and studios, may not ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... who had thus intruded on his privacy. A scarf of black lace was twisted, hood-like, about her head, and beneath its fragile drapery was revealed the beautiful face and haunting, mysterious eyes of Elisabeth Durward. She had flung a long black cloak over her evening gown, and where it had fallen a little open at the throat her neck gleamed privet-white ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Bronte. In 1831, she was a quiet, thoughtful girl, of nearly fifteen years of age, very small in figure—"stunted" was the word she applied to herself,—but as her limbs and head were in just proportion to the slight, fragile body, no word in ever so slight a degree suggestive of deformity could properly be applied to her; with soft, thick, brown hair, and peculiar eyes, of which I find it difficult to give a description, as they appeared to me in her later life. They ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... butterflies out of reach before he could seize them, calling with voices like the cuckoos, themselves all the time just out of sight. Who ever saw a cuckoo when it's talking? Who ever foretold the instant when a butterfly would shoot upwards and away? Such darting, fragile thoughts they were, like hints, suggestions. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... them one of the widow's five hundred franc promissory notes! By four o'clock I was free once more and ready to meet the next day's obligations. My mind is at ease for a month to come. I can seat myself once more in the fragile swing of my dreams and let my imagination keep me ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... sound quite plainly in the darkness, and it was exactly as Uncle Dick described, but I leaned towards its being a fragile shell trodden on by some big ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... well banked fire that burned continually, but within destroyed itself rather than others. Thin, white, and self-consuming, she was like the small Russian cigarettes that were never out of her lips. Fragile as she looked, she had a will that brooked no obstacle, an energy ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... her throat. The bubble was so radiant, so fragile, so unbelievable, that she was afraid to stir for fear of breaking it. She waited until she heard Mrs. Snawdor's heavy feet descending the stairs, and then she crept across the hall and sat on the side of Fidy's bed, waiting to give her the next dose of medicine. Her ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... 'tis in Death For him, whose fragile breath Wends from a breast of piety and peace, But darkness, chains, and dree Eternal, are for me Since Death's tremendous ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... small but piercing blue eye. His locks were light and curly, and his beard sandy. Her hair was brown and straight. He was fully six feet tall, while she was only of medium height. And yet Edith was not a brunette, but possessed a complexion of transparent delicacy which gave her the fragile appearance characteristic of so many American girls. His face was much tamed by exposure to March winds, but his brow was as white as hers. In his morbid tendency to shun every one, he usually kept his eyes fixed on the ground so as to appear not to see people, and this, with his habitual ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... going on, I had made Hans and Sammy open one of the boxes and extract therefrom a good-sized mirror in a wooden frame with a support at the back so that it could be stood anywhere. Fortunately it was unbroken; indeed, our packing had been so careful that none of the looking-glasses or other fragile things were injured. To this mirror I gave a hasty polish, then set it upright upon ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... and fragile Miss Eunice, demure, correct in deportment, and yet not wholly without enthusiasm, thought that day the unluckiest in her life on which she first took into her hands that unobtrusive yet dramatic book, "Miss Crofutt's Missionary ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... capitalism to find an outlet in the New World has led during the past fifty years, though even now on a relatively modest scale, to such countries as Argentine owing an annual sum to such countries as England. But the system is fragile; and it has only survived because its burden on the paying countries has not so far been oppressive, because this burden is represented by real assets and is bound up with the property system generally, and because the sums already lent are not unduly large in relation ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... mystified, and silently drained their glasses. Then there was the tinkle of shivered glass as Danbury, after the manner of the English in drinking to their Queen, hurled the fragile crystal to the floor. Shortly after this Stubbs left the two men to go below and look after his charges. Danbury brought out a bottle of Scotch and a siphon of soda and, lighting his brierwood pipe, settled back comfortably on the bunk with his ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... not love who sip it at the spring. Youth is a fragile child that plays at love, Tosses a shell, and trims a little sail, Mimics the passion of the gathered years, And is a loiterer on the shallow bank Of the great flood that ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... her father and mother, are very fond of her and proud of her. Every day she goes to the palace to see them, and they weigh her in a pair of scales. They put her in one scale and five lotus flowers in the other, and she's so delicate and fragile she weighs no heavier than the five little flowers, so they call her the Panch-Phul Ranee. Her father and mother are very proud ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... please his amorous egoism—to be placed apart from the rest as a delicate and fragile being only fit for feminine adoration. He preferred to inspire the envy that she had felt on beholding her brother decked out in his warlike accoutrement. It seemed to him that something was coming between him and Marguerite that would never disappear, that would ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that pregnant designation of God say? That was a strange shrine for God, that poor, ragged, dry desert bush, with apparently no sap in its gray stem, prickly with thorns, with 'no beauty that we should desire it,' fragile and insignificant, yet it was 'God's house.' Not in the cedars of Lebanon, not in the great monarchs of the forest, but in the forlorn child of the desert did He abide. 'The goodwill of Him that dwelt in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... patient incorruptible thought, Wrought them in joy was wages to his faith. And other than the gods he made. The stalks Of bluebells heavy with the news of spring, The vine loaded with plenty of the year, And swallows, merely tenderness of thought Bidding the stone to small and fragile flight; Leaves, the thin relics of autumnal boughs, Or massed in June ... All from their native pressure bloomed and sprang Under his shaping hand into a proud And governed image of the central man,— Their ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... to say, the first outstanding difference which arises before the Apostle as blessed and glorious, is the contrast between the fragile dwelling-place, with its thin canvas, its bending poles, its certain removal some day, and the permanence of that which is not a 'tent,' but a 'building' which is 'eternal.' Involved in that is the thought that all the limitations and weaknesses ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... other population of the earth by unnumbered myriads of millions; yet the insects, even the same identical species which dance over the Thames to-day, are among the very oldest of living things, just as its plants and its shells are. Rocks and slate are not ideal butterfly cases; and if the fragile limbs of the beetle and grasshopper of the successive prehistoric worlds had perished beyond the power of identification, no one could have felt surprise. But such has been the industry of modern ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... forms in all caves with only such variations as would naturally result from differences in topography? The law is written, but in unfamiliar characters that render our reading slow and uncertain. Yet it is conspicuously noticeable that those caves showing the most delicately fragile and wonderfully varied forms of decoration are those traversed by the most sweeping and changeable, or even reversible, currents of air; which might lead to the conclusion that the moisture is sprayed or converted into a light, misty vapor, and then deposited in exactly the same manner as the ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... Miss Scott," Lord Arranmore said, settling himself in the most comfortable of her fragile easy-chairs, and declining tea. "I cannot fail to perceive that my cause is hopeless. The united efforts of myself and your worthy relatives appear to be powerless to unearth a single grain of common-sense ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... professors of both sexes at home. But he learnt practically nothing except the banjo. Horace had to buy him a banjo: it cost the best part of a ten-pound note; still, Horace could do no less. Sidney's stature grew rapidly; his general health certainly improved, yet not completely; he always had a fragile, interesting air. Moreover, his deafness did not disappear: there were occasions when it was extremely pronounced. And he was never quite safe from these attacks in the head. He spent a month or six weeks each year in the expensive bracing atmosphere of some seaside resort, and altogether ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... permitted to suggest the following leading principles; but we do so with diffidence. Rich colours harmonize with rich brunette complexions and dark hair. Delicate colours are the most suitable for delicate and fragile styles of beauty. Very young ladies are never so suitably attired as in white. Ladies who dance should wear dresses of light and diaphanous materials, such as tulle, gauze, crape, net, &c., over coloured silk ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... pieces in a bag, men remembered by what sweat of mind or body wealth was won, and they had a sense of parting with something which was really theirs. But a cheque has never yet impressed me with the least sense of its intrinsic value. It is a thing so trivial and fragile that the mind refuses to regard it as the equivalent of lands and houses and solid bullion. It is a thing incredible to reason that with a stroke of the pen a man may sign away his thousands. If cheques were prohibited by law, and all payments made in good coin of the realm, ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... broad, curled leaves; stiff, thick, fragile branches, and round, fleshy berries containing a ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... without, these apparently tame and lusterless lives rouse pity rather than envy. Those who approach gently sometimes divine sad secrets, great trials undergone, heavy burdens beneath which too fragile shoulders bend; but this is only the side of shadow. We should learn to know and value this richness of heart, this pure goodness, this power to love, to console, to hope, this joyful giving up of self, this persistence ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... exists to-day, in reality an abomination of abominations, is naturally enough admired by all when first viewed from afar. It certainly looks not dwarfed, or even fragile, but simply delicate, and withal graceful, an opinion which ultimate association therewith speedily dispels. It must be one of the very first examples of modern iron or steel erection in the world, dating from 1827, following three former spires, each of which was burned. The architect responsible ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... it come to pass that solitude itself becometh fragile and breaketh open, like a grave that breaketh open and can no longer hold its dead. ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the first one. Not one nor two of these could be too quick for Johnny. Like a shot his right arm curved out. With a screaming shudder the man leaped in air and went crashing down the hill. The second, seized by his fragile squirrel-skin parka, tore himself away. The third landed upon Johnny's back. Like an infuriated bucking bronco, Johnny went over on his back, crushing the wind out of the fellow on the hard packed snow. But the second man, dressed now in a garment of crimson hue, which he had worn under his ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... were some that resembled gigantic snail shells, and others shaped like the cornucopias, used to hold sugar-plums for children. One species, the most remarkable of all, was composed of a substance, resembling mother-of-pearl, exquisitely beautiful, but very fragile, breaking easily, if you but set foot on one of them: they were changeable in colour, being of a dazzling white, a pearly blue, or a delicate pale green, as viewed in different lights. Scattered here and there, among these deserted tenements of various kinds of shell-fish, were ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... example, 'fragile' and 'frail,' 'intension' and 'intention,' 'providential' and 'prudential,' and many ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... look On all the lights, A thousand times more numerous than the stars; Oh lines and loops of light in unwound chains That mark for miles and miles The vast black mazy cobweb of the streets; Near us clusters and splashes of living gold That change far off to bluish steel Where the fragile lights on the Jersey shore Tremble like drops of wind-stirred dew. The strident noises of the city Floating up to us Are hallowed into whispers. Ferries cross thru the darkness Weaving a golden thread into the night, Their whistles ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale
... distance off. We young people passed the evening alone together. The crimson curtains were closely drawn, and the cosy room was lighted by a blazing fire. Reclining in an easy-chair, I held Celestino's fragile form in my arms, the wonderful eyes gazing into mine as I watched with emotions too deep for words their ever-varying expression. Eugenio sat on an ottoman at my feet, alternately reading aloud from Dante and pausing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... Memory, goddess of the past—and thou, with thy overflowing horn of plenty, blooming Futurity; show him in your mirror the joys of Paradise, while with fleeting foot you elude his eager grasp. Thus will I work my battery of death, stroke after stroke, upon his fragile body, until the troop of furies close upon him with Despair! Triumph! triumph!—the plan is complete—difficult and masterly beyond compare—sure—safe; for then (with a sneer) the dissecting knife can find no trace of wound or ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... which so much of the safety of a canoe depends, as well as comfort and pleasure in using it during the many days' constant work of a long voyage. The proper rigging of a canoe, so as to be neither fragile like a toy nor clumsy in its small details, is well attended to at the Model ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... cap made a breach in the indignant resistance of the courtesan. The conversation then glancing off slightly, the woman of the pendent rosaries went on to speak of the religious houses of her Order, of her superior, of herself and her fragile little companion, her dear little Sister St. Nicephora. They had been sent for to Havre to nurse the hundreds of soldiers there down with small-pox. She described the condition of these poor wretches, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Topila erupted. The roar of the Chill's exhaust nearly drowned the roar of the guns, but the fragile hull of the craft was shaken and rocked by the bursting shells. An occasional bullet thudded into or pinged off the Chill, and, despite Peter's warning that, high or low, they were bound to get it if it came to them, every man on board, including Peter, ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... melting-yellow mustard-fields, nor flame-lit poppied meadows, nor blue-bells lifting their baby-blue eyes out of the grain. All the land was green. Fields, meadows, forests, plains—all were green, green, green. The features of the landscape had changed with this change in coloring. The slim, fragile grace of slim trees and fragile cliffs had been replaced by trees of heroic proportions, and by outlines nobly rounded and full—like the breasts of a mother. The whole country had an astonishing look of vigor—of the vigor which comes with rude strength; ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... Salt, Peter Pierson often perambulated the terrace, with hands folded behind him. Contemporary with these was Daines Barrington, a burly, square man. Lamb also mentions Burton, "a jolly negation," who drew up the bills of fare for the parliament chamber, where the benchers dined; thin, fragile Wharry, who used to spitefully pinch his cat's ears when anything offended him; and Jackson, the musician, to whom the cook once applied for instructions how to write down "edge-bone of beef" in a bill of commons. Then there was Blustering Mingay, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... tranquil leisure enfolded us; day followed day in an order unbroken and peaceful as the unfolding of the flowers and the silent march of the stars. Time no longer ran like the few sands in a delicate hour-glass held by a fragile human hand, but like a majestic river fed by fathomless seas. . . . We gave ourselves up to the sweetness of that unmeasured life, without thought of yesterday or to-morrow; we drank the cup to-day held to our lips, and knew that so long as we were ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... beckoning him and tantalizing him, and there is always something just behind him, menacing him and causing him to sweat. Even when he attains to what may seem to be security, that security is very fragile. The English soap-boiler, brewer, shyster attorney or stock-jobber, once he has got into the House of Lords, is reasonably safe, and his children after him; the possession of a peerage connotes a definite rank, and it is as permanent as anything can be ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... leagues, where navigation is as dangerous as in any part of the world: How much misery did we escape by being ignorant that so considerable a part of the bottom of the vessel was thinner than the sole of a shoe, and that every life on board depended upon so slight and fragile a barrier between us and the unfathomable ocean! It seemed, however, that we had been preserved only to perish here; Mr Banks and Dr Solander were so bad that the physician declared they had no chance for recovery but by removing into the country; a house was therefore hired for them at the distance ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... more of will and ambition than his body had of fibre and muscle. Perhaps, in these incompatibilities of the "physique" with the "morale," lay the secret of that fitful gloom; he WOULD but COULD not, and the athletic mind scowled scorn on its more fragile companion. As to his good looks, I should have liked to have a woman's opinion on that subject; it seemed to me that his face might produce the same effect on a lady that a very piquant and interesting, though scarcely pretty, female face would on a man. I have mentioned ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... Ah, how sharp and startling the contrast between husband and wife! The Countess was a little woman, with a flat, graceful figure and enchanting shape; so fragile, so dainty was she, that you would have feared to break some bone if you so much as touched her. She wore a white muslin dress, a rose-colored sash, and rose-colored ribbons in the pretty cap on her head; her chemisette ...
— The Message • Honore de Balzac
... came to the chaperone, a Mrs. Dr. Bowman, things were different. No longer young, though still beautiful in what I might call a sort of wasted fashion, with slim wrists and fragile fingers, and a splendid mass of rich, auburn hair, I had been startled, even looking across from our table, by the extreme nervous tension of her face. She looked a neurasthenic; but that was not all; ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... a huge staircase, of which the lower steps still remained, as did the balustrade, rusty, split, and in places twisted. Then suddenly they turned off by a fragile wooden bridge, resting on the supports of the staircase, between high walls on which were dimly visible the remains of huge frescoes, cracked, decayed, and blackened with soot, the hind legs of a horse, a woman's torso ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... dazzlingly, supremely beautiful beyond all mortal power of description,—whereas this girl was simply fair, small, and delicate, with something wistful and pathetic in the lines of her sweet mouth, and shadows as of remembered sorrows slumbering in the depths of her serene, dove-like eyes. Her fragile figure drooped wearily as though she were exhausted by some long fatigue, ... yet, ... gazing down upon him, she smiled, ... and in that smile, the faint resemblance she bore to his Spirit-ideal flashed out like a beam of sunlight, though it vanished again as quickly ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... in mute attention to this heart-awakening recital? I looked round at Lucy Anderson in lively sympathy with what I had heard. How little did her appearance give token of the deep domestic grief that must have settled upon her young heart! How deceptive is the human countenance! Though pale and fragile, yet her face sparkled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... housewife who is so dainty and refined that, though her husband's income is strained almost to the breaking point, she must have everything in the house so dainty and fragile that no ordinary servant can be trusted to care for the furniture, wash the dishes, polish the floors, etc., and the result is she is almost a confirmed neurasthenic because, in the first place, she worries over her dainty things, and, secondly, ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... Madrid said: "It was no caprice of the fortunes of war. From the very first cannon-shot our fragile ships were at the mercy of the formidable hostile squadron. They were condemned to fall one after another under the fire of the American batteries, powerless to strike, and were defended only by the valour in the ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... defence of his fragile property. Preliminaries of peace were agreed on, through his high mediation, and finally ratified betwixt the contending parties, ending as they began, like many other conflicting ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... some is regarded as only a form of Amanita phalloides. It is a pure white plant and the pileus is viscid as in the A. verna and A. phalloides. The volva splits at the apex as in A. verna, but the veil is very fragile and torn into shreds as the pileus expands, portions of it clinging to the margin of the cap as well as to the stem, as shown in Fig. 62. The stem is also adorned with soft floccose scales. Gillet further states that ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... igitur te scito esse: si quidem deus est qui viget qui sentit qui meminit: qui providet, qui tam regit et moderatur et movet id corpus cui propositus est, quam hunc mundum ille princeps deus, et ut mundum ex quadam parte mortalem ipse deus aeternus, sic fragile ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... Justice sat listening to evidence which was to be used against himself. But the impeachment never came, for a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the weakest link in the combination against the Chief Justice was a very fragile one indeed—the iniquitous Wilkinson. Even the faithful and melancholy Hay finally abandoned him. "The declaration, which I made in court in his favor some time ago," he wrote the President, "was precipitate.... My confidence ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... O King, belongs to our hermitage. Kill it not! kill it not! Now heaven forbid this barbed shaft descend Upon the fragile body of a fawn, Like fire upon a heap of tender flowers! Can thy steel bolts no meeter quarry find Than the warm life-blood of a harmless deer? Restore, great Prince, thy weapon to its quiver; More it becomes thy arms to shield the weak, Than ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... ought to have great weight with the mother, her relatives and friends. The practical conclusion which it suggests is, that as during pregnancy there is unusual susceptibility to mental impressions, and as these impressions may operate on the fragile structure of the unborn being, this tendency should be well considered and constantly remembered, not only by the woman herself, but by all those who associate or are thrown in contact with her. Upon the care displayed in the management of the corporeal and mental health of the ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... nobody. He had taken his place unceremoniously beside one of the most fascinating women in Paris, a young and graceful dancer, with slender figure, a face as fresh as a child's, all pink and white, and so fragile, so transparent, that it seemed that a man's glance must pass through her as the sun's rays pass through flawless glass. They stood there before me, side by side, so close together, that the stranger rubbed against the gauze dress, and the wreaths ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... e'er for things with wings. When boy I sought for forest fowl, And caged them in rude rushes' mesh, And fed them with my breakfast roll; So that, though fragile were the door, They rarely fled, and even then Would flutter back at ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... in a fragile condition was recently removed to the wall of the east end by the late Vicar, and ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... well," said Dosia that afternoon. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, with her arms spread out half-protectingly over Lois. The latter was only resting; she had been up and around the house now for three or four weeks, and, although she looked unusually fragile, seemed well, if not ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... having, unconsciously, pretty nigh discrowned himself in the opinion of the company. But before leaving, the careful housewife removed everything that was at all fragile from his reach; then, by way of a ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... of oil has the potential to further damage the country's already fragile efforts to create a unified central government. The Iraqi Constitution leaves the door open for regions to take the lead in developing new oil resources. Article 108 states that "oil and gas are the ownership of ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace
... body is fragile like a jar, and making his thought firm like a fortress, one should attack Mara, the tempter, with the weapon of knowledge, one should watch him when conquered, and ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... this chase, a fragile, white-faced girl, had fought with the mammoth waves as with inveterate beasts seeking to stifle her in icy embraces. A mere atom plunged in their depths as in cavernous and boundless darkness, she had struggled with an ocean the whole of the focus of which ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... the holy soil itself. He passed through the village, and found another sea of flowers outside it. He bathed his feet in a brook, and felt refreshed. But now at mid-day a wind from the sea arose, and clouds passed over the land. The violent rain beat down the fragile lilylike plants, the wind rooted them up or tore them in two, and collected them in heaps, which rolled along increasing in size as they went, and crushing other flowers ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... forth from the house, carrying a packing case on their shoulders. This makeshift casket had stenciled on its end: "Glass. Use No Hooks." The intimation that the corpse was so fragile amused Marty. ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... to be the most beautiful woman in all Florence; so great was her fame that she was quite generally spoken of as la bella Simonetta, and the artist Botticelli, who had an eye for a pretty woman, has left us a portrait which vouches for her charms in no uncertain way. She was but a fragile flower, however, and died in the bloom of youth, mourned by her lover with such genuine grief that, with one impulse, all sought to bring him consolation. Letters of condolence were written in prose and verse, sonnets ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... sought more diverting labor; at any rate the futile chopping was abandoned. Instead, several long ladders were hooked together and the synthesis lowered from the curb to the edge of Dinkman's roof. It seemed remarkably fragile, but it reached and the watchers ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... at the hopelessness of her tone, so taken aback at her words, that I could not answer her for a moment: it seemed inconceivable to me that she could be saying such things. Poor pretty Lesbia, whom Charlie had loved and whom I considered a mere fragile butterfly. She was quite pale now, and her ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... afternoon; she was gazing at the distance in an aimless manner that had lately fastened on her when she heard a stirring of the grass behind her and Edward Dunsack approached. He was livid in the pitiless light, and seemed terribly fragile, a thing that a mere clap of thunder might crumble to nothing; she felt that she could sweep him away with a broom; yet at the same time there were startling gleams of inner violence, a bitter energy, an effect of deepness, that ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... as if a rare tropical bird had followed the wake of summer and graced for a time a region from which it must fly with the first breath of autumn. In distinction from all they saw and met she appeared so fragile, such a charming exotic, that he felt an overpowering impulse to cherish and shelter her from every rude thing in the world. With a nice blending of reserve and complaisance she appeared to yield to his mood and yet ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... to see their hands dyed with carmine, Prussian blue, or chromes. Such a method of tinting is likely to prejudice ladies against the work altogether; besides which, it renders the flowers much more fragile. The only time I ever use dry powder is in the form of bloom (peculiarly prepared arrowroot), which I throw on lightly, but never rub in. Having endeavoured to prove that there are no dangerous results likely to accrue from this pleasing occupation, ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... countless variety of animal life in enormous quantities as we sailed along within the reef. The most curious were the beautiful paper-nautili, which swim with their long arms extended in a straight line, their bodies contrasting with their fragile shells, being remarkably ugly, and appearing as if scarcely connected with them. Porpoises rolled along in large shoals, numerous sharks showed their dark triangular fins above the water, and turtles of several species floated on the surface; while ospreys and other sea-birds flew above our heads, ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... which blazed brightly on the hearth, in a low chair made somewhat easy with cushions, sat a fair, fragile-looking, girlish figure, in whose mournful dark eyes was something so pathetic that it suggested the old-time prophecy that such "die young." Clarissa Verplanck in that resembled none of her family, and the one reason for her father's and aunt's ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... was slim and fragile, and in spite of her humble dress, she had something of the grace and carriage of a gentlewoman, but she was only a simple country girl, called Phoebe Marks, who had been nursemaid in Mr. Dawson's family, and whom Lady Audley had chosen for her maid ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... experience, Sir Pyramus! It is easier, far easier for you to exact obedience from a refractory squad of recruits than for a father to guide his little daughter according to his own will. For look! If it gets beyond endurance, you can seize the lash, or, if that won't do, a weapon; but where a fragile girl like that is concerned, we can't give vent to our rage, and, though she spoils the flavour of our food and drink by her pouting and fretting, we must say kind words to her into the bargain. Mine at least spares me the weeping and wailing in which many indulge, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... examined the gorgeous hues,—toyed with their fragile stems,—and then, glancing shyly over her shoulder like a startled fawn half expectant of hounds and hunter, she glided rapidly to an artificial mound crowned with a mouldering mossy plaster image of Ariadne and her pard, and stood surveying her ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... longer quiescent in his chair; he wandered about the room, he dropped on the couch beside her. But as he awkwardly stretched his hand toward her fragile, immaculate fingers, she said brightly, "Do give me a cigarette. Would you think poor Tanis was dreadfully ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... since the fair Lindaraxa passed away, yet how much of the fragile beauty of the scenes she inhabited remained! The garden still bloomed in which she delighted; the fountain still presented the crystal mirror in which her charms may once have been reflected; the alabaster, it ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... perfect autumn weather, I was walking down the main road of a residential suburb, and observing the fragile-wheeled station-wagons, and the ice-wagons enormously labeled "DANGER" (perhaps by the gastric experts of the medical faculty), and the Colonial-style dwellings, and the "tinder" boarding-houses, and the towering boot-shine ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... Crucifixion scene, on either side of, and close to, the cross, have here by a certain liberty been made to commence and close the series." ... "Fortunately the fretwork, when reversed, was found, though fragile, to be fairly sound; and, although not all entirely on a uniform pattern, a large section of it, when turned upward, presented the appearance of a series of Pots of Lilies, side by side, a discovery which largely reconciled ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... up With the warm glance of living feeling. No— It never can be! Ah, poor, powerless art! Most vaunting, yet most impotent, thou seek'st To trace the thousand, thousand shades and lights That glowed conspicuous on the blessed face Of him thou fain wouldst imitate—to bind Down to the fragile canvas the wild play Of thought and mild affection, which were wont To dwell in the serious eye, and play around The placid mouth. Thou seek'st to give again That which the burning soul, inhabiting Its clay-built tenement, alone can give— To leave on cold dead matter ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... green which dewy glisten Cluster sweet violets nodding 'neath the breeze, And coronals of light With golden splendour bright Their fragile heads adorn, which seem to listen To merry birds ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... topic-sentence appears in the paragraph. In such a case it is easily discovered; or at times it is too fragile to be compressed into any definite shape—a feeling, or a sentiment too delicate, too volatile for expression. A paragraph with no topic-sentence is most common ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... these voyages was to effect a landing on open beaches or among shelving rocks, not for persons only, but for coals and food, and the fragile furniture of light-rooms. It was often impossible. In 1831 I find my grandfather 'hovering for a week' about the Pentland Skerries for a chance to land; and it was almost always difficult. Much knack and ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... porcelain," ordered the priest, and like the most fragile porcelain the exquisite young beauty was borne from the cavern smiling in her trance and utterly unconscious, while the corpse of her aged companion was abandoned to the hyaenas. So often did the bearers pause to look on her beauty that it was found necessary to drape the countenance ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... was a nullity; the Child One of those bright bewitching little creatures, Who, if she once but shyly looked and smiled, Would soften out the ruggedest of features; Fragile and slight,—a very fay for size,— With pale ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... of the Lord, that shall stand.' Compare this fern leaf with the mighty palaces of Babylon and Nineveh. Through untold ages this has kept its wavy fragile outline, they are marked only by 'the line of confusion ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... was able to be almost like a mother to her. He taught her to look upon the world with his own pure, untroubled eyes. It became the better part of his aim in life to hedge her around and protect her fragile and delicate nature from all the soilures and perturbations which make the world so perplexing, so difficult, ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... clear, but none the less boyish. The clearness of it reminded him of her face, of her cleanly stencilled brows, her straightly chiselled nose, the very clearness of the gaze of her eyes, the firmly yet delicately moulded lips, and the throat, neither fragile nor robust, but—but just right, he concluded, an adequate and beautiful pillar for ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... sighing of the wind in her shrouds. Every prosperous breeze, which, gently swelling her sails, helped the Pilgrims onward in their course, awoke new anthems of praise; and when the elements were wrought into fury, neither the tempest, tossing their fragile bark like a feather, nor the darkness and howling of the midnight storm, ever disturbed, in man or woman, the firm and settled purpose of their souls, to undergo all, and to do all, that the meekest patience, the boldest resolution, and the highest trust in God, could enable human ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... and powerful emotion of a woman's mind exerts such an influence upon her stomach as to excite vomiting, and upon her heart as almost to arrest its motion and induce fainting, can we believe that it will have no effect upon her womb and the fragile being contained within it? Facts and reason then, alike demonstrate the reality of the influence, and much practical advantage would result to both parent and child, were the conditions and extent ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... there was silence, broken only by a sad sigh from Fan; which meant that she knew it and always had known it, but had gone on hoping against hope that the fragile reed would not break to pierce that ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... day," said Archie. "I think I will remember it years and years until I come to die. On days like this - I do not know if you feel as I do - but everything appears so brief, and fragile, and exquisite, that I am afraid to touch life. We are here for so short a time; and all the old people before us - Rutherfords of Hermiston, Elliotts of the Cauldstaneslap - that were here but a while since riding about and keeping up a great ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tablet gave place to the codex of skin or paper, the papyrus was too brittle and fragile for practical utility, and examples, as we have seen, were very rare; but vellum soon became popular. We may mention, in passing, that the papyrus roll gave us a word still in use in diplomatics, the word protocol. The first sheet of a papyrus roll was called the {GREEK SMALL LETTER ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... on his side, exposing the wound, which was clotted with blood. His small eyes were open, and a red tongue just visible between his parted teeth. One short, rigid, foreleg was stretched out as though in remonstrance, and just within its embrace a fading spray of gilia lifted its fragile blossoms. ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... little beast still lives and breathes; a man would have long been dead under such treatment. His organism is perhaps of a more precious, subtle, and so more fragile nature?" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... yet to be called old. One was large, with fine curves, gray bands of hair under her autumnal bonnet, and a dignity of bearing which suited her ample figure and melodious, rather deep voice; the other was paler, more fragile, her light hair only streaked with gray, and her blue eyes still shaded with a half-wistful uncertainty of what might be before her, which the years had not been able to turn altogether ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... that much of her state, or it presented a relief for her state—she did want to feel that she belonged to them and they to her. She noticed with a large whelming of pity how very small her mother seemed to have grown She was always small, but now—much smaller, fallen in, very fragile. She noticed with a quick pang how all her father's violent blackness of hair, and violent red of colouring, and violent glint of eye and violent energy of gesture were faded, greyed, dimmed, devitalized to a hue and to an air that ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... Miss Priscilla, following her sister. As she passes Monica, she looks anxiously at the girl's little slight fragile figure and her ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... the beginning of this fragile little life begin the anxieties and sorrow of poor Godwin. The blank lines drawn in his diary for Sunday 10th September 1797, show more than words how unutterable was his grief. During the time of his wife's patient agony he had managed to ask if she had any wishes concerning Fanny and Mary. ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... chuckhole an' Annalinda sets up a squall, he pulls a gun an' threatens in the most frenzied way to shoot me up. "You be more careful," he roars, "or I'll blow you plumb off your perch! Childhood, that a-way, is a fragile flower; an' if you figgers I'll set yere an', in the tender instance of my own pers'nal niece, see some booze-besotted drunkard break that flower short off at the stalk, I'll fool you up a whole lot." An' do you-all know,' Monte concloodes, almost ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... high-held heads of this or any other day are or were finer than that of Elizabeth Philipse was in 1778, or are set on more graceful figures. For all her haughtiness, she was not a very large person, nor yet was she a small one. She was neither fragile nor too ample. Her carriage made her look taller than she was. She was of the brown-haired, blue-eyed type, but her eyes were not of unusual size or surpassing lucidity, being merely clear, honest, ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... rural country with about 90% of the population engaged in (mainly subsistence) agriculture. It is the most densely populated country in Africa; landlocked with few natural resources and minimal industry. Primary exports are coffee and tea. The 1994 genocide decimated Rwanda's fragile economic base, severely impoverished the population, particularly women, and eroded the country's ability to attract private and external investment. However, Rwanda has made significant progress in stabilizing and rehabilitating its economy. ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... from the rollers, its fibers are much straighter. This process is repeated several times; and at last when the final sliver comes out, although it looks almost the same as when it came from the carding-machine, its fibers are parallel. It is much more uniform, but it is very fragile, and still has to be handled with great care. It is not nearly strong enough to be twisted into thread; and before this can be done, it must pass through three other machines. The first, or "slubber," gives it a very slight twist, just enough ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... occasionally had a turn at trawling, and usually caught some fine flat fish, turbot, soles, and plaice. Our net was a very primitive one of our own manufacture, and had to be handled very gingerly, as the netting was old and the ironwork very fragile, but knowing this we did not put undue ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... stood listening. Higher and higher he rose, pouring out his song of worship; till the tiny, fragile body disappeared as if fallen from him, leaving his sweet soul still singing. The happy tears came to her eyes, and she passed on. She did not hear that little last faint sob with which he sank exhausted back to earth beside a hidden ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... place in the light, four-wheeled vehicle, and found it difficult to keep it, for the trail was villainous, and Stirling drove rapidly. Their way led between shadowy colonnades of towering firs, and the fragile, two-seated frame bounced and lurched into and out of deep ruts, and over the split trees that had been laid flat-side downward in the quaggy places—like a field gun going into action was the best comparison Weston could think of. The horses, however, kept their ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... perceived the sad consequences of the excessive triumph of individualism in its struggle for life, the enfranchisement of the proletariat, the satisfaction of the few at the cost of the many. At times the bases of this civilization seemed fragile to the Russians; they had a feeling that it was not finished; they also aspired more and more to the harmonious equilibrium of society which appealed to ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... same time. Your way is so dear and sweet and generous that I feel like a dog to say a word against it, and yet—please don't get mad—it is an old-fashioned way. Nowadays girls don't want to be kept at home on a shelf like a piece of fragile china. When they're well and strong and capable of taking care of themselves they want a chance to strike out and realize their ambitions just as a boy would. Joyce did it, and look what she's doing for herself and how ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... them, and drifts of pink and yellow vaporous color that seemed to overhang and envelop every branch of tree and shrub, like faint spirits of flower and leaf, clustering about and striving to enter the clefts of gray bark, that they might become embodied in tangible and fragile beauty. Sweet pungent smells of damp earth rose to their nostrils,—fragrance of reviving things, of stirring sap, of diligent seeds moling their way to light and air. Mists shifted by softly, now gray, now rainbow-hued, now ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... time I meet with a youth in whom I can wish for no alteration or improvement, only I am sorry to see how often his nature makes him quite ready to swim with the stream of the time; and it is on this that I would always insist, that man in his fragile boat has the rudder placed in his hand, just that he may not be at the mercy of the waves, but follow the direction of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... comes from the Hazara country and from Pirkisri, on the confines of Seistan, where there would seem to be a crater, or fumarole. Sal-ammoniac is brought from the same place. Gypsum is found in large quantities in the plain of Kandahar, being dug out in fragile coralline masses from near the surface. Coal (perhaps lignite) is said to be found in Zurmat (between the Upper Kurram and the Gomal) and near Ghazni. Nitre abounds in the soil over all the south-west of Afghanistan, and often affects the water ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... abrupt, for no character could have been more alien to the Greek notions of heroism than that of the love-sick knight who joyfully throws away his life for an hour in his lady's chamber, tears up the warrant reprieving him from execution, and accepts death to save Queen Mary's fragile reputation. But although the keynote of Mr. Swinburne's coming poetry is struck in Chastelard—the overpowering enthralment of Love, a joy to live and ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Suffering, through whose limitless corridors we medical men walk with weary footsteps. Ah, if only an intelligent group of scientists had had the construction of the human body to plan! Think what poor stuff it is! Think how easy it would have been to make it more enduring! The cell—what a useless fragile delicacy! And we are made of millions of these ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... O thy destiny was love, Written in those soft eyes; A creature to be met with smiles. And to be watch'd with sighs; A sweet and fragile blossom, made To be within ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... Debit Debt. Defectum (something wanting) Defect Defeat. Dilat[-a]re Dilate Delay. Exemplum Example Sample. Fabr[)i]ca (a workshop) Fabric Forge. Factionem Faction Fashion. Factum Fact Feat. Fidelitatem Fidelity Fealty. Fragilem Fragile Frail. Gent[-i]lis Gentile Gentle. (belonging to a gens or family) Historia History Story. Hospitale Hospital Hotel. Lectionem Lection Lesson. Legalem Legal Loyal. Magister Master Mr. Majorem (greater) Major Mayor. Maledictionem Malediction Malison. Moneta ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... his astonishment when he found Colonel Barrington lying in a big chair. His face was haggard and pale, his form seemed to have grown limp and fragile, and the ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... father-in-law was still alive; she was not to be the Princesse de Cadignan for some years to come. A friend of the Duchesse de Langeais and the Vicomtesse de Beauseant, two glories departed, she was likewise intimate with the Marquise d'Espard, with whom she disputed her fragile sovereignty as queen of fashion. Great relations lent her countenance for a long while, but the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse was one of those women who, in some way, nobody knows how, or why, or where, will spend ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... empires! and control In their shut breasts their petty misery. What are our woes and sufferings? Come and see The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, ye! Whose agonies are evils of a day— A world is at our feet as fragile ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... and looked at me, and a faint gleam appeared in his eyes. Then he nodded, and took a thin, fragile alabaster hand out of the pocket of his overcoat. I shook it. It was like shaking hands with a dead, starved child. He carefully moved the skin and ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... box. Then she heard Boris laugh softly, it was the quick, proud laugh with which he loved to conceal his agitation. Now he too sat down on the box, took Billy's hand, this cold girlish hand, into his own, as if it were something fragile and precious, and began to ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... away!" said Stenio. "Look at the sun, and the earth, and the beautiful sky, and these green hills; and even that ice, winter's fragile edifice, which has withstood the rays of summer for centuries. Even so man's frail power will prevail! What matters the fall of a few generations? Do you weep for so slight a thing, Lelia? Do you deem it possible a single idea ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... up out of some old grave. But, examining it more closely, Kenyon saw that it was carved in gray alabaster; most skillfully done to the death, with accurate imitation of the teeth, the sutures, the empty eye-caverns, and the fragile little bones of the nose. This hideous emblem rested on a cushion of white marble, so nicely wrought that you seemed to see the impression of the heavy skull in a silken ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sent her away, saying I would look about myself. I went into the studio; there was nothing there but my canvases and some casts, except the marble of the Easter lily. I saw it on a table across the room. Then I strode angrily over to it. But the flower I lifted from the table was fresh and fragile and filled the ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... any special importance in the Ramsays' world was Mavis's birthday. She was seventeen now, and was so much taller and stronger since she had come to live in Devonshire that her mother declared their old friends in the north would hardly know her. She was still more fragile-looking than Merle, but her attacks of bronchitis were luckily things of the past, and she was rapidly outgrowing all her former delicacy. Many things which had been prohibited before were allowed her now, and her father's present was ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... Melissa lay was in a bower of verdure, and the veranda with the wide door through which the bed of the sufferer had been carried in, stood open in the cool evening to the garden, the palm-grove, and the place of worship with its garland, as it were, of fragile tamarisk boughs. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that human hair was obtained from graves at Bugaba, and that he has himself secured the enamel of a molar tooth from that locality. De Zeltner tells us that in three varieties of graves remains of skeletons are found, always, however, in a very fragile condition. One skull was obtained of sufficient stability to be cast in plaster, but De Zeltner is not certain that it belonged to the people who ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... Acalephs or Jelly-Fishes, as they are called, at that early period. Their very name indicates their delicate structure; and were there no remains preserved in the rocks of these soft, transparent creatures, it would yet be no evidence that they did not exist. Fragile as they are, however, they have left here and there some faint record of themselves, and in the Museum at Carlsruhe, on a slab from Solenhofen, I have seen a very perfect outline of one which remains undescribed to this day. This, however, does not carry them farther back than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... unconsciously. Translate her sentences into the thought of to-day, and it is evident, that aside from the morbid conscientiousness produced by her training, that she was the victim of moods arising from constant ill-health. Her constitution seems to have been fragile in the extreme, and there is no question but that in her case as in that of many another child born into the perplexed and troubled time, the constant anxiety of both parents, uncertain what a day might bring forth, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... with a degree of animation that far outshone his zeal in defense of the Germans, of chemistry and chemical analysis." While this is going on Hogg studies the youthful speaker. What manner of man is this brilliant guest? "It was a sum of many contradictions. His figure was slight and fragile, and yet his bones were large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much that he seemed of low stature. His clothes were expensive and made after the most approved mode of the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... always select in preference to a valley. The yellow tussocks were bending all one way, perfectly flat to the ground, and the shingle on the gravel walk outside rattled like hail against the low latticed windows. The uproar from the gale was indescribable, and the little fragile house swayed and shook as the furious gusts hurled themselves against it. Inside its shelter, the pictures were blowing out from the walls, until I expected them to be shaken off their hooks even in those rooms which had plank walls lined with papered canvas; whilst ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... a pick of glass and a spade of earthenware. The boy commenced the work, but at the first stroke his fragile pick and spade broke into a thousand fragments. For the second time he sat down helplessly. Time passed slowly, and as before at midday the damsel in white brought him ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... had a most unfortunate faculty for breaking glass, china, and any other fragile thing she came near. She looked sadly ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... already there. She had some ferns and roses in her hands, and was mingling them, for the adornment of the dinner table. She put them down, and went to meet him with a smile like sunshine. Her small, slender figure clothed in white India mull had a peculiarly fragile appearance; but Allan watched her, as she glided about the room filling the crystal vases, with a restful content. He thought how intelligent her face is! How graceful her diction, how charming ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... gradually encroaching bog and marsh in his land, and realises that with drainage he could reclaim this as good farm land. On the other hand some of the locals would rather see the fen remain, along with their various occupations, and the wonderful and fragile wet-land natural history. When digging begins there are a number of nasty incidents—torching of houses, malicious woundings of horses and cows, gunshot wounds to humans, and ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... and an infant child in it, and giving her a rude spear as a paddle pushed her away from the bank. She was immediately followed by a little urchin who was sitting on the bank, the canoe being too fragile to receive him; but he evidently doubted his ability to gain the opposite bank of the river, and it was most interesting to mark the anxiety of both parents as the little fellow struck across the ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... he will allow me to do so. In such case you and Kate would arrange that, and I would, if possible, go down to Vavasor while you are there. But I am galloping on a-head foolishly in thinking of this, and am counting up my wealth while the crockery in my basket is so very fragile. One word from you will decide whether or no I shall ever ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... for all is it decreed to attain the neighborhood of the three-score and ten years—the span of life. I am to speak of one who died young. Very awkward was his childhood—but most fragile and sensitive! So delicate a nature may exist in a rough, unnoticed plant! Let the boy rest;—he was not beautiful, and dropp'd away betimes. But for the cause—it is a singular story, to which let crusted worldlings pay the tribute of a light ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... his last rest in the little burying-ground of Las Cruces, a tiny, white-paled square of sandy, hummocky bench land where the pink of fragile nopal petals brightens the graves in Spring and the mesquite showers them with its golden pods in Summer; where the sweet scent of the juajilla loads the air, and the sun ever shines down out of a bright and cloudless sky; where a diminutive forest ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... regular rhythm. From it there depended two long, drooping, green tentacles, which swayed slowly backwards and forwards. This gorgeous vision passed gently with noiseless dignity over my head, as light and fragile as a soap-bubble, and ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Commentry trunks of Calamodendrons, Anthropitus, and ferns which are still provided with roots from 15 to 30 feet in length, and the carbonized wood of which surrounds a pith that has been replaced by a stony mould. The fragile ligneous cylinder would certainly have been broken ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... life. Fanged jaws snapped. Aroused, the beast was the incarnation of evil rage, a rage which had a measure of intelligence to direct it into deadly action. And facing it, seemingly unarmed and defenseless, were the slender, fragile Wyverns. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... had been trodden under foot, whose frame gave evidence of countless mendings; the emaciated Delafield, with the folded arms, originally a simple artilleryman, but destined to reach the highest honours; Napoleon, with the flaming clothes, whom fate had bound to a very fragile horse; Green, the simple patriot, who took his name from his coat; and the redoubtable Lafayette in blue, alas! with no ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... newness of our country and the fragile character of our early structures have prevented the accumulation of inferior, ugly, and uncomfortable houses, as the nucleus around which later building has crystallized; it may be from circumstances which have prevented the isolated residence of the better classes ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... it was two years old, and out of fashion at a period when fashions changed less rapidly, it lent an air of indecent festivity to her tearful face. Her youth was already gone, for her beauty had been of the fragile kind that breaks early, and her wan, aristocratic features had settled into the downward droop which comes to the faces of people who ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... though. He unrolled the handkerchief slowly, as if it contained something immensely fragile and valuable, and then, thrusting it back in his pocket, he faced Mr. Trimm. He was carrying in his hands a pair of handcuffs that hung open-jawed. The jaws had little notches in them, like teeth that could bite. The question that had ticked in Mr. Trimm's head was ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... her pallid face heavenward and extended her fair, fragile hands toward the lowering sky and began to pray. "My Creator," she said reverently, childishly, "I have never come to Thee, but they say that people far away from this dark land, under Thy own sun, moon and stars do ask aid of Thee, and I, too, want Thy ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... dreadfully afraid I have made a great mistake,' thought the young lady to herself, 'in believing she could get on with them and be happy there. She is too delicate and fragile for them. I must arrange something different and not attempt her going there ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... myself have become the involuntary minister of these mysteries. You see me here to-night, for the hundredth time, bruised, defeated, broken, after leaving the hallucinating sphere which surrounds that young girl, so gentle, so fragile to both of you, but to me the cruellest of magicians! Yes, to me she is like a sorcerer holding in her right hand the invisible wand that moves the globe, and in her left the thunderbolt that rends asunder all things at her will. ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
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