"Flimsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the tobacco smoke the windows were pulled down partly from the top. The bottom sashes were covered with half-curtains of imitation lace, but so flimsy that the boys saw through them ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... of the transmutation of species than Sir C. Lyell, and that not in the infancy of his scientific life, but in its full vigour and maturity." The Bishop goes on to appeal to Lyell, in order that with his help "this flimsy speculation may be as completely put down as was what in spite of all denials we must venture to call its twin though less instructed ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... her Ladyship's a'ground, your Face may put both Sexes out o'Countenance. [Exeunt Lady Toss-up, and Mrs. Flimsy. ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... The flimsy thing brought clearly back to him the features of the man as he had twice seen him. The close-clipped fair hair, the light sandy eyebrows, the peculiarly light lashes which gave so sinister an expression to the eyes, ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... out of her pocket. Nora clutched it very hard, but her trembling fingers could scarcely take the little flimsy pink sheet out of its envelope. At last she had managed it. She spread it before her; then she found that her dazed eyes could not see the words. What was the misery of the morning to the agony ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... lay where he had fallen, too dazed and befuddled to rise, but presently he clambered up, his eyes wide and terrified, for his rising was Phoenix-like—mantled in flame. With incredible swiftness the flimsy coverings of his bed had burst into a crimson glare and ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... under his feet, crackling and falling into black powder. He ran desperately, not feeling the burning breath of the fire, in blind hope of being able to save something. The house itself, he knew, was doomed; no fire-brigade could have checked the flames which had laid hold of the flimsy weatherboard. The fire had divided round it, checked a little by Tommy's flower-garden, which was almost uninjured yet, and by Bob's rows of green vegetables which lay singed and ruined; then, unable to wait, it had swept on its way through the ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... care if they do!" Norma said. But she glanced about deserted Eighth Avenue uneasily none the less, and furtively dried her eyes upon a flimsy little transparent handkerchief that somehow tore at her husband's heart. "If you had been a little patient, Wolf——" she ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... That flimsy wall of bags filled with corn shook and swayed as bodies of frantic Germans, slaughtered by the defenders, fell heavily against it; while one huge Brandenburger who had leapt in advance of his friends, and who had been caught by a ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... unutterable scoundrel, set himself up as Don Luis Montez. He imposed on the nurse, and took her away with my infant child whom I had never seen after she was three months old. Rabasco went to the United States as soon as he had established a flimsy title to my modest property. In after years he returned, an older and more successful impostor. Yet he feared to live on my estate, dreading that some day his treachery might be discovered. So, still calling himself Don Luis Montez, this scoundrel sold my ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... that, with only two flimsy bulkheads between us, I wrote my first letter to Seraphina, while Sebright went on deck to make arrangements to send me ashore. He was some time away; long enough for me to pour out on paper the exultation of my thought, the confidence of my hope, my desire to have her safe at last with ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... in England made the most of these stories, in order to inflame public opinion against Philip, and with no little success. Nevertheless, whatever element of truth they may have contained, they are too flimsy and unsubstantial to be seriously included in the indictments against Philip's character-which are indeed sufficiently grave without them. [Footnote: See Hume's Treason and Plot, cc. iv. v., where the evidence in a series of these plots is impartially set forth. The ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... confessed that the frame of the Tuti Nama is of a very flimsy description: nothing could be more absurd, surely, than to represent the lady as decorating herself fifty-two nights in succession in order to have an interview with a young prince, and being detained each night by the Parrot's tales, which, moreover, have none of them the least bearing upon the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... simplifies to the last degree compatible with comfort. Useless bric-a-brac is dispensed with. "Not how much but how good," is her rule when buying. A few good things kept in place, are better than a clutter of flimsy things which pander only to an uncultured esthetic taste—and make work. Order is the wise woman's first law in housekeeping; cleanliness her second, which is like unto the first in importance. She lets extra rooms, furniture and fallals go until she ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... only one of the thousand things we have had to do. It would take years to give you an account of what we have done and why we do it. It is like a game of whist and poker combined and we bluff on two flimsy fours, and crawl the next minute to a man that holds a measly two-spot. There is not a wire we have not pulled, or a leg, either, and we go dashing about all day in a bath-chair, with a driver in a bell hat and a blue nightgown, leaving cards and writing notes and giving drinks ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... do get engaged they let their world know of it. A betrothal there is not the informal flimsy contract it often is with us. They begin by publishing the event in their newspapers, and sending round printed forms announcing it to their friends. In the newspaper the announcement is rather bare compared with the advertisement ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... a passionate turn, offend us like an insincerity. All should be plain, all straightforward to the end. Hence it is that, in "Rhoda Fleming," Mrs. Lovel raises such resentment in the reader; her motives are too flimsy, her ways are too equivocal, for the weight and strength of her surroundings. Hence the hot indignation of the reader when Balzac, after having begun the "Duchesse de Langeais" in terms of strong if somewhat swollen passion, cuts the knot by the derangement of the hero's clock. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... opposed the measure, and his sermon on the "Subordination of Woman," published in the Register, called out spirited replies from Mrs. Savery and Mrs. Bloomer in the same journal, which completely demolished the flimsy ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... fifteen years of Imperialist propaganda which have steadily prepared the nation for an aggressive war; and they have raised no voice against the appalling decision that, in order to attain Germany's purposes, every rule of morals and humanity should be set aside. They have servilely accepted every flimsy pretext for outrage, and have followed, instead of leading, their passion-blinded people. It was the same in Austria-Hungary. Austrian and Hungarian prelates have passed in silence the fearful travesties of justice ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... kept me awake, and a worse came to keep it company. The men from the next room came home—students, I suppose. They talked gaily enough, their remarks interspersed by the thuds of falling boots and the other incomprehensible noises of the night. Through the flimsy partition I caught half sentences in that sort of French intonation that is so impossible to attain. It reminded me of the voices of the two men at the Opera. I began to wonder what they had been saying—what they could have been saying that concerned ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... is ridiculous, because it rests on no experimental basis. It is a flimsy theory, entirely unsupported by any facts. Never has it been proved that hot iron, at any temperature likely to be obtained in steam boiler tubes, decomposes steam except by itself appropriating the oxygen of the steam, and leaving the hydrogen, ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... best into my preparations, and then the Lord will honour my work. My part is to be of "pure gold" if my God is to dwell within it. I must not satisfy myself with cheap flimsy and then assume that the Lord will be satisfied with it. He demands my very best as a condition of ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... reveal the pitiful straits to which Chips had latterly been reduced; for worked into it there were scraps of wood less than a foot in length, fastened to other pieces of similar size with nails or plugs, and presenting a most flimsy and unsatisfactory appearance. But when I came to look more closely I saw that the only unsatisfactory part of the work was its appearance; it was not nearly so flimsy as at first sight it had appeared to be. Chips had evidently fully realised his responsibility, and had taken ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... State is sufficiently strong and well organised, its control over the money power is unlimited. If it can rule its people, and if it has the necessary resources of men and material within its borders, it can go on in a state of war so long as these things last, with almost any flimsy sort of substitute for money that it chooses to print. It can enrol and use the men, and seize and work the material. It can take over the land and cultivate it and distribute its products. The little man in the office is only a power ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... Proveditore scornfully. "Whence comes, then, your manifest misery and poverty? Whence comes it that you turn robbers, if in the pay of Austria? No, Dansowich, you will not deceive us by such flimsy pretexts! Your gains, lawful and unlawful, are wrested from you by the archducal counsellors, in whose hands you are mere puppets. 'Twas they who prompted you to tell the Turks that you were in league with Venice; that the republic encouraged your ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... Then there is the friendship based on a purely personal attraction, with mutual respect and self-respect as its dedicated corner-stone. This does not mean that one cannot see any faults in the friend, or know that one's own are seen, without losing affection. There is always something flimsy and insecure about a friendship that simply idealizes. Any relation should be all the stronger for a frank acknowledgment of its imperfections. If a girl cares enough she will be willing to ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... send any more such flimsy notes, for the housekeeper can see through them in the light. I have just received this letter from Leipzig, but I don't mean to send the Quartet yet; we can talk of this on Sunday. Three years ago ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... position—for man, the heir of all the ages: hag-ridden by the flimsy creatures of his own brain. If a pebble in our boot torments us, we expel it. We take off the boot and shake it out. And once the matter is fairly understood it is just as easy to expel an intruding and obnoxious thought from the mind. About this there ought to ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... black and white wings and tail. The habits of this bird are the same as those of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak and its song is very similar but more lengthy. Their nests, like those of the last, are very flimsy structures placed in bushes or trees, usually below twenty feet from the ground; they are open frameworks of twigs, rootlets and weed stalks, through which the eggs can be plainly seen. The eggs are similar to those ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... Chamberlain, "is poetry! this flimsy manufacture of the brain, which in comparison with the lofty and durable monuments of genius is as the gold filigree-work of Zamara beside the eternal architecture of Egypt!" After this gorgeous sentence, which, with a few more ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... hand on the cloth, and drew forth a flimsy pair of tights of carmine hue—part of the Mephistophelian costume that Theodore had worn on the night of the party next door. With this in his hand, and a clearer understanding of the house, with its staircase at the rear. Garrison comprehended the ease with which Theodore had played his ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... tell me that those idiots believe on such flimsy evidence as that that Nancy killed Lloyd!" exclaimed Miss Metoaca wrathfully. "Do you believe a young, delicate, high-strung girl, like Nancy, could commit such ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... Doctor Meredith. "I will not, for one moment, entertain a suspicion, even, against one of my lads on such flimsy evidence ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... first had seen the outraging and repelling of the nobler nature by the ignoble. Diana had frankly not been able to endure her cousin. There was not a trace of that now. Her father's papers had told her abundantly how flimsy, how nearly fraudulent, was the financial claim which Fanny and her belongings had set up. The thousand pounds had been got practically on false pretences, and Diana knew it now, in every detail. Yet neither toward that, nor toward Fanny's other and worse ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... see, I was born with a taste for adventure. At this moment— you may believe it or not—I'm enjoying myself thoroughly. But the deuce of it is that I was also born with a poor flimsy body. Come, I'm not ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... be at his work," said Constans to himself. "Wait until his teeth show through that flimsy wooden screen." ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... room, and saw his strange friend, with legs crossed and hands in pockets, sitting gravely in the usual corner, on the floor, between a brandy-bottle on one side, and a guttering, unsnuffed candle on the other, he roared with laughter, and stamped about in his usual boisterous way, till the flimsy little house seemed to be trembling under him to its very foundations. Mat bore all this noise and ridicule, and all the jesting that followed it about the futility of drowning his passion for Madonna in the brandy-bottle, with the most unruffled and exemplary patience. The self-control ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... couch and to reach the ground; the material is either fine grass- cloth, from the Ashira country, a light stuff called "Mbongo," or calico and blue baft from which the stiffening has been washed out. It is far superior to the flimsy muslin affairs supplied in an Anglo-Indian outfit, or to the coarse matting used in Yoruba. Provided with this solid defence, which may be bought in any shop, one can indulge one's self by sleeping in the verandah ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... hunt the animal, and once an officer contrived to hit it. Forthwith the chief was laid up with a wound in his leg. He gave out that a dog had bitten him, but no doubt the wise shook their heads and refused to be put off with so flimsy a pretext. Again, among several tribes on the banks of the Niger between Lokoja and the delta there prevails "a belief in the possibility of a man possessing an alter ego in the form of some animal such as a crocodile or a hippopotamus. It is believed that such a person's life is bound up with ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... The passion of investigation, which had grown lusty by long exercise, rose within him triumphing over his personal inclinations. Too much was at stake to miss a chance like this. Honour in this situation seemed like a flimsy sentiment. He waited for the answer of the girl's lover ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... flimsy muslin and tore off half a yard or so from the hem of the skirt. The voice of Dr. Fu-Manchu became audible. He was speaking rapidly, sibilantly, and evidently was approaching—would be upon me in a matter of moments. I fastened the strip of fabric over the girl's mouth and tied ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... breath, but game to the last, made an ineffectual attempt to hold one of his tormentors, catching the flying end of his jacket; but such was the moment of Sim's upward movement, and the flimsy character of his wearing apparel, that the entire section came away, remaining in the grip of the enemy as he went ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... advocacy of such principles. A fierce war was carried on by the newspapers of the day against Burke's "Reflections," and pamphlets and volumes of all sizes were published, in order to show that it was a mere flimsy piece of rhetoric and fine writing. The most conspicuous of these volumes were the "Vindictae Gallicae;" or "Defence of the French Revolution," written by Sir James Mackintosh; the "Rights of Man," written by that fierce ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... at him solemnly, and as he attempted to rise, they fell prostrate on their faces. Up flew the poor flimsy Scarecrow again, such was the draught, and this time landed on his face. He was beginning to feel terribly annoyed, but before he could open his mouth or stand ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... laughter and the frowns of men, and the grimaces of their agony. The son read, shrinking into himself, composing his face as if under the author's eye, with a vivid consciousness of the portrait on his right hand, a little above his head; a wonderful presence in its heavy frame on the flimsy wall of mats, looking exiled and at home, out of place and masterful, in the painted ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... On a small hillock to the right of the village stands the fort, a square building of solid masonry, which, however, is now roofless, and has only three walls standing. The garrison (of six men) were lodged in a flimsy tent pitched in the centre of the ruins. Half the houses were constructed of dried mud; the remainder, as at Gwarjak, of palm leaves. The village stands in a grove of date palms, and the swarms of flies were consequently ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... shortly. "The Senate wouldn't dare touch it once this stuff is in the papers." And he jammed a wad of flimsy ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... Lousteau, "criticism is a kind of brush which must not be used upon flimsy stuff, or it carries it all away with it. That is enough of the craft, now listen! Do you see that mark?" he continued, pointing to the manuscript of the Marguerites. "I have put ink on the string and paper. If Dauriat reads your manuscript, he certainly could not tie the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... but six of whom live in States that have utterly refused to have anything to do with the issue of "female suffrage," unite in an address, to apply, as they say, the "principles of the Declaration of Independence to women;" and make a specious, flimsy, and ridiculous little argument in favor of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in the morning when the terrific earthquake shook San Francisco and the surrounding country. One shock apparently lasted two minutes and there was an almost immediate collapse of flimsy structures all over the former city. The water supply was cut off and when fires broke out in various sections there was nothing to do but to let the buildings burn. Telegraphic and telephone communication was shut off. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... They may be necessary for foreigners; but they are not meant for self-respecting American women. I fancy my sister-in-law may not wholly approve of it, but I don't know. I shall take pleasure in showing her and the rest that it would be wicked as well as foolish to let a flimsy suggestion of evil interfere with the happiness of two people ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... beverage of those days; but "black-strap," a compound of rum and molasses, sold at three cents a glass, was the particular "vanity" of the boatmen. In the smaller taverns, a barrel of old Medford, surmounted by a pitcher of molasses, scorning the flimsy subterfuges of modern times, boldly invited its patrons to draw and mix at their own sweet will. "Plenty of drunkenness, Uncle Joe, in those days?" we queried of an ancient boatman who was dilating upon the good old times. "Bless your heart, no!" ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... pronounced the last words, when a startling interruption led to consequences which the persons present had not foreseen. A shrill, wailing voice suddenly pierced through the flimsy partition which divided the front room and the back room. "Bread!" cried the voice in French; "I'm hungry. ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... and emaciated as if dried up in the sunshine; their lives ran out silently; the homes where they were born, went to rest, and died—flimsy sheds of rushes and coarse grass eked out with a few ragged mats—were hidden out of sight from the open sea. No glow of their household fires ever kindled for a seaman a red spark upon the blind night of the group: and the calms of the coast, the flaming long calms of ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... send a second word; but can you imagine his astonishment a little later, when two of that second squad came running in, all breathless, and told him that though they fully explained the magnificence of the wedding supper, some turned upon their heels with a flimsy excuse, others rudely laughed outright in the messengers' faces, and—oh, the horror of it!—still others actually stoned and beat some of the messengers to death!—and their bodies were even at that moment lying in the ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... we may mention, without offending delicacy, the well-known name of Sir George Flimsy, of the house of Flimsy, Diddler, and Flash,) smilingly asked Mr. James what was the amount of his savings, wondering considerably how, out of an income of thirty guineas—the main part of which he spent in bouquets, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to make a desperate effort to find out what a bold stroke will do, and here is my plan: We will go back together to that door before which I was standing a moment ago, which, I conclude, from its character, is rather a flimsy——" ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... was pointed out as in charge. To my inquiry why he was holding the ford, his answer was that until to-day the river had been swimming, and now he was waiting for the banks to dry. Ridiculing his flimsy excuse, I kindly yet firmly asked him either to cross or vacate the ford by three o'clock that afternoon. Receiving no definite reply, I returned to our herd, which was some five miles in the rear. Beyond the river's steep, slippery banks and cold water, ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... nights before he had seen the breaking of the first wave that had turned it into a seething cauldron of surf. That was what he wanted now—just the first great wave washing over her exquisite feet and flinging its garment of spray like a flimsy veil over her perfect form. He wanted that as he wanted nothing else on earth. And then—then—he would catch his dream, he would chain for ever the fairy vision that might ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... Lushington, and others, urged the necessity of interference upon the representatives of a people unanimous in demanding it; and he repeatedly urged it in vain. The Government always leaned towards the planter, and the most flimsy excuses were constantly given for preferring to the effectual measures propounded by the Abolitionists, the most flimsy of expedients, useless for any one purpose, save that of making pretences and ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... exclamation must have disclosed all the horror I felt at this announcement, but, before I could speak again, she had gone swiftly up the rickety steps and pushed shut the flimsy board door behind her. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... philosophers, with a due disdain of the flimsy foundations of human pride, have shown that every man is equally descended from a million of ancestors, within a given number of generations; thereby demonstrating that no prince exists who does not participate in the ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... in the present volume), Miss Clerke writes: "We can hardly imagine so shrewd a people as the irrigators of Thule and Hellas[6] wasting labour, and the life-giving fluid, after so unprofitable a fashion. There is every reason to believe that the Martian snow-caps are quite flimsy structures. Their material might be called snow souffle, since, owing to the small power of gravity on Mars, snow is almost three times lighter there than here. Consequently, its own weight can have very little effect in rendering ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... which seems a bit cloying, to be sure, but is just suited to the melting tone-color of the clarinet. The closing theme borders on triviality; the Exposition ends, however, with some exceedingly brilliant improvisations on the rhythmic figure of the main theme. The following Development is rather flimsy and we need expend upon it no critical powder. Weber was a great colorist but not a great architect. These qualities are united only too seldom. In the Recapitulation, which is shortened by the omission of the second theme—rather overworked in the ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... not strikingly low as temperatures go down here, but the terrific winds penetrate the flimsy fabric of our fragile tents and create so much draught that it is impossible to keep warm within. At supper last night our drinking-water froze over in the tin in the tent before we could drink it. It is curious ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... is to use life to feed the imagination, not to use imagination to feed life. In these sad weeks I have been like a sleeper awakened. The world of imagination, in which I have lived and moved, has crumbled into pieces over my head; the wind and rain beat through the flimsy dwelling, and I must arise and go. I have sported with life as though it were a pretty plaything; and I find it turn upon me like a wild beast, gaunt, hungry, angry. I am terrified by its evil motions, I sicken at its odour. ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Mr. Gorby, thoughtfully, taking down a flimsy yellow book rather tattered. "I've heard of him; if his novels are as bad as his reputation I shouldn't care ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... modestly, "that the epoch of flimsy and frivolous prospectuses had gone by; we are entering upon an era of science; we need an academical tone,—a tone of authority, which imposes ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... disagreement, the second in a conviction. His sentence was a fine of $12,000 and twelve years' imprisonment. When he arrived at the penitentiary, he answered the customary questions. "What occupation?" "Statesman." "What religion?" "None." He served one year and was then released on a flimsy technicality by the Court of Appeals. Civil suits were now brought, and, unable to obtain the $3,000,000 bail demanded, the fallen boss was sent to jail. He escaped to Cuba, and finally to Spain, but he was again arrested, returned to New York on a man-of-war, and put into ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... the mother of his children was corrupt only at heart,—that the Black Horses had come to the door in time,—and, wretchedly consoled by that niggardly conviction, flinging into the flames the last flimsy tatters on which his honour (rock-like in his own keeping) had been fluttering to and fro in the charge of a vain treacherous fool,—envy you that mourner? No! not even in his release. Memory is not nailed down in the velvet coffin; and to great loyal natures less bitter ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... asked to take a sail, and as Buller had driven with him, it would be impossible for him to decline sailing with Buller; but he must see the boat. There was a train for his home at a quarter past seven; if he were not on the premises he could not be asked to sail. If Buller's boat were a little, flimsy thing, he would take that train—but he would ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... tails unassailed. And Rowdy, from wondering what had made Pink change his attitude so abruptly, began to plan industriously the next meeting with Jessie Conroy, and to build a new castle that was higher and airier than any he had ever before attempted—and perhaps had a more flimsy foundation; for it rested precariously ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... hands, but he had neither the height nor the weight, being a flimsy creature alongside a man like me, and, besides, I was blazing to that height of wrath that I could have bit into a chisel. I gave him first the one and then the other, so that I could hear his head rattle and crack, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Blackwood's Magazine was the exhibition of his first Venetian picture exhibited in that year—it is now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. "What is Venice in this picture?" wrote Blackwood's critic. "A flimsy, whitewashed, meagre assemblage of architecture, starting off ghost-like into unnatural perspective, as if frightened at the affected blaze of some dogger vessels (the only attempt at richness in the picture). The greater part of the picture ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... revolving these thoughts in my mind, I held in my hand some flimsy particles of the reputed diamond, which of a truth I firmly believed to be such. Now hope is immortal in the human breast; therefore I felt myself, as it were, lured onward by a gleam of idle expectation. Accordingly, I took up a little knife and a few of those particles, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... signs at once of the date and of the class to which these plays must be referred. The parts of the rebels are rough-hewn rather than vigorous; the comic or burlesque part of Josselin is very cheap and flimsy farce. The peculiar powers of Heywood in pathetic if not in humorous writing were still in abeyance or in embryo. Pathos there is of a true and manly kind in the leading part of Shore; but it has little ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in French. Johnson, though thoroughly versed in that language, and a professed admirer of Boileau and La Bruyere, did not understand its pronunciation, nor could he speak it himself with propriety. For the rest of the evening the talk was in Latin. Boscovich had a ready current flow of that flimsy phraseology, with which a priest may travel through Italy, Spain, and Germany. Johnson scorned what he called colloquial barbarisms. It was his pride to speak his best. He went on, after a little practice, with as much facility as if it was his native tongue. One sentence this writer well remembers. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... enough not to turn on full speed, knowing what a terrific strain this condition of affairs must be upon the entire fabric, flimsy at best; and if anything gave way it was all over with them; for if a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, a heavier-than-air flying machine certainly ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... course, or, perhaps, to go forth unfinished, remanded just there to death. The ten-thirty express was now pulling out through the yards in a powerful clamor of clattering switches and hearty pulsations that shook the flimsy walls of St. Isidore's, and drew new groans from the man on the chair. The young nurse's eyes travelled from him to a woman who stood behind the ward tenders, shielded by them and the young interne from the group about the hospital chair. This woman, having no uniform of any sort, must be some ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... pampered with easily obtained luxuries, instead of having to win the necessaries of life by heavy toil, loses its self-helpfulness; and with self-respect and self-help vanish all the savage virtues, few and flimsy as they are, and the downward road toward begging and stealing, sottishness and idleness, is ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... any whippin', ur tarrin' an' featherin' in this case, I'm agin it tooth an' toe-nail. Cap Westerfelt's boy sha'n't have a hair o' his head fetched on sech flimsy evidence as we've had while I'm alive. You kin think what you please o' me. I've got too much faith in the Westerfelt stock to believe that a branch of it 'u'd spy ur sneak. ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... time the Yankee woke, But instantly saw through the flimsy joke; So never a cry or shout he uttered, But solemnly rose, and slowly muttered: "I see how it is. It's the judgment day, We've all been dead and stowed away; All these stone furreners sleepin' yet, An' I'm the fust one up, you bet! Can't none o' you Romans start, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... arrived, to whom I had the happiness of being recommended. She very obligingly presented me to some of the most distinguished of the Venetian families at their great casino, which looks into the piazza, and consists of five or six rooms, fitted up in a gay flimsy taste, neither rich nor elegant, where were a great many lights, and a great many ladies negligently dressed, their hair falling very freely about them, and innumerable adventures written in their eyes. The gentlemen were lolling ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... neglected. It is still less pleasant to walk home alone along a country road, at one o'clock in the morning, wearing a pale green voile. Lucinda was not prepared for such a walk. She had nothing on her feet save thin-soled shoes, and her only wraps were a flimsy fascinator ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... not forget poor human nature, never! To the world he would seem labouring under the influence of those inert convictions by which we strive to conceal our natural inclinations, while drawing the flimsy curtain of "to do good" ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... prodigies and exploited around the country like a patent medicine or a side-show. What is remarkable at eighteen is not so striking at twenty-eight. So when their extreme youth was no longer a cause for surprise, the boy preachers settled down into every-day dulness, with nothing except the memory of a flimsy fame to compensate ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... was homesick. He was quite used to knowing that there was a quarter of a mile between him and the nearest neighbor, and here he could hear, through the flimsy walls, whether his neighbors were kissing, fighting, or counting their money. "It is so close here, and then I miss the earth; the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... divide into six different squads, one for each set of quarters, crawl to the post of the drowsy sentry, shoot him full of arrows before he could cry out or load, then, all together, charge up the slope and into the flimsy houses, pistols in hand and knives in their teeth, and simply butcher the occupants as they lay in their beds. Doors, even if closed or bolted, which rarely happened, could be smashed in an instant—matches would light their way. It would be ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... destroy this flimsy web, to reply in the words of our blessed Saviour, and of his beloved Disciple—"This is the work of God, that ye believe in him whom he hath sent[61]." "This is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ[62]." ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... little if at all inferior to those of the Kayans, and very similar to them in general plan. But in this as in all other respects the Klemantans exhibit great diversities, some of their houses being built in a comparatively flimsy manner, light timber and even bamboos being used, and the roof being made of leaves. The houses of the Muruts are small and low, and of ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... 181.).—Cordially do I agree with every word of your correspondent LAUDATOR TEMPORIS ACTI, and especially as to the prayer-books for churches and chapels, printed by the Universities. Experto crede, no solicitude can preserve their "flimsy, brittle, and cottony" leaves, as he justly entitles them, from rapid destruction. Might not the delegates of the University presses be persuaded to give us an edition with the morning and evening services printed on vellum, instead of the miserable ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... been undertaken, than the merchants, who had schemes of trade in New France, put forth a powerful opposition. The Parliamentary Court at Rouen even forbade its publication in that city, and the merchants of St. Malo renewed their opposition, which had before been set forth, on the flimsy ground that Jacques Cartier, the discoverer of New France, was a native of their municipality, and therefore they had rights prior and superior ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... Pete heard a faint shuffling sound in the hall outside. Before he could turn the door crashed inward. He leapt to his feet. With the leap his hand flashed to his side. Unaccustomed to a coat, his thumb caught in the pocket just as the man who had shouldered the flimsy door down, reeled and sprawled on the floor. Pete jerked his hand free, but in that lost instant a gun roared in the doorway. He crumpled to the floor. The heavy-shouldered man, followed by two officers, stepped into ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Colonel Pendleton's lodgings, and half expecting to find the St. Charles Hotel itself transformed by the eager spirit of improvement. But it was still there in all its barbaric and provincial incongruity. Public opinion had evidently recognized that nothing save the absolute razing of its warped and flimsy walls could effect a change, and waited for it to collapse suddenly like the house of cards it resembled. Paul wondered for a moment if it were not ominous of its lodgers' hopeless inability to accept changed conditions, and it was with a feeling of doubt ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... whence the Alabama had gone to sea, were approaching completion. Other iron-clads, not less powerful, were under construction in France, with the personal connivance of the Emperor, under the flimsy pretence that they were intended for the imperial government of China. Finally, on the 10th of June, casting all promises and pretexts to the winds, the French troops had marched into the capital of Mexico, made themselves masters of ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... destruction. There was no time in that mad rush to rectify mistakes. A miscalculation, a stroke of the sweep too little or too much, would send the heavily loaded boat with that tremendous, terrifying force behind it, crashing and splintering on a rock like a flimsy-bottomed strawberry box. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... she stepped ashore, she discovered the first of the series of tilts which Bob and Shad had built, and, immediately pushing aside the flimsy bark door, entered the tilt and struck a match. Its flare disclosed a half-burned candle on a shelf near the door, and lighting it she held it aloft for a survey of the ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... friendship, leading to much personal intercourse and a variety of literary schemes. Mr. Gilchrist first started a proposal to publish a 'Select collection of Old Plays,' in fifteen volumes, and on the failure of this scheme, owing to the sudden appearance of a flimsy kind of work called 'Old Plays,' Mr. Taylor and he agreed to launch a new monthly publication, under the revived title of 'The London Magazine.' The negotiations for carrying out this work were pending between writer and publisher, when the first instalment of ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... give all he has for the object of his love, even to the sacrifice of himself. The reflection that God is too great, and that it is useless, even presumptuous, to offer to him what must seem so infinitely mean in the light of his greatness, is but the flimsy pretext of an avaricious soul, and can be nothing but a lie, even in the eyes of those who utter it. From the beginning all truly religious nations have endeavored to make their external worship correspond with their internal feeling, and give expression, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... the gulch, where the upward march of the forests had been halted, there, among scattered outposts of scrubby spruce and wind-twisted willow, stood a village, a sprawling, formless aggregation of flimsy tents and green logs known as Sheep Camp. Although it was a temporary, makeshift town, already it bulked big in the minds of men from Maine to California, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, for it was the last outpost ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... have done is cruel. Let me tell you that, had my aunt done her duty by me, I should not be here today. Had she taken the pains to inquire where I obtained the lead pencils, knives, handkerchiefs, and other small articles which I brought home from time to time; had she not accepted the flimsy excuse that I had found them; had she warned me of my danger, and not praised me for "finding" the things I had stolen,—I might have ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... but with everything worse excluded, being of course the most insolently-pleasant thing in the world. In addition to which, when the garden is in the Italian manner, with flowers rather remarkably omitted, as too flimsy and easy and cheap, and without lawns that are too smart, paths that are too often swept and shrubs that are too closely trimmed, though with a fanciful formalism giving style to its shabbiness, and here and there a dusky ilex-walk, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... out in a field in the hot sun, with little clothing on, and plenty of flies about. Then we would see if he wouldn't sympathize with the poor, dumb beast. It's the most senseless thing in the world, this docking fashion. They've a few flimsy arguments about a horse with a docked tail being stronger-backed, like a short-tailed sheep, but I don't believe a word of it. The horse was made strong enough to do the work he's got to do, and man ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... had told the landlord to drive him into Peterboro'; and as I came down to breakfast the trap returned. Of course, neither of us ever expected to see him again, and when I looked at his IOU in the cold light of the day, it seemed a very flimsy guarantee for my money. There was only one thing about that IOU. It was written on the unused page torn from a letter, and the watermark of the paper was Lydgate Bond. It was the same size as Trojan Club ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... With extreme distaste he began to untie the soft flimsy lavender ribbon that encompassed them. "In their native state, you know," he confided, "one very seldom finds them growing with—sashes on them." From her nest of cushions across the room little Eve Edgarton loomed up suddenly into ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... a foundation either in history or in reason. But the popular fancy was fascinated. The whole flimsy furniture in the chambers of the general mind vanished. New emotions, new purposes, new sanctions appeared in its stead. There was a sad lack of ethical definitions, an over-zealous iconoclasm as to religion, but there were many high conceptions of regenerating society, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... nourishment is partly explained by the nature of the remains of the victims they had brought with them as provisions from Mars. These creatures, to judge from the shrivelled remains that have fallen into human hands, were bipeds with flimsy, silicious skeletons (almost like those of the silicious sponges) and feeble musculature, standing about six feet high and having round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets. Two or three of these seem to have been brought in each cylinder, and all were ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... them also. They were signed By sottish braves—the Long-Knife's tavern-chiefs— Who sell their honor like a pack of fur, Make favour with the pale-face for his fee, And caper with the hatchet for his sport. I am a chief by right of blood, and fling Your false and flimsy treaties in your face. I am my nation's head, and own but one As greater than myself, and he ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... papers they are. Both in appearance and in matter, O Mundo and A Lucta ("The Struggle") would do credit to the journalism of any country. In size, in excellence of production, and in the well-considered weight of their articles, they contrast strangely with the flimsy, ill-printed sheets that content ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... packed. In the back pew I remember noticing three young men with pads of flimsy paper and well-sucked pencils. I distinctly caught sight of the words "Sacred edifice" in the nearest MS., and I have no doubt the others ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... it absurd that I should array myself in these gorgeous gowns to compete with that Indian in her few flimsy calicoes and silks? The contrast is out of all proportion. It's the sublime and the ridiculous. And yet she looks well in anything! Dress her in rags and she is picturesque; robe her in silks ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... to wear the older woman's cape. She had on a coat belonging to one of the men and wore a flimsy, deep-hooded bonnet that once had been azure blue. Her shoulders sagged wearily, her back was bent, her arms lay limply upon her knees. She was staring bleakly before her over the horses' ears, at the road ahead. The reaction had come. ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... and out, whizzing and buzzing around the room by the hundred, clinging to the windows in droves, a maddening distraction on a hot afternoon to a man with his head tipped back, in the act of laying a long, flimsy strip of wall-paper on a wavy, billowy old ceiling. They were no longer vicious and dangerous—they were only disorganized and panic-stricken. A hundred times a day I swept quantities of them from the windows and released them to the open ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... connected in a thousand places with the affairs of the Roman Empire, of which we have several credible histories. Now, there are two modes of investigation open to us, the dogmatic and the inductive. We may take either. We may construct for ourselves, from the most flimsy suppositions, a metaphysical balloon, inflated with self-conceit into the rotundity of a cosmogony, according to which, in our opinion, the world should have been made, and we may paint it over with the figures of the various animals and ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... it is," commanded the managing editor. "Use it for your introduction and get your story from the flimsy. And, in your head, cut out Flagg entirely. Call it 'The Red Cross Girl.' And play it up strong with pictures." He turned on Sam and ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... with errors. The Duke of Nevers was not absent. He gave his opinion at the council before the feast of St. Bartholomew, and Henry of Navarre did not follow the procession four days after. Henry III. did not come back from Poland so quickly. Besides, how many flimsy devices! The miracle of the hawthorn, the balcony of Charles IX., the poisoned glass of Jeanne d'Albret—Pecuchet no longer had any ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... the count by thirty miners—a body of utterly untrained men whose hands, accustomed by daily usage to the contact of pickaxe and shovel, were new and strange to the somewhat delicate task of fingering and separating flimsy ballot papers. They had received no instructions before they were assembled in the room as to the duties they would be required to transact, and the expedition, good-humour, and correctness with which they got through the several stages of the count justly earned for them the admiration ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... breaths while she rustled in. Say, who'd have thought that a few clothes could make such a difference? For instead of the big sloppy young female who used to slouch, gigglin' around the basement who should breeze in but a zippy young lady, a bit heavy about the shoulders maybe for that flimsy style of costume, but more or less stunning, for all that. Rowena had bloomed out. In fact, she had the lilies of the field lookin' like crepe ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... them on the edge of the table, produced a cigarette, lighted it, picked up the four pages of formulas, and held the burning match to their edges. The flame caught, flared up the flimsy paper. Darrow dropped the burning corners as it scorched his fingers. It fell to the ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... make an effective blow, all the pro-slavery elements of Philadelphia were brought into action, and matters looked for a time as though Slavery in this instance would have everything its own way. Passmore was locked up in prison on the flimsy pretext of contempt of court, and true bills were found against him and half a dozen colored men, charging them with "riot," "forcible abduction," and "assault and battery," and there was no lack ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew: 90 Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain, The creature's at his dirty work again, Throned in the centre of his thin designs, Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines! Whom have I hurt? has poet yet, or peer, Lost the arch'd eyebrow, or Parnassian sneer? And has not Colly still his lord, and whore? His butchers, Henley,[97] his freemasons, Moore?[98] Does not one table Bavius still admit? Still to one bishop,[99] Philips seem ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... Hawkins, if you were to give out that you composed my speech, you know very well that people would say it was only your raillery, your fondness for putting a victim in the pillory and amusing the public at his expense. It is too flimsy, Miss Hawkins, for a person of your fine inventive talent—contrive an abler device ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... to be generally thought so. Poor Kenney came to my room next evening, and I could not have believed that one night could have ruined a man so completely. I swear to you I thought at first it was a flimsy suit of clothes had left some bedside and walked into my room without waiting for the owner to get up, or that it was one of those frames on which clothiers stretch coats at their shop-doors, until I perceived a thin face, sticking edgeways ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... whom Adele's charities have flowed with a profusion that has astounded the Doctor, repays some new gift by placing in her hands a little embroidered kerchief, "too fine for such as she," which had belonged to Madame Arles. A flimsy bit of muslin daintily embroidered; but there is a name stitched upon its corner, for which Adele treasures it past all reckoning,—the name ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... this. It's quite a good little car. In its way. My wife drives it at times. It has one or two constitutional weaknesses—incidental to the make—gear-box over the back axle for example—gets all the vibration. Whole machine rather on the flimsy ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... life of the gatherer of wild rubber in the jungle. In Brazil, the solitary workers have to plunge at dawn into the perilous forest, with its lurking wildcats and jaguars, its coiled and creeping serpents. The dwellings are flimsy huts, food is scarce and expensive, and disease and fever cause ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... food and drink Are taken within our members; and, since they Can stop up certain parts, thus, easily Desire of water is glutted and of bread. But, lo, from human face and lovely bloom Naught penetrates our frame to be enjoyed Save flimsy idol-images and vain— A sorry hope which oft the winds disperse. As when the thirsty man in slumber seeks To drink, and water ne'er is granted him Wherewith to quench the heat within his members, But after idols of the liquids strives And toils in vain, and thirsts even whilst he gulps In ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... could not well be otherwise. The Captain's limbs resembled the limbs of oaks in regard to size and toughness. His spirits were far above "proof." His organs were cathedral organs compared with the mere barrel-organs of ordinary men. On the other hand, the "cabin" in Grubb's Court was but a flimsy tenement; its plank floorings were thin, and its beams and rafters slim and somewhat loose owing to age, so that when the captain snored, which he did regularly and continuously, it was as if a mastiff had got inside a double-bass ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... it is that the Great man abides by what is solid, and eschews what is flimsy; dwells with the fruit and not with the flower. It is thus that he puts away the one and ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... into bed with a mind suddenly swept into a new atmosphere, and opened the flimsy cover. Shutting her eyes, she lay still for a moment —still and vague; she was only conscious of one thing, that a curtain had dropped on the terrible pictures she had seen, and that her mind was in a comforting ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... doubt. It was not a specific suspicion upon this point or that. It was a feeling of detachment and unreality at once extraordinarily vague and extraordinarily oppressive. It was as if he discovered himself flimsy and transparent in a world of minatory solidity and opacity. It was as if he found himself made not of flesh and blood ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... grown yet more insolent, By that small loss, or rout, at LEXINGTON, Prevent our purpose and the night by-past, Have push'd intrenchments, and some flimsy works, With rude achievement, on the rocky brow, Of that tall hill. A ship-boy, with the day, From the tall mast-head, of the Admiral, Descry'd their aim, and gave the swift alarm. Our glasses mark, but one ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... in order to attract the attention from the inferior material of which it was composed. The softer and poorer the wood, the deeper it was possible to stamp it at a single blow. The same principle applies to much work in metal. Flimsy bits of silverware stamped with cheap designs of flowers or fruits are attached to surfaces badly finished, while the work involved in making such a piece of plate with a plain surface would increase its cost three or ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... bare carpetless apartment, with a rough wooden bench, a table, and two straight-backed wooden chairs, and the room is heated to suffocation by a huge stove, which occupies a corner of the room. The flimsy plank partition is unpapered, but generally plastered with the cheap, crudely coloured prints sold by pedlars. Some of these depicted events connected with our recent war in South Africa, and it is needless to add that the English troops ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... Porthos, while the comte was looking about, "are constructed in a ridiculously flimsy manner. In my early days, when I used to sit down with far more energy than is now the case, I do not remember ever to have broken a chair, except ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... served him pleased him, and without a murmur He stamped his broad seal on these lawless deeds. What at that time was right, because thou didst it For him, to-day is all at once become Opprobrious, foul, because it is directed Against him. O most flimsy superstition! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... written be not covered by other authority than my own it will have no effect, for they already know all that I can say. On what ground do they pretend to deprive America of the service of any of her citizens without assigning a cause, or only the flimsy one of my being born in England? Gates, were he here, might be arrested on the same pretence, and he and Burgoyne be ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... through this flimsy pretext, and realized at once what had happened. The miserable man, nervous and excited, had, in the excess of fear, attempted to take his own life. The grim specters of the night were too horrible to endure, and ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... out into the cold cell of a room that was oh, so very, very different from the high, warm, richly colored library of Sir Walter! This garret closet in the slums of Edinburgh was all of cut stone, except for the worn, oaken floor, a flimsy, modern door, and a thin, board partition on one side through which a "neebor" could be heard snoring. Filling all of the outer wall between the peephole, leaded windows and running-up to the slope of the ceiling, was a great fireplace of ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... then on account of his nerves, but because ambition to possess a sweet-potato patch, pumpkins and a few bananas, melons, mangoes, had got hold of him. He had taken up a piece of land, but having no money his flimsy fencing was no barrier to the wallabies, and he abandoned the enterprise to them. Now he had abandoned his beche-de-mer project, had bought wire netting to keep out the wallabies, and would make a second effort to settle ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... more to do in the composition of my lectures than to produce such poor flimsy stuff as your discourses, I should soon have done my work, and be prepared to read." It is said this speech was delivered with his fist clenched, in a menacing posture.' (Northcote's Life of Reynolds, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... the drawing-room window open and the lamp burning, and by midnight he was sleeping heavily in the adjoining room. And the wind got up in the night: it played with the muslin curtains, flinging them out like streamers into the room; played with the flimsy parasol lamp-shade until it tilted, and the little lamp was thrown on ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... was immediately reduced to a state of flimsy apology which she made up for by being particularly hot and self-assertive in ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... things to do in no more than a pair of hours. They were not to be done, but he did them. A couple of donkeys were procured without difficulty; he knew of a stable with a flimsy door. A revolver, his own small odds and ends, all his money, and such food as he could lay hands on—by rousing reluctant storekeepers with outcries and expediting commerce with violence—were got together. Then Incarnacion ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... dealer in the Montagne de la Cour, who is willing to take my sketches at a decent price. Look here, Clary, how do you like this little bit of genre? 'Forbidden Fruit'—a chubby six-year-old girl, on tiptoe, trying to filch a peach growing high on the wall; flimsy child, and pre-Raphaelite wall. Peach, carnation velvet; child's cheek to match the peach. Rather a nice thing, isn't it?" asked ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... perhaps the only real enemy he has to fear. How his heart and his flimsy paper must flutter in the unruly gusts of a March wind! We only imagine him pasting up a "Sale of Horses," in a retired nook, and seeing his bill carried away on ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... every life to "a tale that is told," because it has a moral. Any story, good or bad,—the most pernicious work of fiction, the most flimsy narrative, as the grandest history,—has its significance. So it is with the life of a man. As all his conduct he is building up the intrinsic results of character for himself,—establishing in his own soul a ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... your wife's maid, for instance. She will spend two thirds of her wages and the product of many silk dresses ("scarcely soiled") in furnishing that objectionable and disreputable suitor of hers with funds for his extravagance. He has beggared two or three of her acquaintance already, under the same flimsy pretense of intended marriage, that scarcely deludes poor Abigail; she has sore misgivings as to her own fate. Alternately he bullies and cajoles, but all the while she knows that he is lying, deliberately and incessantly, yet she never remonstrates or complains. It is true that, if you pass the ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... possess'd but an atom of sense, He ne'er would have woman from Paradise driven, But instead of his Houris a flimsy pretence, With woman alone, ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... over his shoulder, he saw that his brother was not following, and when he reached the flimsy little barn, there was nothing to prevent him from carrying ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... My general impressions are of crooked, narrow lanes, white-washed houses, mortar-plastered streets, in the clean quarter;—of seeing alcoves on each side, with deep recesses, with a fore-ground of red-turbaned Banyans, and a back-ground of flimsy cottons, prints, calicoes, domestics and what not; or of floors crowded with ivory tusks; or of dark corners with a pile of unginned and loose cotton; or of stores of crockery, nails, cheap Brummagem ware, tools, &c., ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... relief. There was not sufficient flesh on his bones to cure; but we got a quantity of what there was, and because we fried it we called it steak, and because we called it steak we said we enjoyed it, though it was utterly tasteless. The hide was quite rotten and useless, being as thin and flimsy as brown paper. It was impossible now to push farther out west, and a retreat to the Shoeing Camp had to be made, though we could not reach it in a day. Thermometer while on this creek 99, and 100 degrees in shade. This place was always called ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... deal of wind to day, but it did not come in puffs, endangering our tents. I sometimes wonder, however, how the flimsy huts of which part of Tintalous is composed are not swept away. They are made of the dry stalk of that excellent herb bou rekabah, called ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... fortresses and displayed the choicest masterpieces of his skill? 'Intellectual ability wasted' among a people whose scholars smile inwardly at the ignorance of the average Western! Brothers, if God is calling you, be not deterred by flimsy subterfuges such as these. You will need the power of God the Holy Ghost to make you an efficient missionary. You will find your reputation for scholarship put to the severest test in India. Here is ample scope alike for men of approved spiritual power and for intellectual giants. And so I repeat, ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... savoured the intimacy of the room—the necessaries on the washstand, the superb tortoiseshell brushes, bought by George in Dublin, on the dressing-table, the open trunks, George's clothes on a chair, and her own flimsy trifles on the bed. Through the glass she saw, behind her image, the image of the closed door; and then she turned round to look at the real door and to assure herself that it was closed. Childish! And yet...! George ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... shoulders, and turned impatiently on his heel. But Ada was not to be torn away. She ran her eye over the stock, marvelling at the cheapness of everything. Jonah, finding nothing better to do, lit a cigarette, and turned a contemptuous eye on the bales of calico, cheap prints, and flimsy lace displayed. Presently he began to study the tickets with extraordinary interest. They were all alike. The shillings in gigantic figures of red or black, and across the dividing line elevenpence three-farthings ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... paused; lifted a flimsy handkerchief with a very deep black border so as to play the jet bracelet; pushed the tip of her slender foot beyond the lowest of her black flounces; looked up; looked down; looked at Mr. Richard, the very ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. |
