"Fragile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and flat of line, like a bas-relief that had come alive and lost its background. She had in her forget-me-not blue eyes the look of a child who has never been allowed to grow up; and I knew at once that she was one of those women kept by their menfolk on a high shelf, like a fragile flower in a silver vase. She, too, rose as I entered, but sank down again on the sofa with a little gesture at the same time welcoming ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... "We are driving in a fragile vessel on the high seas. If I had a daughter in the house, I know what I should do. Farewell till we meet again, Meister. How are matters at Alfen? The firing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... red walls of the little tower, they were as remote from their kind as if on a rock in the midst of the sea. More, she was in his power in a sense she had never been before, for she had herself broken down the fragile barrier with which she had hitherto known how to keep him at bay. But he felt rather than saw that it was herself she would despise if now, at the eleventh hour, he took advantage of that tremulous kiss of renunciation, of those hot tears of anguished parting—and so—"Then ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... she saw a look of painful incomprehension in her mother's face, she sat down on the arm of the chair, slid a strong arm around the fragile figure and hugged it up ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... not interfere between you and Gherardi before? Ah, but you must forgive me for the delay! I wanted to drink all my cup of nectar to the dregs—I could not lose one drop of such sweetness! To see you, slight fragile blossom of a woman, matching your truth and courage against the treachery and malice of the most unscrupulous priestly tool ever employed by the Vatican, was a sight to make me strong for all my days!" He kissed her passionately. "My love! My wife! ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... may be; but this stupidity wounds me, and it is not my intention to suffer such a stain on my family. The beauty of the face is a fragile ornament, a passing flower, a moment's brightness which only belongs to the epidermis; whereas that of the mind is lasting and solid. I have therefore been feeling about for the means of giving you the beauty which time cannot remove—of creating in you the love of knowledge, of insinuating solid ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... 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
... frail, intensely, vibratingly alive. This extraordinary contradiction between body and mind made a charm and mystery which it is difficult to express in words. One longed to protect and shield her, to tuck her up on a sofa, and tend her like a fragile child, at the very same moment that mentally one was sitting at her feet, domineered by the ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a delicate charm in the self-assurance appearing in some of the present verse, as Sara Teasdale's confidence in her "fragile immortality" [Footnote: Refuge.] or James Stephens' exultation in A Tune Upon ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... 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 ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... 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 ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... elaps'd, "When the same teinted flower the blood produc'd: "Such flowers the deep pomegranate bears, which hides "Its purple grains beneath a flexile rind. "But short its boast, for the same winds afford "Its name, and shake them where they light adhere: "Ripe for their fall in fragile ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... the knickerbockers, loose and badly cut, fell a little below the knees. His stockings were of worsted, his boots clumsy and thick-soled, though relatively tiny. One had the impression always that his body was fragile and small, but as a matter of fact the body and limbs were, if anything, slightly better developed than those of the average child of four ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... a wonderful 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 noise in this quiet corner—making ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with fierce pain. He has found her now; she is sitting quite alone, gazing sadly on a bunch of roses lying on her knee: dreamily she picks off the perfumed leaves, until the bare stems and thorns alone remain in her fragile hands. The old man silently approaches her. Suppressing his emotion, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... came to counting out gold 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 ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... boy about six years of age—akin in his fragile body and his serious mien—a youngster that is very precious to me. I first saw this boy on a little balcony about three feet by four, projecting from the window of a poverty-stricken fourth floor. He was leaning over the railing, his white, thoughtful head just clearing the top, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... the grace of life. The husband is not to dwell on this, that the wife is weak and fragile, but on this, that she also is baptized, and has the same that he has,—all blessings in Christ. For inwardly we are all alike, and there is no difference between man and woman, but as to the outward condition, it is God's pleasure that the husband ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... came here some time ago. She was very pale and fragile when she came. She was in sore distress, too. But she received the consolation of the Church, and ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... She is very fragile, and has been very much fatigued. I do not think, my dear, that I can take her on to Rockhold to-morrow. I think I must let her rest here ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... nose. Each saw the other. The bird made a startled rise, but he struck it with his paw, and smashed it down to earth, then pounced upon it, and caught it in his teeth as it scuttled across the snow trying to rise in the air again. As his teeth crunched through the tender flesh and fragile bones, he began naturally to eat. Then he remembered, and, turning on the back- track, started for home, carrying the ptarmigan ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... lonely, silent spot. The soldier so very still and dead, his face hidden by the shield that had fallen across it; the tall, white girl, rigid as a statue, in whose hand the gun still smoked, the delicate, fragile Kaffir maiden kneeling on the veld, and looking at her wildly as though she were a spirit, and the two horses, one with its ears pricked in curiosity, and the other ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... and in other titillations of one's faculties. Dinner is good and sleep, too, is excellent. But we men and women tend, upon too close inspection, to appear rather paltry flies that buzz and bustle aimlessly about, and breed perhaps, and eventually die, and rot, and are swept away from this fragile window-pane of time ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... that you distinguished yourself greatly in the war against the Welsh, and stood high in the favour and affection of Harold. Guy has overshot you, you see, in point of height, though he is scarce half your breadth," and the baron looked with a suppressed sigh at the fragile young fellow, who stood with his hand ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... cheerfully, "my reputation still continues. Wonderful, is it not, how durable a bad reputation is, and how fragile a good one. One bounds back like a rubber ball. The other shatters like a lustre punch bowl. And did the same young man—I presume he was young—enlighten you about this, the ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... the room in silence, and no one could have recognized in this pretty, fragile creature the pitiful wreck of the juvenile court. And when Alma Pflugel saw the face of the little sister—the poor, marred, stricken face—her own face became terrible in its agony. She put Bennie down very gently, rose, and took the shaking little figure ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... of my day-dreaming. I never could draw on fancy to the exclusion of the Red-man; but, on the contrary, constantly detected myself re-peopling every wood with the wild forms of the aborigines, and in each distant skiff that darted over the broad stream picturing the fragile canoe, and ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... bookseller's shop, in a very moderate line of village-business. The two up-stair rooms into which he introduced us were so crowded with inestimable articles, that we were almost afraid to stir, for fear of breaking some fragile thing that had been accumulating value ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... toward the attic, you will find the art of yesterday—the pictures which have passed out of the glare of popularity without yet arriving at the mellow radiance of old masters. In the basement, concealed in huge packing-cases, and marked "PARIS—FRAGILE,"—you will find the art of to-morrow; the paintings of the men in regard to whose names, styles, and personal traits, the foreign correspondents and prophetic critics in the newspapers, are now diffusing in the public mind that ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... should be dashed against some drifting ice-pack. The tremendous swells would heave us up to the very peaks of mountainous waves, then plunge us down into the depths of the sea's trough as if our fishing-sloop were a fragile shell. Gigantic white-capped waves, like veritable walls, fenced us in, fore ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... stars That wreathe the Illimitable beauteously Quench not the vast of night, so do all joys Life strews along her passing to the grave Prevail not o'er the shadow of sure death. And O Humanity, long-suffering Harp Of passion-strings unnumbered, shall His skill Flung thus forever o'er thy fragile rest Build but these harmonies that seem sometimes Unworth the misery of the trampled worm? Would, would I were not vibrant with all strains He strikes from thee, or else more perfect tuned! World-sorrow have ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... eyes, showed that he was not turned to stone. He had been amazed enough by the other treasures, as the Skipper had taken them one by one from the iron safe in the corner, whose door now hung idly open. Where had been seen such Pheasants as these,—the fragile, the exquisite, the rarely perfect? Even the Australian Pheasant, rarest of all, lay here before him, with its marvellous pencillings of rose and carmine and gray. Mr. Endymion's mouth had watered at ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... thousand flowers stand here around, With glorious brightness some are crown'd: How beauteous art thou, lily fair! With thee no silver can compare: I'll not forget thy dress outshone The pomp of regal Solomon. I write the friend, I love so well, No sounding verse his heart to swell. The fragile flowerets of the plain Can rival human triumphs vain. I liken to a floweret's fate The fleeting joys of mortal state; The flower so glorious seen to-day To-morrow dying fades away; An end has soon the flowery clan, And soon arrives the end of man; ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... 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 ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... hope, patience in the weariness of disease, strength that nerved his arm for shock and onset, and for the last grand that laid his young head low,—all flowed in upon him through the tones of one brave, sweet voice far off. A gentle, fragile, soft-eyed woman, what could such a delicate flower do against the "thunder-storm of battle"? What DID she do? Poured her own great heart and own high spirit into the patriot's heart and soul, and so did all. Now ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... at the Albert Hall when that little fragile building is packed from the expensive fringe of the stalls and the boxes to the mysterious height of the gallery, then magnify many times, and change wood into hewn rock, and take off the roof, and give Roman ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... which this brought the Court, made it vain to think of continuing to give instruction where they would be regarded with enmity and suspicion. Meantime, the officers in the English camp, who had not seen a lady for nearly two years, could not make enough of the graceful, gentle woman, so pale and fragile, yet such a dauntless heroine, and always ready to exert herself beyond her strength for every sufferer ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... them with his eye as they passed, and gazed inquisitively into Risler's apartments through the open windows. The carpets that were shaken with a great noise, the jardinieres that were brought into the sunlight filled with fragile, unseasonable flowers, rare and expensive, the gorgeous hangings—none of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to Baltimore, often without knowing where his next meal was coming from, and finally, at Baltimore, his father's widowed sister gave him a home, and he soon married her fragile daughter, Virginia Clemm. But he had long been a prey to intemperance, and his habits in consequence were so irregular that he was unable to retain any permanent position. The truth seems to be that Poe was ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... Thurlow, who had rendered him the most faithful services, not only through the period of his Indian Vice-royalty, but during his last mission to China; and Her who had shared his every thought, and whose courageous spirit now rose above the weakness of the fragile frame, equal to the greatness of the calamity, and worthy of him to whom, by night and ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... dew-drops in the sun. All day long she was busy at work tending her flowers, bathing them in the fresh morning dew, painting them anew with her delicate fairy brush, or loosening the clay when it pressed too heavily upon their fragile roots; and at night she joined the elves in their merry dance upon the greensward. She was not alone in the great forest; near her were many of her sister fairies, all old friends and playmates. There was the Fairy Primrose ...
— How the Fairy Violet Lost and Won Her Wings • Marianne L. B. Ker
... felicitations of the Corps de l'Etat. Many addresses were delivered. "All contained the expression of the public love," said Marshal Marmont in his Memoirs, "and I believe that they were sincere; but the love of the people is, of all loves, the most fragile, the most apt to evaporate. The King responded in an admirable manner, with appropriateness, intelligence, and warmth. His responses, less correct, perhaps, than those of Louis XVIII., had movement and spirit, and it is so precious to hear from those invested ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... khaki uniform. On his shoulders was his knapsack, from his hands swung his suitcase and between his heavy stockings and his "shorts" his kneecaps, unkissed by the sun, as yet unscathed by blackberry vines, showed as white and fragile as the wrists of a girl. As he moved toward the "L" station at the corner, Sadie and his mother waved to him; in the street, boys too small to be Scouts hailed him enviously; even the policeman glancing over the newspapers on the ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... more clearly, and, like many Irishmen, he was an amusing talker. Gabrielle would sit on a low stool between them in the white dress that Radway loved. It made the solitude for which they were both waiting seem more precious to see her thus at a distance, pale and fragile and miraculous against the sombre background of the Roscarna oak. Then Jocelyn would begin to yawn, and fidget for the nightcap of hot whiskey that Biddy prepared for him, and at last discreetly vanish. And so the most precious ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... until we are clear on all matters. I haven't finished your case. And don't marry that foreign-looking cavalier you were riding with to-day in the park. You are too American ever to be at home over there. You would smash their fragile china, and you wouldn't understand. England might fit you, though, for England is something like that dark green, prairie park, with its regular, bushy trees against a Gainsborough sky. You live deeply in the fierce open air. The English like ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... of her tiny, delicate, fragile-looking aunt engaged in that strenuous and illicit operation brought a momentary smile to Mary Thorne's lips. ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... 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 ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... grow where there have been bush-fires. The waratah is of a brilliant red colour, growing single and stately on a high stalk. Its shape is of a heart; its size about that of a pear. The waratah is not at all a dainty, fragile flower, but a solid mass of bloom like the vegetable cauliflower; indeed, if you imagine a cauliflower of a vivid red colour, about the size of a pear and the shape of a heart, growing on a stalk six feet high, you will have some idea ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... America, but rather high wages, and perchance a well-to-do husband; and, knowing that it would be difficult to replace her, she thought she might be indolent and insolent with impunity. Linda's mother never knew of all the hard household work which her frail fragile girl went through in these days of preparation, nor what good reason the roses had for deserting her cheeks. Mamma should not be vexed by hearing of Biddy's defection; and there was an invaluable and indignant coadjutor ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... one awoke in the unplumbed depths of his soulless breast a great desire to lay his hands upon her. She was very beautiful. Number One wished to have her for his very own; nor would it be a difficult matter, so fragile was she, to gather her up in those great, brute arms and carry her deep into the jungle far out of hearing of the bull-whip man and the cold, frowning one who was continually measuring and weighing Number One and his companions, the while he scrutinized them with those strange, glittering eyes ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... weak to light the lamp or to undress. She fell upon the iron cot, her fragile body scarcely hollowing the worn springs. And in that Erebus of the skylight room, she slowly raised her heavy ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... 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
... of the same strain. This particular condition is only realized with very malleable or plastic bodies; and it may even be regarded as characteristic of such bodies, since its absence is noticeable in all non-malleable or fragile bodies, which break without being deformed. It is already known that the period of altered elasticity for hard or tempered steel is much less than for iron. In 1871 the author showed that steel or iron rails ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... one tiny, tiny fish out of the depths; it looked lonesome and exceedingly fragile, but oh how that man brooded over that triumph! And by the time we reached Jonesville and he related that experience to the awe-struck neighbors it wuz a thrillin' and excitin' seen he depictered, and that tiny fishlet had growed, ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... fountains to gaze upon his own image reflected in the waters, it seeming to him the likeness of her he has lost. He is in pity transformed into a flower on the border of a stream, where, bending on his fragile stem, he seeks his image in the waters murmuring by, until he fades and dies. Has not God, the all loving Author who composed the sweet poem of Man and Nature, written at the close a reconciling Elysium wherein these ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of Katmandu, 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 ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... It is true that the need for European 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 to those which it is still ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... were made in Holland. Some of the colonists made their pipes in Virginia from local clay, either by pipemaking machines or by handmolding. The English and Dutch pipes were white in color, whereas the local product was brown. As they were fragile, not a single complete pipe has been unearthed ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... an aperture, equal for example to four times the diaphragm, will be only 4 centimeters, while the corresponding aperture behind the lens must be 16. The dimensions of the first will be practical, and those of the second will give too cumbersome and too fragile an apparatus. But why must the aperture be larger than the diaphragm employed? This is what we are going to demonstrate. Let us make the aperture equal to the diameter of the objective, and see what occurs at the different periods of the exposure. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... the Bāb was confined 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
... that I allow myself To be made blind by an unworthy zeal For a vain idol, fragile form of wood, Which, notwithstanding my support, the worms Upon its altar every day consume? Born servant of the God that temple loves, It might be Mathan would adore Him still, If lust of greatness, thirst ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... years after the destruction of the religious and political dogmas of the past, France had lived as best she could on some few fragile dogmas, which had in their turn been consecrated by a naive superstition; these dogmas were the principles of 1789—the almightiness of reason, the efficacy of absolute liberty, the sovereignty of the people—in a word, the whole credo of the revolution.... ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... devoted and simple-hearted woman, there would indeed be little cause for apprehension; for you are equally unable to imagine wrong yourself, or to conceive it in others. It would remove a mountain from my heart, could I indeed believe that even you will be permitted to remain near this dependent and fragile girl during the months of suffering and anguish that are likely ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... it is on the cards that Caldecott is going to do a coloured picture for me to write to, for the October No. of A.J.M. (so that it will bind up with the 1879 volume and be the Frontispiece). He is so fragile he can't "hustle," but he wants to do it. D—— and he became great friends in London, and I think now he would help us whenever he could. We have been bold enough to "speak our minds" pretty freely to him, about wasting his time over second-rate "society" ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... me to them, And tell them that, to ease them of their griefs, Their fears of hostile strokes, their aches, losses, Their pangs of love, with other incident throes That nature's fragile vessel doth sustain In life's uncertain voyage, I will some kindness do them: I'll teach them to prevent wild ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... 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 to earn a few ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... 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
... the 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. ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... blows of a tall, swarthy woman was a small girl, so fragile as to appear almost elfin. The woman wore the garb of a gipsy, and the presence of some squalid tents and tethered horses showed our young friends at once that it was a gipsy encampment upon which they ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... folks I've met among your friends," he had told his grandson. He had dined there frequently during the winter, and professed to be enamoured of the hostess. That fragile but sprightly bit of antiquity professed in turn to find Uncle Peter a very dangerous man among the ladies. They flirted outrageously at every opportunity, and Uncle Peter sent her more violets than many a popular debutante ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... of appearing at tiffin. So I said if she came out here afterwards, she would find you and me alone. She's looked happier and less fragile lately. Even Vinx admits the event has justified me. But of course it's simply ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... 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 for ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... automatically in his mind. He passed from his own apartments, through a connecting door into a large and beautifully-furnished salon. A woman with grey hair and white face was lying on a couch by the window. She turned her head as he entered and looked at him questioningly. Her face was fragile and her features were sharpened by suffering. She looked at her husband almost as a cowed but still affectionate animal might look ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at the blackened rafters; he looked out at either door and frowned perplexed, first at the hills, then at the valley. He raised his head and dropped it suddenly with great amazement and much weariness. Finally he ventured to lift a wilted and fragile hand and looked at it. It was not white; but it was unsteady as a laurel leaf beside a waterfall. After a moment's rest from the exertion he parted his lips to speak, but a whisper faint as the sound of the ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... him, for he is no more fit to tell what is good for him than a child.' So spoke the doctor, thinking only of the patient till looking up at the pair he was dismissing to such a charge, the helpless, crippled Charles, unable to cross the room without crutches, and Amabel, her delicate face and fragile figure in her widow's mourning, looking like a thing to be pitied and nursed with the tenderest care, with that young child, too, he broke off and said—'But you don't mean you ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... uttered by the holy woman in her nun's garb weakened the indignant resistance of the courtesan. Then the conversation drifted somewhat, and the nun began to talk of the convents of her order, of her Superior, of herself, and of her fragile little neighbor, Sister St. Nicephore. They had been sent for from Havre to nurse the hundreds of soldiers who were in hospitals, stricken with smallpox. She described these wretched invalids and their malady. And, while they themselves were detained on their way by the caprices of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... slowly formed at the bottom of this wide ocean, would be sprinkled with fossils of but few species. The oceanic Fauna is not a rich one; its hydrozoa do not admit of preservation; and the hard parts of its few kinds of molluscs and crustaceans and insects are mostly fragile. Hence, when the ocean-bed was here and there raised to the surface—when its strata of sediment with their contained organic fragments were torn up and long washed about by the breakers before being re-deposited—when the re-deposits were again and again subject to this ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the fragile nature of his promises had availed to make his mother distrust him. 'My darling, I'm sure you will,' she ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... stuck one of the fragrant, fragile, green-striped orchids in her hair, and hung two others, caught on delicate loops of wire, on the jade studs of her jacket, buttoned ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was finished we manufactured a sago oven, which we baked in the sun. It was, however, of a very fragile nature, and we feared would not answer very well for our cakes—to use it, indeed, we were obliged to increase its size. When all was ready, we prepared some cakes. This we did by drying the sago ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... pause for an instant, and to reflect upon the character and circumstance of our luxurious voyage as contrasted with that of these few adventurers in their fragile birch canoes—a little over 220 years ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... streams, its deep woods and romantic walks, is full of attraction. There we not only see the outward graces of Nature, but catch glimpses of her subtler elements. Springs, dripping from hidden sources, transform the fruit, or the bird's-nest with its fragile eggs, into stone with a Medusa touch; while in deep caverns are found beautiful spars, exquisitely tinted, as if prepared by the genii of the rock for the palace of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... the carnations, she 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
... largest of her parcels, which still lay close to her on the platform, neither Bob nor Nellie having yet reached this to pick it up; for, a thick yellow fluid was oozing out from the wrappings, plainly betokening the nature of its fragile contents and their fate. ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... house they were welcomed by a very fair interesting-looking girl of sixteen; but so fragile and childlike that she scarcely seemed to have entered upon her teens. She blushed deeply as she received ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... the long white beaches with lithe brown beauties who wear passion-flowers in their raven hair. Or, should you weary of so dolce far niente an existence, you can sail across to Java with the opium-runners in their fragile prahaus, or climb a two-mile-high volcano, or in the jungles at the western extremity of the island stalk the clouded tiger. And you can wear pajamas all day long without apologizing. Everything considered, Bali offers more inducements than any place I know to the tired business man ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... our readers to infer from this that a humming-bird might be captured or kept alive, for of all birds, they are the most fragile and delicate, and would die of fright, if from nothing else. They are chiefly used for ornamental purposes, and may be caught in a variety of ways. A few silk nooses hung about the flowers where the birds are seen to ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... I have done, or was ever more cruelly betrayed? Oh! Greville, Greville!—did I not regard you with an affection too intense for my happiness! did I not confide in you with a reverence, a veneration unmeet to be lavished on a creature of clay? But you have broken the fragile idol of my worship before my eyes—and the after-path of my life is dark with fear and loneliness. But be it so; my soul was proud of its good gifts—and now that I am stricken to the dust, its vanity is laid bare to my sight—haply, 'it is good for me that ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... CLARENCE'S clever sympathetic hands. Mr. OWEN ROUGHWOOD gave you a sense of his belief in the efficacy of star-dust. On what a difficult rail our author was occasionally driving his express you may judge when he makes this excellent but not particularly fragile British type exclaim, "I am melting down in dew." The flippant hearer had always to be inhibiting irreverent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... on all parts of the person. The head ornaments should be of gold when this metal can be afforded. On the finger they have a miniature mirror set in a ring; as a rule not more than one ring is worn, so that the hands may be free for work. For a similar reason glass bangles, being fragile, are worn only on the left wrist and metal ones on the right. But the Dhanoje Kunbis, as already stated, have cocoanut shell bangles on both wrists. They smear a mark of red powder on the forehead or have a spangle there. Girls are generally tattooed in ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... now confronted him was that of giving his shafts a penetrating point. Being of a very hard-fibered cane, akin to bamboo, they would take a kind of splintering-point of almost needle sharpness. But it was fragile; and the cane being hollow, the point was necessarily on one side, which affected the accuracy of the flight. There were no flints in the neighborhood, or slaty rocks, which he could split into edged and pointed fragments. He tried hardening his points in the fire; but the results were ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... fancy that we are not an isolated power to which the remainder of the world serves as a pedestal, that one is not a licensed destroyer, a poor, fragile tyrant, whom arbitrary decrees protect, but a necessary note of an infinite harmony? To fancy that the law of life is the same in the immensity of space and irradiates worlds as it irradiates cities and as it irradiates ant-hills. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Trent, as the winter advanced, "I am anxious about Bertha. She does not look strong. I don't know why I have not seen it before, but all at once I found out yesterday that she is really thin. She was always slight and even a little fragile, but now she is actually thin. One can see the little bones in her wrists and fingers. Her rings and her bracelets slip ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sanctuary that St. Louis built for the crown of thorns, "the most precious piece of Gothic," says Ruskin, "in Northern Europe." Michelet saw a whole world of religion and poetry—tears of piety, mystic ecstasy, the mysteries of divine love—expressed in the marvellous little church, in the fragile and precious paintings of its windows.[59] The work was completed in three years, and has been so admirably restored by Viollet le Duc that the visitor may gaze to-day on this pure and peerless gem almost as St. Louis left it, for the gorgeous interior faithfully reproduces ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... the edge of the ice was fragile. He dared not push himself out too far with the sharp toes of his skates. He dug them into the ice now hard, and made another ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... it possible that international intrigue might not have flourished under him. Never had I seen so fragile a man who would be king. He owned, with a shyly comic glance, that he had leanings towards buccaneering. The man of action, were he but some shaggy-bearded shellback, appealed to him. His own physique was his apology for being merely a ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... anything she possessed. When one of the forlorn and woollen-shawled old maids fell ill, she sat up of nights with her, and in spite of her ignorance of nursing, which was as vast as that of a rhinoceros, magnetised the fragile lady into well-being. I think she was fairly happy. If London had been situated amid gorges and crags and ravines and granite cliffs she would have been completely so. She yearned for mountains. Mrs. Considine to satisfy this nostalgia took her for a week's ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... remember, and let us inculcate on those who are to fill the places that so soon shall know us no more, let us remember, I say, that if man seem to survive himself and to be mutely perpetuated in these fragile semblances, it is only the stamp of the soul that is eternally operative; it is only the image of ourselves that we have left in some sphere of intellectual or moral achievement, that is indelible, that becomes a part of the memory ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... for several seconds in mutual horror. Even in his abasement, crouching under a shelf in the corner, Aubrey's stricken senses told him that he had never seen so fair a spectacle. Titania wore a blue kimono and a curious fragile lacy bonnet which he did not understand. Her dark, gold-spangled hair came down in two thick braids across her shoulders. Her blue eyes were very much alive with amazement and alarm which rapidly ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... I will just mention. By the last treaty with Denmark, to which you became a party, the crown of that kingdom was so settled that only three lives stand between it and the Czar of Russia. Three lives! but a fragile barrier, when high political aims are concerned. It is therefore an allowed fact, that the country which commands entrance to the Baltic, and which, in the hands of an unfriendly power, would effectually ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... Leonard's elder by two years and cast in a more fragile mould. His face was the face of a dreamer, the brown eyes were large and reflective, and the mouth sensitive as a child's. He was a scholar and a philosopher, a man of much desultory reading, with refined tastes and a really intimate knowledge ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... inquiries about a yoke of oxen, and Catullus went off to look at the bee-hives in their sheltered corner near a wild olive tree. When he came back he found his brother seated on a stone bench, carving an odd little satyr out of a bit of wood and talking to a fragile looking boy about twelve years old. Valerius's sympathetic gravity always charmed children and Catullus was not surprised to see this boy's brown eyes lifted in eager confidence to the ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... sense of wrong, and with that exquisite selflessness which real love alone can kindle in a human heart, he had succeeded in putting aside all thought of his own great misery, his helplessness and the hopelessness of his position, and remembered only that she looked fragile, a little older, sadder, and had need ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... the worse! I shall try to look between the fragile divisions, through a crack which has revealed itself to ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... 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 ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... shown us how fragile are the treasures of our civilisation. Of all our goods, freedom, on which we prided ourselves most, has proved the frailest. It had been won by degrees through centuries of sacrifice, of patient effort, ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... morning after breakfast. The lady stood like a rival head among the other guests, listening, gloved and bonneted, to the bells of Wrexby, West of the hills, and of Fenhurst, Northeast. The squire came in to them, groaning over his boots, cross with his fragile wife, and in every mood for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bridge, and saw more horses. His grim anticipation became a reality. The Sioux were in the ambush. What depended on him and his luck! Casey's red cheek blanched, but it was not with fear for himself. Not yet on this ride had he entertained one thought concerning his own personal relation to its fragile possibilities. ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... the marshy, submerged plain, a strange pile of buildings is seen cutting the horizon, half a castle, half a cathedral, imposing in a mass as it towers above the fragile and squalid hovels crouched at the feet. This building is Les ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... lay side by side, on their backs. They seemed very thin and fragile in comparison with the solidity of their mother. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... 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 how ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... of opinion about Brie's being the queen of all cheeses, and if there is any such difference, I shall certainly ignore it. The very shape of Brie—so uncheese-like and so charmingly fragile—is exciting. Nine times out of ten a Brie will let you down—will be all caked into layers, which shows it is too young, or at the over-runny stage, which means it is too old—but when you come on the tenth Brie, coulant to just the right, delicate ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... mountain, that for very height Passed any I had seen. Boundless delight Filled us—alas, and quickly turned to dole: For, springing from our scarce-discovered goal, A whirlwind struck the ship; in circles three It whirled us helpless in the eddying sea; High on the fourth the fragile stern uprose, The bow drove down, and, as Another chose, Over our heads we heard the surging ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... skull, which looked as if it might have been dug 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 ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "I don't think he'll find much sympathy with his more fragile symptoms in Billabong—we must try to brace him up, Norah. But whatever will Jim say, ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... to her knees. 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 smile ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter |
