"Frail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the best a creature frail and vain, In knowledg ignorant, in strength but weak, Subject to sorrows, losses, sickness, pain, Each storm his state, his mind, his body break, From some of these he never finds cessation But day or night, within, without, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... robustness and all it entails, Chopin might have been moderately happy, perhaps even have continued to enjoy moderately good health, if body and soul had been well matched. This, however, was not the case. His thoughts were too big, his passions too violent, for the frail frame that held them; and the former grew bigger and more violent as the latter grew frailer and frailer. He could not realise his aspirations, could not compass his desires, in short, could not fully assert himself. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... are only college passmen. They are not religious: they are only pewrenters. They are not moral: they are only conventional. They are not virtuous: they are only cowardly. They are not even vicious: they are only "frail." They are not artistic: they are only lascivious. They are not prosperous: they are only rich. They are not loyal, they are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public spirited, only patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not determined, only ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... for the sides of the canvas building were frail; and as the flames ran swiftly up one side and the burning rags of the canvas roof began to fall upon the struggling crowd, a wave rushed against the opposite side, which gave way like so much paper, and ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... their coming, They, too, braved the winter long; Then at Springtime took new leafage, Frail ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... accounts relating to unsettled affairs. He is a member of the house of Delauney, Rice & Co., in which he had deposited his patrimony to the extent of fifty thousand dollars; and he carries away on that frail bark all evidence of his investment in that firm. He had, he said, a partnership agreement; he had accounts of profits that had been rendered from time to time,—and all are gone. He had a dear wife and two children, for whose loss he now demands large compensation; and yet ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... Reverend Lewis Penzance—a poor and unhealthy scholar, to be vicar of the parish of Dunstan. Only a poor and book-absorbed man would have accepted the position. What this man wanted was no more than quiet, pure country air to fill frail lungs, a roof over his head, and a place to pore over books and manuscripts. He was a born monk and celibate—in by-gone centuries he would have lived peacefully in some monastery, spending his ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... these reached France. The Russians under Wittgenstein now appeared in his rear, and one of his divisions was either destroyed or captured. Napoleon had passed over the Beresina with a part of his army by means of two frail bridges, leaving the defence of the retreat to Victor. A scene ensued which defies description. The retreating French tumbled each other into the stream, or voluntarily rushed in to escape the fire ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... came in Mrs. Morris' eyes. She looked at the little, frail lady, and said, simply "Dear Mrs. Montague, I think the root of the whole matter lies in this. The Lord made us all one family. We are all brothers and sisters. The lowest woman is your sister and my sister. The ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... had her beaver hat and mantle ready by the shrubbery door—as a little quiet postern of her own was called—and in the heavy standing desk, or "secretary," of her private room she had stored a flat basket, or frail, of stout flags, with a heavy clock weight ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... very well for healthy infants," broke in Madame Dupont. "But at the age of three months one cannot take from the breast a baby like ours, frail and ill. More than any other such an infant has need of a nurse—is that ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... never may return: Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow, Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. These common woes I feel. One loss is mine Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore. Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar, Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood Above the blind and battling multitude: In honored poverty thy voice did weave Songs consecrate to truth and liberty— Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve, Thus having been, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... side) was founded early in the century by Mr. William Praed, a banker of Truro. The house had been originally the shop of Mrs. Salmon, till she moved to opposite Chancery Lane, and her wax kings and frail queens were replaced by piles of strong boxes and chests of gold. The house was rebuilt in 1802, from the designs of Sir John Soane, whose curious museum still exists in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Praed, that delightful ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... saw him she was touched to the very heart. Why, he had aged in the last month a hundred years! He looked, sitting there, so frail and helpless that it seemed wonderful that he should have been able to ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... diameter to the natal cell. The obstacle to be pierced is the natural diaphragm, a yielding partition two or three millimetres[6] thick. Some free themselves; others cannot. The less valiant ones succumb, stopped by the frail barrier. What would it be if they had to pass through a ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... Sin-kiang, and repair to the yamen. A large crowd, however, gather and follow us from the market-place, swelling gradually by reenforcements to a multitude that surges in and out of the shanty-like office in such swarms that the frail board walls bulge and crack with the pressure. When the crowd overwhelm the place entirely, the officials clear them out by angry gesticulations and moral suasion, sometimes menacingly shaking the end of their own queues at them as though they were ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... wonders. Nothing landward can possibly approach them: in the rudest tempest the ground remains firm, and you feel that you are a spectator; but at sea you are a part of the storm. The plank whereon you stand refuses to support you, ever shifting its inclination; while the whole of your frail tenement is now borne aloft, now dashed into the liquid furrow beneath, now struck back by a head-sea with a shock that makes every timber quiver, now flung on one side as if about to reverse itself in the bosom of the ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... lamp gleams dull and pale,— The maidens twain are weak and frail,— But Love doth aid his votaries true, While they the massive bolts undo,— And a moment hath flown, and the warrior knight Embraceth his love ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... celebrate a victory, Porthos," interposed D'Artagnan; "never have we incurred a greater danger than we are now encountering. Men may subdue men—they cannot overcome the elements. We are now on the sea, at night, without any pilot, in a frail bark; should a blast of wind upset ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hedges and winding paths overgrown and run wild; the stronger rose-bushes grew in tangled masses, flinging forth their rich blooms among the weeds; such as were more delicate, struggling to live among them, became more frail and scant-blossoming season by season; a careless foot would have trodden them beneath it as their branches grew long and trailed in the grass; but for many months no foot had trodden there at all, and it was a ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... The storm had loosened the meager hair, had flung it in disorder over the fisher-girl's shoulders. Ben's brown teeth gleamed dark; the drawn lips were stretched wide, as if a pain, dreadful and torturing, had opened them never to be closed again. His two huge arms, twisted about the frail frame of the girl, were locked together by the horny fingers. To Tessibel it seemed that Myra smiled faintly in the possession of her longed-for happiness. She had Ben Letts at last, and forever—he was her gift of ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... until they were alongside the shelter, the scouts set about finding loopholes through which they might obtain a glimpse of what lay on the other side of those frail walls. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... source, what its length or the number of its tributaries, through what regions of fertility or barrenness it flowed, or what the character of the nations who might inhabit its banks. Paddling up the rapid current of this flood of waters in their frail boats, the ascent was slow. By the latter part of October they had reached a point fifteen hundred miles above the spot where the Missouri enters the Mississippi. Here they spent the winter with some friendly Indians called ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... and her foes A mist, a light, an image rose, Small at first, and weak, and frail Like the vapour ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Committed, in the silent night you rose And took your last faint steps— These led you down, O great American, Down to the Winter night and the white beach, And there you saw that the huge hull that waited Was not as are the boats of the other dead, Frail craft for a brief passage; no, for this Was first of a long line of towering transports, Storm-worn and ocean-weary every one, The ships you launched, the ships you manned, the ships That now, returning from their sacred quest With ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... said nothing; she looked at the frail skiff, the turbulent river, and the great woods beyond, already growing mysterious beneath the veil ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... great wonderings at their having turned Puritans, until they knew the true state of affairs. Must not it have been dreadful news to Mistress Brenton, and was it not really a dreary prospect—a dreary journey in that frail ship, and at the end a cold, forlorn country? and all the stories of the Indians' cruelties to the settlers came to her mind. They could not, in all probability, return for many months. No one whom she cared particularly for would be there to welcome them. Polly did ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... above the snow, frail in the bluish sky, a frail moon had put forth, like a thin, scalloped film of ice floated out on the slow current of the coming night. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... of his powers. To cut out and rivet the links of the chain, which was to sheathe a piece of string and leave it all its pliancy—"I tell you, Don Luis of my soul," he said, peering up from his board, "there is no man in our mystery who could cope with it—and very few frail ladies who could be worthy of it." Don Luis added that there could be few young men who could be capable of commanding it; but Sebastian had now conceived ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... whites, had just cast anchor, and was furling its sails. Upon the strip of open land bordering the river, and in the woodland beyond, were visible great numbers of savage warriors, their faces hideously bedaubed with war-paint, their hands busy in erecting the frail habitations ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... kept my temper, and refrained as far as might be from any interference, for I saw (in our friend's mulish humour) he always contrived to twist it to our disadvantage. But now came the acute point. Young Frank now took an oar. He was a little fellow, near as frail as myself, and very short; if he weighed nine stone, it was the outside; but his blood was up. He took stroke, moved the big Samoan forward to bow, and set to work to pull him round in fine style. Instantly, a kind of race ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... did not last long. The girl had one of those constitutions which, though they seem frail and delicate, yet, like the reed, are able to resist what breaks more robust frames. The wetting she had gotten, on the evening whose events we have chronicled, had not seriously affected her;—a severe cold, and with it some slight fever, had been the result. And this fever ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... said a word for freedom, a poor, confused word. It was all I could reach to. We are frail, with our passions. ...
— Oliver Cromwell • John Drinkwater
... lose his smile, and remain dilating to an unnatural extent his clouded and troubled eyes. And so, with his whole form distorted with horror, and his thin hand crossing himself, and his knees trembling, and his smock fluttering around his frail wisp of a body, and his features growing stonelike, he would, for an hour or more, continue to stand, until at length someone laid a hand in his, and ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... usurped the powers of Law and Justice to an extent subversive of republican institutions, and not to be borne by any free people. He has given access to the vaults of prisons but not to the bar of justice. It is a part of the nature of frail men to sin against laws, both human and divine; but God Himself guarantees him a fair trial before punishment. Tyrants alone repudiate the justice of the Almighty. To deny an accused man the right to be heard in his own defense ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... eyelids, lifted up their noses As they smelt music: so I charm'd their ears, That, calf-like, they my lowing follow'd through Tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns, Which enter'd their frail shins: at last I left them I' the filthy-mantled[445-44] pool beyond your cell, There dancing up to th' chins, that[445-45] the foul lake O'erstunk ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... "This frail beauty allured Rudolph. But what wholly served to enchant him were Mimi's tiny hands, that, despite her household duties, she contrived to keep whiter even ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... judgment, Lord!" The pious mother prays; Impute not guilt to thy frail child! She knows ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... laws of nature hold their reign O'er man throughout her whole domain. The monarch of long regal line Possesses dust as frail as mine: Nor can he any more than I Fever or restless pains defy. Nor can he, more than I, delay The ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... going to bequeath When this frail part submits to death— But still I hope the spark divine, With its congenial stars shall shine, My good executors fulfill, And pay ye fairly my last will, With first and second codicil. And first I give to dear Lord Hinton, At Twyford school now, not at Winton, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... meadows, and shady places by the roadside may hold bright bunches of these hardy bells, swaying with exquisite grace on tremulous, hair-like stems that are fitted to withstand the fiercest mountain blasts, however frail they appear. How dainty, slender, tempting these little flowers are! One gladly risks a watery grave or broken bones to bring down a bunch ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... be leader of this thousand horse, Whose foaming gall with rage and high disdain Have sworn the death of wicked Tamburlaine. Go frowning forth; but come thou smiling home, As did Sir Paris with the Grecian dame: Return with speed; time passeth swift away; Our life is frail, and ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... "chance" that has worked this change? Where is the forest-covered country and its savage race, its skin-clad warriors and their frail coracles? ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... the tree tops and the river passed rapidly to the rear and only a slender grass rope and the muscles of a frail girl stood between him and the death yawning ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... too sick and cold to enjoy it. That night all slept badly and had some headache. A high wind swept around the mountain and threatened to carry away both of our tents. As we lay awake, wondering at what moment we should find ourselves deserted by the frail canvas shelters, we could not help thinking that Coropuna was giving us a fair warning of what might happen ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... darling. But nothing in the world would make him give up Sylvia. This was the letter to his father, and then Paul wrote one to his mother, detailing the circumstances and imploring her to stand by him, although in his own sinking heart he felt that Mrs. Beecot was but a frail reed on which to lean. He finished these letters and posted them before midnight. Then he went to bed and dreamed that the bad news was all moonshine, and that Sylvia and he were ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... have a home. You need not tell me that; but Graeme, there is only my frail life between you and homelessness. Not that I fear for you. You are all young and strong, and the God whom I have sought to serve, will never leave my children. But Janet is growing old, Graeme, and I do think this way has been providentially opened ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... wretched Giulia gave way to her despair, and refused all comfort. But so gentle, so willing, so softly fascinating were the ways of the beautiful Flora, and so much sincerity did the charming girl manifest in her attempts to revive that frail but drooping flower which had been thrown as it were at her feet; at the feet of her, a pure though also drooping rosebud of innocence and beauty: so earnest did the maiden seem in her disinterested attentions, that Giulia ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... crackling of last autumn's leaves and last summer's twigs—minute dead of the infinite greatness—troubled him. Something portentous seemed connected with the patient noises about him. An acorn dropped, striking a thin fine powder out of a frail oak pod. He took it up, tossing it. He had never liked ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... sweet-faced, frail little woman, a member of the Mennonite Church. She wore the plain garb adopted by the women of that sect—the tight-fitting waist covered by a pointed shoulder cape, the full skirt and the white cap upon smoothly combed, parted hair. Her ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... in a moment Dr. Franchi, small and frail and charming, came forward with a sweet smile and hand outstretched, through a ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... of feeble folk, of men who grow tired, who think twice before dying. They laugh at middle age. The sentries amuse them, the elderly chaps who duck into their caves when a few shells are sailing overhead. They have no charity for frail nerves. They hate races who don't rally to a man when the enemy is hitting the trail. They must wait for age to gain pity, and the Bretons will never grow old. They are killed too fast. And yet, as soon ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... Shelley was incapable of learning, that love can never permanently be a fountain. A living poet, in an article {6} which you almost fear to breathe upon lest you should flutter some of the frail pastel-like bloom, has said the thing: "Love itself has tidal moments, lapses and flows due to the metrical rule of the interior heart." Elementary reason should proclaim this true. Love is an affection, its display an emotion: love is the air, its display is the wind. An affection may ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... shame this shallow and frail town! How ring right out our sordid turbid time, Being pure! We, life's pride ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... indeed, the Sex is frail. But the first time a Woman is frail, she should be somewhat nice methinks, for then or never is the time to make her Fortune. After that, she hath nothing to do but to guard herself from being found out, and she may do what ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... they clapped their hands, and she escorted them up the Baby Walk and back again, one at a time, putting an arm or a finger round the very frail, setting their leg right when it got too ridiculous, and treating the foreign ones quite as courteously as the English, though she could not understand a word ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... slow to get him up again. Babies are such frail little things; a breath can send them up or down. Of course, I ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Scottish ballad, chiming it in with water and wind and bird music, taking first one part and then another; looping together a long chain of pine needles the while,—then throwing back her sleeve, and laying the frail work across her arm, above the tiny hair chain, the broad band of gems and the string of acorns, which banded it; in short, disporting herself generally. But not the "lullaby, baby, and all," of the old rhyme, ever had a more sudden and complete ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... watchers rather than to the passing soul itself that the wonder seems to draw most close. To stand before the veil, to know that very soon it must be lifted for the loved one to pass beyond, to wait for the glimpse of that spirit-world from which only the frail wall of mortality divides even the least spiritual, to watch as it were for the Gate of Death to open and the great Revelation to flash for one blinding moment upon the dazzled eyes that may not grasp the meaning of what they see; ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... built a beautiful villa at Troldhaugen, not far from Bergen, where he spent the rest of his life. Some American friends who visited them in 1901, speak of the ideal existence of the artist pair. Grieg himself is described as very small and frail looking, with a face as individual, as unique and attractive as his music—the face of a thinker, a genius. His eyes were keen and blue; his hair, almost white, was brushed backward like Liszt's. His hands were thin and small; they were wonderful ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... man, slowly, and with some difficulty, "I am about to leave this world. My soul will take flight from this frail body when the sun has sunk behind the horizon. I have lived long and have amassed great wealth which will soon be thine. Use it well, as I have taught thee, for thou, my son, art a man of learning, as befits our ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... in every movement, a girl with a face of regular features, in which was a complexion of blended milk and roses, with a radiant joy of life shining through all her arduous and vulgar conditions. Instead of this, now, she saw a frail form that stood swaying in the opening of the doorway, that bent in a sinister fashion which told of bodily impotence, while the face was quite bloodless. And, too, there was over all else a pall of helplessness—helplessness that had ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... through all coming time, to whom I have intrusted this great responsibility of framing laws for the regulation of their conduct in their connection with the institution, and by which any of the members may lose its privileges, to remember how frail we are, and how liable to err when we come to sit in judgment on the faults of others, and how much the circumstances of our birth, our education, and the society and country where we have been born and brought up, have ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... The boy up aloft was refuting the statement. His voice had a power wholly out of proportion to the frail body. He was getting hold of the people, too, Peggy Falstar was crying openly, and slow, hard-brought ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... I paddled slowly back, "this pale damsel is a Russian. A fit subject for the White Czar and a proper dweller on the shores of the White Sea!" It seemed to me strange that one of her apparent refinement should perform so long a journey in so frail a craft. When I came back into the house, I pronounced the word "Archangel" several times in different intonations, but she did not appear to ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Man sa'nter out in de bushes en cut 'im a hick'ry, en he let in on Mr. Lion, en he frail en frail 'im twel frailin' un 'im wuz a sin. En down ter dis day," continued Uncle Remus, in a tone calculated to destroy all doubt, "you can't git no Lion ter come up whar dey 's a Man a-maulin' rails en put he paw in de split. ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... begetting, who could understand him because he was the same flesh and blood—understand, and comfort him, and become more rich and cultured than himself because he would start even better off. To get old—like that thin, grey wiry-frail figure sitting there—and be quite alone with possessions heaping up around him; to take no interest in anything because it had no future and must pass away from him to hands and mouths and eyes for whom ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... hopes of the future. My faith in him is so unshakable that it's foolish. Next to you I love him best. He seems even dearer to me than my own people. He has made me look at life differently. Likewise he has inspired you. But you, dearest Columbine, are only a sensitive, delicate girl, a frail and tender thing like the columbine flowers of the hills. And for your own sake you must not be blind to what Wade is capable of. If you keep on loving him and idealizing him, blind to what has made him great, that is, blind to the tragic side of him, then ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... wrong, what she contemplated, utterly wrong, and wild to madness; but the girl was ripe for such temptation and frail with a weakness due to long years of deprivation. Full half of her heart's desire was here, free to her covetous fingers, a queen's trousseau ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... and when some 'Caesarism' exhibits as it sometimes will an originality of mind, it is only because it has managed to make its own the products of past free times or neighbouring free countries; and even that originality is only brief and frail, and after a little while, when tested by a generation or two, in time of ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... lifted Jay off the floor I wondered if he was as big as I'd always thought. It wasn't his weight. Nothing weighed very much on this asteroid, but it was his frail body. He seemed to be a boy of sixteen, rather than a man stationed 300,000,000 miles ...
— The Minus Woman • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... was in your place," I tells her, "I'd drink coffee, and if your furnishings is all as frail as that chocolate set you're featurin', you better grab hold of the piano, because I'm ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... then, and be quick: it's hot work here,' and the man held up his arms with a laugh, as the flames licked out below as if to eat away the frail support he ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... endurance, will ever say that woman's is a feeble nature, incapable of withstanding the rude shocks of adverse fortune? Nay, who will not rather say, that in woman, hope and faith, and fortitude and energy, make even the frail body immortal, till her labor of love is accomplished, and its cherished ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... quite natural. Though weakened by sorrow and misery, the Bacchanal Queen, with a constitution as robust as the other was frail and delicate, was necessarily longer than her sister in feeling the effects of the deleterious vapor. After a moment's silence, Cephyse resumed, as she laid her hand on the head she still held upon her knees, "You say nothing, sister! You suffer, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... grim-faced nun. who appeared in Rose's place to assist her to dress, why her companion and friend was debarred attendance. The nun observed on that score an obstinate silence, but threw out many hints on the importance attached to the vain ornaments of a frail child of clay, and on the hardship that even a spouse of Heaven was compelled to divert her thoughts from her higher duties, and condescend to fasten clasps ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Abbey! there we see How frail a thing is royalty! Where crowns and sceptres worms supply, And kings and queens, like lumber lie. The Tombs themselves are worn away, And own the empire of Decay, Mouldering like the royal dust, Which to preserve they have in trust. Nor ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... dismissed the efficiency of the Charity Organisation Society. We shipped about an inch of water and sat in it for the rest of the time, an inconvenience she disregarded heroically. We had difficulties in landing Oscar from his frail craft upon the ait of our feasting,—he didn't balance sideways and was much alarmed, and afterwards, as Margaret had a pain in her back, I took him in my canoe, let him hide his shame with an ineffectual but not positively ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the trammels with which foolish opinion has enswathed it — not one of these celebrated persons who did not in his secret soul condemn the folly to which he lent himself. The bonds of reason, though iron-strong, are easily burst through; but those of folly, though lithe and frail as the rushes by a stream, defy the stoutest heart to snap them asunder. Colonel Thomas, an officer of the Guards, who was killed in a duel, added the following clause to his will the night before he died: — "In the first place, I commit ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... 1847, a singular couple of aborigines whom I met upon a fishing excursion had a small canoe formed of a single sheet of bark tied up at each end; on the floor of this they were squatted, with the gunwale not more than six inches above the water's edge. Yet this frail bark contained a fire, numbers of spears, fishing lines and other gear. The woman was a character well known in Sydney—Old Gooseberry—said to be old enough to have remembered Cook's first visit to ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... the winds, which are chilled in their passage over the bleak and icy regions of Siberia. These manners are admirably adapted to diffuse, among the wandering tribes, the spirit of emigration and conquest. The connection between the people and their territory is of so frail a texture, that it may be broken by the slightest accident. The camp, and not the soil, is the native country of the genuine Tartar. Within the precincts of that camp, his family, his companions, his property, are always included; and, in the most distant marches, he is still surrounded ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... admiring glance. There could be no question that she was very lovely, if a trifle frail in appearance from her month's quiet, and it was comforting to be assured that she was not looking like a ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... modest about entering it now, sir," whispered he, with a sort of sneer. "There has been no frail flesh and blood in ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... addressing me, "is an old frail man, little used to the company of strangers; but in former days he has had kindness from members of your house, and it would be a satisfaction to him, I think, to have ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Mary W. Montagu speaks of the beauty of this garden in her day. I think she would scarcely recognise it at the present. Modern art has done its best, and over the whole yet lingers the mysterious charm of the Past; the dark historical legends connected with the palace and its quondam frail, fair, and, I regret to add, ferocious mistress, its—But what has all this to do with "Saint or Satan," you will ask? Where is your ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... against churchmen high in authority, and without doubt the charges were often true, because a robe and a rope girdle, or the reversal of haberdashery, do not change the nature of a man. Down under the robe, you'll sometimes find a man frail ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... the side of the boat alongside the Lighter, and dropped to the bottom. On the shore by the water's edge, was a rough tent, made of fragments of wreck, where other divers and workmen sheltered themselves, and where they had kept Christmas-day with rum and roast beef, to the destruction of their frail chimney. Cast up among the stones and boulders of the beach, were great spars of the lost vessel, and masses of iron twisted by the fury of the sea into the strangest forms. The timber was already bleached and iron rusted, and even ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... precise, on the fifteenth of July—Donaldson and his beloved airship, the P. T. Barnum, made their last ascent, from Chicago. The balloon was already old—more than a year old—the canvas weakened and in many places rent and patched, the cordage frail. In short, the balloon was in poor condition to stand any extraordinary stress ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... his physical incapacity. His mother had brought him up to look on himself as a singularly frail creature, and the idea was as real to him as the war. He went about pitying himself and ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... of men are seldom more serious than they have to be. But they all were helplessly, hopelessly caught in the magic, gossamer web of Athalie's beauty and personal charm; and some merely kicked and buzzed and some tried to rend the frail rainbow fabric, and some struggled silently against they knew not what—themselves probably. And some, like Dane, hung motionless, enmeshed, knowing that to struggle was futile. And some, like Clive, were still lying under her jewelled feet in the very centre of the sorcery, so far silent ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... exclaimed, making one stride forward and catching the frail wrist in a vice-like grasp which almost extorted a cry of pain—"so, my daughter, thou hast come in from this midnight tryst with thy lover! And what dost thou think is the reward a father bestows upon a daughter who leaves his house at this dead hour of ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... have some of both too. Why not? The war has got to end one of these days. But meanwhile, why be too down-hearted? On the cliffs above my pasture are masses of moss, holding, as a pincushion holds a breastpin, little early saxifrage plants. From the crannies frail hair bells dangle forth. There are clumps of purple cliffbrase and other tiny, exquisite ferns. On a gravel bank beside the State road are thousands of viper's bugloss plants; on a ledge nearby is an entire nursery of Sedum acre (the small yellow stone ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... Having navigated more than eight thousand miles in sail-boats, row-boats, and canoes, upon the fresh and salt watercourses of the North American continent (usually without a companion), a hard-earned experience has taught me that while the light, frail canoe is indispensable for exploring shallow streams, for shooting rapids, and for making long portages from one watercourse to another, the deeper and more continuous water- ways may be more comfortably traversed in a stronger and ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... Arminian or Calvinistic, I have not failed to thank him, and to respect him, too, if he has declared his opinions with becoming diffidence and moderation. You know that nothing so sorely grieves me as dogmatical arrogance, in a being who will always be frail and capricious, let him think and act as he please. On a Sunday evening I usually devote a few hours to my theological studies—(if you will allow my sabbath-meditations to be so called) and, almost every summer evening in the week, saunter 'midst yon thickets and meadows by the river side, with ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... on Daphne, for just then, to Mrs. Stimpson's surprise and secret dismay, the entrance was formally announced of the Court Godmother, whom she had imagined to be at least moribund, if not dead. She came in, looking frail and feeble, but still with much of the energy and vitality that had seemed ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... the greatest imaginative restorer of the past, the greatest historical interpreter of the soul of ancient France, was born in 1798 in Paris, an infant seemingly too frail and nervous to remain alive. His early years gave him experience, brave and pathetic, of the hardships of the poor. His father, an unsuccessful printer, often found it difficult to procure bread or fire for his household; but he resolved ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... motor. The commercial uses of dirigible balloons, however, will be small, as they must remain housed when the wind aloft is brisk. The sizes will be great and costly, the loads small, and the craft frail and short-lived, yet dirigible balloons constitute the obvious type for governments to evolve, until they are superseded by efficient flying machines. (See further, as to the latter, the article FLIGHT AND ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... such a check as he might have wished for, to look at that grim old castle, recollect who he was, and think of the frail tenure of all earthly joy, especially for one of the house of Morville. Could that abode ever be a home for a creature like Amy, with the bright innocent mirth that seemed too soft and sweet ever to be overshadowed by gloom and sorrow? Perhaps she might be early taken from ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... few hours later his body was interred in the sands of the shore. It may be well to say in this place, that the hurricane of 1846, which is known to have occurred only a few months later, swept off the frail covering and that the body was washed away to leave its bones among the wrecks and relics of the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... storm. The warm air, broken by our steamer, coiled over us in a lazy flux.... Sometimes we passed single habitations on the water side. Ephemeral huts of palm-leaves were forced down by the forest, which overhung them, to wade on frail stilts. A canoe would be tied to a toy jetty, and on the jetty a sad woman and several naked children would stand, with no show of emotion, to watch us go by. Behind them was the impenetrable foliage. I thought of ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... Perhaps I'll be able to manage. A big dose of salt water doesn't hurt me. To-day is the twenty-fifth. If we reach Hoboken at eight o'clock the evening of the first of February, I can appear for my act in perfect serenity at nine o'clock; but that frail blossom of yours can't. She will certainly need a few days to recover from the hardships ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... say how much I sympathize with you in this disappointment. I hope the consolations of religion will now be yours. Your notes, the lock of your hair, etc., I return with this now. I will not reproach you for the pain you have cost me; I know it is not your fault that your health has become so frail. I ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... reference. Mr. Locker, for it is by this name, and as the author of 'London Lyrics,' that he will be best remembered, devoted his attention almost exclusively to English literature, although of late years he had devoted as much attention as his frail health would allow to the formation of a section of rare books in French literature. It would be impossible to describe in this place all the many book rarities at Rowfant; we must be content, therefore, with indicating ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... how, starting from such a dogma, he can ever vindicate and uphold his own theory of human liberty. On such theistic principles all sin must be simply defect, and all defect must be absolutely fatuitous.' Eclecticism was a beautiful but frail levee, opposed to the swollen tide of skepticism, and, as in every other crevasse when swept away, it only caused the stream to rush ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... sense, my dear sir," rejoined Campana; "but we are all frail, erring creatures, and he was hardly dealt by. He is now gone to his heavy, heavy account, and I may as well tell you the poor boy's sad story at once. Had you but seen him in his prattling infancy, in ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... have said, and when one of the slippery and frail supports broke from under his feet he had recourse to his usual ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... that the greetings were as commonplace as if occurring in a crowded street. Thirty years had passed since the explorer had dedicated himself to the task of making the world know Africa, and he was an old man, worn-out, bent, frail, and sorrow-stricken. But courage was unfaltering, faith undimmed, power unabated. Had Stanley been a few months later, much of his work would have been lost, and his death even more pitiful than it was—yet he could smile ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... gate, no policeman, no signal: nothing but a rough wooden arch, on which is painted 'WHEN THE BELL RINGS, LOOK OUT FOR THE LOCOMOTIVE.' On it whirls headlong, dives through the woods again, emerges in the light, clatters over frail arches, rumbles upon the heavy ground, shoots beneath a wooden bridge which intercepts the light for a second like a wink, suddenly awakens all the slumbering echoes in the main street of a large town, and dashes on haphazard, pell-mell, neck-or-nothing, down the middle of the road. There ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... bewailed again the sad fate of his wife and of his young children. The Bishop entreated him anew to withdraw his mind from such harrowing reflections, and to give himself entirely to God. Overwhelmed with grief, Egmont exclaimed with natural and simple pathos—"Alas! how miserable and frail is our nature, that, when we should think of God only, we are unable to shut out the images ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... repeated peals of thunder crashing over our heads, while the lightning played incessantly, beautiful but most awful to behold. The rain at first came in gusts, but after a while, such a deluge poured down upon us, that in half an hour our little frail huts were beaten down over our heads. One minute's exposure to the sheets of water that were descending drenched us through. With difficulty we crawled to a little cavern, which just held us, and also permitted the servants to change the children's dripping ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... like a monster to him. What he had fought so hard to hold from his own, now was being poured out upon his helpless little cousins. A thought of help and succor came again and again to his mind, but he remembered how frail Nell was for any added burden. Her sharp eyes saw the struggle and doubt in his mind, and she knew ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... I have disclosed, it will be seen that I am but a frail man; but for many years I have striven honestly and hard to discipline sexuality within myself, and to regulate it according to right reason, pure hygiene, and the moral law; and I can but hope ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... long have bound him. It has fallen. He is free again. In dying, the sufferer made no sign. Suddenly she plunged into the dark profound, so impenetrable to mortal eyes, and as the turbid waves closed, sighing over her, he who had called her wife turned from the couch on which her frail body remained, with an inward "Thank God! I am ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... patient up was now passing away and the inevitable reaction was setting in. Oh, if he were only a year older so that he could have communicated to us by speech his feelings and his wants! His little body, which stood the long sickness with such fortitude, got frail. His bright eyes, high forehead and round cheeks remained, however, to defy the waste of the disease. The parson came and uttered words of encouragement. "Symptoms of death," he said, pointing to the sick-bed (and ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... the necessity of lightness, the weight of the various elements had to be kept at a minimum, and the factor of safety in construction was therefore exceedingly small, so that the machine as a whole was delicate and frail and incapable of sustaining any unusual strain. This defect was to be corrected in later models by utilising data gathered in ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... were upon duty over the royal prisoners, had difficulty, not merely in saving them from this horrible inhumanity, but also in preventing their prison from being forced. Three-coloured ribbons were extended across the street, and this frail barrier was found sufficient to intimate that the Temple was under the safeguard of the nation. We do not read that the efficiency of the three-coloured ribbons was tried for the protection of any of the other prisoners. No doubt the executioners had their instructions where ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... of love and hate. He knew that you can have a contempt for a girl and her ideals and yet love her. That sort of love is like those big thin bowls they showed me in Japan—beautiful, expensive and awful frail—no use at all for domestic purposes. I thought this out on the voyage to Genoa, and put Gladys, so to speak, on a shelf, where she is now. And as I thought it out, I saw how I stood. I saw I was not only an alien wherever ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... and the half-submerged man parted company. The former was steered for the open sea; the latter drifted and tossed helplessly to and fro, growing hourly weaker and more and more benumbed, but always hanging on with convulsive tenacity to the friendly timber that buoyed him up, and was his last frail chance of life. ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... were aware of what was at my feet, kneeling there, face buried in clasped hands, too soft, too small, too frail to hold a man's whole destiny. And, as I bent to kiss them, I scarce dared clasp them, scarce dared lift her to my arms, scarce dared meet the frightened wonder in her eyes, and the full sweetness of them, and the ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... result of this marriage was the quasi-legitimisation of the child Antonio—a vigorous youngster and certain to outlive frail ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... within and the laughing crowds had dispersed, Bob's mother came to Jeremy, put her hands on his shoulders and looked long into his face. She was a frail slip of a woman, dark like her son, with a sensitive mouth and big, black eyes full of courage. Jeremy flushed a slow scarlet under her gaze, but his eyes never ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... and dying, Knew neither friend nor foe, She spent her strength in trying To heal a neighbor's woe. For deeds by love inspired The Kaiser's vengeance fell On form so frail and tired, Heroic ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... Tacitus sublimely expresses himself at the close of his admired biography of Agricola: "I do not mean to censure the custom of preserving in brass or marble the shape and stature of eminent men; but busts and statues, like their originals, are frail and perishable. The soul is formed of finer elements, its inward form is not to be expressed by the hand of an artist with unconscious matter; our manners and our morals may in some degree trace the resemblance. All of Agricola that gained our love and raised our admiration still ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... than six. Night fell before the fortification was nearly completed. Unfortunately it was bright moonlight. The cannon from the fortress continued to play upon the half-finished works. The Walloons, and at last the citizens, feared to lift their heads above their frail rampart. The senators, whom Champagny had deputed to superintend the progress of the enterprise, finding the men so indisposed, deserted their posts. They promised themselves that, in the darkest hour of the following night, the work should ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Mr. Warne in his gentle tones, which were yet not without more firmness than one might expect from so frail a person, "that I have heard somewhere a homely proverb to the effect that it is not ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... his dramatic entertainment censored by a frail, prim little thing like Miss Beach tickled his burly sense of humor. "It would be a horrible thing if I should go to see anything vulgar, wouldn't it?" he observed. "But I think I'll take a chance. You go ahead ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... was Richard of Anjou, dog and cat. Now here was all cat. Not the wolf's lust, but the lion's jealous rage spurred him to the act. He could see this beautiful thing of flesh without any longing to lick or tear; he could have seen the frail soul of it, but half-born, sink back into the earth out of sight; he could have killed Jehane or made her as his mother to him. But he could not see one other get that which was his. His by all heaven she was. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... this point the young sailor looked over his brother's shoulder and saw his mother coming along the hall. A second later he held her clasped in his arms. She looked very small and frail while standing beside that tall, broad-shouldered son, who was as fine a specimen of an American sailor as could be found anywhere outside of New England. Although he was but three years older than Marcy, who was ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... his pacing to and fro, and gazed at the frail figure, and fine old face before him, with mingled compassion ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... bed I watch the moonbeams cast a trail So bright, so cold, so frail, That for a space it gleams Like hoar-frost on the margin of my dreams. I raise my head, — The splendid moon I see: Then droop my head, And sink to dreams of thee — ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... service, with a generosity that often reduced her to utter exhaustion. But none who knew or loved her ever misinterpreted the coldness of those seasons of exhaustion. We knew that it was not the spirit that was chilled, but only the frail mortal tabernacle. When I called on her at this time, she could not see me at first; and when, at last, she came, it was evident that she was in a state of utter prostration. Her hands were like ice; her face was ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Susan Bailey, a gentle, frail little body also joined our circle, adding one more pair of eyes to those whose scrutiny must have been somewhat trying to the bride. To meet these blunt, forthright folk at such a table without betraying amusement or surprise, required tact, but the New Daughter succeeded in winning them all, ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland |
