"Thin-skinned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into disgraceful artifices. The life of the unfortunate victims, pilloried in the Dunciad and accused of the unpardonable sins of poverty and dependence, was too often one which might have extorted sympathy even from a thin-skinned poet and critic. ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... his fine hands, palms uppermost, and flexed them; then, turning them, he laid them flat upon the table and again spread out his fingers. They were notable hands—shapely, supple, strong as steel, the thin-skinned fingertips as delicate and sensitive of touch as the antennae he was used to handling. They were even more capable than of old, because of the exquisite work they had been trained to accomplish, work to which ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... truthful quite beyond the limits of a mere negative virtue. But he was also, what seems almost incompatible with this ferocious truthfulness, excessively self-conscious and morally attitudinising, a thin-skinned poseur. To reconcile these seemingly contradictory characteristics, to become what he wished to appear, to pose as what he was, to make himself up (if I may say so) as himself, to intensify what he recognised as his main characteristics and efface all his other ones, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... you have begun to devote yourself so tremendously, that I have come to take the thing seriously at all. I confess, if you like, that I have got you into the scrape—now I want to get you out of it! I am not thin-skinned, but I hate family unpleasantnesses—and you know what ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Lucian had been voluminous enough, without the mathematical demonstration. The banterers seem to have put poor Harvey nearly out of his wits; he and his friends felt their blows too profoundly; they were much too thin-skinned, and the solemn air of Harvey in his graver moments at their menaces is extremely ludicrous. They frequently called him Gabrielissime Gabriel, which quintessence of himself seems to have mightily affected him. They threatened to confute his letters till eternity—which seems to have put ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... wonder whether they will be thin-skinned enough ever to discover that other and less delightful side of life only seen by those who have plenty of leisure. Sordid cares may be very terrible to the sensitive, and make them miss the best of everything, but as long as they have them ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... had fallen foul of him as usual. Contact with this childlike, thin-skinned creature, who let his very heart burn itself out in a clasp of his hand, always made him brutal. "Now, Bjerregrav, have you tried it—you know ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... "God's mercy, Andrew, how thin-skinned you are! On how fine a thread you make your hopes and my reputation hang, since you let the cruel sword of jealousy so easily pierce your soul. Tell me, Andrew, if there were any artifice or deceit in this case, could I not have held my tongue ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... (by Englishmen) as a thin-skinned people. It is you who are thin-skinned. An Englishman may write with the most brutal frankness about any man or institution among us and we republish him without dreaming of altering a line or a word. But England cannot stand that kind of a book written about herself. It is England that is thin-skinned. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of perfected effort. There is nothing more delightful than to sit for a strictly limited time with a child who tells you what he means to do when he is a man; but when that same child, loud-voiced, insistent, unblushingly eager for praise, but thin-skinned as the most morbid of hobbledehoys, stands about all your ways telling you the same story in the same voice, you begin to yearn for something made and finished—say Egypt and a completely dead mummy. It ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... had it out with Tyler. Jed said himself afterward that it was a regular old-fashioned session, but further than that he would not commit himself, beyond saying that of course Hat was sensitive—awful sensitive—and just as thin-skinned as she could be, and it was only natural she should get up on her high horse when once she had him alone. It was not till near midnight that, red of eye and with her hair stringing down any old how, she put her head out of the companionway and looked vengefully ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... kind in covering the unsightly underbrush of damp places. And here, first, last, and always, come the wild grapes, showing so many types of leaf and fruit, from the early ripening summer grape of the high-climbing habit, having the most typical leaf and thin-skinned, purple berries, that have fathered so many cultivated varieties; the frost grape, with its coarsely-toothed, rather heart-shaped, pointed leaf and small black berries, that are uneatable until after frost (and rather ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... "Your friend, Pleader Carr—or whatever he calls himself—must be as thin-skinned as you are, Val, to fancy that a rubbishing action of that sort, brought against a husband, can reflect disgrace on the wife! Separate, indeed! Has he lived in a wood all his life? Well, I ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... put upon the facts submitted to him absolutely and entirely justified the course which he took in that controversy. Mr. Gladstone, as Mr. Morley somewhat drily states in his biography, "reckoned on a proper stoicism in the victims of public necessity," and I suppose my brother was regarded as thin-skinned, but a man may be forgiven a measure of sensitiveness when ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... thin-skinned, sir. If you can't keep from abusing me about business details, go ahead and abuse. It will ease your feelings and the abuse will not hurt me, because I don't propose to do anything knowingly to justify abuse. Twitting ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... laugh, and went on debating in whispers the object-lesson before them. And Jude said he also thought they were both too thin-skinned—that they ought never to have been born—much less have come together for the most preposterous of ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... not thin-skinned, but his tone shocked me. "Dear boy," I said, "they wouldn't look at it in that light. They would be your ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... I'm thin-skinned and can't stand a little teasing," Sarah continued, "for I'm sure I can—I always have had to. But lately I haven't said a thing that hasn't made one or other of you 'hoot' as Kitty says. And everything I've wanted to do you've thought ridiculous. Lately the boys have begun to laugh at ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... Press at greater length than I otherwise should have done, because I think after the reader has followed me through a short review of English Items, he will see what strong internal testimony they bear to the truth of my previous observations. I would also remark that I am not at all thin-skinned as to travellers giving vent to their true feelings with regard to my own country. All countries have their weaknesses, their follies, and their wickednesses. Public opinion in England, taken as a whole, is decidedly ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... a pity that the Tarantella is gone to Berlin, for, as you know from Schubert's letter, Liszt is mixed up in this monetary affair, and I may have some unpleasantness. He is a thin-skinned Hungarian, and may think that I do not trust him because I directed that the manuscripts should not be given otherwise than for cash. I do not know, but I have a presentiment of a disagreeable mess. Do not say anything about it to the ailing Leo; go and see him if ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... omission, I added, was one which could easily be remedied there and then, as I happened to share Mr Bradlaugh's views as to the absurdity of the belief in these violent interferences with the order of nature by a short-tempered and thin-skinned supernatural deity. Therefore—and at that point I took ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... mind them unco weel—they cost me a' my few savings, mair by token; an' mony a braw fallow paid for ither folks' sins that tide. But my puir laddie here's no made o' that stuff. He's ower thin-skinned for a patriot." ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... sitting-room, or on the balcony with me, as you used. You don't seem to want my society; you make excuses if I suggest going anywhere. You and your brother and cousin are continually getting away by yourselves and talking in whispers. Oh, I'm not hurt. It isn't that. I'm not so thin-skinned and stupid. But I've been thinking that perhaps I'd offended you, or you were simply tired of me, and, being kind-hearted, didn't like to send me about my business. You know, dear, if you would ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... Dragon-flies, Flies and Wasps, small Dung-beetles and Locusts. If I offer her a Mantis, a Bumble-bee, an Anoxia—the equivalent of the common Cockchafer—and other dishes probably unknown to her race, she accepts all and any, large and small, thin-skinned and horny-skinned, that which goes afoot and that which takes winged flight. She is omnivorous, she preys on everything, down to her own ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... scowled. "You delight, Monsieur, in touching the raw spots—However, I daresay matters will go rippingly." He took the bills and counted them into his own purse. "A chap can't afford to be too sentimental or thin-skinned." He was thinking of a couple of clubs in Cairo from which he had been asked to resign. Then he laughed callously as he added aloud: "You see there's a regiment stationed there, just now, which I'd rather not meet. I used to belong to its mess—once ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... weeks—the ceaseless mockery of Miss Catheron's soft, scornful tones, the silent contempt and derision of her hard black eyes. What should she wear? how should she act? What if she made some absurd blunder, betraying her plebeian birth and breeding? What if she mortified her thin-skinned husband? Oh! why was it necessary to ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... not an important crop at Aldington, the land was too stiff, but I had some fields which contained limestone, where good crops could be grown. Even there it was inclined to coarseness, but in dry seasons sometimes proved a very nice bright and thin-skinned sample. Before the repeal of the malt tax, which was accompanied by legislation that permitted the brewers to use sugar, raw grain and almost anything, including, as people said, "old boots and shoes" instead of barley malt, good prices, up to 42s. a quarter and over, ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... DE MAITRE went widely abroad over the world. The poor Prince's words and procedures were eagerly caught up by a scrutinizing public,—and some of the former were not too guarded. At Dresden, he said, one morning, calling on a General Finck whom we shall hear of again: "Four such disagreeing, thin-skinned, high-pacing (UNEINIGE, PIQUIRTE) Generals as Fouquet, Schmettau, Winterfeld and Goltz, about you, what was to be done!" said the Prince to Finck. [Preuss, ii. 79 n.: ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... esteem of men is fawned for instead of being honestly earned, criticism is deprecated, importance is attached to the babbling of blockheads, and even to the opinion of fools. What should have been self-respect in Major Colquhoun had degenerated into a devouring vanity, which rendered him thin-skinned to the slightest aspersion. He had married Evadne in order to win the credit of having secured an exceptionally young and attractive wife, and now all he thought of was "what fellows would say" if they knew of the slight she had put upon him. To conceal this was the one ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... thin-skinned person. Where there was anything "doing" he wanted to cut a figure. And his desire to be important, and be marked by the company, began to make him objectionable before ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... warfare, to abstain from a natural and obvious ground of defence. I am not so unreasonable as to expect this, if I cared one farthing about anything that can be said of that inquiry, in which, if I cared at all, it was in being too easily satisfied. Nor am I so thin-skinned as to have any feeling on the subject; and the only thing that could have made it at all unpleasant to me would be the appearance (which such a step as you speak of must have) of my being angered on the occasion, and having used ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... year the mulleins hold their own and no more. Any particular field may have more or less, but in the long run the average for a district is about the same. Some of the seeds are poor and thin. These scarcely sprout. Others spring up into thin-skinned plants, and the first frost nips them. Still others lack the woolly coating in its finest abundance, and the browsing animals eat these. Others lack power to put out a wide-ranging root supply and the first drought kills these. Still others fail ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... varieties. In the dark he can usually tell them by the sense of touch. There is not only the size and shape, but there is the texture and polish. Some apples are coarse grained and some are fine; some are thin-skinned and some are thick. One variety is quick and vigorous beneath the touch; another gentle and yielding. The pinnock has a thick skin with a spongy lining, a bruise in it becomes like a piece of cork. The tallow apple has an unctuous ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... imagine," retorted Jack, "that anything that we can say or do will have much permanent power of hurting you. For the last two years you have been engaged in an—intrigue, such as a thin-skinned or sensitive person would hardly of her own free will undertake. You may be able to explain it to yourself—no doubt you are—but to our more limited comprehensions it must remain inexplicable. We can ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman |
