"Fabric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... like an unhealthy excrescence on the face of Nature, who, as though ashamed of the disgusting blemish, has thrown a veil over the defect. The most exquisite fabric that can be imagined—a scarlet veil, like a silken net—falls over this ugly fungus, and, spreading like a tent at its base, it is ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... school of jurisprudence at Rome and practiced in the courts. I have already remarked that the barbarians who overran Italy allowed the vanquished the right to be judged in most cases by their own code. But the splendid fabric of the Roman law was too elaborate a system to win the attentive study of a rude people; the Church had its own canons, the people their own ancestral customs; and until the twelfth century no development ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... weight for a moment. It was accompanied by booming noises. The sounds were not in the air outside, because there was no air. They were reverberations of the rocket-motors themselves, transmitted to the fabric of the ship. The ship's steering-rockets were correcting the course of the vessel and—yes, there was another surge of power—nudging it to a more correct line of flight to meet the space platform coming up from behind. The platform went around the world six times a day, four thousand miles out. ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... attributes are but like his back parts, and he leaves the resemblance of his footsteps upon other creatures. What can be so beautiful as the image of God upon the soul? Creatures, the nearer they are to God, the more pure and excellent. We see in the fabric of the world, bodies the higher they are, the more pure and cleanly, the more beautiful. Now then, what was man that was "made a little lower than the angels"?—in the Hebrew, "a little lower than God," tantum non deus. Seeing man is set next to God, his ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... already freed from all defects; by power of the good root obtained in other births, he quickly reached the fruit of an Arhat. The secret light of pure wisdom's virtue enabled him to understand, on listening to the law; just as a pure silken fabric with ease is dyed a different color. Thus having attained to self-illumination, and done that which was to be done, he was converted; then looking at his person richly ornamented, his heart was filled with shame. Tathagata knowing his inward thoughts, in gathas spoke the following words: ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... few drops of hot water being poured on immediately after applying the chloride of soda. By the same process, iron-mould in linen or calico may be removed, dipping immediately in cold water to prevent injury to the fabric. Wax dropped on a shawl, table-cover, or cloth dress, is easily discharged by applying spirits of wine; syrups or preserved fruits, by washing in lukewarm water with a dry cloth, and pressing the spot between ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... did it enter on the road of success; but the whole nation was fired with high enthusiasm when it finally recognized the goal to which the great statesman was so surely leading it. Success was the foundation on which Bismarck built up the mighty fabric of the German Empire. Even in the years of peace he understood how to rivet the imagination of the people by an ambitious and active policy, and how, in spite of all opposition, to gain over the masses to his views, and make them serve his own great ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... one or two of us appear on the stage just in time to arouse in our mamma a sense of duty to her children and to prevent the elopement. Now we submit that the office of justifying our entire modern marriage fabric is too burdensome for us. Don't you think so, ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... she could see nothing, for the glass was cloudy. She noted, with a pang of disgust, that the table-cover was made of brown alpaca, fringed all around by the fabric itself, cut unskilfully into shreds with the scissors. As she ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... revolving hooks. It is well known that the lock stitch is formed by the crossing of two threads, one of which lies over, and the other under, the cloth to be sewn. This crossing point, to insure integrity of the stitch, must occur as nearly as possible in the middle of the thickness of the fabric. The crossing must also be effected while a certain strain, called tension, is imposed upon both threads. If the tension of one thread should outweigh that of the other, the locking point becomes displaced. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... as he does Gradations above and below pleasure Greatest apprehensions, from things unseen, concealed He did not think mankind worthy of a wise man's concern Home anxieties and a mind enslaved by wearing complaints How infirm and decaying material this fabric of ours is I do not willingly alight when I am once on horseback Led by the ears by this charming harmony of words Little knacks and frivolous subtleties Men approve of things for their being rare and new Must of necessity walk in the steps of another Natural death ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... and its aisles, give this portion of the church an awkward perspective, and tend to diminish the apparent height of the whole facade. The screen itself was the last important addition to be made to the fabric by Bishop Brantyngham (1370-94), and it is little more than a low stone scaffolding for holding the rows of figures of saints, kings, and other distinguished persons which fill the niches. An attempt to identify these sixty-five individuals, with the ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath
... It shall be the object of the Black Belt Improvement Society to, as far as possible, eliminate the credit system from our social fabric; to stimulate in all members the desire to raise, as far as possible, all their food supplies at home, and pay cash for whatever may be purchased ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... eighteenth-century philosophers, science, and literature, are simple enough. Like every wise man, he felt that the end of all philosophy and science is emphatically social, the construction and maintenance and improvement of a fabric under which the communities of men may find shelter, and may secure all the conditions for living their lives with dignity and service. Then he held that no truth can be harmful to society. If he found any system of opinions, any ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... things!" I had an absurd impression of a duel between myself and the cavernous antagonism of the huge black spaces below me. I argued that all this pain and waste was no more than the selvedge of a proportionately limitless fabric of sane, interested, impassioned and joyous living. These stiff still memories seemed to refute me. But why us? they seemed to insist. In some way it's essential,—this ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... sarcophagi, of [marble?], well carved in the antique style, and adorned with the story of Meleager. They were in the shape of a large bath, and found, I think, at Paestum. The old church had passed to decay about a hundred years ago, when the present fabric was built; it is very beautifully arranged, and worthy of the place, which is eminently beautiful, and of the community, who are Benedictines—the most gentlemanlike order in the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... these thieves possessed the Bad Lands. They were here, there, and everywhere, sinister, intangible shadows, weaving in and out of the bright-colored fabric of frontier life. They were in every saloon and in almost every ranch-house. They rode on the round-ups, they sat around the camp-fire with the cowpunchers. Some of the most capable ranchmen were in league with them, bankers east and west along the railroad were ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... the arches of London Bridge. What immensely perplexed me was a sharp, angry sort of rattle, in all quarters, far off and close at hand, and sometimes right at my own back, where it sounded as if the stout fabric of my English surtout had been ruthlessly rent in twain; and everybody's clothes, all over the fair, were evidently being torn asunder in the same way. By and by, I discovered that this strange noise was produced ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stool whereon he had placed it, and we prepared to take our departure. In leaving the hut, Jack stumbled heavily against the door-post, which was so much decayed as to break across, and the whole fabric of the hut seemed ready to tumble about our ears. This put it into our heads that we might as well pull it down, and so form a mound over the skeleton. Jack, therefore, with his axe, cut down the other door-post, which, when it was done, brought the whole hut in ruins ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... many years worked upon it steadily until it was stiff as cloth of gold and voluminous as a puffed-out summer cloud. Some think that much of it was such stuff as dreams are made of. Probably some breadths were the fabric of vision. Still it seems certain that he did have some kind of an extraordinary coat or mantle. The adventures which he relates of himself are those of a paladin. Born in 1579 or 1580, he was at this time still a young man. But already he had fought in France ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... And so it came about that a sense of mystery, of large issues, of things at once strong and hidden, impenetrable to his understanding and concerning which no questions might be asked, encircled Dominic's childhood and passed into the very fabric of his thought. While through it all his mother moved, to him tender and wholly exquisite, but with the reticence of some deep-seated enthusiasm silently cherished, some far-reaching alarm silently endured, always upon her. And ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... and if Richard still wanted instigation, then it must follow, that he had not murdered Henry the Sixth, his son, and Clarence, to pave his own way to the crown. If this fine story of Buckingham and Percival is not true, what becomes of Sir Thomas More's credit, on which the whole fabric leans? ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... opened to my view Glory beyond all glory ever seen By waking sense or by the dreaming soul! The appearance, instantaneously disclosed Was of a mighty city,—boldly say A wilderness of building, sinking far And self-withdrawn into a boundless depth, Far sinking into splendor,—without end! Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold, With alabaster domes, and silver spires, And blazing terrace upon terrace, high Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright, In avenues disposed; there, towers begirt With battlements that on their restless fronts Bore stars,—illumination of all gems! The ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... tending. On this point, the writings of Dr. Newman, while he still remained within the Anglican fold, are a vast store of the best and the most authoritative information. His doctrines on Ecclesiastical miracles and on Development are the corner-stones of the Tractarian fabric. He believed that his arguments led either Romeward, or to what ecclesiastics call "Infidelity," and I call Agnosticism. I believe that he was quite right in this conviction; but while he chooses the one alternative, I choose the other; as he rejects Protestantism on the ground of its incompatibility ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... things, and one's neighbour as one's self. (62) This cannot be a spurious passage, nor due to a hasty and mistaken scribe, for if the Bible had ever put forth a different doctrine it would have had to change the whole of its teaching, for this is the corner-stone of religion, without which the whole fabric would fall headlong to the ground. (63) The Bible would not be the work we have been ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... fore end of the main hatchway, came into view, and we saw that the vessel was indeed, as we had supposed, hove-to on the starboard tack, with her mainyard laid almost square, the mainsail brailed up, and the remainder of her canvas set; and the fabric was full of the sound of a gentle creaking of timbers, trusses, and parrals, and the soft rustling of the white cloths overhead. She had no way on her, but was curtsying and rolling gently on a long, sluggish swell that came creeping up ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... the world was well constructed, but that the particular people disgraced the elegance and beauty of the general fabric." In the same manner I was relating once to him how Dr. Collier observed that the love one bore to children was from the anticipation one's mind made while one contemplated them. "We hope," says he, "that they will sometime make ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... uprights at the base, where exposed to the full violence of the waves, had become weather-worn, and required renewing in part; but this was only equivalent to a ship being overhauled and having some of her planks renewed. The main fabric of the lighthouse remained as sound and steadfast at the end of that long period as it was at the beginning, and it would in all probability have remained on the Eddystone Rock till the present day, had not a foe assailed it, whose nature ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... national taxes, and to enforce the laws made by Congress. Thus Washington had shown that rare combination of the leader who could first destroy by revolution, and who, having led his country through a great civil war, was then able to build up a new and lasting fabric upon the ruins of a system which had been overthrown. At the close of his official service he returned again to Mount Vernon, and, after a few years of quiet retirement, died just as the century in which he had played so great a part ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... the very essence of morality is involved in the dislike (within reasonable limits) of death. Morality aims at a maximum of comfortable life and a minimum of death; if then, a minimum of death and a maximum of life were no longer held worth striving for, the whole fabric of morality would collapse, as indeed we have it on record that it is apt to do among classes that from one cause or another have come to live in disregard ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... can these claims be substantiated? Was Napoleon, although a usurper, like Cromwell and Caesar, also a benefactor like them; and did his fabric of imperialism prove a blessing to civilization? What, in reality, were his services? Do they offset his aspirations and crimes? Is he worthy of the praises of mankind? Great deeds he performed, but did they ultimately tend to the welfare of France ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... the imbecile and half-witted may seem in comparison with the normal members of the community, it should always be remembered that feeble-mindedness is not an unrelated expression of modern civilization. Its roots strike deep into the social fabric. Modern studies indicate that insanity, epilepsy, criminality, prostitution, pauperism, and mental defect, are all organically bound up together and that the least intelligent and the thoroughly degenerate classes in every community are the most prolific. Feeble-mindedness in ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... as the Invisible King of the whole world means not merely that God is to be made and declared the head of the world, but that the kingdom of God is to be present throughout the whole fabric of the world, that the Kingdom of God is to be in the teaching at the village school, in the planning of the railway siding of the market town, in the mixing of the mortar at the building of the workman's house. It means ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... priesthood, and waits with his quiet "pazienza" till the progress of education shall have secured him a wife who won't grudge him his dinner. But Lent is no reality to him, and spring is a very real thing indeed. The winter is so short that the whole habit of his life and the very fabric of his home is framed on the apparent supposition that there is no such thing as winter at all. His notion of life is life in the open air, life in the sunshine. The peasant of the Cornice looks on with amazement at an Englishman tramping along in the rain. A little rainfall ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... the little jealousies and intrigues among them, and all their histories and their ambitions. They are more moral than you may think, but it is not the moral one who is the most interesting. Her virtue is generally a very threadbare, common sort of thing. The—others—have more color in the fabric of their lives, and you can't think how picturesque their passions are. One of the chorus girls has two children. I feel a brute sometimes at the way she—" Elfrida broke off, and looked out of the window for an instant. "She brings their little clothes into my bedroom to make—though there ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... island there had been an ancient Roman temple, consecrated to Apollo. And Sebert, perhaps on account of the seclusion which Thorney afforded, resolved to build a church on the site, and he dedicated the fabric to St. Peter the Apostle. This church is now Westminster Abbey; the busy city of Westminster is old Thorney Island, that seat of desolation; and the bones of Sebert yet rest in the structure which he founded. Another ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... to rise reproachfully between them; that generous, gentle woman to whom his faith was pledged. No matter at what cost, she must guard Leo's peace of mind; and to dispel his jealous illusion now, would speedily overwhelm the tottering fabric of his allegiance. Folding her arms tightly across her ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... above it, while the main body was to force the bridge itself. On the morning of the intended crossing, the Irish sent a volley of grenades among the wooden work of the bridge, when some of the fascines took fire, and the whole fabric was soon in a blaze. The smoke blew into the faces of the English, and it was found impossible to ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... soul. There is a vine growing in the islands of the tropic seas that thrives best upon the ancient ruins or crumbling walls of some edifice built by man; yet ever as it thrives, the tiny tendrils penetrate between the fibres of the stone, cutting and cutting till the whole fabric disappears, leaving only the verdant mass of the foliage of the living vine. Spiritualism is to the future humanity what this vine is ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... face a member of the crowd whose inquisitive propensities had become annoying, but as soon as he left another filled the gap. Quite pitiful was it to see how trivial articles of foreign manufacture—such, for instance, as the cover of an ordinary tin or the fabric of one's clothing—brought a regular deluge of childish interest and inane questioning; and if I happened to make a few shorthand notes upon anything making a particular impression, a look half surprised, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... almost the only decent chance he has given them. You can do something with a word like "you." It rhymes with "sue," "eyes of blue," "woo," and all sorts of succulent things, easily fitted into the fabric of a lyric. And it has the enormous advantage that it can be repeated thrice at the end of a refrain when the composer has given you those three long notes, which is about all a composer ever thinks of. When a composer hands a lyricist a "dummy" for ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the Association in Mr. Freeman's volume, entitled Remarks on the Architecture of Llandaff Cathedral, with an Essay towards a History of the Fabric—a volume which, as we learn from the preface, had its origin in the observations on some of the more singular peculiarities of the fabric made by the author at the Cardiff meeting of the Association in 1849. These remarks were further developed in a paper in the Archaeologia Cambrensis; and have now been expanded into the present descriptive and historical account of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... operations there remain two large piers for the support of the central tower, which form the earliest portion of the structure of St. Machar's now remaining."[111] The dean and chapter (of which Barbour, the father of Scottish poetry, was a member) taxed themselves for the fabric in sixty pounds annually for ten years; the bishop surrendered revenues worth about twice that sum; the Pope in 1380 made a grant of indulgences to all who should help the work. All these appliances but availed to raise the foundations of the nave a few ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... and workmen. Kerensky had fled. Lenin and Trotzky were the Marat and Danton of the Revolution, and decreed the Reign of Terror. Tales of appalling atrocity, some true, some false (no one can tell how true or how false), came through to France and England. It was certain that the whole fabric of society in Russia had dissolved in the wildest anarchy the world has seen in modern times, and that the Bolshevik gospel of "brotherhood" with humanity was, at least, rudely "interrupted" by wholesale murder within ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... and through the spray of the goura on her hat he saw Kedzie sharp and stark, her suavities of line and the milk-smooth fabric of her envelope. He studied Kedzie with emancipation, not seeing Charity at all any more—nor ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... limit, are ranged along their common centre, a branch. Many branches cluster around a large one, and all the largest branches in their turn cluster around the common trunk, or great centre supporting the whole fabric. Each leaf and twig and branch contributes its share to the life of the whole tree, and is in turn supported by the general ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Venetians made their glasses,—a most pure kind of glass, with a long stalk, within which was a curved elaboration of fancy-work, wreathed and twisted. This old glass was an heirloom of the Feltons, a relic that had come down with many traditions, bringing its frail fabric safely through all the perils of time, that had shattered empires; and, if space sufficed, I could tell many stories of this curious vase, which was said, in its time, to have been the instrument both of the Devil's sacrament in the forest, and of the Christian in the village meeting-house. But, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... description, sometimes realistic in detail, sometimes largely or even wholly conventional. It has always in it something of a reaction, real or affected, from crowds and the life of cities, an attempt to regain simplicity by isolation from the complex fabric of society. ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... may be added his self-righteousness, especially under criticism or satire. "Every Man Out of His Humour" is the first of three "comical satires" which Jonson contributed to what Dekker called the poetomachia or war of the theatres as recent critics have named it. This play as a fabric of plot is a very slight affair; but as a satirical picture of the manners of the time, proceeding by means of vivid caricature, couched in witty and brilliant dialogue and sustained by that righteous indignation which must lie ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... attempt, a few days before, to awe and fascinate by a spectacle of pomp and pageantry the too impressionable Briton. Nothing has been omitted that could in any way buttress the insecure and tottering fabric of aristocratic power. But as the ancient sage shrewdly observed, dementation is the prelude of doom; "whom the gods destroy they first infatuate." The representatives of the nation have taken the earliest ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... did not know how impossible it was for her to ever wholly escape the things that belonged to her childhood and youth. Those things of her girlhood, out of which her heart and soul had been fashioned, were as interwoven in the fabric of her being as the vitality, strength and purity of the clean, wholesome, outdoor life of those same years were wrought into the glowing health and vigor and beauty of ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... founders were laid to rest beneath the gorgeous fabric they had founded, and there they had hoped to await the day of doom and righteous retribution. But alas! poor Normans! in the sixteenth century old Harry pulled the grand church down above their heads; in the nineteenth ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... unclouded, a steady blaze; thick, shining, black hair elaborately curled, and a rich tropical complexion, clear and glowing as the warm blood that pulsed through her rounded graceful form. She wore a fleecy fabric, topaz-coloured, with black lace trimmings; yellow roses gemmed her hair, and topaz and ruby ornaments clasped her throat and arms. An Eastern queen she looked, exacting universal homage, and full of fiery jealousy whenever her eyes ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... into a vast square in the heart of the city, I perceived a great gate covered with plates of gold, the two leaves of which stood open, and a curtain of silk stuff seemed to be drawn before it; I also saw a lamp hanging over the gate. After I had well considered the fabric, I made no doubt but it was the palace of the prince who reigned over that country; and being very much astonished that I had not met with one living creature, I went thither in hopes to find some: I entered the gate, and was still more surprised when I saw none but ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... Piura, a town which lies about fourteen leagues up in the country. The town of Paita is itself an open place; its sole protection and defence is a small fort near the shore of the bay. It was of consequence to us to be well informed of the fabric and strength of this fort; and by the examination of our prisoners we found that there were eight pieces of cannon mounted in it, but that it had neither ditch nor out work, being only surrounded by a plain brick wall; and that the garrison consisted ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... expression to inspire mirth. His eyebrows lifted to little gothic arches of anxiety, a rash of tiny perspiration broke out over his blue shaved face and as he sat on the edge of his chair, it seemed that inevitably the tight sausage-like knees must push their way through mere fabric. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... wide-spreading sounding-board, were likewise early importations from Holland; as also the communion-table, of massive form and curious fabric. The same might be said of a weather-cock perched on top of the belfry, and which was considered orthodox in all windy matters, until a small pragmatical rival was set up on the other end of the church above the chancel. This latter bore, and still ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... stories that outrival the romances of Dumas and Hugo. And geography as a whole will reveal herself as the cherishing mother of us all, providing us with food, and drink, and shelter, and raiment, giving us poetry, and song, and story, and weaving golden fancies for the fabric of our ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... profits. A certain weave was in great vogue that season, the demand far exceeding the output, and it so happened that the mill of the man with the professorial face was one of the very few that produced that fabric. So he let me have a much larger supply of it than any other cloak-manufacturer in the country was able to obtain. My business then took a great leap, while my overhead expenses remained the same. My net profits exceeded two hundred thousand ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... the existing conditions were the only ones possible—they were simply ideal; the sweater and the money-lender, whom he hated, were in the most harmonious agreement with the fundamental laws of life! And the terrible thing was that from this standpoint the social fabric was clearly illuminated: he could not deny it. He who best learned to accommodate himself to the existing state of things, conquered; no matter how vile the existing state ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... proud in death, And goes in haste to gain a better breath. The spicy heap fir'd with celestial rays Doth burn the aged Ph[oe]nix, when straight stays The chariot of th' amazed moon; the pole Resists the wheeling swift orbs, and the whole Fabric of Nature at a stand remains, Till the old bird a new young being gains. All stop and charge the faithful flames, that they Suffer not Nature's glory to decay. By this time, life which in the ashes lurks Hath fram'd the heart, and taught new ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... Gastrell seemed able to concoct these ingenious and plausible narratives to account for anything and everything that happened on any occasion. A single discrepancy, for instance, in the story that Dulcie had just repeated to me would have brought the whole fabric of what appeared to be true statements—though I believed them to be false—crumbling to the ground. But there had been no such discrepancy. Everything that had occurred during the afternoon in relation to Dick, the telegram sent to Eton, Doris Lorrimer's meeting him in place of Sir Roland's butler, ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... the still air. When I arrived at the area in front of the flight of marble steps which formed the entrance of the palazzo, I was astonished at the magnificence, the good taste, and the total disregard of expense which were exhibited. The palazzo itself appeared like the fabric built of diamonds and precious stones by the genii who obeyed the ring and lamp of Aladdin, so completely was its marble front hidden with a mass of many-coloured lamps, the reflection from whose galaxy of light rendered it bright as day for nearly one hundred yards ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... on ocean's stormy breast I see majestic VENICE rest; While round her spires the billows rave, Inverted splendours gild the wave. Fair liberty has rear'd with toil, Her fabric on this marshy soil. She fled those banks with scornful pride, Where classic Po devolves her tide: Yet here her unrelenting laws Are deaf to nature's, freedom's cause. Unjust! they seal'd FOSCARI'S doom, An exile in his early bloom. And he, who bore the rack unmov'd, Divided far ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... all the more necessary to remain with the others, and share the chances of safety offered by the great raft. Slight as these might be, they were still better than those that might await them, exposed on such a frail fabric as that they now occupied. It is true, that upon this they had left the burning vessel separate from the others; but immediately after they had rowed up alongside the larger structure, ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... each other, than they had experienced from the zeal of infidels. During the ages of ignorance which followed the subversion of the Roman empire in the West, the bishops of the Imperial city extended their dominion over the laity as well as clergy of the Latin church. The fabric of superstition which they had erected, and which might long have defied the feeble efforts of reason, was at length assaulted by a crowd of daring fanatics, who from the twelfth to the sixteenth century assumed the popular ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the nutty odor of dried grasses, the clear tang of coming frosts crystal to the taste as water; and if one listened, almost listened to the silence, one could hear above the lapping of the tide the far echo of the cataract. To Cartier the scene might have been the airy fabric of some dream world; but out of dreams of earth's high ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... annihilation of matter would involve our globe and its inhabitants in equal destruction. Of this matter, the concentrated power of man cannot create nor exterminate a single atom. The human body is a material fabric: the brain and nerves, together with those delicate organs that are the instruments of our perceptions,—whereby we receive light, detect fragrance, apprehend sounds, relish viands, and enjoy the gratifications of contact, are all of material ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... nerve had been touched, we must admire the wonderful perfection to which he has attained in the use of his cord. By these means he is able to conquer creatures too swift and strong for him, and make them his prey. When we see him repairing damages, weighting his light fabric in windy weather with pebbles or sticks, as a fisher weights his net, and cutting loose a captive whose great strength threatens the destruction of the web, then we begin to suspect that he has, above his special instinct, a reason that guides, modifies, and in many ways supplements ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... had been burnt, into the old presses where Holt's books and papers had been kept, and tried the spring, and whether the window worked still. The spring had not been touched for years, but yielded at length, and the whole fabric of the window sank down. He lifted it and it relapsed into its frame; no one had ever passed thence since Holt ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... entangled in them, tears them rectangularly—divides them into two longitudinal rents, at right angles with each other, and meeting at an apex where the thorn enters—but it is scarcely possible to conceive the piece 'torn off.' I never so knew it, nor did you. To tear a piece off from such fabric, two distinct forces, in different directions, will be, in almost every case, required. If there be two edges to the fabric—if, for example, it be a pocket-handkerchief, and it is desired to tear from it a slip, then, and then only, will the one force serve the purpose. But in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... things that its apostles should have no suspicion of its real nature; that they should no more recognise the common element between the new and the old than the early Christians recognised it between their faith and Paganism. If they did, they would be paralysed. Others say that the new fabric may be seen rising on every side, and that the coming religion is science. Certainly its apostles preach it without misgiving, but it is not on that account less possible that it may prove only to be the coming superstition—like Christianity, true to its true votaries, ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... of Bullock's oriole rewarded my slight search. They are larger and less compactly woven than the Baltimore's, and have a woolly appearance exteriorly, as if the down of the Cottonwood trees had been wrought into the fabric. Out on the plains I counted four dangling nests, old and new, on one small limb; but that, of course, was unusual, there being only one small clump of trees within a radius of ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... Maria Nikolaevna asked Sanin to put on her shawl and did not stir, while he wrapped the soft fabric round her really queenly shoulders. Then she took his arm, went out into the corridor, and almost cried out aloud. At the very door of the box Doenhof sprang up like some apparition; while behind his back she got a glimpse of the figure of the Wiesbaden critic. The ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... capital be one's own, it can scarcely be risked and lost, without the ruin of other men. No man could blow up his store in a compact street, and destroy only his own. Men of business are, like threads of a fabric, woven together, and subject, to a great extent, to a common fate of prosperity or adversity. I have no right to cut off my hand; I defraud myself, my family, the community, and God; for all these have an interest in that hand. Neither has ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... had led a wild, free life, but their dogged love for the Stuart cause brought to them desolation and ruin. By one stroke the British government destroyed the social fabric of centuries. From the farthest rock of the storm-wasted Orkneys to the narrow home of Clan Donald in Argyllshire, the ban of the government was laid on the clan organization. Worst of all, possession of the soil was given, not to the many clansmen, ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... remarkable phase of my experiences! I tell it here simply to show how one's isolation and departure from this planet touched not only the functions and feeling of every organ of the body, but indeed also the very fabric of the mind, with strange and unanticipated disturbances. All through the major portion of that vast space journey I hung thinking of such immaterial things as these, hung dissociated and apathetic, a cloudy megalomaniac, as it were, amidst the stars and planets in the void of space; and not ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... with intensity, for she had set herself to destroy the fabric of his spirit, which not even Rosamund had been able entirely to destroy by her desertion of him. Sometimes he felt a sort of ugly love of her, because she was the agent through whom he was learning to get rid of all that Rosamund had most prized ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... a failure; so was the second; but the third time never fails. Will twisted the cord on his fingers, with the result that the double hook turned right over, and the barbed points, in answer to a gentle twitch, took hold of the white fabric, after passing ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... hiding himself that he might still continue to bestow them. Nothing could calm the smart of the wound reopened in Pierre's heart—neither the warm peacefulness into which he entered, nor the silent solemnity of the broad, deep fabric, whose new stonework was quite bare, without a single painting or any kind of decoration; the nave being still half-barred by the scaffoldings which blocked up the unfinished dome. At that early hour the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... dead are unconscious and that they have no power to communicate with the living. This being established, it sweeps away at one stroke the entire foundation of Spiritualism. Evidence will now be presented to show that this is a Bible doctrine; and wherever this is received, the fabric of Spiritualism from base to finial falls; it cannot possibly stand. But where the doctrine prevails that only the thin veil that limits our mortal vision, separates us from a world full of the conscious, intelligent spirits of those who have departed this life, Spiritualism has the ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... blackness under the stars descended even to the treetops. But the attention of Smith and Helen, gazing north on Tremont Street, was fixed on the unsteady glow of threatening, reddish light thrown up against the absorbing fabric of the air. ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... opinion can be formed of the correctness of the writer's views, it is necessary to take to pieces this skilful fabric, and to bring the parts together in a different connection and with greater succinctness, following out each doctrine to its inevitable, but most remote, conclusions, so as to obtain a just idea of the position in ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... was not made by withered bracken or bramble leaves, and had nothing to do with the stealthy fall of a poacher's heavy boot. It came again more clearly, and Thurston was almost sure that it was the rustle of a woven fabric, such as a woman's dress. To confirm this opinion a soft laugh followed. He rose, deciding it could only be some assignation with a maid from the Hall, and no business of his. He had turned to retreat when he noticed the eastern side of a silver fir reflect ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... business in hand were one which it would be wicked to treat with impatience. She even struck her mother with awe by the grandeur of her ideas and the depth of her theories. Nor let it be supposed that she rushed away at once to the consideration of the great fabric which was to be the ultimate sign and mark of her status, the quintessence of her briding, the outer veil, as it were, of the tabernacle—namely, her wedding-dress. As a great poet works himself up by degrees to that inspiration which is necessary ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... paths in space must be thrown the shuttle of time and a ribbon of paper. It must be seen how a lever-pen, alternately dropping upon and rising at defined intervals from a fillet of paper moved by independent clock-work, would produce the fabric of the alphabet ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... doubt," Wanhope assented. "It is very striking how sudden the lapse was. Everyone who experienced it in himself could date it to a year, if not to a day. The agnosticism of scientific men was of course all the time undermining the fabric of faith, and then it fell in abruptly, reaching one believer after another as fast as the ground was taken wholly or partly from under his feet. I can remember how people once disputed whether there were such beings as guardian spirits or not. That minor question was disposed of when it was decided ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... archaic sort of way, pronouncing the words which appear upon its pages with a pronunciation never employed under any other circumstances. The newspaper is read, the psalms are intoned. It is a crime to be natural. All the time men are sick of the whole fabric of artificiality, and long for that touch of nature which makes the ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... very simple Tuscan basilica, with picturesque crypt and raised choir, of a very plain Romanesque type. It looks like a fitting church for the mother-town of Florence; it seems to recall in its own cold and austere fabric the more ancient claims of the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... on some ornament in the room. The whole fabric was raised a little from the fair head on which it seemed to grow—Caroline sprang forward instantly, and dexterously disentangling the accomplished actress, relieved her from this ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... Adriatic; but still more remarkably in the narrow strip of recent land (called the Placca) which connects Leucadia, one of the Ionian Islands, with the continent, and so much resembles a work of art, that it has been considered as a Roman fabric. The stone composing this isthmus is so compact, that the best mill-stones in the Ionian Islands are made from it; but it is in fact nothing more than gravel and sand cemented by calcareous matter, the accretion of which is supposed to be rapidly ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... seven maidens," and they brought him seven maidens; and he said, "Bring me seven baskets of cotton-bolls," and they brought him seven baskets of cotton-bolls; and he taught the seven maidens to weave a magical fabric from the cotton, and when they had finished it he held it aloft, and the breeze carried it away toward the firmament, and in the twinkling of an eye it was transformed into a beautiful full-orbed moon, and the same breeze caught ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... distinctions like these. In common fairness and in common candour, I feel myself compelled to give my decisive verdict against the conduct of men whose measures I firmly believe to have been hostile to British interests, destructive of British glory, and subversive of the splendid and, I trust, lasting fabric ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... ingenuity of man humbled and overcome; the elements of the Lord occupying the fabric which had set them at defiance; tossing, tumbling, and dancing, as if in mockery at their success! The structure, but a few hours past, as perfect as human intellect could devise, towering with its proud ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a shelf two dark, heavy cloth jackets, cut out, and tied up in separate bundles with a strip of the fabric from which they had been taken. As he handed them, to the woman ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... defeat; great imaginations rise to profit. Ten days after Skippy Bedelle had seen the gilded fabric of his future greatness collapse with the failure of the Foot Regulator to revolutionize the bathtub industry the spirit of invention had risen triumphantly from the ashes of first disillusionment. After all, there were other services to render to humanity, and the mind that at the age of ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... president of the Directory declared that monarchy would never show its frightful head in France, Bonaparte with his grenadiers entered the palace of St. Cloud, and, dispersing with the bayonet the deputies of the people, deliberating on the affairs of the state, laid the foundation of that vast fabric of despotism which ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... was in the island of Magellone that Apicius's ten books on cookery were rediscovered.' Ibid.—Vide Fabric. Biblioth: Lat: edit. ab ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... flattering illusion that it lives above the clouds and breathes mythological air. That is why all vehemence, the cry of Nature, all suffering, thoughtless familiarity, and every frank sign of love shock this delicate medium like a bombshell; they shatter this collective fabric, this palace of clouds, this enchanted architecture, just as shrill cockcrow scatters the fairies into hiding. These fine receptions are unconsciously a work of art, a kind of poetry, by which cultivated society reconstructs an idyll that is age-long dead. They ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... time to an Honourable Mr —— there. When she first came to the estate, her husband had been some years dead, and Lady Catherine brought with her a son, who was to be heir—at that time a boy like myself—and two handsome grown-up daughters. The castle was a great fabric, partly old and partly new. It stood in the midst of a noble park, with tall trees and red deer in it. Its last possessor had been a stingy old bachelor; but after Lady Catherine's coming, the housekeeping was put on a grand ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... did not lose heart at this fabric of lies; after the pleadings of the advocates whose ruinous eloquence he had bought with heavy gold, he defended his son himself, and put so much truth, so much passion, and so many tears into his speech, that the whole audience was moved, and three of the judges voted for an ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... temptation; whereas, inspired by it, the weakest becomes strong and full of courage. "Duty," says Mrs. Jameson, "is the cement which binds the whole moral edifice together; without which, all power, goodness, intellect, truth, happiness, love itself, can have no permanence; but all the fabric of existence crumbles away from under us, and leaves us at last sitting in the midst of a ruin, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... browns and greens; leaves, mosses, grasses made a dim-colored, velvety fabric that contrasted richly with her coppery satin surfaces ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... eradicated without in the process creating dangers for popular government he would rejoice. But all the schemes of the Abolitionists, hitherto, he had condemned as dangerous devices because they would strain too severely the fabric of the popular state, would violate agreements which alone made it possible. Therefore, being always relentless toward himself, he required of himself the renunciation of this personal hope whenever, in whatever way, it threatened to make less effective the great ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... whole fabric of Mr. Arbuton's defence toppled to the ground. He was a man of scrupulous truth, not accustomed to deceive himself or others. He had been ashamed of her, he could not deny it, not to keep the love that was now dearer to him than ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... external colouring may indeed be employed without dishonour—but it must be with the warning reflection that a time will come when such aids will pass away and when the building will be judged in its lifelessness, dying the death of the dolphin. Better the less bright, more enduring fabric. The transparent alabasters of San Miniato and the mosaics of Saint Mark's are more warmly filled and more brightly touched by every return of morning and evening rays, while the hues of the Gothic cathedrals have died like the iris out of the cloud, and the temples, whose azure ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... deny that Mr Masterton's arguments had demolished the whole fabric which I had built up. "You are right, sir," replied I mournfully, "I ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... separated from one another, and submitted to microscopic examination, either as opaque or as transparent objects. By combining the views obtained in these various methods, each of the rounded bodies may be proved to be a beautifully-constructed calcareous fabric, made up of a number of chambers, communicating freely with one another. The chambered bodies are of various forms. One of the commonest is something like a badly-grown raspberry, being formed of a number of nearly globular chambers of different sizes congregated together. It is called Globigerina, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... greater still in a democratic country like France, where the different classes of which the former fabric of society was composed, being brought together but not yet mingled, import day by day into each other's circles various and sometimes conflicting notions of honor—where every man, at his own will and pleasure, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... be considered; the doctrine they taught, and the example they led among all people. I have already touched upon their fundamental principle, which is as the corner-stone of their fabric: and, indeed, to speak eminently and properly, their characteristic, or main distinguishing point or principle, viz. the light of Christ within, as God's gift for man's salvation. This, I say, is as the root of the goodly tree of doctrines that grew and branched out from it, which I shall ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... circumstances which determine the march and destiny of nations; and to find, in the events of the past, a key to the proceedings of the future, is nothing less than to unite into a single science all the laws of the moral and physical world. Whoever does this, will build up afresh the fabric of our knowledge, rearrange its various parts, and harmonize its apparent discrepancies. Perchance, the human mind is hardly ready for so vast an enterprise. At all events, he who undertakes it will meet with ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... going to stand beneath the dome of the Capitol to weave a new Fabric of Government and see that ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... about naked, shivering in the rain! Indeed, the facts of aboriginal life seem to indicate that dress is developed out of decorations. And when we remember that even among ourselves most think more about the fineness of the fabric than its warmth, and more about the cut than the convenience—when we see that the function is still in great measure subordinated to the appearance, we have further reason for inferring ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... my way to the lounge and went about my work. I wrote up my notes until five o'clock in the afternoon. Just then—was it due to some personal indisposition?—I felt extremely hot and had to take off my jacket made of fan mussel fabric. A perplexing circumstance because we weren't in the low latitudes, and besides, once the Nautilus was submerged, it shouldn't be subject to any rise in temperature. I looked at the pressure gauge. It marked a depth of sixty feet, a depth beyond ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... and in despair, The Greeks grew weary of the tedious war, And by Minerva's aid a fabric reared Which like a steed of monstrous height appeared. The sides were planked with pine: they feigned it made For their return, and this the vow they paid. Thus they pretend, but in the hollow side Selected numbers of their soldiers hide; With ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... totally different organization and culture; and in the interval no one could say how many generations, concerning which, and their conditions and developments, there was nothing but blank ignorance. So that it seemed as though the marvellous fabric of Greek civilization as we know it were indeed something unexampled, rising almost at once out of nothing to its height of splendour, as the walls of Ilium were fabled to have risen beneath the ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... "the whole social and industrial fabric of the world would crumble into dust. America would be ruined for a hundred years, there would be deaths by the million. It means the very end ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... of the new life already received. As the leaf grows green and broad, so a Christlike character must grow not altogether by effort. And there must be a continual being builded up in Him by constant additions to the fabric of graces set ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... like the "baseless fabric of a vision," has as little foundation. The problem to be solved is not what is or shall be the status of the colored man born beneath the flag, but whether the forces of Christian civilization, the genius and spirit of our ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... concerned in raising an agitation against the destruction of the church, and had, in consequence, incurred the hostility of the incumbent, a certain Mr. Wade, who was anxious to replace the venerable fabric in which the Brontes had worshipped for so many years by a handsome modern edifice. Mr. Shepard, the American Consul at Bradford, was the companion of Harte and myself in our visit; but somewhat to our annoyance, we were joined at a wayside station by ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... whether he was a mere vulgar adventurer—you could see, at least, that this man was not of low birth. There was in his bearing an indefinable something which indicated that he had "seen better days." The surface of the fabric was foul and defiled, but the texture beneath was of velvet, not ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... out the picture. When the reason, from want of facts, is unable to understand and therefore unable to explain the structure of a given society, imagination walks bravely in and fearlessly rears its glittering fabric to the skies. Thus in this case, we have a grand historical romance, strung upon the conquest of Mexico as upon a thread; the acts of the Spaniards, the pueblo of Mexico, and its capture, are historical, while the descriptions of Indian society and government are imaginary and delusive. ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... humanity.... The actions of the Deity make no appeal to any special sense. We are deaf and blind, therefore, to the imminent grandeur around us unless we have insight enough to appreciate the whole and to recognize the woven fabric of existence flowing steadily from the loom of ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... promptly allayed the fears of the conquered people by promising that all vested rights should be respected and that 'the lords of manors' should continue in possession of all their ancient privileges. This meant that they intended to recognize and retain the entire fabric of seigneurial tenure. ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... foundations of a country and change the feelings of a whole generation of men and women in regard to each other. Whilst it lasted it roused the worst passions and showed up the worst aspects of the character of the people who played a part in it; but once it was over the false fabric upon which the animosities of the day before had been built fell. A serious and more enlightened appreciation of the events that had brought about the cataclysm which had cleared the air took the place of the ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... fill them with the products of ancient art—marbles from Asia Minor, vases from Athens, Italian bronzes, and Babylonian tapestries. They kept up great households with endless lords in waiting, ladies of honor, pages, guards, and servants. Soft couches and clothes of delicate fabric replaced the simple coverlets and coarse cloaks of an earlier time. They possessed rich carpets and hangings, splendid armor and jewelry, and gold and silver vessels for the table. The Greeks thus began to imitate the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... pours forth from his prodigious hands? This is a kind of "creative reading" (the phrase is Emerson's) which comes instinctively to few of us. We know how to imagine a landscape or a conversation when he describes it, but to gather up all these sights and sounds into a compact fabric, round which the mind can wander freely, as freely as it strays and contemplates and loses its way, perhaps, in Tolstoy's wonderful world—this is a task which does not achieve itself without design and deliberation on the part ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... or rather enough burlap from which to fashion a square of the desired size, Ezekiel Bailey framed up the fabric as the good old grandmas used to hitch up quilts at a quilting bee, the only difference being that the burlap was framed or stretched over a table made of planed boards large enough for the full spread ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... portion of a blanket from the Hopi Indians is shown, that the delicate design may be better seen. A number of Hopi patterns have this fine white line of tracery upon the dark background and it is this play of the fine line pattern on the fabric which is one of the chief beauties of Hopi weavings. The sparkle of white is even more brilliant in Figure 11, another smaller weaving from the same people. They make constant use of the diagonal or twilled technic, a weave which requires ...
— Aboriginal American Weaving • Mary Lois Kissell
... that about the material fabric, the actual stone and mortar, of Trinity College, Dublin, which makes a vivid appeal to the imagination of the common man. The cultured sentimentalist will not indeed be able to lave his soul in tepid emotion while he walks through these ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... receive Senator Stone, he sent him a letter in which the cardinal points of his position were underlined. "Once accept a single abatement of right," he insisted, "and many other humiliations would certainly follow, and the whole fine fabric of international law might crumble under our hands piece by piece. What we are now contending for in this matter is the very essence of the things that have made America a sovereign nation. She cannot ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... theoretic or abstract definition of that ideal commonwealth, but rather as if in search of its visible locality and abiding-place, the walls and towers of which, so to speak, he might really trace and tell, according to his own old, natural habit of mind. It would be the fabric, the outward fabric, of a system reaching, certainly, far beyond the great city around him, even if conceived in all the machinery of its visible and invisible influences at their grandest—as Augustus or Trajan might have conceived of them—however well the visible Rome might pass ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... a force upward, by rearing one man on another's shoulders. This scheme succeeded in part, but the fellow who first showed his head above the perpendicular part of the cliff, received a bullet in his brains. The musket was fired by the hands of Socrates. This one discharge brought down the whole fabric, several of those who fell sustaining serious injuries, in the way of broken bones. The completely isolated position of the crater, which stood, as it might be, aloof from all surrounding objects, added materially to its strength in a military sense, and Waally was puzzled how to overcome ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper |
