"Flimsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... declare him more than indifferent to circles in which he would not meet them. In the end our argument left me ridiculously irritated—it was simply distressing to see the platform from which he obtained so wide and exquisite a view of the world upheld by such flimsy pillars—and my nerves were not soothed by his proposal to walk with me to the Club. I could hardly refuse it, however, and he came along in excellent spirits, having effected the demolition of British social ideals, ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... for a minute by the quickness of his defence, but being compelled to give back he was parrying a couple of their blades in front, when the third got in a thrust beneath his arm. It was as if the hostile sword had stricken a stone wall. The flimsy and treacherous blade went to flinders, and the would-be robber was left staring at the guard suddenly ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... round, and such clouds as "drop fatness," making the shelter the greater—a figure or two in the road. There is great simplicity in the chiaroscuros, and the paint is of the most brilliant gem-like richness, into which you look, for it is not flimsy and thin, but substance transparent—so that it lets in your imagination into the very depth of its mystery. No painter ever understood the poetry of colour as did Rembrandt. He made that his subject, whatever were the forms and figures. We have made notes of every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... wealth.' What contempt is expressed in putting the two side by side! It is as if the author had said, 'Look on this picture and on that!' Two fortresses! Yes! The one is like Gibraltar, inexpugnable on its rock, and the other is like a painted castle on the stage; flimsy canvas that you could put your foot through—solidity by the side of nothingness. For even the poor appearance of solidity is an illusion, as our text says with bitter emphasis—'a high wall in his ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... it chance or the immutable workings of fate which took us in time past the house of the cherry tree? In a porch hammock was Rosie, a vision of budding beauty only half clouded in flimsy lawn and lace. Yet with never a turn of the head Dickie swaggered by, talking meanwhile to me in tones meant to carry an idea of much light-heartedness. Over my shoulder I noted that Rosie was standing watching us, a puzzled ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... famous Mississippi dreams! A rage that time seems only to redouble— The Banks, Joint-Stocks, and all the flimsy schemes, For rolling in Pactolian streams, That cost our modern rogues so little trouble. No matter what,—to pasture cows on stubble, To twist sea-sand into a solid rope, To make French bricks and fancy bread of rubble, Or light with gas the whole celestial cope— Only propose to blow ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... good time, Sire," said Howard. "But not crudely, not crudely. This is one of those flimsy times when no man has a settled mind. Your awakening. No one expected your awakening. ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... very shipyards whence the Alabama had gone to sea, were approaching completion. Other iron-clads, not less powerful, were under construction in France, with the personal connivance of the Emperor, under the flimsy pretence that they were intended for the imperial government of China. Finally, on the 10th of June, casting all promises and pretexts to the winds, the French troops had marched into the capital of Mexico, made themselves masters of the country, vamped up a sham throne, and upon it set an Austrian ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... have at least this full and undoubting confidence, that it will on all hands be admitted that we have not sought to evade the difficulties of our position; that we have not concealed those difficulties, either from ourselves or from others; that we have not attempted to counteract them by narrow or flimsy expedients; that we have prepared plans which, if you will adopt them, will go some way to close up many vexed financial questions—questions such as, if not now settled, may be attended with public inconvenience, and even ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... only got one-eighth part of his wits at home to govern the doings of his arms, legs, and tongue. A large half is occupied with his fancy, in all the wanderings of that creature, dreamy, flimsy, anchoring with gossamer, climbing the sky with steps of fog, cast into abysms (as great writers call it) by imaginary demons, and even at its best in a queer condition, pitiful, yet exceeding proud. A quarter of the mental ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... one runs to the right and one to the left, so that the driver cannot favor them at all, but has to crowd between them, and drive both into the mud. That is palpably interested false witness. He thinks it is fine fun to push women into the mud, and frames such flimsy excuses. But as a woman's thoughts about women, this woman's utterances are deserving of attention; and she says that women are not to be depended upon. She is never sure that they will not turn out on ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... own story was written by unknown hands. The epilogue remained, in which I was to go on seeking what contentment I could find in action. But my whole story was not written on these flimsy pages. It was before me always and always I was turning to it, always asking myself how it would have run had this not happened or had that occurred. Studying it over and over again in my room at night and on my long walks up-town, I found that I could not ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... quite a disagreeable degree of cold by the time I reach the end of to-day's ride. This introduces me promptly into the mysteries of how the Japanese manage to keep themselves warm in their flimsy houses of wooden ribs and semi-transparent paper in cold weather. An opening in the floor accommodates a brazier of coals; over this stands an open wood-work frame; quilts covered over the frame retain the heat. The modus operandi of keeping warm is to insert the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... rectify mistakes. A miscalculation, a stroke of the sweep too little or too much, would send the heavily loaded boat with that tremendous, terrifying force behind it, crashing and splintering on a rock like a flimsy-bottomed strawberry box. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... o'clock in the morning when the terrific earthquake shook San Francisco and the surrounding country. One shock apparently lasted two minutes and there was an almost immediate collapse of flimsy structures all over the former city. The water supply was cut off and when fires broke out in various sections there was nothing to do but to let the buildings burn. Telegraphic and telephone communication was shut off. Electric light and gas plants were rendered useless and the city ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... At the top he found another room exactly similar to the one below, furnished in the same bare way. In one corner he saw something gray. Examining it, it proved to be a flimsy gauze-like wrap; it was not old, nor torn. There was a white cloth, also ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... lagged, until an opening in the traffic permitted it to swing swiftly into the main line tunnel. At the automatic distance of ten feet it followed a car in which rode a scantily clad girl, her flimsy silks fluttering in the rush of air. I cursed my luck. She would be far more likely to turn around than a man, to see if a man were in the car behind, and if he were personable—for not even the impending doom ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... could help him, Thomas Jordan had collided with the flimsy spring-door. It had given way, and let him crash down the half-dozen steps into Fanny's room. There was a second of amazement; then men and girls were running. Dawes stood a moment looking bitterly on the scene, then he ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... revolving these thoughts in my mind, I held in my hand some flimsy particles of the reputed diamond, which of a truth I firmly believed to be such. Now hope is immortal in the human breast; therefore I felt myself, as it were, lured onward by a gleam of idle expectation. Accordingly, I ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... or no-style, have got at the cheapest way of supplying the first imperative demands of the people for whom they build,—namely, to be walled in and roofed weather-tight, and with a decent neatness, but without much care that the house should be solid and enduring,—for it cannot well be so flimsy as not to outlast the owner's needs. He does not look to it as the habitation of his children,—hardly as his own for his lifetime,—but as a present shelter, easily and quickly got ready, and as easily plucked up and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... a thing, man? Why, a night-dress—of course! What d'you think?" Mrs. Rickett chuckled at his ignorance. "And that flimsy—why I'm almost afraid to touch it. It's the quality, ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... residence streets I was better pleased. Man had done little, but nature was prodigal to make up for his omissions. The buildings were poor and flimsy, but in the middle of December the flowers bloomed, vines were green, bushes sent forth their leaves, and the beauty of the scene even under the leaden skies and rising gale made it a ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... floor and, lifting the candle, looked in at the yellowed old playthings, the flimsy, spineless paper-dolls, the faded silk rags, the discolored bits of papers, the misshapen staggering paste-board chairs and bed, which had seemed so delightful and enchanting to her then, far better than ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... spat upon his hands and, seizing the ropes, began slowly and carefully to mount the flimsy, shaking ladder. Those below held it as tight as they were able, but nevertheless he swung backward and forward and round and round as he climbed steadily upward. Once he stopped upon the way, and those below saw him clutch the ladder close to him as though ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... extensive, and there are several specimens of this class of work, both by French and English firms. The drawing-room of 1850 to 1860 was apparently incomplete without occasional chairs, a screen with painted panel, a work table, or some small cabinet or casket of this decorative but somewhat flimsy material. ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... very numerous, and had become bolder in their advocacy of such principles. A fierce war was carried on by the newspapers of the day against Burke's "Reflections," and pamphlets and volumes of all sizes were published, in order to show that it was a mere flimsy piece of rhetoric and fine writing. The most conspicuous of these volumes were the "Vindictae Gallicae;" or "Defence of the French Revolution," written by Sir James Mackintosh; the "Rights of Man," written by that fierce ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... guards of the different Legations and the sailors and marines from the ships of war were in hot chase after the enemy, who were scampering away over the hills as fast as their legs could carry them, leaving their baggage ingloriously scattered over the road, as many a cheap lacquered hat and flimsy paper cartridge-box, preserved by our Blue Jackets as trophies, will testify. So good was the stampede, that the enemy's loss amounted only to one aged coolie, who, being too decrepit to run, was taken prisoner, after ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... I presume," he announced, thrusting his hand nervously into his pocket and bringing out a fistful of papers. So eager and excited was he that, unnoticed, he dropped one flimsy sheet, many times folded, into ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... contrary, was homesick. He was quite used to knowing that there was a quarter of a mile between him and the nearest neighbor, and here he could hear, through the flimsy walls, whether his neighbors were kissing, fighting, or counting their money. "It is so close here, and then I miss the earth; ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... upon the natural phenomena which are constantly before us that it would be felt by every student to possess a real value, that (from that circumstance) it would dwell in his mind, and that it would enable him to correct a great amount of flimsy education in the country, and, so far, ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... officers were sentenced to imprisonment in Holloway jail, the rumors died out. They revived again as one man after another was released from jail before his time was up. The various excuses offered were so flimsy that the public began to think that it was true that they had ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 34, July 1, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... more Dick led the way. Of a sudden he halted—-right up against a huge surprise. For the boys had suddenly broken into a little circular clearing, not much more than thirty feet in diameter. Near the center of this clearing, under a flimsy shelter he had made of poles and branches, crouched Amos Garwood. He was at work over a low bench built of a board across two boxes. So intent was Garwood on what he was doing that he appeared not to have heard the approach ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... is not the way in which the things occurred. The historian must, therefore, beware that those divisions of the subject which he makes for our ease and convenience, do not induce him to treat his subject in a flimsy manner. He must not make his story easy ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... party of older people seemed stunned by the quick way in which he talked. His airy manner and flimsy wit impressed them with a sense of his knowledge of life. He represented the world to them, the World with a capital W, and they were all more or less conscious of a certain awe in his presence. His utter disregard of the little observances and forms which were expected ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... does not merely remind us of the genius of Pope and Swift, of Fielding and Johnson and Walpole. He also summons us to Armory's John Buncle and to the Reverend Richard Graves's Spiritual Quixote as to a feast. Of the latter novel he declares that "for a book that is to be amusing without being flimsy, and substantial without being ponderous, The Spiritual Quixote may, perhaps, be commended above all its predecessors and contemporaries outside the work of the great Four themselves." That is characteristic of the wealth of invitations scattered through The Peace of the Augustans. After ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... glimpse of some very pretty faces; oval faces with large dreamy black eyes, and a flush of warm sunset on brownish cheeks. The indoor costume of Persian women is but an inconsiderable improvement upon the costume of our ancestress in the garden of Eden, and over this they hastily don a flimsy shawl-like garment to come out and see me ride. They are always much less concerned about concealing their nether extremities than about their faces, and as they seem but little concerned about anything on this occasion save ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... a short time, and of such flimsy material, this expensive Banqueting House seems to have been allowed to stand, and to have been used thereafter for masques and plays. Thus, when King James came to the throne, he ordered plays to be given there in ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... looks to be seen going about with him as she does. She hardly lets him get out of her sight when he's in town. I invited them to tea the last time they were here and she wouldn't let him come; kept him at her house, made some flimsy excuse, and had the evening with him to herself. She's tried her best to ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... in its character; and the design of this brief work is, in part, to drag it forward into the light of the middle of the nineteenth century, to strip the flimsy vizor off its face, and to bring it, with all its abuses, corruptions, and hypocritical Protestant advocates, before the bar of enlightened public opinion, for judgment in the case. Roman Catholics misrepresent their own creed, their Church, and its corrupt institutions. ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... years of Imperialist propaganda which have steadily prepared the nation for an aggressive war; and they have raised no voice against the appalling decision that, in order to attain Germany's purposes, every rule of morals and humanity should be set aside. They have servilely accepted every flimsy pretext for outrage, and have followed, instead of leading, their passion-blinded people. It was the same in Austria-Hungary. Austrian and Hungarian prelates have passed in silence the fearful travesties of justice by which, in recent years, their ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... sailing with Buller; but he must see the boat. There was a train for his home at a quarter past seven; if he were not on the premises he could not be asked to sail. If Buller's boat were a little, flimsy thing, he would take that train—but he would wait ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... dinner, and though, observing the flimsy compact, they dismissed the questions of Ionian islands and marriage, they talked till midnight of ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... perishable adornments as feathers, artificial flowers, or ribbons. The purchases of his spouse are certain to be governed by extreme frugality. She selects the family raiment with a view to durability. Flimsy finery that the sun would fade, shoddy materials that a shower of rain would ruin, offer no temptations to her. When she expends a few sous on the cutting of her boy's hair, she has it cropped until ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... undoubtedly disturbed. He searched amongst the papers on his desk and brought out at last a flimsy half-sheet of notepaper which he ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... went into the bedroom. With a sick feeling in her heart, and as near the fire as she could get, she undressed with desperate haste, and got to bed. An age—it seemed—she lay there shivering in her flimsy lawn against the cold sheets, her eyes not quite closed, watching the flicker of the firelight. She did not think—could not—just lay stiller than the dead. The door creaked. She shut her eyes. Had she a heart at all? It ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... but a flimsy barricade against a mob, especially if that mob be led by five-and-twenty stout-bodied seaman. We had shut it merely to gain time, and when the cudgels outside began to play tattoo upon its upper ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... all there is to it," he easily proceeded. "I knew Miss Challoner and I have already said how much and how little I had to do with her death. The other woman I did not know at all; I did not even know her name. A prosecution based on grounds so flimsy as those you advance would savour of persecution, ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... rumble, and you are assured that the swift, delightful, dangerous shower, that cools the earth without interrupting our pleasures for dreary days, is approaching. No one whose dwelling is not better protected than most of those which bear the vain and flimsy decorations called "lightning-rods" can know whether his own house may not in a few moments receive a ruinous stroke, or that it may not be his lot to enter eternity with the first flash from that dark, towering mass of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... the sort of girl I request the ten lines for. Somewhat of a pensive cast what you admire. The lines may come before the Law question, as that cannot be determined before Hilary Term, and I wish your deliberate judgment on that. The other may be flimsy and superficial. And if you have not burnt your returned letter pray re-send it me as a monumental token of my stupidity. 'Twas a little unthinking of you to touch upon a sore subject. Why, by dabbling in those accursed Annuals I have ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... was pleasant enough. The men knew exactly where they were. There was a time to eat, a time to sleep, a time for fatigues, and a time for sentry-go. There was little rain, and no bitter nights. The shelters, which held two or three men a-piece, though mere flimsy shell-traps, were comfortable, and either boarded or lined with straw, which was frequently renewed. When the Warwicks took over from us they exclaimed in admiring surprise, 'Why, they're all officers' ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... flimsy stuff, our teachers of what nobody knows, would palm upon us as demonstration of the Being and Attributes ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... other person, Francine would have instantly seen through that flimsy pretense. But the love which accepts the meanest crumbs of comfort that can be thrown to it—which fawns and grovels and deliberately deceives itself, in its own intensely selfish interests—was the love that burned in Francine's breast. The wretched girl believed Mirabel ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... It is often difficult, as in the present case, to see the justice of such exactions. These Indians had been guilty of no unfriendly act, and the utmost urged in extenuation of the imposition was the flimsy pretence that but for an alleged protection the same sums would have gone in fealty to their red brethren. In 1644, the Narragansetts were fined 2000 fathoms, and doomed to pay yearly thereafter a ...
— Wampum - A Paper Presented to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society - of Philadelphia • Ashbel Woodward
... the next room came home—students, I suppose. They talked gaily enough, their remarks interspersed by the thuds of falling boots and the other incomprehensible noises of the night. Through the flimsy partition I caught half sentences in that sort of French intonation that is so impossible to attain. It reminded me of the voices of the two men at the Opera. I began to wonder what they had been saying—what ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... an honest calling, for his trade seems to have been that of a stone-cutter, he wasted his time in discoursing with such youths as his lecherous countenance and satyr-like person could gather around him, leading them astray from the gods of his country, the flimsy veil of his hypocrisy being too transparent to conceal his infidelity. Nevertheless, he was a very brave soldier, as those who served with him testify. It does not appear that he was observant of those cares which by most men are probably considered as paramount, giving himself but ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... are fairly common, and have, therefore, been selected to point a moral. Poisoning fish is a poor sort of sport, perhaps, but there are two classes of fishermen—the hungry and the artistic. The latter use flimsy tackle and complicated gear, and play the game, giving the victims to their wiles a sporting chance. Though not the only representative of the hungry class, the black boy generally fishes on an empty stomach, and his demeanour coincides. No slobbering sentiment affects him. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Ladybug declared. "They're so flimsy and delicate that Betsy Butterfly never dares venture out in bad weather. Of what use would I be to Farmer Green if I had wings like hers? If I stayed under cover whenever the sun didn't shine, the orchard would soon ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... engine of discipline may be rendered not only the most effective, but essentially the most lenient, and when duly reported and checked, far more likely to contribute to the peace and comfort of the men themselves, than any of the specious but flimsy substitutes alluded to. Solitary confinement, for example, I take to be one of the most cruel, and, generally speaking, one of the most unjust of all punishments; for it is incapable of being correctly measured, and it almost always renders the offender worse. It prompts ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... the significance of these old heroisms as the color is washed from flimsy cloths; so that chroniclers act wisely when they wave aside, with undipped pens, the episode of the brave Siennese and their green poison at Bellegarde, and the doings of the Anti-Pope there, and grudge the paper needful to record ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... affairs, appealed to the Delphic oracle for some means of cure. The god prescribed a peculiar form of sacrifice, which would be effective if they could carry it through without laughing. They did their best; but the flimsy joke of a boy upset their unaccustomed gravity, and in this way the oracle taught them that even the gods could not prescribe a quick cure for a long vitiation, or give power and dignity to ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... in, in a flimsy dressing gown of yellow, with blue ribbons in it, her hair wet and still done up in a towel. Superbly she trusted to her big eyes of limpid brown, and to the marble-like pallour of her complexion, the ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... a canary-colored jersey, stout boots, and carried a hefty ash stick, for she was essentially an out-of-door girl, though at night she could put on a short and flimsy dance frock and look ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... Brazilian bills on London. Yet, what British merchant does not know the traffic on which those bills are founded, and for whose support his wares are purchased? France, with her bonnet rouge and fraternity, dispatches her Rouen cottons, Marseilles brandies, flimsy taffetas, and indescribable variety of tinsel gewgaws. Philosophic Germany demands a slice for her looking-glasses and beads; while multitudes of our own worthy traders, who would hang a slaver ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... acquitted himself so well; he cut, capered, and set to his partner with unusual agility; we naturally participated in the admiration he excited, and in the fullness of our triumph, while brushing past the flimsy nankeens worn by Tibbins, I could not refrain from bestowing a smart kick upon his shins, that brought the tears to his eyes with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... repairs, to start once more on its erring course, or, perhaps, to go forth unfinished, remanded just there to death. The ten-thirty express was now pulling out through the yards in a powerful clamor of clattering switches and hearty pulsations that shook the flimsy walls of St. Isidore's, and drew new groans from the man on the chair. The young nurse's eyes travelled from him to a woman who stood behind the ward tenders, shielded by them and the young interne from the group about the hospital chair. This woman, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... other; and a few tried to combine the two, of course spoiling both. But, beyond this, their power of invention could not go. They were always trying to conceal the old idea, and could do no more than to distort it. We could see through their flimsy pretensions to originality much as a schoolmaster recognises the extracts from the encyclopaedia in his ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... all the prisoners identified, and some of them doubly. The defence was scarcely more than a sham. The flimsy alibis were destroyed even by the incompetent, unready Rocklin, and when the charge came blackness fell upon the citizens of Tucson. The judge's cold statements struck them as partisan, and they murmured ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... gently as the breeze stirs a cornfield. "Nor is there anything in this world so perfect as the truth. If the truth opened an abyss which plunged me into hell, I would sooner know it, than attempt to enter Paradise across the flimsy ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... Sometimes I go down on picket with the regiments I know best. As to rations, the army here at present seems to be tolerably well supplied, and the men have enough, such as it is, mainly salt pork and hard tack. Most of the regiments lodge in the flimsy little shelter-tents. A few have built themselves huts of logs and mud, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... graphic and entertaining of modern writings. If we were, through any misadventure, sent to jail, we would stipulate for permission to carry into our cell Hakluyt's Voyages. The narratives of modern travellers are often learned, more often flimsy, and from the universality of locomotion, much given, like the prayers of the old Pharisees, to tedious repetitions. A tour in Greece or Italy now affects us with unutterable weariness. A journey from London to York affords more real novelty than many of these excursions. ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... himself that, if he be served such another trick, he will have his brains taken out, and buttered, and given to a dog for a new-year's gift. But still his vanity and thirst of money are too much for his startled prudence: upon the offer of a second device, that too of a very flimsy texture, and very thinly disguised, his paralysis of wit returns, and his suspicions sink afresh into their dreamless nap. In the hard blows and buffets there experienced, he has stronger arguments ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... a weak and helpless condition, all out of fear of him. It is impossible to argue the patient out of his delusions by pointing out to him how clearly they conflict with reality; he evades any such test by some counter-argument, no matter how flimsy, and sticks ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... about that, with only two flimsy bulkheads between us, I wrote my first letter to Seraphina, while Sebright went on deck to make arrangements to send me ashore. He was some time away; long enough for me to pour out on paper the exultation of my thought, the confidence of my ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... poets and our thinkers do not view the world with a settled gaze either of appreciation or of contempt: they look at it with the wild eye of a man who cannot imagine where he has put his gloves. Their condemnations and suggestions are alike undignified, whirling and flimsy. They pick up and throw down in the same space of time every human institution: they are in a hurry to question everything and they have not the patience to wait ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... unnecessary. It is rather a moment when the commentator should step forward. Ought the Wilcoxes to have offered their home to Margaret? I think not. The appeal was too flimsy. It was not legal; it had been written in illness, and under the spell of a sudden friendship; it was contrary to the dead woman's intentions in the past, contrary to her very nature, so far as that nature was understood by them. To them ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... could make such a difference? For instead of the big sloppy young female who used to slouch, gigglin' around the basement who should breeze in but a zippy young lady, a bit heavy about the shoulders maybe for that flimsy style of costume, but more or less stunning, for all that. Rowena had bloomed out. In fact, she had the lilies of the field lookin' like ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... Hotel, built in 1852. Across the street is the Wells Fargo building, erected about the same time and of solid stone, as is the hotel. Nothing on this trip surprised me more than the solidity of the hotels and stores built in the early fifties. Instead of the flimsy wooden structures I had imagined, I found, for the most part, thick stone walls. It was evident the Pioneers believed in the permanence of the gold deposits in the Mother Lode. Possibly they were ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... doth disdain Flimsy safeguards raised by man, Struck a blow more swift and sure In that I was ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... author's manuscript, has been altered to 'paper-windows.' Bunyan's allusion is to the winkers, called by many 'blinkers,' put by the side of a horse's eyes, to keep him under the complete control of his driver—and by 'paper-winkers' the flimsy attempt of Antichrist to hoodwink mankind by printed legends, miracles, and absurd assumptions—it is one of the almost innumerable sparks of wit, which render all the writings of Bunyan so entertaining and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... wailing sigh, Sad as the gust that sweeps the clouded sky. Ask him his griefs; what midnight demons plough The lines of torture on his lofty brow; Unlock those marble lips, and bid them speak The mystery freezing in his bloodless cheek. His secret? Hid beneath a flimsy word; One foolish whisper that ambition heard; And thus it spake: "Behold yon gilded chair, The world's one vacant throne,—thy plate ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... there against a flimsy sheet of wood and cotton, which for part of a second stuck straight up against the wind, like a paper ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... these nests, and studied them: flimsy things, constructed of a few dried grasses, inwoven with horsehair and cobwebs. Before next spring the rains would dissolve them and they ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in shape and somewhat in song, have mended their ways, and though it is true they make a bad mess of it, they at least try to build their own nest, and rear their own young with tender solicitude. The nest is usually so sparse and flimsy an affair that you can see through its coarse mesh of sticks from below, the fledglings lying as on a grid-iron or toaster; and it is, moreover, occasionally so much higher in the centre than at the sides that the chicks tumble out of bed and perish. Still, it is a beginning ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... to be posted in the Agora. But if there is a sudden crisis, formalities can be thrown to the winds; a sudden bawling of the heralds in the streets, a great smoky column caused by burning the traders' flimsy booths in the Agora,—these are valid notices of an extraordinary meeting ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... me that a rank injustice was done to Garfield on the occasion of the Credit Mobilier scandal of 1873, which came near costing him his position in public life. The evidence was of so indefinite and flimsy a nature that the credence given to the conclusion from it can only illustrate how little a subject or a document is exposed to searching analysis outside the precincts of a law court. When he was nominated for the presidency this scandal was naturally raked up and much made of it. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... old and new. And as the English Creoles with their skin like porcelain, and their small dainty figures, imitated their more rosy and well-grown sisters of the North, the handsome strapping coloured wenches copied their island betters in materials which if flimsy were no less bright; so it is no matter for wonder that the young bloods came from London to admire and loiter and flirt in an enchanted clime that seemed made for naught else, that the sons of the planters sent to London for their own finery, and the young coloured ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... how slowly this filtering proceeded, through the dense, choking crush, every one overladen with packages or children, and yet under the necessity of fishing out his ticket by the way; but it ended at length for me, and I found myself on deck, under a flimsy awning, and with a trifle of elbow-room to stretch and breathe in. This was on the starboard; for the bulk of the emigrants stuck hopelessly on the port side, by which we had entered. In vain the seamen shouted to them to move on, and threatened them with shipwreck. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I answered in turn, "I know very well, though I can conjure up this feeling of security, that it is very flimsy stuff; and I take it rather as men take symbols. For though these good people will at last perish, and some brewer—a Colonel of Volunteers as like as not—will buy this little field, and though for the port we are drinking ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... misunderstanding. It is generally, though mistakenly, held that the Boers ill-treated the natives, and that in the most brutal and tyrannical manner. Such unwarranted assertions had furnished one of the various flimsy excuses for war in South Africa. The natives had to be protected! They were slaves, and must be liberated. Therefore—war! That natives have sometimes received bad treatment at the hands of their masters we shall candidly admit. In such instances ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... time manoeuvred his flimsy craft to the position he desired, within a few yards of the current, which at that point made a sharp bend from the east. He shouted out some words to his wife and Maskull. Gleameil kissed her children convulsively, and broke down a little. The eldest boy bit his lip till it bled, and tears ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... Mr. Gorby, thoughtfully, taking down a flimsy yellow book rather tattered. "I've heard of him; if his novels are as bad as his reputation I ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... if varieties may be found in their structure and color, these are only to be attributed to the nature of their diet and habits, as also to the soil and the climate they may inhabit, and serve as flimsy pretexts ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... erected the most laughable superstructure of fantastic farce. I remember hearing one of the two great comedians of the Theatre Francais, M. Coquelin, praise a comic actor of the Varietes whom we had lately seen in a rather cheap and flimsy farce, because he combined "la verite la plus absolue avec la fantasie la plus pure." And this is the merit of La Boule: its most humorous inventions have their roots ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... sort do not go well with juries, and, of course, the whole story is so flimsy and so improbable that it will go for no more than a piece of ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... their Prophet possess'd but an atom of sense, He ne'er would have woman from Paradise driven, But instead of his Houris a flimsy pretence, With woman alone, he ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... back before the Portuguese attack towards the island, where he could secure the aid of shore batteries and a swarm of 300 or more foists and other small craft in the harbor. Almeida had only 19 ships and 1300 men, but against his vigorous attack the flimsy vessels of the east were of little value. The battle was fought at close quarters in the old Mediterranean style, with saber, cutlass, and culverin; ramming, grappling, and boarding. Before nightfall Almeida had won. This victory ensured Portugal's commercial ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... the Judge, harshly. "Tell us everything plainly and promptly, or I shall send you straight to gaol. The order is already made out;" and as he spoke, he waved a flimsy ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... repeated, this time in a more piercing tone. Dorothea was lying on a big bed with nothing on but a flimsy chemise. Frau Hadebusch, pimp always, had rented the bed from a second-hand dealer; it covered a half of the room. Before Dorothea was a plate of cherries; she had been amusing herself by shooting the pits at her lover. He likewise was lacking nearly all the garments ordinarily ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Wilberforce, William Smith, Brougham, Lushington, and others, urged the necessity of interference upon the representatives of a people unanimous in demanding it; and he repeatedly urged it in vain. The Government always leaned towards the planter, and the most flimsy excuses were constantly given for preferring to the effectual measures propounded by the Abolitionists, the most flimsy of expedients, useless for any one purpose, save that of making pretences and ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... a bright cinnamon brown color with black head, and black and white wings and tail. The habits of this bird are the same as those of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak and its song is very similar but more lengthy. Their nests, like those of the last, are very flimsy structures placed in bushes or trees, usually below twenty feet from the ground; they are open frameworks of twigs, rootlets and weed stalks, through which the eggs can be plainly seen. The eggs are similar to those of the preceding but are usually of a paler color, ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... which struck me was the utter absence of all the mock-modesty, and the pretended self-underrating, conventionally assumed by persons expecting to be complimented upon their sayings or doings. Jasmin seemed thoroughly to despise all such flimsy hypocrisy. 'God only made four Frenchmen poets,' he burst out with, 'and their names are, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... war. May I ask you to come at once to me with their answer. It is possible that they will call for a consultation with the ministers, nobles and high officers. Still, I fear they will be unwilling to risk much on the rather flimsy proof you can give. Gabriel is powerful and we do not seek a war with him. There is another foe for whom we are quietly whetting our swords." The significant remark caused both listeners to prick up their ears. But he disappointed, ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... privately, was that, like the majority of men, I hated work. Like so many men I was certain that my home, my wife, were absorbing as possible. Wherever I looked, other lives were built of the same labored and flimsy materials. Mine was no worse; it was, actually, far better than most. But only better in degree, not in kind. It occupied about a fifth of my existence, and the rest was made up of hours, engagements, that were ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... his body, pampered with easily obtained luxuries, instead of having to win the necessaries of life by heavy toil, loses its self-helpfulness; and with self-respect and self-help vanish all the savage virtues, few and flimsy as they are, and the downward road toward begging and stealing, sottishness and idleness, is easy, if ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... harm in a bit of grass and a few trees, and the rooms are cheaper in their long continuance than any flimsy new rubbish that could ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... occasioned by Solange's dramatic entrance, noises of the camp could be heard through the flimsy walls. Far down the canyon faint shouts could be heard. Some one was calling to animals of some sort, apparently. A faint voice, muffled by snow, ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... all gazed at Rabourdin with curiosity. The poor man had come there expecting some serious, even solemn, result, and he was like a great fish caught in the threads of a flimsy net; he ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... a lover; ay, and a romantic one too? Yet do I carry every where with me such a confounded farrago of doubts, fears, hopes, wishes, and all the flimsy furniture of ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... greater gods, and invested with many of their attributes, we may next ask the question, why this artificial cult, due in the first place to imperial passion and caprice, and nourished by the adulation of fawning provinces, was preserved from the rapid dissolution to which the flimsy products of court-flattery are subject. The mythopoetic faculty was extinct, or in its last phase of decadent vitality. There was nothing in the life of Antinous to create a legend or to stimulate the sense of awe; ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... made by the lake-dwellers spread over his knees, knew nothing of Leh Shin's disappearance. The fever of chase was in his blood, and he threw the flimsy yards through his hands. Nothing, nothing, and again nothing, and again—he felt his heart swell with sudden, stifled excitement. Under his hand was a three-cornered rent, a damaged piece where a patch rather larger than his palm had been roughly ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... this metal. Our fathers used steel very little in railway transportation; rails and locomotives were usually made of iron, and wood was the prevailing material for railroad bridges. Steel cars, both for passengers and for freight, are now everywhere taking the place of the more flimsy substance. We travel today in steel subways, transact our business in steel buildings, and live in apartments and private houses which are made largely of steel. The steel automobile has long since supplanted the wooden carriage; the steel ship has displaced ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... this Emmanuel well. A bony small man of the color of straw, with eyes that moved too quickly and a cold hand, a body like a wisp of linen-cloth-so flimsy and slight—and some slenderness at the knee that made him shamble like a thief! Peter stood with a great brown hand on his shoulder, smiling at me with a frank open mouth and cheeks creased with ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... to remind people of their religious duties; but, like other unwise human inventions, which do not take into consideration the evil tendencies of the human mind, they have led to a system of degrading idolatry, while the simple truths of Christianity have been superseded by a flimsy tissue of falsehoods. Although the members of the Greek Church are iconoclasts, or image-breakers, and allow no actual images to be set up on their altars, it must be owned that they pay just as much adoration to the pictures of their saints as the Roman Catholics do to ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... Westermarck devotes ten pages to an attempt to prove that immorality is not characteristic of uncivilized races in general. He leads off with that preposterous statement of Barrow that "a Kaffir woman is chaste and extremely modest;" and most of his other instances are based on equally flimsy evidence. I shall recur to the subject repeatedly. It is hardly necessary to call the reader's attention to the unconscious humor of the assertion of Westermarck's friend Cousins that "between their various feasts the Kaffirs have to live in strict continence"—which is a good deal like saying ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... contact. In the starlight the old stone church outlined its old-world, old-time architecture in friendly shadows which veiled the pitiful scars and age-stains: the bamboo shacks across the square—wry, flimsy, smutted by a hotly jealous sun—had yielded to the magic of the night to become little golden houses in which the fairies abode till the morning stars ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... secondhand. The lone witness was said to have rushed over to his car to get his camera as the disk approached. When it plunged toward the lake, he was so startled that he failed to snap the picture until the moment it struck. This story sounded so flimsy that I didn't ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... sea in the afternoon, returning just before dark. The fort, showing signs of reanimation, was treated to another bombardment, which effectually settled it. A small fishing hamlet composed of a dozen flimsy huts of bamboo was set on fire and burned to the ground. When we left Guantanamo shortly after dark, bound back for Santiago, we had the satisfaction of knowing that one more blow had been struck against Spanish rule in the fair ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... on me in the least. I was too much accustomed to analytical labours to be baffled by so flimsy a veil. I determined to probe the mystery ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... set in, and next day the boys found their flimsy wigwam blown down—nothing but a ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... was going on simultaneously in France. As it was evident that the Spanish children could not be disposed of in both markets at the same time, it was plain to the dullest comprehension that either the brokerage of Toledo or of Girono was a sham, and that a policy erected upon such flimsy foundations would ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to him that again he had the soldiers where he wanted them. Word of the flimsy little corral spread a laugh among his two thousand warriors. The squaws and old men were summoned from the allied Sioux and out-law Cheyenne village, to come and see and ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... it to thee," said the latter, with the cold, sardonic expression peculiar to him, "that Richard would burst through the flimsy wiles you spread for him, as would a lion through a spider's web. Thou seest he has but to speak, and his breath agitates these fickle fools as easily as the whirlwind catcheth scattered straws, and sweeps them together, or ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... water-bottle over the little upward-pointing pegs which bristle from the trunk. "As a shade tree, however, it isn't an unqualified success. Curious that in the universal adaptation of means to ends something a little less flimsy could not have been ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... moment he lay where he had fallen, too dazed and befuddled to rise, but presently he clambered up, his eyes wide and terrified, for his rising was Phoenix-like—mantled in flame. With incredible swiftness the flimsy coverings of his bed had burst into a crimson glare and even ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... more readily to the authority of the native Prince, whom they had always been accustomed to respect, than to that of a rival trading corporation. This policy may, at that time, have been judicious. But the pretence was soon found to be too flimsy to impose on anybody; and it was altogether laid aside. The heir of Meer Jaffier still resides at Moorshedabad, the ancient capital of his house, still bears the title of Nabob, is still accosted by the English as "Your Highness," and is still suffered to retain a portion ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not," he continued, "the indignity which is offered you? Does the loose, the flimsy veil with which it is covered, hide it from your understanding, or disguise it from ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the sweet look of goodness which sat upon my uncle Toby's assimilated everything around it so sovereignly to itself, and Nature had, moreover, wrote gentleman with so fair a hand in every line of his countenance, that even his tarnished gold-laced hat and huge cockade of flimsy taffeta became him; and, tho not worth a button in themselves, yet the moment my uncle Toby put them on, they became serious objects, and, altogether, seemed to have been picked up by the hand of Science to set him ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... question of a fake warranty deed, against 'Gene's quit-claim deed, which was all he had in absence of those missing pages from the town records. As a matter of fact, the lawyer hasn't dared to cut the lumber off it yet, because his claim is pretty flimsy; but flimsy or not, the law regards it as slightly better than 'Gene's. The result is that 'Gene can't sell it and daren't cut it for fear of being involved in a law-suit that he couldn't possibly pay for. So the Powers ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... repeated the Proveditore scornfully. "Whence comes, then, your manifest misery and poverty? Whence comes it that you turn robbers, if in the pay of Austria? No, Dansowich, you will not deceive us by such flimsy pretexts! Your gains, lawful and unlawful, are wrested from you by the archducal counsellors, in whose hands you are mere puppets. 'Twas they who prompted you to tell the Turks that you were in league with Venice; that the republic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... economy was somewhat flimsy, but they had the bayonets, and the queen was compelled to give way ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... was there. Surrounded by a few villagers, he squatted before his flimsy, frond-roofed hut, his mouth in grotesque motion. Now, he stopped his noisemaking and poised his head. Then he ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... cooking, one man holding the lamp and two men guarding the aluminium cooking-pot, which had to be lifted clear of the Primus whenever the movement of the boat threatened to cause a disaster. Then the lamp had to be protected from water, for sprays were coming over the bows and our flimsy decking was by no means water-tight. All these operations were conducted in the confined space under the decking, where the men lay or knelt and adjusted themselves as best they could to the angles of our cases and ballast. It was uncomfortable, ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... grown yet more insolent, By that small loss, or rout, at LEXINGTON, Prevent our purpose and the night by-past, Have push'd intrenchments, and some flimsy works, With rude achievement, on the rocky brow, Of that tall hill. A ship-boy, with the day, From the tall mast-head, of the Admiral, Descry'd their aim, and gave the swift alarm. Our glasses mark, but one small regiment there, Yet, ev'ry hour we languish in delay, ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... at the stiff, ornamental, and childishly antithetical style of his day and nation, he welded the flimsy elements of the French language into instruments of strength akin to his own conceptions, and wrought out of them a style for himself in which a Demosthenic simplicity and severity of language is sustained by an earnest and straightforward power which vivifies and amplifies all that it touches. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... it rests on no experimental basis. It is a flimsy theory, entirely unsupported by any facts. Never has it been proved that hot iron, at any temperature likely to be obtained in steam boiler tubes, decomposes steam except by itself appropriating the oxygen of the steam, and leaving the ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various |
