"Fragile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Folco had greatly changed in his bearing toward his daughter, the which, indeed, he had already told me, and that he seemed to understand, as it were, for the first time, how precious a life hers was, and how lovely and how fragile. Severo believed that Messer Folco would now be willing, if only he could liberate his child from the weight of the Bardi name, to leave her all liberty of choice as to the man she would wed, even if that man had neither wealth nor fame to back him. Such changes of mood, the physician averred, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... to our readers the fair Madeline of Rokewood. Slender and graceful and of a form so fragile that her frame scarce fitted to fulfil its bodily functions...she appeared rather as one of those ethereal beings of the air who might visit for a brief moment this terrestrial scene, than one of its earthly inhabitants. Her large, wondering ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... at the little man who sat there so still, so fragile, with eyes which gleamed so fiercely and lips that trembled with emotion; and he shivered a little at the thought that here was the man who had struck ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... who might have been ten years of age, and the fragile little creature appeared to smile in return. Then it came over the visitor that there was something out of common in that uplifted, happy face, and that the smile was not in response to her own greeting. The wide blue ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... a nullity; the Child One of those bright bewitching little creatures, Who, if she once but shyly looked and smiled, Would soften out the ruggedest of features; Fragile and slight,—a very fay for size,— With pale town-cheeks, ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... turned with him, and he was at times with his back to the side from which the rope was strained, gazing at the dimly-seen opposite wall, some six or seven feet away. Above was the over-arching snow, which looked fragile in the extreme. ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... the Franciscan code. Whenever I have been tempted to buy some small plot of ground, an inward voice has prevented me. To have done so would have seemed to me gross, material, and opposed to the principle: Non habemus hic manentem civitatem. Securities are lighter, more ethereal, and more fragile; they do not exercise the same amount of attachment, and there is more ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... she seemed almost fragile. She did everything daintily—like a little girl playing tea-party. Her hands and feet were exquisitely small, her features childlike and indefinite, except her little coral mouth, which was as clearly outlined with color as a doll's and as mobile as a fluttering leaf. ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... drawn up under her, as in old days when she was frightened. She did not stretch out her arms; she remained huddled together. But he bent over her, knelt down, laid his face on hers, wept with her. She had grown fragile, thin, haggard, ah! as though she could be blown away. She let him take her in his arms like a child and clasp her to his breast; let him caress and kiss her. Ah, how ethereal she had become! And those eyes, which at last he saw, now looked tearfully out from their large orbits, but ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... luminous mind, with his invincible perseverance, with his more than human industry. Many generals have passed terrible hours on the field of battle; but he passed more terrible ones in his cabinet, when his enormous work might suffer destruction at any moment, like a fragile edifice at the tremor of an earthquake. Hours, nights of struggle and anguish did he pass, sufficient to make him issue from it with reason distorted and death in his heart. And it was this gigantic and stormy work which shortened his life by twenty years. Nevertheless, devoured ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... weak characters are very imperious toward the women they care for. Among women I have often been surprised to see how a strong, determined woman will give way to a man she loves, and how tenacious of her own will may be some fragile, clinging creature who in daily life seems quite unable to act on her own responsibility. A certain amount of passivity, a desire to have their emotions worked on, seems to me, so far as my small experience goes, very common ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... returned from his last voyage. His ship had been reported as missing; and the once happy home of the Claires had been left for a small house in a busy town. Maurice and Helen, healthy, hopeful children, bore up well enough under their reduced circumstances. But fragile little Dora had begun slowly to droop. The doctor ordered change of air to some seaside place. So it was that Maurice had announced that they must sell one of the dogs—their ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... face was bright with anticipation, as the woman wrapped her in a warm shawl and carried her fragile weight down the staircase. The cobblestones hurt the poor sempstress's feet, and she staggered under the light burden, but she persevered, for the child's murmurs of ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... deformed thee, will die with me. You will exist to reflect other images in other minds, and ever will remain the same, although your reflected semblance vary in a thousand ways, changeable as the hearts of those who view thee. One of these fragile mirrors, that ever doted on thine image, is about to be broken, crumbled to dust. But everteeming Nature will create another and another, and thou wilt loose nought ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... has been saved by feminine tact. There was the cabinet-member's wife who drank out of her finger-bowl because her guest, a senator, had done so. And the general's wife who, when a clumsy tea drinker smashed a priceless cup, picked up another of the fragile affairs and crushed it between her fingers with a "They do break easily, don't they?" And the woman who, when M. Blanc was mistaken at an English garden party for a page, replied, "Well, M. Blanc ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... needed, that I first made his acquaintance. He has had something of Gissing's restricted and grey experiences, but he has nothing of Gissing's almost perverse gloom and despondency. Indeed he is as gay a companion as he is fragile. He is a twinkling addition to any Christmas party, and the twinkle is here in the style. And having sported with him "in his times of happy infancy," I add an intimate and personal satisfaction to my pleasant task of saluting this fine work that ends a brilliant ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... Katmandu, situated at the junction of the Bhagmutty and Bishmutty, and containing a population of 50,000 inhabitants, lay spread at our feet, and we could discern the passengers on the narrow fragile- looking bridges which span the two rivers, at this time containing scarcely any water. Innumerable temples, Bhuddist and Hindoo, and mixtures of both, occupied hillocks, or were situated near the sacred ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... The fragile tenure of the sense of personal identity is illustrated by the ease and completeness with which actors can put themselves in the place of the characters they assume, so that even their instinctive demeanor corresponds to the ideal, ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... labouring surges of the world. Pierce where thou wilt the springing thought in me, And there thy pictured countenance lies enfurled, As in the cut fern lies the imaged tree. This poor song that sings of thee, This fragile song, is but a curled Shell outgathered from thy sea, And murmurous still of its nativity. Princess of Smiles! Sorceress of most unlawful-lawful wiles! Cunning pit for gazers' senses, Overstrewn with innocences! ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... the pious woman in the big white cap made a breach in the indignant resistance of the courtesan. The conversation then glancing off slightly, the woman of the pendent rosaries went on to speak of the religious houses of her Order, of her superior, of herself and her fragile little companion, her dear little Sister St. Nicephora. They had been sent for to Havre to nurse the hundreds of soldiers there down with small-pox. She described the condition of these poor wretches, gave details ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... his face, though. He unrolled the handkerchief slowly, as if it contained something immensely fragile and valuable, and then, thrusting it back in his pocket, he faced Mr. Trimm. He was carrying in his hands a pair of handcuffs that hung open-jawed. The jaws had little notches in them, like teeth that could bite. The question that had ticked in Mr. Trimm's head was answered ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... the Lord, that shall stand.' Compare this fern leaf with the mighty palaces of Babylon and Nineveh. Through untold ages this has kept its wavy fragile outline, they are marked only by 'the line of confusion ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... rich fund of happiness which it is so well able to give. There is not a worm we tread upon, nor a rare leaf that dances merrily as it falls before the autumn winds, but has superior claims upon our study and admiration. The child who plucks a rose to pieces, or crushes the fragile form of a fluttering insect, destroys a work which the highest art could not create, nor man's best skilled ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... forgotten, and yet eyes, hair, expression, combined to remind him of some one whom he had seen but could not bring definitely to mind. There were no names on the locket, no marks of identification of any kind, yet realizing the sacredness of it, Keith slipped the fragile gold chain about his neck, and securely hid the trinket ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... hand, In native mirth, as here they came, Gave a bluff rock his humble name: A yew-tree clasps its rugged base; The boatman knows its reverend face; And with his memory and his fee, Rests the result that time shall see. Yet e'en if time shall sweep away The fragile whimsies of a day; Or travellers rest the dashing oar, To hear the mingled echoes roar; A stranger's triumph—he will feel A joy that death alone can steal. And should he cold indifference feign, And treat such honours with disdain, Pretending pride shall not deceive ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... Bluebells, their stalks bending under the weight of blossoms, clothe every hillside in a glorious azure dress bespangled with yellow roses, daisies, and forget-me-nots. But I think I like the wild poppies best of all, for their delicate, fragile beauty is wonderfully appealing. I learned to love them first in Alaska, where their pale, yellow faces look up happily from the storm-swept hills of the Pribilof Islands ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... Yet in that lovely, fragile form, in that dreaming, poetical soul, lay undeveloped a latent power of heroism soon to be aroused into action. "Darling of all hearts and eyes," Edith had been at home a year when the War ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... here some years ago, during which several blocks of buildings sailed out of town and had never been heard from since. A Chinaman concluded to leave in a wash tub, and actually set sail in one of those fragile barks. A drowning man hailed him piteously, thus: "Throw me a rope, oh throw me a rope!" To which the Chinaman excitedly cried, "No have got—how can do?" and went on, on with the howling current. He was never seen more; ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... him at that moment other foolish blithe little loves, like faded flowers with the sweetness gone out of them. They had been so innocent, so fragile, so free from blame; all but the last; and this last it was that threatened to rise like a shadow perhaps, and defeat his winning the only woman he ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to my benefit. There was a baldish, broken-down captain of Native Infantry, shivering with ague behind an indomitable red nose—and they called him Captain Dickson. There was another captain, also of Native Infantry, with a fair mustache; his face was like white glass, and his hands were fragile, but he answered joyfully to the cry of Tertius. There was an enormously big and well-kept man, who had evidently not campaigned for years, clean-shaved, soft-voiced, and cat-like, but still Abanazar for all that he adorned the Indian Political ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... to this heart-awakening recital? I looked round at Lucy Anderson in lively sympathy with what I had heard. How little did her appearance give token of the deep domestic grief that must have settled upon her young heart! How deceptive is the human countenance! Though pale and fragile, yet her face sparkled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... upon the box. Suddenly he realized that the word cross, in its repetitions, its position as the final word of the song, must have a definite meaning. Before his eyes he saw the cross, so delicately carved as to project scarcely an eighth of an inch above the thin and fragile ivory surface. Instinctively he began to push at it, pressing it this way and that, to discover, if possible, any spring or other means whereby it might be made to turn or lift up. As he did so, his fingers unconsciously pressed upon the large pearl at the top. In a moment the upper surface of the ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... much embarrassed by the state of parties in England that he could not venture to make war on the House of Bourbon. He was suffering under a complication of severe and incurable diseases. There was every reason to believe that a few months would dissolve the fragile tie which bound up that feeble body with that ardent and unconquerable soul. If Lewis could succeed in preserving peace for a short time, it was probable that all his vast designs would be securely accomplished. Just at this crisis, the most important ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sighing of the wind in her shrouds. Every prosperous breeze, which, gently swelling her sails, helped the Pilgrims onward in their course, awoke new anthems of praise; and when the elements were wrought into fury, neither the tempest, tossing their fragile bark like a feather, nor the darkness and howling of the midnight storm, ever disturbed, in man or woman, the firm and settled purpose of their souls, to undergo all, and to do all, that the meekest patience, the boldest resolution, and the highest trust ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... cheering and praying ones were Mrs Mooney—a brand plucked from the burning—and fragile Eve, with her weak, thin, helpless body and her robust heart, chosen to do herculean and gladiator service of sympathy and rescue in the Master's cause. And you may be sure that blooming Isa Martin was there, and her friend Martha Lockley; Manx Bradley, the Admiral, who, with other fishermen, ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... bids me rise and strip, and, naked all from toe to lip, To wander where the dewdrops drip from off the silent trees, And where the hairy spiders spin their nets of silver, fragile-thin, And out to where the fields begin, like down ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... see the sun setting behind a glorious sky, directly before us. We were evidently near the sea, because the water was perfectly salt, and we scented also the cool and bracing sea breeze, with feelings of satisfaction and rapture. However, the wind became too stormy for our fragile canoe; the waves leaped into it over the bow, and several times we were in danger of being swamped. Our companion was far before us, and out of sight, so that, for the moment, there was no probability of receiving assistance, or of ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... were to be married directly. It was all rather contemptible, but I passed on tolerantly, for it is only when she is unhappy that this woman disturbs me, owing to a clever way she has at such times of looking more fragile than she really is. ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... was no fragile maiden sigh, but a sigh which shook her like a shiver. Whenever a flash of reason darted like an electric light upon her lover—as it sometimes would—and showed his imperfections, she shivered thus. But it was over in a second, and she loved on. She knew ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... we shall ever go back again, or what is to happen to us before we do go back," she thought, and turned, with a half defined fear, toward her eldest sister, who looked so old and fragile beside that sturdy, healthful servant girl. "Elizabeth!" Elizabeth, rubbing Miss Leaf's feet, started at the unwonted sharpness ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... chanced to discover Zelma's trysting-place, thrown open to the world the hidden romance in which she took such shy and secret delight, and handled in idle gossip the delicate joys and fragile hopes of young love, it is more than likely that she would have been frightened away from bower and lane, shocked and disenchanted. But the preoccupation of her cousin and her own eccentric and solitary habits prevented suspicion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... of all except the loin-cloth and, casting their clothing at the feet of some holy man, proceed calmly upon their way. One out of a number of beautiful, fragile girls, with cast-down painted eyes and half-veiled face, for no apparent reason would sidle up against some man; rest for one moment against him, and continue with him upon the road, his arm about her, crushing her body to his; and the drums throbbed, and the horns screamed in and around the temple ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... supreme interest lie with Dante or Shakespeare or Goethe. It is astounding how commonly the function and the brain power of the great poet are misconceived and underrated. The supreme poets are no dainty or fragile sentimentalists; in reality they are the very flower of human penetration. Not because they write in splendid verse. That, indeed, is the appropriate vehicle of their power; the harmonies and melodies of verse represent and reproduce the tone and colour ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... up old cotton cards, and horns that had been used to call the slaves. Finally the "robe-tail muslin" came to light. The soft material, so fragile with age that a touch sufficed to reduce it still further to rags, was made with a full skirt and plain waist, and still showed traces of a yellow ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... young leaf of a pure rich green, with thickly-clustered buds just breaking into a dense snow of blossom. Periwinkles trailed down upon the turf, and the closely set stonecrop made a reddish bloom on the lower boulders, amidst bronze-hued moss, pale fragile scales of lichen, and glossy leaved fibrous-rooted ivy, that all went to pattern their sullen grey with delicate arabesques. The strongest note of colour was in the wild hyacinths, that, where the earth had been disturbed at some time and so given them a chance, made drifts of a deep ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... games and problems there do lead occasionally to recommendations by the War College to the General Board as to various matters; but the connection between the conclusions of the War College and the decisions of Congress via the General Board and the secretary of the navy is so fragile and discontinuous, that it may truthfully be said that the influence of the war games at our War College has but a faint resemblance to the determining force of ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... "long ago." It would not have meant much for some others, but it seemed the greatest of all responsibilities to Henry Rayne, who had become an utter stranger to the female sex, and who had settled down in an old bachelor's home for the rest of his life. He tried to think it all out, but the fragile form of a young, beautiful girl, glided between him and his thought, and he saw upon her face the sweet, sad smile, of a parentless child pleading for protection. He was lost—he was dreaming; he never stirred for hours, until the dawn streaked in between the drawn curtains, ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... had had a presentiment that things would go wrong if she remained inside. In his gratitude, and in the boyish exultation with which success filled him, he had collected all the roses, and wantonly pulled them to pieces. Red petals fell like flakes of red snow; and, crushed and bruised, the fragile leaves had ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... her delight to wreath flowers around Amy's golden curls, and to add a thousand fantastic decorations to her delicate and seraphic loveliness. They would have made an exquisite picture, those two sisters, so different in age and character; the one so fair, with childhood's silent and fragile beauty, the other glowing with life and premature thought, already testing the "rapture of the strife," and revealing in the intense gaze of her dark, restless eyes, the world of gleaming visions ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... saw for the first time the interior of an East Side tenement. Mrs. Turner lay propped in bed, a ghost of what was once a comely woman. She was barely thirty, yet poverty, disease and the city had drawn their cruel lines across her face. Gloria went to her bedside and gently pressed the fragile hand. She dared not trust herself to speak. And this, she thought, is within the shadow of my home, and I never knew. "Oh, God," she silently prayed, "forgive us for our ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... Salt, Peter Pierson often perambulated the terrace, with hands folded behind him. Contemporary with these was Daines Barrington, a burly, square man. Lamb also mentions Burton, "a jolly negation," who drew up the bills of fare for the parliament chamber, where the benchers dined; thin, fragile Wharry, who used to spitefully pinch his cat's ears when anything offended him; and Jackson, the musician, to whom the cook once applied for instructions how to write down "edge-bone of beef" in a bill of commons. Then there was Blustering Mingay, who had a grappling-hook in substitute ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... wolf-pack on their trail, with the nearest human habitation many miles away, with her reindeer doing his utmost to keep up with the racing lead-deer, that slender jerk-line with which she could do so little seemed a fragile "life-line" in ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... carpet beneath as well as upon the table, and against the wall stood richly carved trunks. On the table, beside a bowl of late flowers were a great silver flagon and a number of goblets, some of chased silver and some of colored glass, strangely shaped and fragile as an eggshell. The late sun now shining in at the open window made the glass to glow ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... meant nothing in the boy's life. That was because they did not seem members of his species, but something fragile, mysterious, and ranking somewhere between flowers and angels. Thus his feeling for them was composed of a little awe, more reverence, and a sense of great remoteness. Never had he observed them thoughtfully ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... sweat of mind or body wealth was won, and they had a sense of parting with something which was really theirs. But a cheque has never yet impressed me with the least sense of its intrinsic value. It is a thing so trivial and fragile that the mind refuses to regard it as the equivalent of lands and houses and solid bullion. It is a thing incredible to reason that with a stroke of the pen a man may sign away his thousands. If cheques were prohibited by law, and all payments made in good coin of the realm, I believe we should ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... wanted an immediate illustration of the fragile nature of man's purposes, of how completely and thoroughly our firmest resolutions are the sport of fate and accident, it could have been furnished to him within five minutes after he left the gates of the house where he ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... feelings, propensities, and passions, which are found to occur under the same forms at all the different periods of history, it may defy the efforts of time; or at least it can only be destroyed by another religion. But when religion clings to the interests of the world, it becomes almost as fragile a thing as the powers of the earth. It is the only one of them all which can hope for immortality; but if it be connected with their ephemeral authority, it shares their fortunes, and may fall with those transient passions which supported them for a day. The alliance ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... that period, with their unsewered and unpaved streets, their dingy, flickering gaslights, their ambling horse-cars, and their hideous slums, seemed appropriate settings for the unformed social life and the rough-and-ready political methods of American democracy. The railroads, with their fragile iron rails, their little wheezy locomotives, their wooden bridges, their unheated coaches, and their kerosene lamps, fairly typified the prevailing frontier business and economic organization. But only by talking with the business leaders of that time ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... glorious brightness some are crown'd: How beauteous art thou, lily fair! With thee no silver can compare: I'll not forget thy dress outshone The pomp of regal Solomon. I write the friend, I love so well, No sounding verse his heart to swell. The fragile flowerets of the plain Can rival human triumphs vain. I liken to a floweret's fate The fleeting joys of mortal state; The flower so glorious seen to-day To-morrow dying fades away; An end has soon the flowery clan, ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... athletic exercises, but as a barrier to three fine chargers urged by the rider of the centre one forward at a hand gallop, and armed only with a long thin Andrea Ferrara blade, he seemed but a fragile reed to stem the charge. But the unexpected happens more often than the reverse, and it was so here. One minute the horses were tearing along as far apart as the reins would allow; the next they seemed to have passed ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... the population engaged in (mainly subsistence) agriculture. It is the most densely populated country in Africa; is landlocked, and has few natural resources and minimal industry. Primary exports are coffee and tea. The 1994 genocide decimated Rwanda's fragile economic base, severely impoverished the population, particularly women, and eroded the country's ability to attract private and external investment. However, Rwanda has made significant progress in stabilizing and rehabilitating its economy. GDP has rebounded, and inflation has been curbed. In June ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... afternoon and left his son to finish the work, and the son tagged and labelled and painted with all his might. The Dirty Boy barrel in the corner, being separated from the others, looked to him especially important, so he gave particular attention to that; pasted on it one label marked "Fragile," one "This Side Up," two "Glass with Care," and finding several "Perishables" in his pocket tied on a few of those, and removed the entire lot of boxes, crates, and barrels ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Remnants of such matchless Villanies, who surviving were enslaved, is infinite. But because so much might be said concerning the Assassinations and Depopulating of these people, as cannot without great difficulty be published in Writing (nor do I conceive that one fragile part of 1000 that is here contained can be fully displayed) I will only add one remark more of the prementioned Wars, in lieu of a Corollary or Conclusion, and aver upon my Conscience, that notwithstanding ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... this sound, suggestive of moving animals coming from pasture to protected places for the night, put a heart in the breast of this pastoral. Thin was the sound and delicate, fit music for Greece in the fragile evening. As Dion listened to it, he looked at that black finger below him pointing to the redness in the west. Then he remembered it was a gun, and, for an instant, looking at the red, he thought of the color of ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Garth with a sharp scrutiny; and Garth looked with interest at her. She was a fragile, elegant, plaintive little person of the old "lady-like" regime; but for all her gentleness, Garth was somehow conscious that he faced a woman of an iron will. She had the impatient, inattentive manner of one possessed by a single idea. ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... to be like sisters. So she had brought from the depths of the Vosges a humble relation on her mother's side, a very pious and honest soul, who had been cook to the Bishop of Nancy. Fearing, however, her inexperience of Paris ways, and yet more the evil counsel which wrecks such fragile virtue, at first Lisbeth always went to market with Mathurine, and tried to teach her what to buy. To know the real prices of things and command the salesman's respect; to purchase unnecessary delicacies, such as fish, only when they were cheap; to be well informed as to ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... empires! and control In their shut breasts, their petty misery. What are our woes and sufferance?—Come and see The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye! Whose agonies are evils of a day:— A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... feeling. This was exhibited in the tenderness of her attachment to Agnes Hamilton, and in the agonizing grief which she experienced at her death—a grief which had well-nigh become fatal to a girl of her fragile organization. The predominant trait, however, in her character was timidity and a terror of a hundred trifles, which, in the generality of her sex, would occasion only indifference or laughter. On ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... looked very pale, very frail, intensely, vibratingly alive. This extraordinary contradiction between body and mind made a charm and mystery which it is difficult to express in words. One longed to protect and shield her, to tuck her up on a sofa, and tend her like a fragile child, at the very same moment that mentally one was sitting at her feet, domineered by the influence of ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... but its dingy walls were more or less concealed by paintings of the martial Virginia ancestors of Mrs. Ballinger and her husband, the table linen had been woven for her in Ireland, the cut glass blown for her in England; the fragile china came from Sevres, and the massive silver had travelled from England to Virginia in the reign of Elizabeth. The room may have been ugly, nay, ponderous, ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... on the fragile Miss Hastings a smile so pleasant that it made her instantly determine to find out something about his family and commercial standing. "What time do we start on ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... opened and a little old lady in widow's cap and gown came forward. She was a fragile, delicate-looking little woman, with a very bright face and smile, and she ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... after the destruction of the religious and political dogmas of the past, France had lived as best she could on some few fragile dogmas, which had in their turn been consecrated by a naive superstition; these dogmas were the principles of 1789—the almightiness of reason, the efficacy of absolute liberty, the sovereignty of the people—in a word, the whole credo of the revolution.... ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... without a judge; she will not have much to fear from envy, because its malignant eye will not fix upon one object exclusively, when there are numbers to distract its attention, and share the stroke. The fragile nature of female friendships, the petty jealousies which break out at the ball or in the drawing-room, have been from time immemorial the jest of mankind. Trifles, light as air, will necessarily excite not only the jealousy, but the envy of those who think only of trifles. Give them more ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... certain lights, in certain poises of head it suggested tragic sorrow. Or it might have been her wavy hair. Or even just that pointed chin stuck out a little, resentful and not particularly distinguished, doing away with the mysterious aloofness of her fragile presence. But any way at a given moment Anthony must have suddenly seen the girl. And then, that something had happened to him. Perhaps nothing more than the thought coming into his head that this was "a ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Miss Gilder's admiration (and hospitality) through her unassuming pluck. To my mind she is the ideal adventuress of a new, unknown, and therefore deadly type; but for once I rejoiced at sight of the pallid, fragile woman, so cheerful in spite of frail health, so frank about her twenty-eight years. She had news to tell of a nature so exciting that, after a whisper or two, Cleopatra forgot Anthony in her desire to know the latest ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... the shops of Malta with a tasteful species of bijouterie, which is eagerly sought after by all the visitors. The carved work of Malta is sold very cheap; but the same quality, which renders it so easily cut, occasions it to chip, and, therefore, great care is necessary in packing these fragile articles. ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... (How some of us would like to see those signs once more!) To prevent the handles from being broken off, these cups were made without handles. They were so thick that you could drop them on the floor and not damage the cups. When one man hit another on the head with this fragile china, the skull cracked before the teacup did. The "family reach" which we developed in helping ourselves to food, was sometimes used in reaching across the table and felling a man with a blow on the chin. Kipling has ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... dainty and fragrant about her, and one had a vision of pale blue ribbons, and soft laces, and lovely flowers, and then one forgot everything else as one looked at the dear face framed in such soft grey hair. She looked so fragile that one fancied she might be wafted away by a summer breeze, and I have never seen anyone so pale. There was not a tinge of colour in face or hands, and one kissed her gently for fear that even a caress might be too much for ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... naturally ingenious, possibly the original workers sought more diverting labor; at any rate the futile chopping was abandoned. Instead, several long ladders were hooked together and the synthesis lowered from the curb to the edge of Dinkman's roof. It seemed remarkably fragile, but it reached and the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... same tranquil leisure enfolded us; day followed day in an order unbroken and peaceful as the unfolding of the flowers and the silent march of the stars. Time no longer ran like the few sands in a delicate hour-glass held by a fragile human hand, but like a majestic river fed by fathomless seas. . . . We gave ourselves up to the sweetness of that unmeasured life, without thought of yesterday or to-morrow; we drank the cup to-day held to our lips, and knew that ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... Mrs. Harrington, fragile, flushed, breathlessly intense in her wheel-chair, had yet a certain resemblance in voice and gesture to Mrs. De Guenther—a resemblance which puzzled Phyllis till she placed it as the mark of that far-off ladies' school they had attended ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... uncritical assumption. It is an uncritical common sense experience that substances are different from qualities and actions, and that the latter inhere in the former. To base the whole of metaphysics on such a tender and fragile experience is, to say the least, building on a weak foundation. It was necessary that the importance of the self-revealing thought must be brought to the forefront, its evidence should be collected and trusted, and an account of experience should be given ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... fire-buckets at quarters, in readiness for night action only. There is usually one attached to each gun; the bucket is fragile, but intended to screen the light, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... kindliness, to cram the leg of a turkey down a man's throat, while his yoke—fellow in bondage is fracturing his tender woolly skull—for all negroes, as is well known, have craniums, much thinner, and more fragile than an egg—shell—with so tremendous a weapon as a silver ladle? Ay, a silver ladle!!! Some people make light of a silver ladle as an instrument of punishment—it is spoken of as a very slight affair, and that the blows inflicted by it are mere child's play. If any ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... men, that the one whose like no neighbouring city can show, you have chosen to chase from among you? With what triumphs, with what valorous citizens, are you splendid? Your wealth is a removable and uncertain thing; your fragile beauty will grow old; your delicacy is shameful and feminine; but these make you noticed by the false judgments of the populace! Do you glory in your merchants and your artists? I speak imprudently; but the one are tenaciously avaricious ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... brought tears to eyes of case-hardened section of the audience seated in Press Gallery. They furtively dropped when Member for Carnarvon described how, a small boy visiting the Strangers' Gallery, he found seated there "a saintly Pressman, a frail and fragile figure in bad health, who wrote weekly letters to the Welsh Baner. I saw him," he added, "at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... toys—a little train and some building blocks—"to get Granny to play with him as usual," and the fragile old lady knelt down on the floor, and played with him just as any ordinary Granny might have done, only with ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... chair and sat by the crib, watching the infant go back to sleep. I was glad to be alone, to have a chance to get myself together. But suddenly I heard a rustle of skirts in the doorway behind me, and turned and saw a white-clad figure; an elderly gentlewoman, slender and fragile, grey-haired and rather pale, wearing a ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... to her breast, appeared stretched on a litter, and was borne toward the spot. It was Helen, brought from the adjoining nunnery, where since her return to these once dear shores, now made a desert to her, she had languished in the gradual decay of the fragile bonds which alone fettered her mourning ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... a fragile thing, and eminently frangible. This present writer once did see four beauties break within a single moon. And when they break, what previous joy of coloring can over-top the sorrow of their dire destruction? It is a singular difficulty in the way of those ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... from my couch I rose, and like a ghost Stole through the darkness of my father's halls; Fled to the sea; and in my fragile bark I heaped a few fresh fruits, and bore a vase Filled with fresh water,—this was all my store. I loosed my shallop from the anchoring rock, And, as it drifted out upon the tide, I leaned upon the single, ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... don't mind," she replied in a tone of such utter indifference that Everard took a book. He did not read however, but sat shading his face with his hand, so as to enable him to contemplate the poor worn face and fragile form of her whom he loved better than life. He pictured her, as she appeared when waiting the arrival of the guests on Grace's birthday, and the contrast was painful in the extreme, neither could he account for the utter ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... thou, pale violet, to see the dying year; Are Autumn's blasts fit music for thee, fragile one, to hear; Will thy clear blue eye, upward bent, still keep its chastened glow, Still tearless lift its slender form above ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... pretty, he thought, or perhaps it was that, with the wide, dry lonely plain as a setting, her fragile delicacy of appearance was invested with a ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... at the moment, in honestly warning him away from the sunken wreck he had a dream of raising; and looked at him with eyes which assuredly, in association with her patient face, her fragile figure, her spare dress, and the wind and rain, did not turn him from ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... fragile-looking girl, who looked as if she had grown among crowded streets, rather than blossomed in the open valley, with its flowing river and breezy hillsides. She was a very silent child, too, with a meek grace about all her ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... fond and fragile creature Then known to me . . . Well, shall I say it plain? I would not have you thus and there, But still would grieve on, missing you, still feature You as ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... caught Gilbart's eye, and somehow it seemed to lift and remove her and the house she was entering—the lit windows, the guests, the Admiral himself—into another world. If it were real, then (like enough) this fragile thing, this Dresden goddess, owned a brother, perhaps a lover, on board the Berenice. If so, here was another world waiting to be shattered—a world of silks and toys and pretty uniforms and tiny bric-a-brac—a sort of doll's house inhabited ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... looked down and saw the heavens figured in a sphere of glass, he laughed and said to the other gods: "Has the power of mortal effort gone so far? Is my handiwork now mimicked in a fragile globe?" An old man of Syracuse had imitated on earth the laws of the heavens, the order of nature, and the ordinances of the gods. Some hidden influence within the sphere directs the various courses of the stars ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... matter; he would take her away from it. It was very sweet to him, the thought of putting a protective arm about this little fragile creature whose weakness gave him strength. He was not always going to be a clerk in an office. He was going to write poetry, books, plays. Already he had earned a little. He told her of his hopes, and her great faith in him gave him ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... ingenious method cups, saucers and other forms of ware can be made almost as thin as an egg shell or a piece of heavy paper, and after being allowed to become thoroughly dry can be safely burned in the kiln. It can readily be understood that it would not be possible to make such fragile pieces by the usual processes with plastic clay, which must be of the consistency of putty or dough, on the potter's wheel or by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... swept down by the light touch of a mere willow wand? for the very sake of his own manhood and self-respect, he cannot help but be ashamed! It is as though a little nude, laughing child mocked at a lion's strength, and made him a helpless prisoner with a fragile daisy chain. So the god Eros begins his battles, which end in perpetual victory,—first fear and shame,—then desire and passion,—then conquest and possession. And afterwards? ah! . . . afterwards the pagan deity is powerless,—a higher God, a grander force, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... as his thoughts travelled heavily along the past, that no other woman but Annesley Grayle, this fragile white rose that had freely given its sweetness, could have turned him from the vow of vengeance for his parents' fate which as a boy he had sworn against the world. Day by day, week by week, month by month, the fragrance of the white rose ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... clearing was made of the articles of more fragile virtue, and Timothy, entering in state, was off-loaded from his nurse's arms ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... Rider Boys took to the lad at once. He was a manly little fellow, but delicate to the point of being fragile, the lad having only recently recovered from a serious ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... a little stone out of the mountain would roll down on the feet of clay and break them, and then the great image, golden head, and silver breast, and brazen body, and iron legs, would all go to pieces—they rested on an infirm footing, fragile clay. ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... are the insects So wondrously fair; Illumining grasses And painting the air? You dear little shells, O, why do you shine? And feathery sea-weed Grow fragile and fine? ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... hand of his daughter, and learned that she was not free, at least until she had met a certain gentleman who was every day expected, his soul recoiled with a sudden sting; he had so leaned upon this staff of happiness, and now it bent like a fragile reed. May laughed in scorn that she should prefer any one to Marion, but he learned that the stranger was talented, handsome, wealthy, everything that a lady would desire in her favored suitor. If he did not release her, ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... might be compared to cases with glass and china, upon which is written, 'Fragile.' For you, a spiritual son of Athens, for me and a few others, it is pleasant to be in touch with it; but if you want to build anything on such foundation, you will find the beams coming down on your head. Don't you think those refined dilettanti of ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... deep pomegranate bears, which hides "Its purple grains beneath a flexile rind. "But short its boast, for the same winds afford "Its name, and shake them where they light adhere: "Ripe for their fall in fragile beauty gay." ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... the Venetian Points, some of the fine Rose Points being priceless. It is so fragile that little of it remains, and the smallest piece is eagerly snapped up ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... he was a spindly and fragile person, with a knobby forehead and a fade-away face. Dressed in close-fitting black and turned sidewise, with his profile to you, he would instantly suggest a neatly rolled umbrella with a plain bone handle. But he was not dressed in black; he was dressed in white—all ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb |
