"Eggshell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and nearly set them wild, but being so accustomed to running the road, they never once left the track, and went flying on down the grade towards the next station, eight miles distant, the coach bouncing over the loose stones and small obstacles, and surging from side to side, as an eggshell would in the rapids of Niagara. Not satisfied with the break-neck rate at which they were traveling, Bob pulled out his revolver and fired in rapid succession, at the same time yelling ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... in Otter, "why did you not shoot that old medicine-man as I told you? It would have been easy when you were about it, Baas, and now he would have been broken like an eggshell thrown from a house-top, and not alive and full of the meat of malice. He is mad with rage and wickedness, and I say that he will kill us all if ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... some ten paces. The buccaneer threw himself upon the Gascon; raised his gun like a club; he seized the chevalier by the collar and cried, "Your life is mine; I am going to break your head like an eggshell." ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... of them adrift," Dick shouted into his friend's ear during one of the lulls. "God help them all; what will become of them? A ship would be dashed to pieces like an eggshell against these cliffs." ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... chances, that is all," I answered carelessly. "I just want to call your attention to the fact that one of those steel yards, end-on, will go through the roof of your forecastle as if it were so much eggshell." ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... planning. But when the door behind Helen, urged by the wind through the broken casement, banged to, the man made his first lightning-like sign. He dashed the lamp to the floor, where it burst like an eggshell, and darkness leaped into the room as an animal pounces. Had she been calmer or had time for an instant's thought Helen would have hastened back to the light, but she was midway to her liberty ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... strong man, much stronger than myself, and if I am upon an equal footing with you, could crush me as easily as an eggshell.' ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... most keenly felt, fell upon them. Bulletin after bulletin came to port with its doleful tale of this vessel burned or that vessel scuttled, this one held by the pirates for their own use or that one stripped of its goods and sent into port as empty as an eggshell from which the yolk had been sucked. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston suffered alike, and worthy ship owners had to leave off counting their losses upon their fingers and take to the slate to keep the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... mackerel, an unlucky dish. The Harmonie, empty of cargo, was like an eggshell in the water. She bounced and rolled and bounded from wave to wave, half of the time her screw out of the water. The breakfast did not nourish many. Far on the horizon could be seen the destroyer and the cruiser ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... knees, groggy-headed and bleary-eyed. His hand closed over the whip. The stock was heavily loaded with lead, and it was a terrible weapon when held reversed. One blow from it could crush a skull like an eggshell. ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... Jimmie admitted that it was worth while coming, and let me record in advance that when we got to Vienna, and they served us an equally delicious beer in long thin glasses as delicate as an eggshell, Bee grew so enthusiastic in the process of beer drinking that Jimmie grew absurdly proud of his pupil, and professed to think that she was "coming round after all." But Bee declared that it was the thinness of the glasses which attracted her, and insisted that beer out of a ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... weather, while Roderick was on the stand at Epsom, watching the City and Suburban winner pursue his meteor course along the close-cropped sward, Lord Mallow was sitting at ease in a flowery fauteuil in the Queen Anne morning-room at Kensington, sipping orange-scented tea out of eggshell porcelain, and listening to Lady Mabel's dulcet accents, as she somewhat monotonously and inexpressively rehearsed "The ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... back broke with a good lot of eggshell," said a short, stout man with a snuff-colored coat, the collar well up the back of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... coffee-pot, and let it drop therein, and then, with a charming frenzy, stir it round and round. It was a picture of domestic suggestion, a subtle insinuation of home, the unconscious appeal of inherent housewifery to inherent husbandhood. At the crash of the eggshell he trembled; the swift agitation of the coffee and the egg within ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... feet of the party and then, with a bound, rose as though to pass directly above their heads. His powerful tail was raised high to one side, and as he passed close above them he brought it down in one terrific sweep that crushed a green warrior's skull as though it had been an eggshell. ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... surface, the pressure would grow more and more enormous, until at last it became quite doubtful if any line could bear the tremendous strain. It was even possible that at a certain depth the walls of the Nautilus might be crushed in like an eggshell, and the whole machine made as flat as two leaves of paper ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... Sahib? The minute he done it, the tiger let out a yell that you would have heerd a mile off, and, afore Sam could get out of the way, the tiger smashed right out of the cage and was among the people, chawing them up. He had his well eye on Sam, and crushed his head like an eggshell, with one bite! Then he made a sweep with his paw, and knocked Jack Habersham clean out the tent. He must have gone a hundred feet through the air, for he come down on top of the steeple, and is there yet with the ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... the first rage of the storm was terrible enough, its fierceness did not come to its height till about one o'clock in the middle watch. Long before then the sea had grown mountainous, and the dance of our eggshell of a brig upon it was sickening and affrighting. The heads of the Andean peaks of black water looked tall enough to brush the lowering soot of the heavens with the blue and yellow phosphoric fires which sparkled ghastly amid the bursting ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... has set them all by the ears in this country. It is just the difference in the amount of power brought to bear on the action. That is all. I have seen, in a workshop in Calcutta, a hammer that would crack an eggshell without crushing it, or bruise a lump of iron as big as your head into a flat cake. 'Phenomena' may amuse women and children, but the real beauty of the system lies in the promised attainment of happiness. Whether that ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... this time," said the Major. "They have cut a deeper niche in the log to hold the breech and there'll be no chance of its slipping. These walls will be shattered like an eggshell. Steady, ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... the four flags that showed the ship's name in signal letters. The red ensign was already fluttering from a staff at the stern, and the house flag of David Verity & Co. was at the fore, but these emblems did not satisfy Coke's fighting mettle. The Andromeda would probably crack like an eggshell the instant she touched the reef towards which she was hurrying; he determined that she would go down with colors flying if he were not put out of action by a bullet before he could reach ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... In carrying out an eggshell, broken at one end and of no further use, she dropped it near the foot of the tree. To her this was doubtless a disaster, but to me it was a treasure-trove, for it told her well-kept secret. The hint was taken, the home soon found ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... was forced to resign herself to doing as the birds do, and bring up her little one on a bed of moss and down. She hardly dared to put upon the little arm, smaller than her own little finger, a little shift made of the fine white skin of the inside of an eggshell. The boots of the little one had soles cut out of the inside husks of the corn; a poppy leaf made her an ample bonnet. The spider's web which the dew whitens, and the wind winds up in balls, seemed too coarse too weave her sheets with, and the cup of an acorn ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... them in their butterfly life. I seemed to catch glimpses of a symbolic truth in this; as if indeed the human soul were even already beginning to shake itself free from its chrysalis-wrapping, or were bursting off the last fragments of the eggshell. ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... me, that magnificent rustic!" he growled. "At a sign from Marie-Anne he would have crushed me like an eggshell, without a thought of my ancestors. Ah! does he also love her? There will be ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... the Texans are stubborn. But I do not need any information from you. I shall crush the Alamo, as my fingers would smash an eggshell." ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... two of our people went to this sandbank while the rest stayed to watch the cayman. The turtle had advanced on to the sand to lay their eggs, and the men got betwixt them and the water; they brought off half a dozen very fine and well-fed turtle. The eggshell of the fresh-water turtle is not hard like that of the land-tortoise, but appears like white parchment, and gives way to the pressure of the fingers; but it is very tough, and does not break. On this sandbank, close to the forest, we found several guana's nests; ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... said the doctor in a low voice, "metaphors literally fail me. It is inadequate to say that the skull was smashed to bits like an eggshell. Fragments of bone were driven into the body and the ground like bullets into a mud wall. It was the hand of ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... trained the gun upon the nearest prahu, and aiming at the waterline, fired it when the craft was within twenty feet of them. A moment later its impetus brought it against the side of the launch, which was crushed like an eggshell between it and the captured prahu, the two midshipmen springing on board just in time. It was the Malays' turn to board now, that of the British to prevent them; the musketry of the sailors and marines for a time kept the enemy off, but they strove desperately to gain a footing on board, ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... and with such care did he weigh everything that I said about my art. Of matters of state or of the dreadful scene of blood through which we had just passed he spoke no word. At the end, however, after a little pause during which he held up a cup of alabaster as thin as an eggshell, studying the light playing through it on the rich red wine within, he said ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... are five hundred warriors in Black Hawk's camp at this minute, and that is only fifteen miles away. Within ten days he could rally to him Kickapoos, Potawatamies and Winnebagoes in sufficient force to crush us like an eggshell. Why, Gaines ought to be here himself, with a thousand regulars ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... weighing about four hundredweight I should say, struck him on the breast, and killed him on place; he never spoke. I've forgotten his very name. Another; the stone went clean out of window, but it kicked the grinder backward among the machinery, and his head was crushed like an eggshell. But the worst of all was poor Billy's father. He had been warned against his stone; but he said he would run it out. Well, his little boy, that is Billy, had just brought him in his tea, and was standing beside him, when the stone went like a pistol-shot, and snapped the horsing chains like ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... every bar, with nearly the same pauses between each dose. Whether they were really helping him against Time and Decay or not, they were making him pink and dropsical, and had not prevented, if they had not helped to produce, a baldness as of an eggshell. This he would cover in, to counteract the draughty character which he ascribed to all bar parlours alike, with a cloth cap having ear-flaps, as soon as ever he had hung up a beaver hat which he might have inherited from ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... infuriated beast. Even as the astonished Abou dropped his struggling burden to meet the attack of the unexpected deliverer, he was felled to the earth by a mighty blow from the rifle which his assailant swung swift and true. His skull was crushed as if it were an eggshell. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... house, he took the lift down to his second-floor suite, where he showered and changed into evening sandals and clout. He redonned his gloves, then rode down another two flights to the terrace, where Elise was waiting for him in a gossamer-thin iridescent eggshell sari. They kissed and she patted the place on the love-seat beside her. She had a book—an old-fashioned book of colored reproductions of long-since-destroyed old masters on her lap. The artist was a man ...
— It's All Yours • Sam Merwin
... that lies around the fount sprinkle the ash, in order that its branches may not rot and wither away. This water is so holy that everything placed in the spring becomes as white as the film, within an eggshell. As it is said in ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... clambered into a blackened and branchy hackmatack, so small that he feared the rush of the bull might break it down. It did, indeed, crack ominously when the headlong bulk reared upon it; but it stood. And Sandy felt as if every branch he grasped were an eggshell. ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... have to do is to place the empty half-shell of your egg on the rim of the plate, and keeping this latter duly sloped, by a slight movement of the wrist as may be needful, you will see the eggshell begin to revolve rapidly on its own axis, at the same time traveling round the plate. It is hardly necessary to remark that the egg-shell will not travel uphill, and the plate must therefore be gradually shifted round, as well as sloped, so that the shell may always have an inch or ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... Mongoose; and he sat down and began to crack the eggs, and eat the little muggers as they came out. And he threw the shells into the water, so that the old Mugger should not see that any one had been eating them. But he was careless, and he left one eggshell on the edge, and he was hungry and he ate so many that the pile got much smaller, and when the old Mugger came back he saw at once that some one had been ...
— The Story of Little Black Sambo, and The Story of Little Black Mingo • Helen Bannerman
... hermit, "and we are fitted out for longish voyages and rough weather. Besides, it is not so much of an eggshell as you suppose. I made it myself, and took care that it should be fit for the work required of it. The wood of which it is made, although light, is very tough, and it is lined with a skin of strong canvas which is fixed to the planks with tar. This makes the craft watertight as well ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... broke like an eggshell. Sarah Brown turned back towards her bed. It was too early to get up. It was too late to go to sleep again. Eunice, her hot-water bottle, she knew, lay cold as a serpent to shock her feet if she ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... demanded and then, pushing the engineer aside, he flashed a torch on the wreck. Wedged in the gearing of the shattered gear-wheel was a pair of engineer's overalls. They had jammed tight in the teeth and the resistless driving of the engine had cracked the great gear-wheel like an eggshell. Held solid by its base in the bolted concrete there had not been a half-inch's play and, since something must give, and the opposing wheel had stood, the enormous casting had smashed. The engineer and his helpers were pottering about, ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... shot. The whole charge took the canoe about six feet behind the bow, and doubled her up like an eggshell. Before the smoke had cleared she had foundered, and the second canoe had paused to pick up some of the wounded men. The others, as much at home in the water as in the woods, were already striking ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the old blacksmith said, taking Norah's small brown hand, and holding it for a moment in his horny fist very much as if he feared it were an eggshell, and not to be dropped. "Master Jim's growing a big fellow, too—goin' to be as big a man as his father, I believe. Well, good-bye, missy, and don't forget to come in next time ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... enough, the moment her bows passed beyond the pier, the sea struck her, and tossed her like an eggshell, and the deck, from stem to stern, was drenched in a moment, and running with floods as if she had been under water. For a few moments H. and I both enjoyed the motion. We stood amidships, she in her shawl, I in a great tarpauling which I had borrowed of Jack, and every pitch sent the spray ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... recog. Pet. cap. 3. Peter answers by the simile of an eggshell, which is cunningly made, yet of necessity to be broken; so is the world, &c. that the excellent state of heaven ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... jury on the whole case was long remembered in the courts, rising as it did to a very high level of forensic eloquence. Few who saw it ever forgot the sight of his handsome face and commanding presence as he crushed the case of his opponents like an eggshell, and then with calm and overwhelming force denounced the woman who with her lover had concocted the cruel plot that robbed her uncle of life and her cousins of their property, till at the last, pointing ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... the other; "there is not enough to blow a lady's curl aside. If you wait, sir, till the land-breeze fills your sails, you will wait another moon. I believe I've got my eggshell out of that nest of gray-caps; but how it has been done in the dark, a better ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... again? This Fort was right. At least one intelligent man lived in your world, I'm pleased to know. The sky is a dome holding the sun, the stars and the wandering planets. The problem is that the dome is cracking like a great, smashed eggshell." ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... hits me the jig is up," Jet muttered, dodging his head barely in time to escape a huge fragment which would have crushed his skull like an eggshell. ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis |
