"Fragile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the old lady sitting up in her easy-chair by the sunny window, looking very white and fragile and serene. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... shone, keen, alert, humorous, and a trace wistful behind his glasses. His years were indeterminate; with the aspect of fifty, the spirit and the verve of thirty assorted oddly. But his hands were old, delicate, fine and fragile; and the lips beneath the drooping white mustache at times trembled, almost imperceptibly, with the generous sentiments that come with mellow age. He held his back straight and his head with an air—an air that was not a swagger but the sign-token of seasoned experience ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... these—'The counsel of 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
... child would soon learn that, although school-girls' vows are rarely false, they are usually as fragile and transient as harebells. She had dropped into a different world, and the old one would fade like a receding star. She would soon find her that her only choice must be to make new associations and friendships and find new pleasures; and this her mercurial, frank, and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... lovely scent, And rosemary, dear ornament, Sword-lilies proud, unfurled, And basil, quaintly curled, And fragile violet blue— He soon will seize you too! ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... herself before the immense press and was measuring it with her fiery glance, as if to take it by assault, to sack it, to destroy it, in spite of the withered and fragile thinness of her eighty years. Then, with ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... the King, whose body is fragile, a very unhealthy city. Moreover, there is no work here that a King can profitably do. Also it is dangerous for Barbul-el-Sharnak to be long ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany
... the same superficial marks, founded and maintained on the same nominal principles, framed in the same verbal forms, may yet work with infinite diversity of operation, according to the variety of social circumstances around them. Yet it is here inferred that democracy in England must be fragile, difficult, and sundry other evil things, because out of fourteen Presidents of the Bolivian Republic thirteen have died assassinated or in exile. If England and Bolivia were at all akin in history, religion, race, industry, the fate of Bolivian Presidents would be more instructive ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... and sixties, from Cruikshank and Browne to Frederick Walker, were partly helped by the system, partly helped to make it popular. But the circulating libraries did not like it for obvious reasons, the parts being fragile and unsubstantial: and the great success of cheap magazines, on the pattern of Macmillan's and the Cornhill, cut the ground from under its feet. The last remarkable novel that I remember seeing ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... plants are young, and have not acquired their peculiar scent. In the sheep it is larger, and fills the superior portion of the nasal cavity; but in the dog it seems to occupy that cavity almost to the exclusion of the turbinated bones. It is also much more fragile in the dog than in the ox, and the plates have a ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... shop, in a very moderate line of village business. The two up-stair rooms into which he introduced us were so crowded with inestimable articles, that we were almost afraid to stir for fear of breaking some fragile thing that had been ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shoulder in it was a manoeuvre of extreme delicacy, especially where the rapids caused the water to be in wild commotion. I was told that it would go down stream like an arrow, and so it did. There was no need to row hard, for the current took the fragile skiff along with it so fast that the trees on the banks sped by as if they were running races, and every few minutes brought a change of landscape. It was very delightful; only one sensation of movement could have ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the idea of beings from other worlds looking and acting human seems fantastic. It should not. There is good sound scientific reason to believe that there is little chance of it being any other way. Life is a delicate and fragile thing when compared to cosmic extremes of temperature and environment in our universe. If life formed on earth as science now believes that it did, we must have had just the right size planet at just the ...
— The Four-Faced Visitors of Ezekiel • Arthur W. Orton
... upon the Governor's morning stroll to the post-office. How much more magnificent, impressive, and spectacular, then, was the scene at public functions when the General would lead forth the silver-haired relic of former greatness, like some rare and fragile waxwork figure, and trumpet his pristine ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... responded, bending 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 our mad ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... had bade him go, Sobbing, "Je t'aime"—which means, "I love you so!" Her hair—her hands—her lips, Red as a sunset cloud when daytime slips Into the night. No, redder! Like a flower That blooms upon the earth for just an hour; A poppy flower, fragile, soft.... HER LIPS Red as the heart-blood of a man, that drips Into ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... more like an unhappy ghost. Her small face was smaller; there was a tinge of green in its honey-whiteness, and of mauve in the dull rose of her mouth. And under her shallow breast her heart seemed to rise up and grow large, while the rest of Alice shrank and grew small. It was as if her fragile little body carried an enormous engine, an engine of infernal and terrifying power. When she lay down and when she got up and with every sudden movement its throbbing ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... abode, across whose threshold no loose fish had ever darted; 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, but it ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... nature-lore, and the lessons were but play. Tying the horse to a fence, the two cronies wandered into the wood and found, after much careful search, some Indian Pipes of an exquisite perfection. These fragile, curious things were Marjorie's great delight, and she carried them carefully ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... does the husband, thus neglected, get out of going to the occasional party whenever he can, and when he does allow himself to be dragged thither, why does he sulk, leaning against a chilly mantel-piece, eying his fragile coffee cup with disdain, and enacting the role of martyr generally, until he can persuade his wife to go home again? Why, indeed; but because he feels out of place. His rare and incidental appearance is a journey into a far country, of which he has little knowledge, and in which he ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... of missiles. There was, for instance, the cartridge charged with shot of various sizes— from dust-shot for the killing of humming-birds and such like, up to ordinary buck-shot—enclosed in a case so fragile that the friction of its passage along the rifling of the barrel destroyed it, causing it to crumble to dust as it emerged from the muzzle of the weapon, and leave the charge of shot free to do its work in the same manner as ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... lip, the chin, faintly decided, balanced beautifully on a rather short neck. On a photograph she must have been completely classical, almost cold—but the glow of her hair and cheeks, at once flushed and fragile, made her the most living ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the hall when I entered. Only the clock ticked ponderously. The house was cold, and Coppertoes seemed suddenly very fragile. How lonely he would be! I stared at the closed door of the parlour, thinking what a shame that the stuffed birds in there were not alive, so they might be company for him. Still—he was very young—and had not seen much of the world. Might he not be made to believe that they were a ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... bigger than ever by contrast with the slender little Japanese girl who faced him. She was barely seventeen, dainty and fragile as a porcelain figure, wholly in keeping with her exquisite setting and yet the flush on her cheeks—free from the thick disfiguring white paste used by the women of her country—and the vivid animation of her face were oddly occidental, and the eyes raised ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... the sour Puritan courage of the currant-bushes, taught a reckless native grapevine to wander and wanton over the southern side of the fence, and decked the banks with violets as fearless and as fragile as New England girls, so that about the end of June, when the heavens relented and the sun blazed out at last, there was little for him to do but to redden and darken the daring fruits that had attained almost their full growth ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... Leonard's elder by two years and cast in a more fragile mould. His face was the face of a dreamer, the brown eyes were large and reflective, and the mouth sensitive as a child's. He was a scholar and a philosopher, a man of much desultory reading, with refined tastes and a really ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... twigs, intricate, involved, erratic, might be likened to unschooled scribblings, with here a flourish and there a blot and many a boisterous smudge. Soon—it is merely a question of days—the swelling buds displace millions of leaf-sheaves, pale green and fragile, which fall and, curling in on themselves, redden, and again the yellow sand is littered, while overhead fresh foliage, changing rapidly from golden, glistening brown to rich dark green, makes one compact blotch. And when the wind torments sea and ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... pathways, lone and dreary, Quite unmeet for foot of Peri, Soft and fair;— Heavy air with vapors laden, Shrinking, fragile wings from Aidenn ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... character, and her errors are those of strength and independence rather than of weakness. She says to Mr. Dimmesdale that what they did "had a consecration of its own," and it is this belief which supports her under a weight of obloquy that would have crushed a more fragile spirit. She does not collapse into a pitiful nonentity, like Scott's Effie Deans, nor is she maddened to crime like George Eliot's "Hetty Sorrel"; [Footnote: A name apparently compounded from Hester Prynne and Schiller's Agnes Sorrel.] but from the outset she forms ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... della Robbia there Created forms so wondrous fair, They made thy sovereignty supreme. These choristers with lips of stone, Whose music is not heard, but seen, Still chant, as from their organ-screen, Their Maker's praise; nor these alone, But the more fragile forms of clay, Hardly less beautiful than they, These saints and angels that adorn The walls of hospitals, and tell The story of good deeds so well That poverty seems less forlorn, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... much of her state, or it presented a relief for her state—she did want to feel that she belonged to them and they to her. She noticed with a large whelming of pity how very small her mother seemed to have grown She was always small, but now—much smaller, fallen in, very fragile. She noticed with a quick pang how all her father's violent blackness of hair, and violent red of colouring, and violent glint of eye and violent energy of gesture were faded, greyed, dimmed, devitalized ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... be ashamed to trust, like the lower animals, only to our instinct, (which, after all, is much less developed in us than in them,) for blindly escaping the thousand chances of destruction that beset a structure so fragile and delicate in its contrivances as the human body. Besides, it is not only our own machinery that is entrusted to us, we are liable to be responsible for that of others, whose development it is our duty to guard and watch; and how can we do this with a safe conscience, if we are ignorant of the ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... the cook were called, and afterwards Ethelwynn, who, dressed in black and wearing a veil, looked pale and fragile as she drew off her glove in ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... the wilderness. Though he may not see a house nor a human being, and is conscious that he is far from the habitations of men, he can scarcely divest himself of the idea that he is traveling through scenes embellished by the hand of art. The flowers so fragile, so delicate, and so ornamental, seem to have been tastefully disposed to adorn the scene. The groves and clumps of trees appear to have been scattered over the lawn to beautify the landscape; and it is not easy to avoid that illusion of the fancy which ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... who occupied a tiny tenement on one end of the dock, supplied us with a bubbling samovar, sugar, and china, since we were not traveling in strictly Russian style, with a fragile-nosed teapot and glasses. We got out our tea, steeped and sipped it, nibbling at a bit of bread, in that indifferent manner which one unconsciously acquires in Russia. It is only by such experience that one comes to understand the full—or rather scanty—significance ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... dock-like hollow among the rocks, in which a bed of clay has yielded to the waves, while the strata on either side stand up over it like low wharfs on the opposite side of a river. The shells, though exceedingly fragile,—for they partake of the nature of the clayey matrix in which they are imbedded,—rise as entire as when they had died among the mud, years, mayhap ages, ere the sandstone had been deposited over them; and we were enabled at ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... and vehicular entanglements, its vile concert saloons, the alternate meanness and magnificence of its architecture, the fragile character of its theatrical structures, and their limited and hazardous means of exit,—despite falling walls and the necessity of police guardianship at the crossings, the reckless driving of butcher-boys ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... 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
... 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
... when Alan asked for the volume under the title he knew. "The Cavour Theory? I don't think—ah, wait." He vanished for perhaps five minutes and returned with an old, fragile, almost impossibly delicate-looking book. Alan took it and scanned the opening page. There were the words he had read so many times: "The present system of interstellar travel is so grossly inefficient as to be virtually inoperable on ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... erect, as if distrusting gravitation. Thirty Confederates had gathered in that house at a country-side frolic, and the fiddle sang deep in the night. The mountain girls are very pretty, having dark, opalescent eyes, with a touch of gold in them at a side glance, slight, rather too fragile figures, and the singular purity of complexion ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... khaki uniform. On his shoulders was his knapsack, from his hands swung his suit-case, and between his heavy stockings and his "shorts" his kneecaps, unkissed by the sun, as yet unscathed by blackberry vines, showed as white and fragile as the wrists of a girl. As he moved toward the "L" station at the corner, Sadie and his mother waved to him; in the street, boys too small to be scouts hailed him enviously; even the policeman glancing over the newspapers on the ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... the range been thus degraded during the last glacial period,—a quantity of mechanical work almost inconceivably great. And our admiration must be excited again and again as we toil and study and learn that this vast job of rockwork, so far-reaching in its influences, was done by agents so fragile and small as are these flowers of the mountain clouds. Strong only by force of numbers, they carried away entire mountains, particle by particle, block by block, and cast them into the sea; sculptured, fashioned, modeled all the ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... efforts on one occasion to place the hot aluminium stand on top of the Primus stove after it had fallen off in an extra heavy roll. With his frost-bitten fingers he picked it up, dropped it, picked it up again, and toyed with it gingerly as though it were some fragile article of lady's wear. We laughed, or rather gurgled ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... will assimilates a thing. "Once touched by man," says one of M. Cousin's disciples, "things receive from him a character which transforms and humanizes them." I confess, for my part, that I have no faith in this magic, and that I know of nothing less holy than the will of man. But this theory, fragile as it seems to psychology as well as jurisprudence, is nevertheless more philosophical and profound than those theories which are based upon labor or the authority of the law. Now, we have just seen to what this theory of which ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... 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, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... London by De Quincey, who, even amid the festivities of national and international congratulation on the fall of Napoleon, could not forget that this imperial ally was a very commonplace-looking fellow, after all. But, in regard to physical superiority, De Quincey lived in a glass house too fragile to admit of his throwing many stones at his neighbors. The very fact that he valued personal appearance at so low an estimate takes away the sting from his remarks on the deformities of other people: he could not have meant any detraction, but simply wished to present ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... not an accident; I soon found out that they lived there, and had settled upon a row of tall raspberry bushes that separated the garden from the lawn for their summer home. Madam was already at work collecting her building materials, and very soon the fragile walls of her pretty nest were formed in an upright crotch of the raspberries, about a foot below ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... scarce reaches to Guerrabella's shoulder; her figure is fragile and dainty; and though her cheek lacks bloom, the lines are soft and graceful, and the face pensive and poetic. The mouth is small and well curved, and the air of repose that rests upon the imaginative brow resembles the Muse ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... appearances, or to anything else, except her own comfort, had her feet up on a sofa, and was fast asleep; two ladies were standing in front of the fire, talking in undertones; Lady Hartledon sat on a sofa a little apart, her baby on her knee; and her sister-in-law, Lady Kirton, a fragile and rather cross-looking young woman, who looked as if a breath would blow her away, was standing over her, studying the infant's face. The latter lady moved away and joined the group at the fire as Mr. Carr ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... him come," pleaded Alphonso, a fragile-looking boy a year younger than Joanna, whose violet-blue eyes and fair skin were in marked contrast to her gipsy-like darkness of complexion; and this request was echoed eagerly by another boy, a fine, bold-looking ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the causes of this earlier development and more abundant manifestation of womanly intellect in France? The primary one, perhaps, lies in the physiological characteristics of the Gallic race—the small brain and vivacious temperament which permit the fragile system of woman to sustain the superlative activity requisite for intellectual creativeness; while, on the other hand, the larger brain and slower temperament of the English and Germans are, in the womanly organization, generally dreamy and passive. ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... there so intolerably monotonous that they prefer to take the chances above ground. Others pass whole days with wives and families or in solitary misery where there is not light enough to read or work, scarcely showing a head outside from sunrise to sunset. They may be seen trooping away from fragile tin-roofed houses half an hour before daybreak carrying children in their arms, or a cat, or monkey, or a mongoose, or a cage of pet birds, and they come back similarly laden when the night gets too dim for gunners ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... by the crushing effect the news of Mac's serious tubercular condition had upon his parents. On the day they were told Mr. Clarke paced the corridor for hours with slow steps and bent head, refusing to see people or to answer the numerous inquiries over the telephone. As for Mrs. Clarke, all the fragile prettiness and girlish grace she had carried over into maturity, seemed to fall away from her within the hour, leaving her figure stooped and her face settled ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... sometimes fragile character of the "frames" affixed to large pictures has been made an objection to the proposal that they should be fixed to screens moved by electric gear. I cannot venture to discuss the subject of picture frames here. I am aware that it ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... the new settlement rose steadily day by day, but it gave signal for no watching enemy. All about stretched the pale green ocean of the grasses, dotted by many wild flowers, nodding and bowing like bits of fragile flotsam on the surface of a continually rolling sea. The little groves of timber, scattered here and there, sheltered from the summer sun the wild cattle of the plains. The shorter grasses hid the coveys of ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... Mr. Grayson and called him Tim. They seemed to be excellent friends. Roger sat bolt upright on the edge of a fragile, gilded chair which Freda kept to hide a shabby spot in the carpet, and glared at Tim until the latter said ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... man accustomed to passing bricks might be more likely to break glassware than another man who previously had no particular skill in passing anything. The expert brick-passer would be apt to forget sometimes that he was passing glass. His muscles might treat the fragile ware with the rough habit acquired ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... a wonderful day," said Archie. "I think I will remember it years and years until I come to die. On days like this - I do not know if you feel as I do - but everything appears so brief, and fragile, and exquisite, that I am afraid to touch life. We are here for so short a time; and all the old people before us - Rutherfords of Hermiston, Elliotts of the Cauldstaneslap - that were here but a while since riding about and keeping up a great noise in this quiet corner - ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we look sharply into every group of myrtle warblers, we are quite likely to discover some of their dainty, fragile cousins that gladly seek the escort of birds so fearless as they. By the last of May all the warblers are gone from the neighborhood except the constant little summer ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... the way down the garden to where, the Marie Louise pear-tree spread its long branches upon the wall, each laden with the soft green fruit hanging to the long thin stalks, which looked too fragile to bear so great ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... usual country-clergyman,—thrown on her own resources from an early age, and the rest: a common story, but an uncommon person,—very. All conscience and sensibility, I should say,—a cruel worker,—no kind of regard for herself,—seems as fragile and supple as a young willow-shoot, but try her and you find she has the spring in her of a steel crossbow. I am glad I happened to come to this place, if it were only for her sake. I have saved that girl's life; I am ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... laws of prudence and of love, Practise dark magic on our sister's soul— That by strange motions, incantations, spells, So work you on her spirit that strange sleep, Sombre as Death's dark shadow, presently Steals o'er her fragile body, dulls her sense, And wraps her wholly in its chill embrace; That thus, spell-bound, lost to the living world, She lies till thou again unwind her chain, And wak'st her feebly to this life of earth. Thus dost thou peril ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... which blazed brightly on the hearth, in a low chair made somewhat easy with cushions, sat a fair, fragile-looking, girlish figure, in whose mournful dark eyes was something so pathetic that it suggested the old-time prophecy that such "die young." Clarissa Verplanck in that resembled none of her family, and the one reason for her father's and aunt's anxiety ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... stone house—would see for himself this wonderful Maggie—and, though he had been warned against it, would possibly win her from his friend, who, unconsciously perhaps, had often crossed his path, watching him jealously lest he should look too often and too long upon the fragile Rose, blooming so sweetly in her bird's-nest of a home among the tall ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... dropped his eyes and fell upon his knees, as if in the presence of some heavenly spirit, his hot tears falling upon the fragile hand she held out to him, which he clasped, unconsciously, in both his own, with a grasp so like a vise that it would have smitten her with sharp pain had she been capable at that moment ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... One of the poorest countries in the world, landlocked Burkina Faso has a high population density, few natural resources, and a fragile soil. About 90% of the population is engaged in (mainly subsistence) agriculture which is highly vulnerable to variations in rainfall. Industry remains dominated by unprofitable government-controlled ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... took the place of papyrus, but papyrus was used not only in Egypt, but in imperial Rome before vellum became common, and even biblical manuscripts were written on rolls of this material. It was, however, too fragile and perishable to remain the receptacle of writing and illumination intended to last for all time, and therefore, by the middle of the tenth century A.D. it was altogether discarded. Only a few tattered fragments of the New Testament written on ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... the tent that had wakened me. It must have been the wind, I reflected—the wind beating upon the loose, hot sand, driving the dry particles smartly against the taut canvas—the wind dropping heavily upon our fragile roof. ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... movement of the water, swayed gently backward and forward, leaning toward each other as if kissing. Above their broad leaves, lying like shields on the surface of the water, swarmed indigo-colored insects with wide, translucent, sibilant wings, so delicate and fragile that they are justly called water-sprites. Black butterflies, with white-edged, mournful wings, rested on the sharp, slender tops of the tamarack. On the dark turf blossomed blue forget-me-nots. On the edge of the stream grew some alder trees, and under the bushes peeped ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... that the fight lay between them alone, when they found the prize had been ravished from them. Madeleine Verrier was very intelligent, and the contrast, which the story brought out, between the girl's fragile youth and the strange and passionate sense of power which breathed from her whenever it became a question of wealth and the use of it, was at no point lost upon ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... clad in white with a wreath of green leaves about her hair. Had the audience been closer she would have appeared a pale and fragile Goddess with wide gray eyes set in a delicate, bravely smiling face. For the old-time Kara had been doing her best to return these days in order to cast no gloom upon the ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... but gentleman withal, Took out the note;—held it as one who feared The fragile thing he held would slip and fall; Read and re-read, pulling ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... with voices like the cuckoos, themselves all the time just out of sight. Who ever saw a cuckoo when it's talking? Who ever foretold the instant when a butterfly would shoot upwards and away? Such darting, fragile thoughts they were, like hints, suggestions. Still, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... and the tread of generations of feet. Through the wide-open French windows could be seen the long, graceful streamers of wistaria, hanging from the arched boughs round the veranda like a lace veil. Against this background grew masses of pale-pink and blue hydrangeas, with their flat fragile flowers and broad leaves. The bamboo house was given wholly to ferns, over which a fountain was playing, and under the fine spray the green fronds glistened as freshly as though they grew in the ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... nature of Maude's thoughts, as she lay day after day upon the couch, too weak to do more thin lift her hands or rise her head when the dreadful paroxysms of coughing seized her and racked her fragile frame. Still she was very happy, and the happiness showed itself upon her, where there rested a look of perfect content and peace, which her father and mother had noticed and commented upon, and which Jerrie saw the moment she entered the ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... there the storm, which had been threatening all day, had broken with a violence such as he had never known before. For nearly two hours he had remained a prisoner in the little lonely house, which had seemed merely a fragile toy, to be their only shelter from the floods of rain, the deafening thunder, the flaming, darting lightning. Again and again it had seemed as though the roof and walls must crack and fall about them, or the rain come through and wash them ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... glances. That 'etagere' was Sidonie's very soul, and her thoughts, always commonplace, petty, vain, and empty, resembled those gewgaws. Yes, in very truth, if Risler, while he held her in his grasp last night, had in his frenzy broken that fragile little head, a whole world of 'etagere' ornaments would have come from it ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... more conveniently by means of a good urinometer. In the latter case it is very important to have an instrument of known accuracy, many of those in the market being valueless. Urinometers of glass, though fragile, are decidedly more cleanly and less liable to get out of order than the gilded brass instruments carried in the pocket by many physicians. Mr. J.J. Hicks, of 8 Hatton Garden, E.C., manufactures a very creditable "patent urinometer" at ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... 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 risk ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... cried Rhoda. 'This is the meaning of what Satan showed me in the vision! You are like her at last!' And clutching the bare arm of the younger woman, she pulled her unresistingly back against the wall. Immediately Brook had loosened her hold the fragile young Gertrude slid down against the feet of her husband. When he lifted her up she ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... forehead and straight over the shoulders, falling in massive clusters. A delicately sculptured laurel branch is woven into a victor's crown, and laid lightly on the tresses it scarcely seems to clasp. So fragile is this wreath that it does not break the pure outline of the boy-conqueror's head. The armour is quite plain. So is the surcoat. Upon the swelling bust, that seems fit harbour for a hero's heart, there lies the collar of an order composed of cockle-shells; and this is all the ornament ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... kiss the little gem, And to her bosom pressed it; And there she placed the fragile stem, And with soft ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... to make up for all you've gone through. I'm going to be awfully good to you, Eve. You sha'n't ever have any more worries, poor old thing." He looked at her affectionately. "I wonder why it is that large men always fall in love with little women. There are you, a fragile, fairy-like, ethereal wisp of a little creature; ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... our aerial protegee in all her purity—too delicate, too fragile, too beautiful for this rough world; at least those were my ideas at the time, but little did I think how soon it was to be realised. I soon found, before I had time to introduce the spark, a drooping ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... not strikingly low as temperatures go down here, but the terrific winds penetrate the flimsy fabric of our fragile tents and create so much draught that it is impossible to keep warm within. At supper last night our drinking-water froze over in the tin in the tent before we could drink it. It is curious how thirsty we ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... unsound, worn, diseased, fainting, sick, wasted, worn down, emaciated, fragile, unhealthy, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... in her soft-toned room, pouring out tea into fragile cups with hands that seemed to demand lace ruffles, so white were they and transparent. The room was like herself, exquisitely fresh and dainty; white walls hung with pale water-colours in gilt frames, Indian rugs ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... was undoubtedly the doctor's favourite. She was such a sweet girl, beautiful in face, gentle in her manners. In her black dress she had looked so fragile and broken with grief on the day of her father's funeral. Vainly trying to maintain composure, yet shaken constantly by an involuntary sob, she had marvellously affected the tough old doctor, to whom female beauty appealed, although he affected to ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... portrait once again from memory, and that picture is quite unlike the others for it is no longer full of glowing life, but daintier, suggestive of a more spiritual life, as if she were growing fragile. ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... Micheline grew up amid this colossal prosperity. The one, tall, brown-haired, with blue eyes changing like the sea; the other, fragile, fair, with dark dreamy eyes. Jeanne, proud, capricious, and inconstant; Micheline, simple, sweet, and tenacious. The brunette inherited from her reckless father and her fanciful mother a violent and passionate nature; the blonde was tractable and good like ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... half completed, he glanced up at the sun and quickened the polishing. It was a long walk to the place the berry bushes grew, and if he arrived too late, the sun would have dried out the night's crop of fragile berries and he would wait until ...
— Say "Hello" for Me • Frank W. Coggins
... toward herself—Her dress. Etiquette and good manners. The Golden Rule. Pride in personal appearance. The science of beauty culture. Manicuring as a home employment. Recipes for toilet preparations. Nail-biting. Fragile nails. White spots. Chapped hands. Care of the skin. Facial massage. Recipes for skin lotions. Treatment of facial blemishes and disorders. Care of the hair. Diseases of the scalp and hair. Gray hair. Care ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... conservative, and sagacious, while Toombs was impetuous, overpowering, defiant, and masterful. Stephens was small, swarthy, fragile, while Toombs was leonine, full-blooded, and majestic. And yet in peace and war these two men walked hand in hand, and the last public appearance of Robert Toombs was when, bent and weeping, he bowed his gray head at the coffin and pronounced the ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... photograph might have seemed pretty to a less prejudiced eye. It was that of a slight, innocent-looking girl in a white satin gown, "ungirt from throat to hem," and holding a sheaf of lilies in her hand. Her hair was loose upon her shoulders, crowned with a fragile garland and covered with ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... there, underneath their spreading branches, were open spaces carpeted with wind-flowers and bluebells, primroses and wild orchids, while ferns, large and small, grew in glorious profusion, some as tall as Tony, others as fragile and tiny as a fairy fern might be. In other spots large lichen-covered rocks raised their heads out of a tangle of bracken and bushes, while here and there, down by the river's brink, gleamed little bays of ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... realized it. And sometimes things went wrong, and then with a pang as from the stab of a knife would come the thought that he might some day lose this child. So much pain and toil a child cost, so much it took of one's strength and power; and then, such a fragile thing it was—exposed to so many perils and uncertainties, to the ravages of so many diseases, that struck like a cruel enemy in the dark! Corydon and Thyrsis were so ignorant—they were like children themselves; ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... transparent, with nervures of a tender green. The thorax is barely clouded with brown. All the rest of the body is a pale green, whitish in places. Heat and a prolonged air-bath are necessary to harden and colour the fragile creature. Some two hours pass without any perceptible change. Hanging to its deserted shell by the two fore limbs, the Cigale sways to the least breath of air, still feeble and still green. Finally, the brown colour appears and rapidly covers the whole body; the change of colour ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... things as they glided over the snow. But now with a 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 case ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... feeble, debile|; impotent &c. 158; relaxed, unnerved, &c. v.; sapless, strengthless[obs3], powerless; weakly, unstrung, flaccid, adynamic[obs3], asthenic[obs3]; nervous. soft, effeminate, feminate[obs3], womanly. frail, fragile, shattery[obs3]; flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, gimcrack, gingerbread; rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky; craichy[obs3]; drooping, tottering &c. v.. broken, lame, withered, shattered, shaken, crazy, shaky; palsied &c. 158; decrepit. languid, poor, infirm; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... terrible bit and spurs. She did not remember the time when she could not swim, and she tried her own running against every new horse, to find what he could do. Some highland girl might perhaps have beaten her, up hill, but I doubt it. She was so small that she looked fragile, but she had nerves such as few men can boast, and muscles like steel. It never occurred to her not to say what she thought, believed, or felt; she would show favour or dislike with equal readiness; and give the reason ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... plain below the plateau had been a sea of moonlight, white, ethereal, fragile as spun glass. Each evening the shadow of the mountains had shortened, drawing close under the skirts of the hills. In stately orderly progression the quality of the night world was changing. The heavy brooding darkness ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... pencil in too," said he; and, as he returned the box to his pocket he added: "you had better get one of these little boxes from Polton. If is often useful to have a safe receptacle for small and fragile articles." ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... either Haim or Prince. Her complexion was damaged but not destroyed. Little fluffy portions of her hair seemed absolutely girlish. Her body was full of nice curves, which struck George as most enigmatically pathetic. But indeed the whole of her was pathetic, very touching, very precious and fragile. Even her large, shiny, shapeless boots and the coarse sateen stuff of her dress affected him. A lump embarrassed his throat. He suddenly understood the feelings of Mr. Haim towards her. She was inexpressibly romantic.... He lifted her torso easily; and pride filled him because he could do easily ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... drawn down and the leg gradually revealed. And the sight of the little soft leg, so fragile and defenceless, really did touch Edward Henry. It made him feel more like an authentic father than he had felt for a long time. And the sight of the red wound hurt him. Still, it was a beautifully clean wound, and it was ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... fancy breeds other and stronger fancies, and the feeling that it was all reality grew upon him. Dreams are of thin and fragile texture, but they are very vivid while they last. Of course Willet, Tayoga and Grosvenor were there, and when the food was all served, course by course, he filled four glasses, one at each plate, from a bottle of the old cordial that he had saved from the ship, lifted his own to his ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... mirror That said I was fair; Alas! fatal error, This picture reveals my despair. Smiles no longer can pass O'er this faded brow, And I shiver this glass, Like his love and his fragile vow! ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... for honey. Then he stopped and looked at a tiny blue flower, just blooming in the shelter of a bush. He examined it with appreciation and touched the delicate leaf very gently, lest he break it away. Little and fragile, it had its place nevertheless in ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Ware, with fragile, uplifted hand, "please don't offend us with these horrible family scandals. Katharine, dear, are you going to the vicar's garden party this afternoon? If you are, will you take ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... for such she was, entirely, to Elizabeth, was light and fragile. Her dress was neat and becoming; and her countenance, though pale and slightly agitated, excited deep interest by its sweet and melancholy expression. A second and third response was made by this juvenile assistant, when the manly sounds of a male voice proceeded ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... not human Nor yet divine like the gods above) Poured all their gifts in the soul of woman, That fragile vessel meant only for love. Still more they taught her, Still more they brought her, Till they gave her the world for a harp one day: And they bade her string it, They bade her ring it, While the stars all wondered ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... silk, disconnected slippers, boudoir caps, and hairpins. There were thuds from the cushions, grunts from the man, squeals, yelps and giggles from the girls, and from the totality of the combat inextinguishable laughter and a ripping and tearing of fragile textures. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... answered. Her fragile face wore the look of quiet obstinacy which had braved James Stonehouse and the worst disasters. Robert had seen it too often not to understand. But now his father was dead, and instead; inexplicably, he had become the source of trouble. He disgraced Christine. Her people hated her because she ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... here some time ago. She was very pale and fragile when she came. She was in sore distress, too. But she received the consolation of the Church, ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... by unnumbered myriads of millions; yet the insects, even the same identical species which dance over the Thames to-day, are among the very oldest of living things, just as its plants and its shells are. Rocks and slate are not ideal butterfly cases; and if the fragile limbs of the beetle and grasshopper of the successive prehistoric worlds had perished beyond the power of identification, no one could have felt surprise. But such has been the industry of modern naturalists—to give ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... the shoulder of the man on the cot. Stefani Gregor puzzled him. He came to this room more often than was wise, driven by a curiosity born of a cynical philosophy to discover what it was that reenforced this fragile body against threats and thirst and hunger. He knew what he wanted of Gregor—the fiddler on his knees begging for mercy. And always Gregor faced him with that silent calm which reminded him of the sea, aloof, impervious, exasperating. Only once since ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... forms in these fragile fungus threads that eat their way into the tissues of the host. There are fascinating phenomena in the growth and reproduction. Even so and for all that, man protects his tree by spraying it with poison, and thereby ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... upon us as the only miracle which will bear our leaning upon, and stand the strain of human questioning! It was borne in upon Eustace, as he sat bowed beside his dying sister, that through this fragile body and this failing breath the Eternal Mind was speaking, and that in Marie's love the Eternal Love was taking voice. He said so to her brokenly, and her sweet eyes smiled back upon him a divine answer of ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... His hands gripped the main switch. He had ripped it loose. And his left hand had reached and broken the fragile line of tubes that intensified the current of the pneumatic plate-shifters. A suicide? With his last frenzy determined ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... surprising lot of lonely people in the world, aren't there? The little lady next to me—she's a widow, I find. It's hard when a woman has had a man to depend on and suddenly finds herself left to battle with the world, isn't it? Women are such fragile little flowers to me—they ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... flood 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; but a few weeks after his ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne |
