"Thin-skinned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as he seized the paper, and ran his eye over the paragraphs concerning his collar habit and his shoe habit, and his ante-prandial energy,—"the laugh's only up against myself, and I'm not thin-skinned." Then he saw the signature at the end, "Agnes Bibby (Burunda)," in large, ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... I am not thin-skinned, but his tone shocked me. "Dear boy," I said, "they wouldn't look at it in that light. They would be your ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... he assured me, "you are too thin-skinned. You can't take life that way. It's all good to me, whatever happens. We're here. We're not running it. Why be afraid to look at it? The chemistry of a man's body isn't any worse than the chemistry of anything else, and we're eating the dead things we've ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... nature suffers. The extent to which Cooper was affected by hostile criticism is something remarkable, even in the irritable race of authors. He manifested under it the irascibility of a man not simply thin-skinned, but of one whose skin was raw. Meekness was never a distinguishing characteristic of his nature; and attack invariably stung him into defiance or counter-attack. Unfriendly insinuations contained in obscure journals could goad him into remarks upon ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... ought to have tried it. The omission, I added, was one which could easily be remedied there and then, as I happened to share Mr Bradlaugh's views as to the absurdity of the belief in these violent interferences with the order of nature by a short-tempered and thin-skinned supernatural deity. Therefore—and at that point I took out ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... followed, but Hasluck was not thin-skinned, and the next thing I distinguished was ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Dung-beetles and Locusts. If I offer her a Mantis, a Bumble-bee, an Anoxia—the equivalent of the common Cockchafer—and other dishes probably unknown to her race, she accepts all and any, large and small, thin-skinned and horny-skinned, that which goes afoot and that which takes winged flight. She is omnivorous, she preys on everything, down to her own kind, should ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... DE MAITRE went widely abroad over the world. The poor Prince's words and procedures were eagerly caught up by a scrutinizing public,—and some of the former were not too guarded. At Dresden, he said, one morning, calling on a General Finck whom we shall hear of again: "Four such disagreeing, thin-skinned, high-pacing (UNEINIGE, PIQUIRTE) Generals as Fouquet, Schmettau, Winterfeld and Goltz, about you, what was to be done!" said the Prince to Finck. [Preuss, ii. 79 ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... that the Tarantella is gone to Berlin, for, as you know from Schubert's letter, Liszt is mixed up in this monetary affair, and I may have some unpleasantness. He is a thin-skinned Hungarian, and may think that I do not trust him because I directed that the manuscripts should not be given otherwise than for cash. I do not know, but I have a presentiment of a disagreeable mess. Do not say anything about it to the ailing Leo; go and see him if you think ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... own and no more. Any particular field may have more or less, but in the long run the average for a district is about the same. Some of the seeds are poor and thin. These scarcely sprout. Others spring up into thin-skinned plants, and the first frost nips them. Still others lack the woolly coating in its finest abundance, and the browsing animals eat these. Others lack power to put out a wide-ranging root supply and the first drought kills these. Still others fail to send up a vigorous stem and the passing animal ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... his chaps and saddle, Scornful still of jar and jolt, He'll come back sometime a-straddle Of a bald-faced thunderbolt; And the thin-skinned generation Of that dim and distant day Sure will stare with admiration When they hear old Boastful say: "I was first, as old raw-hiders all confest, I'm the last of all rough riders, and the best. Huh! ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... and I found myself in a kind of nightmare museum. There was an unwrapped mummy there, the mummy of a woman—I can't possibly describe it. He had pictures, too—photographs. I shan't try to tell you what they represented. I'm not thin-skinned; but there are some subjects that no man anxious to avoid Bedlam would willingly investigate. On the table by the lamp stood a number of objects such as I had never seen in my life before, evidently of great age. He swept them into a cupboard before I had time to look long. ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... the rest of the body, besides being less protected and more temptingly filled with blood. A mosquito would surely think he had struck it rich if he landed on the hot, palpitating end of a Wapiti's thin-skinned, blood-gorged antlers. It is quite probable that some of the queer bumps we see on the finished weapons are due to mosquito or fly stings suffered in the early period ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... one Samuel Woodhull, late column captain, it was to be admitted that for some time he had been conscious of certain buffetings of fate. But as all thoroughbred animals are thin-skinned, so are all the short-bred pachydermatous, whereby they endure and mayhap arrive at the manger well as the next. True, even Woodhull's vanity and self-content had everything asked of them in view of his late series of mishaps; but by now he had somewhat chirked up under rest and good ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... for some people." There an aloofness in his tone that did not encourage further remarks, but the young stranger was evidently not thin-skinned, or else he loved to hear ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... that," said Hilda. She was not angry, but bored, by this characteristic remark of Miss Gailey's. In three months she had learnt a great deal about the new landlady of the Cedars, that strange neurotic compound of ability, devotion, thin-skinned vanity, and sheer, narrow stupidity. "I've been quite warm enough," Hilda added as quickly as she could, lest Miss Gailey might have time to ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... fat friend?" Nothing could be more dexterously impudent; for it repaid the Prince's pretended want of recognition precisely in his own coin, and besides stung him in the very spot where he was known to be most thin-skinned. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... never loud. Even when he was hilariously delighted by anything,—as when poor Mahailey, undressing in the dark on a summer night, sat down on the sticky fly-paper,—he was not boisterous. He was a jolly, easy-going father, indeed, for a boy who was not thin-skinned. ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... "You're not particularly thin-skinned, that's a fact; but it's the educational qualification I'd be afraid of. There's some sort of an examination to be passed before you can get into any of these Training Schools nowadays. I'll write ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... lower faculties have a chance to air and exercise themselves. After the first and second floor have been out in the bright street dressed in all their splendors, shall not our humble friends in the basement have their holiday, and the cotton velvet and the thin-skinned jewelry—simple adornments, but befitting the station of those who wear them—show themselves to the crowd, who think them beautiful, as they ought to, though the people up stairs know that they are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... natural and obvious ground of defence. I am not so unreasonable as to expect this, if I cared one farthing about anything that can be said of that inquiry, in which, if I cared at all, it was in being too easily satisfied. Nor am I so thin-skinned as to have any feeling on the subject; and the only thing that could have made it at all unpleasant to me would be the appearance (which such a step as you speak of must have) of my being angered on the occasion, and having used any influence ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... best you could of it, it argued that I'd lost a considerable share of my wits. So, when I come home, I felt so kind of worried and down-hearted that I couldn't half eat my supper; and that worried Gracie,—she was a thin-skinned little critter, and if I didn't eat the same as usual she'd always take it into her head there was something wrong with the victuals. I fell asleep in my cheer right after supper, and slept till nine ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... his Americo-Italian polish all those rank and primitive instincts, whose satisfaction necessitated the million miseries of his fellows; all those thick rapacities which stir the hatred of the humane and thin-skinned! And yet, one's meditation could not stop there—it was not convenient to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... will evince by never using them to support a fiction, except on high and solemn occasions, such as when you are about to be invested with some public dignity. But avoid any approach to a superstitious veneration for them: it is to keep those thin-skinned and impracticable individuals who are infected by this failing from the management of public affairs, that they have been, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... the whole world, children are taught that virtue is self-control. In the Southern States, among these tobacco-lords, boys learned just the opposite lesson,—that virtue is self-indulgence. This particular youth, thin-skinned, full of talent, fire, and passion, the heir to a large estate, fatherless, would have been in danger anywhere of growing up untrained,—a wild beast in broadcloth. In the Virginia of that day, in the circle in which he lived, there was nothing for him in the way either ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... and cracks, too, his reason. For once the novelist seems cruel to the pathological point—I mean in the punishment of Razumov by the hideous spy. I hope this does not betray parvitude of view-point. I am not thin-skinned, and Under Western Eyes is my favourite novel, but the closing section is lacerating music for the nerves. And what a chapter!—that thunder-storm driving down the valley of the Rhone, the haggard, haunted face of the Russian ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Clyde. "I apologize to you, Senora," she said, adding proudly, "but I've nothing to apologize for to Blue Bonnet. Half the fun of being a We are Seven is being able to say just what we want to. If everybody is suddenly going to be thin-skinned, I'll ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... "God's mercy, Andrew, how thin-skinned you are! On how fine a thread you make your hopes and my reputation hang, since you let the cruel sword of jealousy so easily pierce your soul. Tell me, Andrew, if there were any artifice or deceit in this case, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... "You delight, Monsieur, in touching the raw spots—However, I daresay matters will go rippingly." He took the bills and counted them into his own purse. "A chap can't afford to be too sentimental or thin-skinned." He was thinking of a couple of clubs in Cairo from which he had been asked to resign. Then he laughed callously as he added aloud: "You see there's a regiment stationed there, just now, which I'd rather not meet. I used to belong to its ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... Gillet, a species not to be confused with the C. Laurentii belonging to the robusta coffee, but standing near to C. liberica, characterized by oblong rather than thin-skinned berries; ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... fine hands, palms uppermost, and flexed them; then, turning them, he laid them flat upon the table and again spread out his fingers. They were notable hands—shapely, supple, strong as steel, the thin-skinned fingertips as delicate and sensitive of touch as the antennae he was used to handling. They were even more capable than of old, because of the exquisite work they had been trained to accomplish, work to which only the most skilled lapidary's is comparable. Apparently satisfied, he drew ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... another qualification of the former, at which some readers may smile, a thickness of the skin; whence the crackling of the roasted pork is a fine gelatinous substance, which may be easily masticated; while the crackling of the thin-skinned breeds is roasted into good block tin, the reduction of which would almost require teeth of iron."—MOUBRAY ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... the exclamation the true Boston inflection. "You are either too shrewd or not quite shrewd enough, Dick. You covered that up with a laugh, so that I might take it as a joke if I happened to be too thin-skinned to take it in disreputable earnest. Let us understand each other; we are fighting squarely in the open in this campaign; publicity is the word—I have Mr. McVickar for my authority. Anybody who wants to know anything ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... insult me," murmured Jack, never turning to look at his chum. "Don't be so thin-skinned, Wal. ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... At one time thin-skinned persons among us used to complain that Italians who passed them on the roads used to call out "imboscato!" Imboscato is a term very frankly used in the Italian army, generally though not necessarily as a term of reproach. ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... mental eye, that one loses in a good measure the powers of critical discrimination. Here the best criterion I know is a friend—not only of abilities to judge, but with good-nature enough, like a prudent teacher with a young learner, to praise perhaps a little more than is exactly just, lest the thin-skinned animal fall into that most deplorable of all poetic diseases—heart-breaking despondency of himself. Dare I, Sir, already immensely indebted to your goodness, ask the additional obligation of your being that friend to me? I inclose you an essay ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... advocates of the "White Australia" principle use more than the average quantity of oil, which makes the skin to shine and embrown under the influence of the much-loved sun. Do not their shoulders bear testimony to the sun's wholesome salutations, and does not the too fair and thin-skinned individual smart under his peeling and display envy against the favoured ones who burn to the tint of old copper? Naturally, those who have the most intense longing for a coloured skin, who persistently seek to acquire it by exposure to ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... launch, you John!" cried Black, "and take every shilling you can lay hands on. You hear me?—and hang up that skipper for a thin-skinned fool." ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... next, Donal did not even come in sight of any other of the family; but on the third day, after their short early school—for he seldom let Davie work till he was tired, and never after—going with him through the stable-yard, they came upon lord Forgue as he mounted his horse—a nervous, fiery, thin-skinned thoroughbred. The moment his master was on him, he began to back and rear. Forgue gave him a cut with his whip. He went wild, plunging and dancing and kicking. The young lord was a horseman in the sense of having a good seat; but he knew little about horses; they ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... and causes me suffering, and in my head as well; I have the mind of the Latin race, which is very worn out. And, again, there are days when I do not think thus, but when I suffer just the same; for I belong to the family of the thin-skinned. But then I do not tell it, I do not show it; I conceal it very well, I think. Without any doubt, I am thought to be one of the most indifferent men in the world. I am sceptical, which is not the ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... child! Beyond all understanding! And, do you know, the calumnies that were spread about us, especially the miserable anonymous letters, all kinds of meanness, it all helped. For each time we found in each other a perfect refuge. He was not so thin-skinned in such matters as I. It was through me that he first came to understand them—how to manage the petty incidents of social life. The leaders of society in this little country are not of pure Norwegian race, but of foreign descent. A man like him could never learn to keep pace with them. But ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson |
