"Brittle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Greeks and Romans had no substitute for the papyrus, which was so brittle that it could not be folded or creased. It could not be bound up in books, nor could it be rolled up unsupported. It was secure only when it had been wound around a ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... Polybius would have bent, not broken. There is no doubt on that head: if Polybius is not romancing, the Celtic sword of 225 B.C. doubled up at every stroke, like a piece of hoop iron. But Mr. Leaf tells us that, "by primitive modes of smelting," iron is made "hard and brittle, like cast iron." If so, it would be even less trustworthy for a sword than bronze. [Footnote: Iliad (1900), Book VI, line 48, Note.] Perhaps the Celts of 225 B.C. did not smelt iron by primitive methods, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... York, a statesman of national fame, a man of largest public spirit, a most valuable citizen, and Colonel Robert Ingersoll, an orator of world-wide fame and of great nobility of soul, dropped as beeves beneath the stroke of an ax because of a fracture of brittle bloodvessels. In both of these cases not many less pounds than a hundred had ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... weather. Basalt and related rocks resist abrasion, and cement well. Granites and other coarse-grained igneous rocks do not cement well and are not resistant to abrasion. Many sandstones are very hard and brittle and resist abrasion, ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... on the trail." He came back from his reverie as from a journey. "A'm the old breed that doesn't break. 'Tis you young brittle fellows all bred to pace and speed and style needs look to y'r goin's. Which way do A turn at the foot of the Ridge? One—two—three—A see four lights. Which ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... and bake almonds to golden brown. Crisco a tin, and sprinkle almonds on it split side down. Dissolve sugar and water together in saucepan, add Crisco, salt, and cream of tartar, and boil until when tested in cold water it will be brittle, or 300 deg. F. Add almond extract and pour over nuts. When firm, cut ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... fallen upon an expedient which, as it agrees with their other policy, so is it very different from ours, and will scarce gain belief among us who value gold so much, and lay it up so carefully. They eat and drink out of vessels of earth or glass, which make an agreeable appearance, though formed of brittle materials; while they make their chamber-pots and close- stools of gold and silver, and that not only in their public halls but in their private houses. Of the same metals they likewise make chains and fetters for their slaves, ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... roof is peaked, with many cross-beams. High up on the walls are several small square lattices of wood. The floor is of discolored stone. Everywhere one sees wood wrought into lattices, crumbling carpets that look almost as frail and brittle and fatigued as wrappings of mummies, and worn-out matting that would surely become as the dust if one set his feet hard upon it. The structure of the building is basilican, and it contains some strange carvings of the Last Supper, the Nativity, ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... nor beauty but in the mind's idea. Love sows the wind and reaps the whirlwind.[9] Confusion, thrice confounded, is the portion of him who rests even for an instant on that most brittle of reeds—the affection of a human being. The sum of our social destiny is ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... a hard, brittle substance of various colors, from brilliant yellow to dark brown, without smell when cool, of a mild taste, and burns with a pale blue flame, emitting pungent and suffocating fumes. Its specific gravity is from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... through which it takes its food. It has innumerable feet, which it displays when in the water, and by means of which it can climb rocks. Some of the varieties fall to pieces on being taken from their native element, as the lizard, or brittle star-fish. The gorgon's head, which has innumerable branches from its central part, should be observed by the visitor; and the sea-wigs, which are a kind of star-fish, somewhat resembling the gorgon's head, with innumerable ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... New Year (January 1, 1915) was cloudy, with a gentle northerly breeze and occasional snow-squalls. The condition of the pack improved in the evening, and after 8 p.m. we forged ahead rapidly through brittle young ice, easily broken by the ship. A few hours later a moderate gale came up from the east, with continuous snow. After 4 a.m. on the 2nd we got into thick old pack-ice, showing signs of heavy pressure. It was much ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... products are derivatives of diphenylamine or hydroxybenzyl alcohols. When the latter are heated, either by themselves or in presence of acids, anhydrides and polymerisation products are formed producing hard, brittle, fusible substances, insoluble in water but fairly soluble in organic solvents. The same substances are formed when phenols are condensed with formaldehyde, especially in the presence of acid contact substances and excess of phenol by sufficiently long heating at certain temperatures. The ...
— Synthetic Tannins • Georg Grasser
... sad catalogue of crimes which our Lord enumerates, and which defile our best efforts after purity of heart and life. No sinner will ever totally rely upon the Saviour until he is sensible of his own perishing state; hanging by the brittle thread of life over the yawning gulf of perdition; sinking in that sin which will swallow him up in those awful torments which await the transgressor; feeling that sin has fitted him as stubble for the fire; then it is that the cry proceeds ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... trusting you with a funeral or a christening," Filmer felt his way gingerly, "I wouldn't care a durn. You can't hurt the dead and the kid might outgrow it; but when it comes to tying folks together tight, it's a blamed lot like trusting something brittle in a baby's hand. It mustn't be broke, you see, or there'll be h—I mean ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... gentlemen, the pawpaw—not the pawpaw (Carica papaya), but a small tree of the anonas or custard apple tribe, common in the woods of western America—is one of the softest and most brittle of our trees, and the hog seemed to have discovered this, for he suddenly changed his tactics, and instead of shaking at the sapling, commenced grinding it between his powerful jaws. The others assisted him, and the tree fell in a few seconds. As soon as the top branches touched the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... left galloping, Joris and I, Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh; 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; Till over by Delhem a dome-spire sprung white, And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... they do not spin well and they do not dye well. On examination under the microscope it is seen that these fibres have not the flattened, twisted appearance of the ripe fibres, but are flatter, and the central canal is almost obliterated and the fibres are but little twisted. Dead fibres are thin, brittle ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... two or three feet high, and has fine large leaves and tubers like those of the potato, but not so good when roasted. There is much gracefulness in the appearance of the plantain, or banana, which varies from twelve to fifteen feet in height, and has leaves like those of the palm, but a brittle reed-like stem, about eight inches in diameter. It attains its full growth in the first year, bears fruit in the second, and then dies. Thus its life is as ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... approach of midday a light wind had arisen, and now, wandering northward, it tugged at the pony's long, shaggy mane and tail, set each individual hair of the little beast vibrating in unjustified ferocity; and, drifting aimlessly on, stirred the brittle grass stalks at the man's feet with the muffled crackling of a far-distant prairie fire. The herd, a great machine cutting clean every foot of the sun-cured grass in its path, moved on and on, reached a low spot in the gently rolling country, and passed slowly from view; ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... this had ever before visited our country. Houses that stood unmoved through many fierce convulsions went down like brittle reeds, and old Corporations which were thought to be as immovable as the hills tottered and fell, crushing ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... the animal is shod, the shoes should be removed and reset at least once a month, to allow the feet to be properly pared and trimmed. If habitually brittle, it will be proper to keep such feet off from much moisture, and instead provide dry floor of whatever kind. Once or twice a week such feet should be given an ample coat of some simple hoof ointment, such as equal parts of tar, ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... stem, that is, the portion between the frill and the socket in the cap, is used, but the portion below the frill, that is, the "root" end, is discarded. Any part of the stem that is discolored or tough or woody should be rejected, and only the portion that is succulent and brittle and of a clean white color at any time used. The stems are nearly always retained in "button" mushrooms when they are cooked, and the upper or succulent parts of the stems of plump, fresh, full-grown ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... mighty fear, nor blush to own their dread. (43)Large is his front; and, when his burnish'd eyes Lift their broad lids, the morning seems to rise. In vain may death in various shapes invade, The swift-wing'd arrow, the descending blade; His naked breast their impotence defies; The dart rebounds, the brittle fauchion flies. Shut in himself, the war without he hears, Safe in the tempest of their rattling spears; The cumber'd strand their wasted volleys strow; His sport, the rage and labour of the foe. His pastimes like a cauldron boil the flood, And blacken ocean with the rising mud; The billows ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... little, And your bones are very brittle; If you would grow great and stately, You must try to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... moved restlessly. He saw something lying under the blanket of frost and went to it. It was an arrow that someone had dropped. He picked it up, carefully, because the intense cold had made the shaft as brittle as glass. It would regain its normal strength when taken into ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... filled with krapfen. You would indeed have supposed that the Hof were one great patent krapfen manufactory, with the sole right of making, baking by steam and selling these indigestible, leathery, yet brittle puffs so dear to the Tyrolese palate, had not the figures of men, women and children, humble guests at more modest dwellings, been seen filing along the highway or crossing the moorland slopes, each bearing a light but bulging bundle of krapfen tied up in a gay ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... projections which the insect does not remove, being unable to get at them, and polished on the inside surface, which is within the worm's reach. What can be the nature of that singular lid whereof the Cerambyx furnishes me with the first specimen? It is as hard and brittle as a flake of lime-stone. It can be dissolved cold in nitric acid, discharging little gaseous bubbles. The process of solution is a slow one, requiring several hours for a tiny fragment. Everything is dissolved, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... lighten, as far as was possible, the severity of their work. On the northern coasts in particular, the intense cold of the furious winter gales rendered it no easy task to keep the assigned stations; the ropes were turned into stiff and brittle bars, the hulls were coated with ice, and many, both of men and officers, were frost-bitten and crippled. But no stress of weather could long keep the stubborn and hardy British from their posts. With ceaseless vigilance they traversed ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... arms of some vile fortune-hunter; who quickly lavishes away the remains of that fortune which her extravagance had left; and then, after the worst usage, abandoning her with contempt, she sinks into an obscurity that cuts short the thread of her life, and leaves no remembrance, but on the brittle glass, and still more faithless bark, that ever ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... with its contents; the animal is oviparous, and these bubbles serve also as a nidus for its eggs. It is probable that it never goes down to the bottom, nor willingly approaches any shore; for the shell is exceedingly brittle, and that of few fresh-water snails is so thin: Every shell contains about a tea-spoonful of liquor, which it easily discharges upon being touched, and which is of the most beautiful red-purple that can be conceived. It dies linen cloth, and it may perhaps be worth enquiry, as the shell ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... demonstrate the derivation of one class from another. Indeed, there is much reason to believe that the extinct class Cystidea of the Cambrian is the ancestral group, from which all the other Echinoderms, star-fishes, brittle-stars, sea-urchins, feather-stars, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... blizzard is gathering force and we have still some hours to ride. But," he continued, stepping close to Cameron and looking him in the eyes, "there must be no more nonsense. You can see my man is somewhat short in temper; and indeed mine is rather brittle at times." ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... mad himself now and swore right out—at least the only oath he ever swears, which is "By doggie!" He says, by doggie, it ain't his fault that Ed was so brittle! And, by doggie, he wasn't going to let family affection interfere none with his career, because it wouldn't be right by the children he hopes some day to be the father of! Then he got his temper back and tried patiently to explain once more to Ed that what a railroad ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... and high soft sastrugi due to very recent snowfalls. The sledges were so often brought up by this that we decided to take to our feet, and thus made better progress, but for the time with very excessive labour. The crust, brittle, held for a pace or two, then let one down with a bump some 8 or 10 inches. Now and again one's leg went down a crack in the hard ice underneath. We drew up a slope on this surface and discovered a long icefall ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... attitudes which are worth more study than the Apollo or the Antinous, because they are life, not marble. How noble were Horatio Greenough's meditations, in presence of the despised circus-rider! "I worship, when I see this brittle form borne at full speed on the back of a fiery horse, yet dancing as on the quiet ground, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... who could not handle a chisel, might knead out of them some expression of human thought. In the ancient architecture of the clay districts of Italy, every possible adaptation of the material is found exemplified: from the coarsest and most brittle kinds, used in the mass of the structure, to bricks for arches and plinths, cast in the most perfect curves, and of almost every size, strength, and hardness; and moulded bricks, wrought into flower-work and tracery as fine as raised patterns upon china. And, just as many of the finest works of the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... where his daughters sat shivering. His coat was powdered with ashes, and there were ashes in his beard and in his tangled hair. He stood straight up, and held his costly treasure on high, in the brittle glass. 'Found, found!—Gold, gold!' he shouted, and again held aloft the glass to let it flash in the sunshine; but his hand trembled, and the alchymic glass fell clattering to the ground, and broke into a thousand pieces; and the last bubble of his happiness had burst! Hu-uh-ush! rushing away!—and ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... brittle hissing. The ends of the rods began to dissolve into dazzling, diamond rain, atomically minute, that passing through the egg-shaped lights poured upon the periphery of the pedestal. Rapidly the bars melted. Heat there must be in these lights, terrific ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... product is the bezoar stone. These stones are found in the gall-bladder and intestines of the long-tailed monkey SEMNOPITHECUS (most frequently of S. HOSEI and S. RUBICUNDUS). They are formed of concentric layers of a hard, brittle, olive-green substance, very bitter to the taste. A soft brown variety is found in the porcupine. Both kinds are highly valued by the Chinese as medicine. The monkeys and porcupines are hunted for the sake of these stones. A similar substance, also highly valued as a medicine by the Chinese, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... must be given to the fact that a compound of different properties is required where the range of temperature is great than is required where this range is smaller. Asphalt, for example, should have a flow point of 212 F. and a brittle point of -15 F. when exposed directly to sun and frost as compared with say a flow point of 185 F. and a brittle point of 0 F. when covered from the direct action of sun and frost. Another point to be kept in mind particularly in using exterior coatings is that the concrete ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... (as we call it) is a fruit as big as a pomegranate, and much of the same colour. The outside husk, shell, or rind, is for substance and thickness between the shell of a pomegranate, and the peel of a seville orange; softer than this, yet more brittle than that. The coat or covering is also remarkable in that it is beset round with small regular knobs or risings; and the inside of the fruit is full of a white soft pulp, sweet and very pleasant, and most resembling a custard of any thing, both in colour and taste; ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... on loops, to lose itself at last in the cooler promise of the first bulwark of the mountains. They looked cooler, the distant wooded hills; for all the shimmering heat waves that danced and eddied in the gaps and glanced, shaft-like, from the brittle needles of the pines which sentineled the ridges, they hinted at depths to which the sun's rays could not penetrate; they hinted at chasms padded with moss, shadowed and dim beneath chapel arches of spruce and hemlock, even chilly with the spray of spring-fed brooks ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... advise a start before March, and not until April unless a steady heat of 60 deg. or 65 deg. can be maintained. Sow in well-drained pots, filled with soil composed of two parts of turfy loam and one part of leaf-soil, with very little sand added. The seedlings are exceedingly brittle at the outset, and re-potting should not be attempted until they are about an inch high. Even then they need delicate handling, and after the task is accomplished they should be promptly placed in a warm frame or propagating pit for a ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... her arm in his and crunch-crunch over the brittle leaves and up a hillside to a plateau of rock overlooking the flaming country; and from the valley below, smoke from burning mounds of leaves wound in spirals, its pungency drifting ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of this Town was opened by Mr. McGrath's Company of Comedians, with the celebrated comedy The Miser. This Company is by far the best that ever visited this town." Then on August 12 there was "The Beggars Opera and A Comedy of two acts, Barnaby Brittle or a Wife at her Wits End. Also in August Mr. McGrath's Company of Comedians gave The Tragedy of Douglas and Garrick's Comedy of Two ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... softly or be too careful. All these things are as brittle as burnt egg-shells—the slightest jar may shatter them to atoms." His voice was ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... deal has been said in the newspapers lately on the subject of Faulty Bayonets. It seems that from some cause or other these arms have been found out to be faulty and unworthy of trust. Some of them are brittle, and break, others are soft, and bend, so there are a large number of those in use which will have to be discarded on account of unfitness. Where the blame lies we don't know, but doubtless some one has been unfaithful to their trust, or the thing ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... step, for it was upon hard slippery rock, and gathering courage from this, the young naturalist kept one foot firm, and stamped with the other to try whether the rock was brittle and likely to ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... pressed close to her side. The nearer she came, the more astonished was the hostess at the fragile slenderness of her form. Her face was fair, but it was delicate and transparent, as though it had been made of brittle glass. ...
— The Treasure • Selma Lagerlof
... was unsafe; the whole journey was unsafe, but I am convinced that this thin, continuous sheet of ice, cushioned actually upon the surface of the water out of which it was growing, was really safer than much of the thicker but brittle, unsupported ice we had unhesitatingly come over. Chemists tell us that certain substances in the act of formation, which they call nascent substances, are extraordinarily active and potent, and it may be that ice in the same state ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... than is necessary in making the Paris experiment. We shall let the old dear rooms, and make money by them, and keep them to fall back upon, in case we fail at Paris. 'But we'll not fail.' Well, I hope not, though I am very brittle still and susceptible to climate. Dearest Sarianna, it will do you infinite good to come over to us every now and then—you want change, absolute change of scene and air and climate, I am confident; and you never will be right ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... need for haste. Rudolph was simply getting excited, but then the making of maple-wax is such a very responsible undertaking, he could not be blamed for that. You need to stop its boiling at precisely the right moment, else it suddenly reaches the point where, when you cool it, it grows brittle like "taffy," and then good-bye to maple-wax for that kettleful. So Rudolph, every half-minute, kept dripping little streams of the boiling sugar from the spoon upon the piece of ice, and Tattine and Mabel kept testing it with their fingers and tongues, until both ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden
... carved lion on the other side of the panel. He glanced into the little opening and, to his delight, saw the end of a bit of paper tucked away there. He dug it out with the blade of his pocket knife and unfolded it. It was yellow and brittle with age, covered with writing in a fine clear hand. But he was annoyed to discover, as he bent closely over to read it, that it was written in French, still worse, part of the paper was missing, for one side of it was ragged as if it had been torn ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... appear so barren, As if that nature had forgot the spring. They are the true material fire of hell: Worse than those tributes i' th' Low Countries paid, Exactions upon meat, drink, garments, sleep, Ay, even on man's perdition, his sin. They are those brittle evidences of law, Which forfeit all a wretched man's estate For leaving out one syllable. What are whores! They are those flattering bells have all one tune, At weddings, and at funerals. Your rich whores ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... settlements, he was considered to be infallible; and there was no woman on the Patent but would as soon think of becoming a mother without a husband as without the assistance of Dr. Todd. In short, he was rearing, on this foundation of sand a superstructure cemented by practice, though composed of somewhat brittle materials. He however, occasionally renewed his elementary studies, and, with the observation of a shrewd mind, was comfort ably applying ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... has for twenty years stood the Test, and found to be the best one made for breaking all kinds of hard and brittle substances, such as Ores, Quartz, Emery, etc., etc. Mr. S. L. Marsden, for the past twenty years connected with the manufacture of this machine, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... black, rich, though thin one; the sides of the hills covered with large trees, and very thick, growing to a great height before they branch off. They are all of the evergreen kind, different from any I ever saw; the wood is very brittle, and easily split; there is a very little variety of sorts, having seen but two. The leaves of one are long and narrow; and the seed (of which I got a few) is in the shape of a button, and has a very agreeable smell. The leaves of the other are like the bay, and ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... Mrs. McGregor, hot but triumphant in a petticoat that crackled like brittle ice beneath her black alpaca skirt and a pair of white cotton gloves at the fingers of which she was continually tugging. Both her hat and Mary's gleamed ebon under a recent coat of blacking—so recent that they ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... distinguished from any other of their congeners. The most remarkable feature is the shape of the leaves. They are broader and shorter, and especially at the base they are broadened in such a way as to become apparently sessile. The stalk is very brittle, and any rough treatment may cause the leaves to break off. The young seedlings are recognizable by the shape of the first two or three leaves, and when more of them are produced, the rosettes become ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... doesn't jar your ideal to see them worn against such a stormy day dress. To me they are the perfection of summer. No color could be more intense than this spotless whiteness. There!' Fastening them, the brittle stems snapped, and the flowers fell at her feet. 'No flowers for me to-day, of your choosing at least. Practically, lilies have such an uncomfortable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in warehouses for exportation from the Frith of Forth. In our way hither we visited a flourishing iron-work, where, instead of burning wood, they use coal, which they have the art of clearing in such a manner as frees it from the sulphur, that would otherwise render the metal too brittle for working. Excellent coal is found in almost every part ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... variegated marl, often muriatiferous (red marl, salzthon) with hydrated gypsum and fetid limestone. The gem-salt oscillates from zechstein to muschelkalk. (d) Limestone of Gottingen or muschelkalk alternating towards the top with white sandstone or brittle sandstein. (Ammonitis nodosus, encrinites, Mytilus socialis): clayey marl is found at the two extremities of muschelkalk. (e) White sandstone, brittle sandstein, alternating with lias, or limestone with graphites; a quantity of dicotyledonous ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... in the proportion of a dozen leaves and a teaspoonful of soda to two quarts of water. When tender, take them out of the water and put them in cold water that has had half a large spoonful of alum dissolved in it. They will then become brittle and green. Let them soak in the alum water for an hour; then rinse in clear, cold water, and boil in a syrup made of equal weight of white sugar. Boil with them lemons cut in thin slices, allowing one lemon to two pounds of rind. Boil fifteen or twenty minutes. When a little cool, add ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman
... her crook, and the pink coat of the shepherd had an unseemly rent in it,—but I only laughed at the disaster, and would not scold her for her awkwardness. China had a knack of slipping through Jill's fingers; she had a loose uncertain grasp of things that were brittle and delicate; she had not learned to control her muscles or restrain her strength. She had a way of lifting me up when I teased her that turns me giddy to remember: I was quite a child in her hands. She was always ashamed of herself when she had done it, and begged my pardon, and as long ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 20) consisted in the injection, first, of a solution of sulphate of iron, and afterward of common burnt lime. Mr. Tilden reported the wood to be brittle, and the water used to test the absorptive power to have been filled with threads of fungi in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... the trees in the pine wood ahead of me were parted, as brittle reeds are parted by a man thrusting through them; they were snapped off and driven headlong, and a second huge tripod appeared, rushing, as it seemed, headlong towards me. And I was galloping hard to meet it! At the sight of the second monster ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... "is, as you see, done on vellum. Most of the illuminators of ancient books preferred that material for their work. Papyrus such as the Romans used was too brittle to be folded or sewed, and therefore could not be bound into book form; it had to be rolled on rollers, and even then was liable to crack. It was far too perishable for bookmaking. Hence the old scribes turned to ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... Cobbett, of which only one survives, a hickory, together with some straggling bushes of robinia, which Cobbett thought would make good hedges, being very thorny, and throwing up suckers freely, but the branches proved too brittle to be useful. About 1819 Mr. Harley sold his house and the paddock adjoining to Mary Bargus, widow of the Rev. Thomas Bargus, Vicar of Barkway in Hertfordshire, and she came to live there with her daughter ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... machinery you would need," Tom told Mr. Damon. "Besides, if you could surround your propellers with a strata of condensed air, it would create such terrible cold as to freeze the propeller blades and make them as brittle ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... we see of him now are in the trees that he planted, chiefly introduced from America. He thought the robinia, or false acacia, would make good hedges, because of its long thorns and power of throwing up suckers, and many people planted them, but they proved too brittle to be of much use, though some are still growing. He was a friend of Mr. Harley, who then owned Otterbourne House, and planted many curious trees there, of which two long remained—a hickory nut and a large tree in the ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Saltpeter in many places, as at Ouglits, Yaruslaue, and Vstiug, they make and some smal store of brimstone vpon the riuer Volgha, but want skil to refine it. [Sidenote: 14. Iron.] Their iron is somewhat brittle, but a great weight of it is made in Corelia, Cargapolia, and Vstiug Thelesna. Other mine they haue none gowing within ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... it rings, Is but a brittle glass; Experience of changing things Might teach a very ass! Right often Many turns to None, And honour has but a ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... shone well on them, discover'd their surface to be variously raz'd or scratched, and to consist of an infinite of small broken surfaces, which reflect the light of very various and differing colours. And indeed it seems impossible by Art to cut the surface of any hard and brittle body smooth, since Putte, or even the most curious Powder that can be made use of, to polish such a body, must consist of little hard rough particles, and each of them must cut its way, and consequently leave some kind of gutter or furrow behind it. And though ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... out of the kiln, some of them are good and some are not. Those that were on the outside are not burned enough; those next it are not well baked, but can be used for the middle of thick walls. The next ones are of good quality; but those directly over the fires are so hard and brittle that they are of little use ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... the captain and the engineer were not so brittle of temper. They discussed the matter, calling on the fireman, who had heard nothing, being ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... taken into the third heauen, 2. Corint. 12. 4. Thus his tentation was a medicine preseruatiue preuenting the disease of his soule, which otherwise hee might haue falne into, [e]for both himselfe, and the rest of the Apostles, though they were chosen vessells, yet were they also fraile and brittle, wandring yet in the flesh vpon earth, not ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... like Jacaro's gunmen"—Denham's voice was brittle—"had come out of it, why, intelligent men might send something living and deadly down it, as men on Earth will send ferrets down a rat-hole! To wipe out the breed! That's what's happened! Jacaro's gone through ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... them that it was possible to cut the bine and pull up the pole. They soon became very quick and expert at the tying, and their well-worn wedding-rings, telling of a busy life, would flash brightly in the sunshine as they tenderly coaxed the brittle bines round the base of the poles, securing them with the rush tied in a special slip-knot, so that it easily ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... into the streets from the country, large farm-wagons heavily loaded with supplies for the markets—with hay and meat and cordwood. And these wagons make more noise than usual because the pavements are still brittle from nightly frosts. It is ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... according to its species,) which seldom has anything ornamental to landscape, either in the trunk or branches. These sombre trees are, however, very useful for timber, and they grow to an astonishing height, often rearing up their lofty heads to 150 feet or upwards. The woods, in general, are very brittle, partly, it may be, owing to the number of acacias which are to be found among them; and no experienced bushman likes to sleep under trees, especially during high winds. We must by no means form our ideas of the appearance of an Australian forest from ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... less brittle than bone or celluloid, and not likely to chip. Any one who has eaten cottage cheese that has been too long on the stove will believe that the new substance has powers of resistance that are ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 17, March 4, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... one sees all things in a mirror; they may all live in glass houses if they will not throw stones. For this thin glitter of glass everywhere is the expression of the fact that the happiness is bright but brittle, like the substance most easily smashed by a housemaid or a cat. And this fairy-tale sentiment also sank into me and became my sentiment towards the whole world. I felt and feel that life itself ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... thirty-eight feet in rather more than a mile), the ground became more and more full of pitch, and the vegetation poorer and more rushy, till it resembled, on the whole, that of an English fen. An Ipomoea or two, and a scarlet-flowered dwarf Heliconia, kept up the tropic type, as does a stiff brittle fern about two feet high. {148a} We picked the weeds, which looked like English mint or basil, and found that most of them had three longitudinal nerves in each leaf, and were really Melastomas, though dwarfed into a far meaner habit than that of the noble forms we saw at Chaguanas, and again on ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... falling leaves and dying dreams, month of fragrant beauties gone to dust, the month of the last, failing fight against the clutch of grim, all-destroying winter. And Fairchild was sagging in defeat just as the leaves were falling from the shaking aspens, as the moss tendrils were curling into brittle, ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... know. One expects fairly rough play in this sort of game. After all, we tackle pretty hard ourselves. I know I always try and go my hardest. If the man happens to be brittle, that's his lookout,' concluded ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... scratch it with copper," said Tonlos. "It is the second hardest metal we know—it is not as hard as chromium, but far less brittle. It is malleable, ductile, very very strong, very tough, especially when alloyed with iron, but those alloys are used only in very particular work because ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... full of stones for a presser. We used a common soap-box, and put in stones to the weight of about thirty-five pounds. The handles were made of rope. I have found this a splendid way to press flowers, as it absorbs the moisture from the flower and does not leave it at all brittle. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... haste, they betook themselves to their swords, each guarding the opposite attack warily with his shield. That of Sir Tarquin was framed of a bull's hide, stoutly held together with thongs, and, in truth, seemed well-nigh impenetrable; whilst the shield of his opponent, being of more brittle stuff, did seem as though it would have cloven asunder with the desperate strokes of Sir Tarquin's sword. Nothing daunted, Sir Lancelot brake ofttimes through his adversary's guard, and smote him once until the blood trickled down amain. At this sight, Sir Tarquin ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... spring, thundering delicate, tender spring. I wish these brittle, frost-lovely flowers of pas- sionate, mysterious corruption were not yet to come still more from the still- ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... braided in the United States was made by Miss Betsey Metcalf, of Providence, R.I., in 1789. For many years straw-plaiting was done at home; but the quality of our material was always inferior to that grown abroad, our climate making it much more brittle and difficult to handle. The wage at first was from two to three dollars a week; but as factories were established where imported braid was made up, the sum sometimes reached five dollars. The census of 1860 ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... his fierce little cocked hat oppose its course. The biting steel clove through the stubborn ram-beaver, and would have cracked the crown of any one not endowed with supernatural hardness of head; but the brittle weapon shivered in pieces on the skull of Hardkoppig Piet, shedding a thousand sparks like beams of glory round his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... developed strip around the dome, the desert land lies as chilled and brittle as it did for eons before Earthmen reached Mars. The sky is suddenly raw and cruel. You pull your furs around your nose and check your oxygen mask, and wish you were inside something, even a thin wall of ...
— Fee of the Frontier • Horace Brown Fyfe
... once more on the pleasant, homely earth; and now the gentle rain of penitence, which could never water the dry places for a soul in torment, drenched him like the real rain which was falling to slake the thirst of the parched fields and the brittle-leaved, rustling forest. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... existence, there were other monsters, only too real, in these woods which it would be dreadful to encounter alone and unarmed, since against such adversaries a revolver would be as ineffectual as a popgun. Some huge camoodi, able to crush my bones like brittle twigs in its constricting coils, might lurk in these shadows, and approach me stealthily, unseen in its dark colour on the dark ground. Or some jaguar or black tiger might steal towards me, masked by a bush or tree-trunk, to spring upon me unawares. Or, worse ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... touch a squirrel, a buffalo, a cat, or any animal which "humps" itself. In the same way a scrofulous patient must not eat turkey, as that bird seems to have a scrofulous eruption on its head, while ball players must abstain from eating frogs, because the bones of that animal are brittle and ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... There is an if in everything. Life is like that, and we cannot alter it. Quarrel with the seemingly arbitrary or unreasonable condition, and the whole fairy palace vanishes. "Life itself is as bright as the diamond, but as brittle as the window-pane." ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... car-wheel manufacturers in this country, whose extensive plant was located in Philadelphia. Made under Whitney's patent of 1866, these wheels may well have been added to the Pioneer during the 1871 rebuilding. Railroad wheels were not cast from ordinary cast iron, which was too weak and brittle to stand the severe service for which they were intended, but from a high-quality cast iron similar to that used for cannons. Its tensile strength, which ranged from 31,000 to 36,000 psi, was remarkably high and very nearly approached that of the ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... to the brittle ware that may chance to travel through our roads. Lucky, indeed, are we if, through the superior carefulness of the person who packs them, more than one-half happens to arrive in safety. For such mishaps we have no redress. The storekeeper lays the accident ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... off ricks and such. In London they died." He plucked a lock of wool from his blue smock. "They was no staple—neither the Elphicks nor the Moones. Shart and brittle all of 'em. Dead they be seventeen year, for ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... further inquiry, and stripped in silent disgust for a plunge in the pool. Three times he hurled himself into the delicious rush of the cold chalk stream, with that utter abandon in which man, whose bones are brittle, can only indulge when there are six or seven feet of water between him and mother earth; and, letting the stream bear him away at its own sweet will to the shallows below, struck up again through the rush and the roar ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... epigrammatic expression there are few if any whose fame rests solely upon the brittle structure of the bon mot. Martial, about whose brilliant brevities can scarcely be said to hover the odor of sanctity, is, I suppose, remembered solely as a wielder ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... absorbed and lost. Thus oft reclined at ease, I lose an hour At evening, till at length the freezing blast That sweeps the bolted shutter, summons home The recollected powers, and, snapping short The glassy threads with which the fancy weaves Her brittle toys, restores me to myself. How calm is my recess! and how the frost Raging abroad, and the rough wind, endear The silence and the warmth enjoyed within! I saw the woods and fields at close of day A variegated show; the meadows green Though ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... unites parent to child is a very precious one," Lord Henry continued. "It is, however, as brittle as it is precious. A trifle will snap it. Now there is one aspect of the relationship between parent and child, the physical aspect, the physical relation, which lies beneath a sort of sacred seal: it is deliberately never ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... a mortal body, and a brittle and brief tenure of earth, you are traversing perilous paths. Had you God for your friend, your case would be far other than it is. Peril and snare might still beset you; but you would confront and traverse ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... widened, and slivers of brittle rock fell away. His efforts were greeted with cheers from the other side, and he redoubled them, with the result that in a short time, a passage between the two sections of the underground chambers ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... the sweat on your salty skin Shall dry and crack, in the breathing of a wind That's like a draught come through an open'd furnace. The leafage of the trees shall brown and faint, All sappy growth turning to brittle rubbish As the near heat of the star strokes the green earth; And time shall brush the fields as visibly As a rough hand brushes against the nap Of gleaming cloth—killing the season's colour, Each hour charged with the wasting of a year; And sailors ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... to Miss Myra St. Claire's bobbing party spent the morning in his coat pocket, where it had an intense physical affair with a dusty piece of peanut brittle. During the afternoon he brought it to light with a sigh, and after some consideration and a preliminary draft in the back of Collar and Daniel's "First-Year ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... deny that he possessed or take by force a mass of iron which he could not conceal, which no one envied him for possessing, which he could not even break up and so make use of; for the iron when hot was, it is said, quenched in vinegar, so as to make it useless, by rendering it brittle and hard to work? ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... impetuosity with pity for his sad overthrows, we did not for many weeks quite realize to ourselves the stern fact that here at length had the peculiar fall come upon us,—the last of all these falls! This brittle life, which had so often held together and victoriously rallied under pressures and collisions, could not rally always, and must one time be shivered. It was not till the summer came and no improvement; and ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... pounds of refined sugar; boil it to the degree of cracked (which may be ascertained by dipping a spoon into the sugar, and then instantly into cold water, and if it appears brittle, it is boiled enough); squeeze in a small tea-spoonful of the juice, and four drops of essence of lemon, and let it boil up once or twice, and set it by a few minutes: have ready a marble slab, or smooth stone, rubbed ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... Uncle Sebastian chose to pick up a redwood splinter on which to whittle. He took out a slick-handled jackknife, blew a clot of pocket lint from the springs, opened a whetted pruning blade, and began shaving the brittle wood. His watery blue eyes were far-off ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... through the sphere will conduct an electrical current, which is pretty definite proof that the metal isn't within the sphere at all. Glass can be forced through it without breaking. Not flexible glass, but rods of plain old brittle glass. It turns without breaking, and it also loses some of its length. Water can be forced through a tube inserted in the sphere, but only when terrific pressure is applied. What that proves I can't even ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... afternoon when he reached it, and the wine shop was deserted. Outside, the California August lay withering and suffocating over all the land. The far hills were burnt to dry, hay-like grass and brittle clods. The eucalyptus trees in front of the wine shop (the first trees Felipe had seen all that day) were coated with dust. The plains of sagebrush and the alkali flats shimmered and exhaled pallid ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... children of the city ran down the hill to their home, in infinite astonishment. And ere they reached it, Elizabeth was weeping with dismay, and the darkling ground about them was white and brittle and ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... conical tree sixty to eighty feet high, two to three feet in diameter. In Otago it produces a dark-red, freeworking timber, rather brittle . . . ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... clever craftsman, its surface has neither the waxiness of Parian, nor the brittle edge of Carrara marble; and it resists weather better than marble of the choicest quality. This may be observed in many monuments of Venice, where the stone has been long exposed to sea-air. These qualities of the Dalmatian limestone, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... the wood in the main branches becomes very brittle and is easily broken by wind or ice. This condition is followed by the dying back of branches and finally the death of the tree. Trees even moderately affected soon become worthless for nut production, as few nuts are set and those that mature ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... to cry indignantly as he broke away from the other's detaining clutch; "what do you take me for anyway? Must think you're doing one of the new fangled fox-trot hesitation dances. I've got feelings, I'd have you know; and my ribs are brittle bones in the bargain, not hoop-iron. Go hunt up a tree if you must exercise ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... long, slim loaf of wheaten bread that hath been baked upon the hearth; it should be warm from the fire, with glossy brown crust, the color of the hair of mine own Maid Marian, and this same crust should be as crisp and brittle as the thin white ice that lies across the furrows in the early winter's morning. These will do for the more solid things; but with these I must have three potties, fat and round, one full of Malmsey, one of Canary, and one brimming full of mine own dear lusty ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... shadows floated by, Some moaning and some singing. So the years Clustered about me, till the hand of God Let down the lightning from a sultry sky, Splintered the pine and split the iron rock; And from my odorous prison-house, a bird, I in its bosom, darted: so we fled, Turning the brittle edge of one high wave,— Island and tree and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... if either he or you brittle a syllable of this to Father Pether, I'll read you both oat—do you hear that now? Bring ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... this pottery, look down to the ground, Where bottle and mug, jug and pottle abound; From the plebeian throng see the graded array; There is shelf above shelf of brittle display, As rank above rank the poor mortals arise, From menial purpose to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... separation not being effected by those mechanical appliances so common in most ore dressing establishments, such as stone breakers or crushing rolls, is simply because the ores are so rich in silver, and frequently of such a brittle nature, that any undue pulverization would certainly result in a great loss of silver, as a large amount would be carried away in the form of fine dust. So much attention is indeed required in this department that it is found ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... to gather from October to January, when the ripe berries should be carefully picked from the trees by hand every morning, and dried in the shade, the sun being apt to make them too brittle; they must be carefully turned to prevent fermentation, and when sufficiently dry the husks must be removed, and the clean coffee separated from the broken berries. After being picked out and put aside, and then again dried, it is fit to pack. The first year's ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... dynasty, under the form of a neutral peace compact to include the warlike Powers. There is little likelihood of such a scheme being found acceptable, with popular sentiment running as it now does in the countries concerned. And yet, if the brittle temper in which any such proposal is rejected by popular opinion in these countries today could be made to yield sufficiently to reflection and deliberate appraisal, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that its acceptance would not be the best way out ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... woods are in general very brittle, and no experienced bushman likes to sleep under trees, ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... repair'd a numerous Crew, In Shirts and Drawers of (d) Scotch-cloth Blue With neither Stockings, Hat nor Shooe. These Sot-weed Planters Crowd the Shoar, In hue as tawny as a Moor: Figures so strange, no God design'd, To be a part of Humane kind: But wanton Nature, void of Rest, Moulded the brittle Clay in Jest. At last a Fancy very odd Took me, this was the Land of Nod; Planted at first, when Vagrant Cain, His Brother had unjustly slain; Then Conscious of the Crime he'd done From Vengeance dire, he hither run, And in a hut supinely dwelt, The first ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... them at a glance and assort them accordingly. They are not engaged in this work of selection continuously from day to day, but at intervals, for they can handle the tobacco only when the weather is damp enough to moisten the leaf, otherwise it is so brittle that it would crack and fall to pieces under their touch. They like this work, for the barn is kept very comfortable by large stoves, they do not have to move from their seats, and they can all sit very sociably together, talking, laughing, and singing. It contrasts very agreeably ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... by changes in operating environment or configuration, or by any minor tweak to the software itself. Also, any system that responds inappropriately and disastrously to abnormal but expected external stimuli; e.g., a file system that is usually totally scrambled by a power failure is said to be brittle. This term is often used to describe the results of a research effort that were never intended to be robust, but it can be applied to commercially developed software, which displays the quality far more often than it ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... more force, as if they had marched further up the hill. One or two arrows fell very near me, and I reached for them to examine their construction. They were made of the hollow, filmy stock of a rather tough reed, and were pointed with a chipped stone tip, which was brittle, but not harder than ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... matter so much whether you use a square, pointed, or a round-nosed bit, provided it is properly ground and set in the tool holder. As a rule, the more brittle the metal the less the top ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... exports from China are said to be about five million pounds annually; price about 32s. per cwt. In 1850, 6,509 piculs of cassia lignea (nearly one million pounds), valued at 87,850 dollars, were shipped from the single port of Canton. Cassia bark is of a less fibrous texture, and more brittle, and it is also distinguished from cinnamon by a want of pungency, and by being of a ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... mouth. It is said to be much improved by roasting, and to be then quite equal to Chestnuts. Yet it is not much prized in England except by pigs and children, who do not mind the trouble of digging for it. But the root lies deep, and the stalk above it is very brittle, and "when the little 'howker' breaks the white shank he at once desists from his attempt to reach the root, for he believes that it will elude his search by sinking deeper and deeper into the ground" (Johnston). I have never heard of its being cultivated ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... such estates to be anyway happy, as are in continual wars, being still in terror, trouble, and guilt of shedding human blood, tho it be their foes; what reason then or what wisdom shall any man show in glorying in the largeness of empire, all their joy being but as a glass, bright and brittle, and evermore in fear and danger of breaking? To dive the deeper into this matter, let us not give the sails of our souls to every air of human breath, nor suffer our understanding's eye to be smoked ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... appearance, deeply miserable in aspect. His garments are black glazed oiled-cloth from head to foot, and immensely too large for him, especially the waistcoat, which is double-breasted, and seems to feel that his trousers are not a sufficient covering for such a pair of brittle looking legs, for it extends at least half way down to his knees. The flap of his sou'-wester, also, comes half way down his back. He is a wonderful object to look upon; yet he has the audacity, (so it seems to me), to take us in charge, ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... gravely. "Perhaps, if now we have morphine, presently we give him smaller dose every time, it will be all right." He lifted up the sick man's hand and examined the nails critically. They were broken, brittle. ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... with all the intensity of an original discovery, devilish unpleasant to grow old; to die progressively on one's feet, he elaborated the fact. That was what happened to a man—his liver thickened, his teeth went, his veins became brittle pipes of lime. Worse than all that, his potency, the spirit and heat of living, met without any renewal its inescapable winter. This might, did, occur while his being was rebellious with vain hope. Today, in spite of the slight ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... foreseen— They ate up all they had, and drank their wine, In spite of all remonstrances, and then On what, in fact, next day were they to dine? They hoped the wind would rise, these foolish men! And carry them to shore; these hopes were fine, But as they had but one oar, and that brittle, It would have been more ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... wood-plants clustered round thy edge in spring; The liver-leaf put forth her sister blooms Of faintest blue. Here the quick-footed wolf, Passing to lap thy waters, crushed the flower Of sanguinaria, from whose brittle stem The red drops fell like blood. The deer, too, left Her delicate footprint in the soft moist mould, And on the fallen leaves. The slow-paced bear, In such a sultry summer noon as this, Stopped at thy stream, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... blowing in from the ocean and the brittle sand grass kept up a constant rustling. This sound served admirably to cover the approach of a stealthy figure that had followed the boys at a distance ever since they had left Bartanet. This figure crept closer and closer to the sand dune, until only a projecting ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... hill dead, having succumbed to a blow that a woodchuck or a coon would hardly have regarded at all. Thus does the easy, passive mode of defense of the porcupine not only dull his wits, but it makes frail and brittle the thread of his life. He has had no struggles or battles to harden ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... will; but know, and be assured, oh, democrats, that, like a pyramid, a great man stands on a broad base. It is only the brittle porcelain pagoda, that tottles ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... generally wrinkled, brittle, breaks easily in handling and cannot be laid flat on the cliche; but by holding it over a basin of boiling water, the steam in a few moments rendering it sufficiently pliable to lay it flat between glass plates, where it should be kept under ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... when we left, 38 deg. F., hard frost. All the world seemed buttoned up and great-coated; the trees seemed wiry and cheerless; the legs of the pack-horses seemed brittle, and I felt so. Breath issued visibly from the mouth as I trudged along. My boy and I nearly came to blows in the early morning. I wanted to lie on; he did not. If he could not entertain himself for half an hour with his own thoughts, I, who could, thought it no fault of mine. I was a reasoning ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... worlds in visions bright, Fear's dim terrific train, Guilt's midnight schemes, Strange peeping eyes, soft smiling fairy faces, Dark consciousness of fallen angels nigh, Sad converse with the dead, or headlong races Down the straight cliffs, or clinging on a shelf Of brittle shale, or hunted thro' the sky!— O, God of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... I'm ..." The beastly, brittle voice drifted into silence as though halted by an intruding thought. Then the thought voiced—voiced with a yearning at once pathetic and terrible: "It would be nice to kill you. Someday I will. Someday I'll kill you if I ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... racked my brains to distraction in the effort to evolve some practicable plan for obtaining a sail, even going to the length of endeavouring to weave one of grass; but it was no good, for as soon as the grass dried it became so tender and brittle that it would never have borne the pressure of even a very moderate breeze, much less ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... and very regular blast. The hammer, forceps, and anvil, are all very simple, and the workmanship (particularly in the formation of knives and spears) is not destitute of merit. The iron, indeed, is hard and brittle, and requires much labour before it can be made to answer ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... October when Putnam returned to the city. He went at once to the cemetery, but on reaching the grave his heart sank at the sight of a bunch of withered flowers which must have lain many days upon the mound. The blossoms were black and the stalks brittle and dry. "Can she have changed her mind and gone South already?" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... the fact, for the oxydasion of the iron it contains gives it that appearance, and colors the soil a reddish hue in its immediate vicinity. Wherever this rock abounds, the soil is durable and the crops are usually heavy. It is sometimes met with having a fine grain, and so very hard as to be almost brittle, though generally very difficult to break, and when broken strongly resembling cast-iron, and will sometimes ring, on being struck, almost as clearly. It was used very much formerly for making journals to run mill-gudgeons upon. ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... details in the history of that sentimental journey and allusion to matters which have no part in this record. Its substance being fully in the consciousness of the writer, he tenderly folds it up and returns it to the package—yellow and brittle and faded and having that curious fragrance of papers that have lain for scores of years in the gloom and silence of a locked mahogany drawer. So alive are these letters with the passion of youth in long forgotten years that the writer ties the old ribbon and returns them to their tomb with ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... danger is the greater by how much the more his heart has become callous, under the hardening influence of a wicked life; and every day that danger increases. God's patience may be exhausted. The brittle thread of life may be sundered at any moment, and the impenitent and unprepared soul be summoned to the bar of God. With great propriety, therefore, may the parent feel anxious in regard to ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... phosphates as she is long on natural potash. But she has made up for it by utilizing a by-product of her steelworks. When phosphorus occurs in iron ore, even in minute amounts, it makes the steel brittle. Much of the iron ores of Alsace-Lorraine were formerly considered unworkable because of this impurity, but shortly after Germany took these provinces from France in 1871 a method was discovered by two British metallurgists, ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... extent far beyond what had been achieved by the most perfect of glass lens instruments. Mr. Maudslay was interested in the idea I suggested; and he requested me to show him what I knew of the art of compounding the alloy called speculum metal. He wished to know how so brittle a material could be cast and ground and polished, and kept free from flaws or ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... the old man, harkening, it seemed that her words fell sharp and brittle like breaking icicles. One thing, though, might be said for her—she sought no roundabout course. She did not quibble or seek to enwrap the main issue in specious excuses ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... I hastily take the load of blankets Herr Liebert lent us off a boy's back and undo it, throwing one blanket round each man, and opening my umbrella and spreading it over the other blankets. Then I give them a tot of rum apiece, as they sit huddled in their blankets, and tear up a lot of the brittle, rotten wood from the trees and shrubs, getting horrid thorns into my hands the while, and set to work getting a fire with it and the driest of the moss from beneath the rocks. By the aid of it and Xenia, who soon revived, and a carefully scraped up candle and a box of matches, the fire soon ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... political victories have been won by the forces of stability and freedom. Slowly but surely, the free world gathers strength. Meanwhile, from behind the iron curtain, there are signs that tyranny is in trouble and reminders that its structure is as brittle as ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... once hard and transparent, which could answer the double purpose of protection and vision. And to this day they know none hard enough for protection, clear enough for vision, and elastic enough to resume its form after a blow. But men did the best they could, and put a round piece of brittle but transparent glass in a ring of tougher metal for the protection of the hands of a watch; and he who first invented the watch crystal thought he had made a discovery. Now, observe in the eye, that forward part is the watch glass; the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... travelling and abundant supplies. On these great wastes and wilds, however, each season has its peculiar hardships. The travellers had not proceeded far, before they found themselves among naked and arid hills, with a soil composed of sand and clay, baked and brittle, that to all appearance had never been visited by ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... scrub oak a handful of leaves. They were very brittle and crumbled in his hand. A match flared out. His palm cupped it for a moment to steady the blaze before he touched it to the crisp foliage. Into a nest of twigs he thrust the small flame. The twigs, dry as powder from a four-months' drought, crackled like miniature fireworks. The grass caught, ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine |
