"Fabric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... above the plain. No friendly gorge or gully or canon invited such an effort as I could make to scale this rocky barrier. Oh, for the faith that could remove mountains! How soon should this colossal fabric open at my approach! What a feeling of helpless despair came over me with the conviction that the journey of the last two days had been in vain! I seated myself on a rock, upon the summit of a commanding hill, and cast my eyes along the only route which now seemed tenable—down the Yellowstone. ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... swept Central India, or alien garrisons been quartered in Agra fort, the Taj has always suffered mutilation. The Mahrattas looted it of everything movable and systematically wrenched precious stones from their places in the design ornamenting the fabric of the interior. After the Mutiny came the red-coated soldier, who relieved the tedium of garrison duty by appropriating any attractive piece of inlay overlooked by the Mahrattas—these pretty bits made ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... revolted against, as it would against something abominable. That was what led me to examine your teachings critically. I only wanted to unravel one point in them; but as soon as I had got that unravelled, the whole fabric came to pieces. And then I realised ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... remained, and clasped on his feet with two massy silver buckles. If the dress of the old man was rude and sordid, that of his grand-daughter was gay, and even rich. She wore a bodice of fine wool, wrought round the bosom with alternate leaf and lily, and a kirtle of the same fabric, which, almost touching her white and delicate ankle, showed her snowy feet, so fairy-light and round that they scarcely seemed to touch the grass where she stood. Her hair, a natural ornament which woman seeks much to improve, was of bright glossy ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... imagination than of the heart. These things she uttered as the shadows of the sweet twilight gathered darkly and more darkly around us—and then, with a gentle pressure of her fairy-like hand, overthrew, in a single sweet instant, all the argumentative fabric she ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... any of the doors, though it is reckoned by builders as one of the cardinal points in hard-wood finish that veneered doors must 'match' the finish of the rooms in which they show. This is absurd. Doors are under no such obligations. They may be of any sort of wood, metal or fabric. They may be veneered, carved, gilded, ebonized, painted, stained or 'decorated.' To finish and furnish a room entirely with one kind of wood, making the wainscot, architraves, cornices, doors and mantels, ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... have forgotten that we are integral parts in the fabric of human society—that all that interests the race, interests us. We have never once, as a body, claimed the practical application of the principles of our government. It is our own fault. Let it be so no longer. Let us say to men: "Government ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... thoughts the builders of character for the individual; they are also the architects of states and nations. All this wonderful fabric lying over our land like a beautiful garment is a fabric spun and woven out of ideas. Each outer substance was builded by an inner sentiment. What the eye sees are stone and brick and iron united by masons and carpenters, ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded one of the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... is of such a character that the man's position in the tribe is fixed by his kinship. There is no place in a tribe for any person whose kinship is not fixed, and only those persons can be adopted into the tribe who are adopted into some family with artificial kinship specified. The fabric of Indian society is a complex tissue of kinship. The warp is made of streams of kinship blood, and ...
— Wyandot Government: A Short Study of Tribal Society - Bureau of American Ethnology • John Wesley Powell
... That it could be bridged was the dream of a lunatic. Even if it were possible to construct a bridge, and probable that the Zeelanders and Antwerpers would look on with folded arms while the work proceeded, the fabric, when completed, would be at the mercy of the ice-floods of the winter and the enormous power of the ocean-tides. The Prince of Orange himself, on a former occasion, when Antwerp was Spanish, had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... poet one must be steeped in the great ocean of literature. They do not recognize that there is such a thing as a special poetic vocabulary,[270] or that the commonplaces of rhetoric require to be interwoven with, not merely tacked on to, the fabric of their verse, and so it comes about that the writer who would turn the Civil War into an epic is apt to stumble beneath the burden he takes upon his shoulders, unless indeed he is permeated through and through with literature. You must not simply turn history into ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... six feet long, passing from barrel to barrel, and the chain of barrels was laid from the stern to the point where the deck was level with the water. This plan was adopted in order that the whole fabric should be shaken and broken up, while, had the whole force of the explosion taken place at one point, it would have entirely destroyed the timber there, while perhaps leaving a considerable portion still standing above ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... of ownership, have done the disgraceful work, and occasionally the whole of the parishioners have been implicated. Gough says that the inhabitants of Letheringham in Suffolk, being under the necessity of putting their church into decent order, chose to rebuild it, and sold the whole fabric, monuments and all, to the building contractor, who beat the stones to powder, and sold as much at three shillings a pound for terrace (?) as came to eighty guineas. A portion of the fragments was rescued by the Rev. Mr. Clubbe, and erected in form of a pyramid in the vicarage garden of Brandeston, ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... covered fabric on top and bottom, tightened at the rear of the planes by lacing. A single lever controlled the elevator and side flaps and there were radical bearings to take both ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... is made more significant by the author's subsequent comment on it. 'Though my dejection,' he says, 'honestly looked at, could not be called other than egotistical, produced by the ruin, as I thought, of my fabric of happiness, yet the destiny of mankind was ever in my thoughts, and could not be separated from my own. I felt that the flaw in my life must be a flaw in life itself; and that the question was whether, if the reformers of society and government could succeed in their objects, and every person ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... into the fire, and mused, she fell asleep, and all these thoughts were woven into the fabric of a dream—and who shall say that God does not speak to ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... definition of that ideal commonwealth, but rather as if in search of its visible locality and abiding-place, the walls and towers of which, so to speak, he might really trace and tell, according to his own old, natural habit of mind. It would be the fabric, the outward fabric, of a system reaching, certainly, far beyond the great city around him, even if conceived in all the machinery of its visible and invisible influences at their grandest—as Augustus or Trajan ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... bare, and her wrists covered with bracelets; the upper part of her neck was insufficiently veiled by the too slight fabric of a transparent gauze; in short, the desire to please was displayed in her by all the details of her appearance. I was stirred at the aspect of so much frivolity, and I felt myself blush ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... the dames, or the canal, or more likely still, some touch of atmosphere, but I was reminded of Holland. Indeed, I know not what the special occasion was. It is a strange fabric we are so busy weaving out of sensations. Let something accidentally pick up an old thread, and behold, without rhyme or reason, we are treated to a whole piece of past experience. Stranger yet when but the background is brought back. For we were unconscious of the warp while the ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... bundles to and fro; and more than once I heard her rudely spoken to by the pert young tailor who received her work, and who examined it as carefully as if the material had been silk or cambric, instead of the coarse fabric which constitutes the staple of such establishments. I thus learned, at a very early age, to know something of the duties of needle-women, as well as of the mortifications and impositions to which their vocation frequently ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Hebe drest, The chiefs who fill our Albion's story, In warlike weeds, retired in glory, 110 Hear their consorted Druids sing Their triumphs to the immortal string. How may the poet now unfold What never tongue or numbers told? How learn delighted, and amazed, 115 What hands unknown that fabric raised? Even now before his favour'd eyes, In gothic pride, it seems to rise! Yet Graecia's graceful orders join, Majestic through the mix'd design: 120 The secret builder knew to choose Each sphere-found ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... been related to it. She knew how awful it was and what desperate efforts were made, what desperate means resorted to, in the concealment of it. And how difficult and almost impossible it was to cope with it and how it seemed sometimes as if the whole fabric of society and custom combined to draw attention to mere trifles which in the ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sculptured vases, or more properly sarcophagi, of [marble?], well carved in the antique style, and adorned with the story of Meleager. They were in the shape of a large bath, and found, I think, at Paestum. The old church had passed to decay about a hundred years ago, when the present fabric was built; it is very beautifully arranged, and worthy of the place, which is eminently beautiful, and of the community, who are Benedictines—the most gentlemanlike order in ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... these occasions when he needed it was approaching. He had made a "killing" at Desmond's, and had used the money to stop up the more threatening gaps in the tottering financial fabric known as his "personal accounts." The fabric would hold for a while, but meantime he needed money to go on with. And Leila evidently had none. He tried everybody except Plank. He had scarcely the impudence to go to Plank just yet; but when, completing the vicious circle, he found his borrowing ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... restorer of my race! mine shall be the first voice to swell the battle-cry of freedom—mine the first hand to rear her banner—yes, from the height of my own soul as from a mountain, I see already rising the liberties and the grandeur of the New Rome; and on the corner-stone of the mighty fabric posterity ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... counsellors and Cabinet Ministers. If they have erred, my conscience is void of reproach. I wish the National Assembly may govern for the future with equal prudence, equity, and justice; but they have given a poor earnest in pulling down one fabric before they have laid the solid foundation of another. I am very happy that their agents, who, though they call themselves the guardians of public order have hitherto destroyed its course, have, in the courage of this English lady, met with some resistance to their ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... bottom and equally distributed except the omission of one on the East side which I suppose was the entrance to the lodge; the upper part of the poles are united in a common point above and secured with large wyths of willow brush. in the center of this fabric there was the remains of a large fire; and about the place the marks of about 80 leather lodges. I know not what was the intention or design of such a lodge but certain I am that it was not designed for a dwelling of anyone family. it was 216 feet in circumpherence ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... in them, sir!" So I wandered out again, joined the admiral, and inspected the Bluejackets' Club by the water's edge. Nothing one sees, perhaps, is so eloquent of the change that has taken place in the life and fabric of our navy. If you are an enlisted man, here in this commodious group of buildings you can get a good shore meal and entertain your friends among the Allies, you may sleep in a real bed, instead of a hammock, you may ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... his head, it seemed to him that this bright yellow sunbeam was reflected in rather a singular way on the white coverimg of the bed. Looking more closely, what was his astonishment and delight, when he found that this linen fabric had been transmuted to what seemed a woven texture of the purest and brightest gold! The Golden Touch had come to him with the ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... Juno as the more fashionable one of the sisters, but Bell answered quickly: "Poplin, mother, on Katy? It will not become her style, I am sure, though suitable for many. If I am to be fitted I shall say a word about the fabric. Get a little checked silk, as expensive as you like. It will suit her better than ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... of gilded iron scroll work, which occupied nearly the whole of one end of the room. Beyond the screen hung a violet-coloured curtain of Oriental fabric; but so closely woven was the metal design that although he could touch this curtain with his finger at certain points, it proved impossible for him to move it aside ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... had made yourself; you said also that you had made the shoes which you had on your feet, and the cloak and the short tunic; but what appeared to us all most extraordinary and a proof of singular art, was the girdle of your tunic, which, you said, was as fine as the most costly Persian fabric, and of your own weaving; moreover, you told us that you had brought with you poems, epic, tragic, and dithyrambic, as well as prose writings of the most various kinds; and you said that your skill was also pre-eminent in the arts which I was just ...
— Lesser Hippias • Plato
... the old days in Phoenix, or, indeed, the entire Territory, who did not drink liquor, and lots of it. In fact, it may be said that the entire fabric of the Territory was constructed on liquor. The pioneers were most of them whiskey fiends, as were the gamblers. By this I am not defending the liquor traffic. I have sold more liquor than any man in Arizona over the bar in my life-time, but I voted dry at ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... rendered in sordid, grotesque, and homely terms. Pickwick in 1837 had established the immense vogue of Dickens, the Heroes in 1840 had assured the imposing prestige of Carlyle; and the example of both made for the freest and boldest use of language. Across the Channel the stupendous fabric of the Comedie Humaine was approaching completion, and Browning was one of Balzac's keenest English readers. Alone among the greater poets of the time Browning was in genius and temperament a true kinsman to these ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... have here the blessed confidence that when all the baseless fabric of the dream of life has faded from our opening eyes, we shall see the face of our ever-loving God. Here the distracting whirl of earthly things obscures Him from even the devoutest souls, and His own mighty works which reveal do also conceal. In them ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... readily. Remember first, as to the driving system, that it works on the fabric of space. Space is, in the physical sense, a fabric woven of the threads of lines of force from every body in the universe, made up of fields and forces. It is elastic, and can transmit strains. But anything ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... his position and barely six feet away from him one of the main power cables of the cavern was suspended from heavy insulators. If the cable had ever had an insulating sheath around it the fabric had vanished during the centuries for the dull silver-colored metal was ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... group upon whom we need dwell was Hampden. In his Bampton Lectures of 1832, under the title of The Scholastic Philosophy considered in its Relation to Christian Theology, he assailed what had long been the very bulwark of traditionalism. His idea was to show how the vast fabric of scholastic theology had grown up, particularly what contributions had been made to it in the Middle Age. The traditional dogma is a structure reared upon the logical terminology of the patristic and mediaeval schools. It has little foundation ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... pause and without remorse, the most dreadful judgments of Heaven upon itself. We see the frantic patient tearing the bandages from his wounds and thrusting aside the hand that would assuage his miseries, and every day that the war goes on we see less and less probability that the great fabric of the Union will ever be reconstructed in its original form, and more and more likelihood that the process of disintegration will extend far beyond the present division between North and South.... Were we really animated by ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... joy for ever. She wore one of those jackets to which several gray- squirrel families had contributed their hides, a hat whose existence was due to the negligence of a certain rare bird, and many silk-worms had spun the fabric of her gown. Had any one called her attention to all this, there isn't any doubt that she would have been shocked. Only here and there are women who see what a true Moloch fashion is; this tender-souled girl saw only a handsome habit which pleased the eye. Health bloomed in her cheeks, ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... God, that they have "a city which hath foundations; whose builder and maker is God." From the fact that the city has foundations we are clearly authorized to infer that it rests upon the immutable love, wisdom and power of God. It is not the baseless fabric of a dream. There is reality about it. Imagination did not construct it, for its builder and maker is God. This city is the New Jerusalem, so beautifully described in the last part of the book of Revelation. The foundations of the WALL of the city are there described. There are twelve foundations, ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace— Radiant palace—reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion— It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair! ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... second attempt with his life-saving ice-water. He had proceeded half the length of the car when, above the muffled rattles and creaks of its fabric, there lifted ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... answered, "Of course I can," whereupon the gentlemen stood in a row and offered Joe the tempting bait of one dollar if he would tell each one the color of his pants. Two of them were dressed in broad cloth, and the other in a coarse, grey suit. The boy naturally inferred that the smooth, textured fabric was broad cloth, and would most probably be black, and being aware of the then prevailing style of grey business-suits, he, with great ease, ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... that you are neither, I beg to submit, but a sensible young girl,—with no great quantity of the manufactured article, perhaps, but plenty of raw material, capable of being wrought into fabric of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... churches, best houses, and walls are built.' Further, Evelyn tells us: 'The suburbs are large, the prospect sweete with other amenities, not omitting the flower-gardens, in which all the inhabitants excel. The fabric of stuffs brings a vast trade to ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... fancied ground of security is deceptive, and will sooner or later crumble beneath our deceived feet. On this very occasion, Peter built a towering fabric of profession of unalterable fidelity on such shifting ground, and saw it collapse into ruin in a few hours. Let ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... at the intensely personal period, though with her it took objective form in dress and pleasures rather than in the subjective wonderings of her youngest brother. As to John-James, he hardly entered into the fabric of her existence. Life to her was the cat-like attempt to get as much comfort as possible regardless of others. The only emotion Ishmael obtained out of Cloom came from Katie Jacka, and that was rather unhealthy, because furtive and sentimental, and he only detested it. As to his mother, that hectic, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... Venus to bring her shawl. The obsequious dressing-maid laid it lightly on her shoulders, and holding out a white nubia of zephyr worsted, she said, "P'r'aps missis would like to war dis ere." She stood watching while her mistress twined the gossamer fabric round her head with careless grace. She opened the door for her to pass out on the veranda, and as she looked after her she muttered to herself, "She's a pooty missis; but not such a gran' hansom ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... the night scenes he had taken in town. He almost forgot that all this was his work, so smoothly did the story steal across his senses and beguile him into half believing it was true and not a fabric which he had built with careful planning and much toil. He saw the round-up scenes; the day-herd, the cutting-out and the branding, the beef-herd driven to the shipping cars. True, those steers were not exactly prime ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... noise rent the air. A pulley attached to the base of the crane sprang out, dragging after it the capstan, which struck the crane like a lever. The beams tottered, the cables broke, and the whole fabric collapsed with a deafening roar and in a whirlwind ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... sheltered angles of my rail fence. It was set about by dry grass, overhung by a much larger cherry tree, and bearing still its withered last year's leaves, worn diaphanous but curled delicately, and of a most beautiful ash gray colour, something like the fabric of a wasp's nest, only yellower. I gave it a shake and it sprung quickly under my hand like the muscle of a good horse. Its bark was smooth and trim, its bole well ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... of one whole section; I make war on the principles of the Constitution; and yet, I uphold the Union, and I desire to see it protected." Undermine the foundation, and still pretend that he desires the fabric to stand! Common sense rejects it. No one will believe the man who makes the assertion, unless he believes him under the charitable supposition that he knows not ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... however, was in better case. Lieutenant-Commander Perkins got her into position under the stern of the Tennessee just after the latter's collision with the Hartford; and there he stuck to the end, never over fifty yards distant, and keeping up a steady rapping of eleven-inch shot upon the fabric which they could not at once penetrate, but which they visibly shook. Fifty-two of these projectiles were fired from the Chickasaw in the short half-hour of her attack. The exposed rudder-chains were ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... the abrupt quietness, "that cargo will become food, fabric, vitryl, plastiboard, reagents, fuels, a hundred different things. That's what we're ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... several sharp pops near Tom's head, and he knew these were machine bullets from the Hun aviator's gun, breaking through the tightly stretched linen fabric of the wings ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... thunder through this book, heroism and the gallant facing of peril are wrought into its very fabric, and the Coast Guard has endorsed its accuracy. The stories of the rescue of the engineer trapped on a burning ship, and the pluck of the men who built the Smith's Point Lighthouse are told so vividly that it is hard to ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... hard, like the plaited belts and armlets. The band is generally about an inch (more or less) in width. It is not dyed or coloured in any way, but is often decorated with beads, which are worked into the fabric in one or more horizontal lines, but as a rule, I think, only at irregular intervals, and not in continuous lines. These bands and anklets are seen in many of the plates. In Plates 10, 11 and 12 the bead ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... some one to whom I could be kind, for whom I could think, plan, hope, weave a fabric of ambitious dreams, look forward along the path that leads to glory. I needed some one for whom I could be unselfish, to whom I could often offer those small burnt sacrifices whose smoke women love to see ascending towards God, burnt sacrifices of small personal desire, small ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... by destructive changes which give rise to the usual phenomena of the menstrual period; there is a discharge of blood, mucus, and disintegrated mucous membrane. The actively growing cells of the uterine lining membrane undergo rapid destructive changes, the fabric of the half-formed decidua tumbles to pieces, the turgid capillaries burst and pour out the menstrual flow, which sweeps away all the useless debris. The irritation sets up reflex uterine contractions, and so the blood is squeezed ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... Thus the sophistical fabric has been demolished, chiefly by appealing to the analogy of the arts. 'Justice is like the arts (1) in having no external interest, and (2) in not aiming at excess, and (3) justice is to happiness what the implement of the workman is to his work.' At this the modern reader is apt ...
— The Republic • Plato
... should retire with such a guide into the deserts of denial and chosen godlessness, was to Wingfold a thought of torture almost unendurable. The thought of its possibility, nay, probability—for were not such unfitnesses continually becoming facts?—threatened sometimes to upset the whole fabric of his faith, although reared in spite of theology, adverse philosophy, and the most honest and bewildering doubt. That such a thing should be possible seemed at those times to bear more against the existence of a God than all the other grounds of question ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... assistance did me another good turn, one that brought me a rich harvest of profits. A certain weave was in great vogue that season, the demand far exceeding the output, and it so happened that the mill of the man with the professorial face was one of the very few that produced that fabric. So he let me have a much larger supply of it than any other cloak-manufacturer in the country was able to obtain. My business then took a great leap, while my overhead expenses remained the same. My net profits exceeded two hundred thousand dollars ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... 7 B.C.; but they do not therefore date their letters 1923, nor, I presume, do they expect me to do so. What I am engaged in is a criticism (in the Kantian sense) of an established body of belief which has become an actual part of the mental fabric of my readers; and I should be the most exasperating of triflers and pedants if I were to digress into a criticism of some other belief or no-belief which my readers might conceivably profess if they were erudite Scriptural paleographers and historians, in which case, by the way, they ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... now expressed with more consistency than in the first edition. I have seen reason, more and more, to doubt the validity of the "ghost theory," or animistic hypothesis, as explanatory of the whole fabric of religion; and I present arguments against Mr. Tylor's contention that the higher conceptions of savage faith are borrowed from missionaries.(1) It is very possible, however, that Mr. Tylor has arguments more powerful than those contained in his ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... ornaments, his mind already freed from all defects; by power of the good root obtained in other births, he quickly reached the fruit of an Arhat. The secret light of pure wisdom's virtue enabled him to understand, on listening to the law; just as a pure silken fabric with ease is dyed a different color. Thus having attained to self-illumination, and done that which was to be done, he was converted; then looking at his person richly ornamented, his heart was filled with shame. Tathagata knowing his inward thoughts, in gathas spoke the following ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... quicksilver. In the air was the nutty odor of dried grasses, the clear tang of coming frosts crystal to the taste as water; and if one listened, almost listened to the silence, one could hear above the lapping of the tide the far echo of the cataract. To Cartier the scene might have been the airy fabric of some dream world; but out of dreams of earth's ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... the threads of existence are weaving fabric more intricate than any woof or warp of the great mills goes confidingly to the old woman, who lifts her tenderly into her arms. With every word she speaks this aged creature draws her own picture. To these types no pen save Tolstoi's ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... the believer. It insisted on purity rather than profundity of thought. Unable to remove the galling yoke, it gave strength to its wearers by prohibiting sadness and asceticism, and emphasizing joy and fellowship as important elements in the fabric of its theology. ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... site he desired for the building was granted him, and the first Crystal Palace—the first palace for the people in England—went slowly up, amid the sun-dropped shades of Hyde Park. Temporary as was that marvelous structure, destined so soon to pass away, like "the baseless fabric of a vision," I can but think it the grandest of the monuments to the memory of the Prince- Consort, though little did he so regard it. To his poetic yet practical mind it was the universal temple of industry and art, the valhalla of the heroes of commerce, the fane of the gods of science—the ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... tools, forging-pressing machines, electric motors, tires, knitted wear, hosiery, shoes, silk fabric, chemicals, trucks, instruments, microelectronics, jewelry manufacturing, software development, ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... Romans, have endeavored to supply its place with all the extravagances of an irregular fancy." In the following paper (No. 63), an "allegorical vision of the encounter of True and False Wit," he discovers, "in a very dark grove, a monstrous fabric, built after the Gothic manner and covered with innumerable devices in that barbarous kind of sculpture." This temple is consecrated to the God of Dullness, who is "dressed in the habit of a monk." In his essay "On Taste" (No. 409) he ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... mere white paste, only to be distinguished by scraping sections with a knife through mud and bone. Under the whole body was a bed of white sand. Near the entrance were six vases (XI, 12), of a shape and fabric indistinguishable from a late Neolithic form common at Naqada, and opposite the middle of the body was a group of important objects. These were: a model granary in rough red pottery (PL. VI), each little storehouse having an opening above, closed by a stopper; ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell
... than that which fixed our eyes upon the gladiators; he is really beautiful—a beautiful Greek. Around his temples, holding the waving hair, is a crown of myrtle, to which still cling the pale flowers and half ripe berries. His tunic, scarlet in color, is of the softest woollen fabric; below the girdle of buff leather, which is clasped in front by a fantastic device of shining gold, the skirt drops to the knee in folds heavy with embroidery of the same royal metal; a scarf, also woollen, and of mixed white and yellow, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... obtained some show of right to the crown; but the decision of the oracle was not universally acceptable, and war broke out, in which Gyges was victorious, thanks to the bravery of his Carian mercenaries. His career soon served as the fabric on which the popular imagination was continually working fresh embroideries. He was reported at the outset to have been of base extraction, a mere soldier of fortune, who had raised himself by degrees to the highest posts and had finally ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... touch of resistance, transform your stolid, laudable, laughable Englishman into the beastliest of tyrants. It may drive him into a delirium of cruelty and injustice. It may sweep away, in one ruin of war, wealth, culture, and the whole fabric of civilisation. It may darken counsel, and corrupt thought. In fact, it may give you something very like the history of the English in Ireland. Now it is not denied that most Englishmen believe the English mind to ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... and swirl of fog fell like a sudden whirl of snow. It closed down and overwhelmed at once the tall flutter of the flames, the black figures, the purple gleams playing round my oar. The hot glare had struck my eyeballs once, and had melted away again into the old, fiery stain on the mended fabric of the fog. But the attitudes of the crouching men left no room for doubt that we had been seen. I expected a sudden uplifting of voices on the shore, answered by cries from the sea, and I screamed excitedly at Castro to lay hold of ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... that I was inclined to wish Mr. Tubbs success in driving his hard bargain, especially as it would profit him nothing in the end. But this sentiment was exclusively my own. On all hands indignation greeted the rigorous demands of Mr. Tubbs. With a righteous joy, I saw the fabric of Aunt Jane's illusions shaken by the rude blast of reality. Would it be riven quite in twain? I was dubious, for Aunt Jane's illusions have a toughness in striking contrast to the uncertain nature of her ideas in ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... Humanity into the throne occupied by the Supreme Being under monotheistic systems made all the rest of Comte's construction easy enough. Utility remains the test of every institution, impulse, act; his fabric becomes substantially an arch of utilitarian propositions, with an artificial Great Being inserted at the top to keep them in their place. The Comtist system is utilitarianism crowned by a fantastic decoration. Translated into the plainest English, the position is as follows: ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... supplied by the wickerwork and textile netting familiar to the everyday life of the artist. Assisted by the fertile imagination of bardic lore in snakes, dragons, and other mythic monsters of heroic verse, the illuminator produces a pencilled tapestry of textile fabric or flexile metal-work as marvellous as it is unique. No amount of description can give a true idea of what Celtic work is like; it must be seen to be comprehended. One glance at a facsimile of such a MS. as the Book ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... than men, of course," she went on. "Dressmakers stitch those weights into the lower edges of women's suit coats to make the fabric drape ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... shoulders flung, His homely garments with a leathern zone Confined, his snowy beard low clust'ring down Upon his ample chest, his keen dark eye Glancing from underneath the arched brow, He fixed his sandaled foot, and on his staff Leaned, while to his disciples he declared How all creation's mighty fabric rose From the abyss of chaos: next he traced The bounds of virtue and of vice; the source Of good and evil; sketched the ideal form Of beauty, and unfolded all the powers Of mind by which it ranges uncontrolled, And soars from ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... he cried. "It is the question I have asked myself a thousand times: Why is it—why is it that women so strong-willed, so unyielding in the seeking what they desire, why is it that apparently they have no influence on the general fabric of ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... at him from all sides. He saw that our social fabric is thrown together in the most haphazard fashion, without scientific organization, with the greatest waste, in such a way that non-producers win all the prizes while the toilers do without. Yet out of this system that sows hate and discontent, ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... on this institution, who did not consider it as dishonorable and destructive to our governments; and that every writing which has come out since my arrival here, in which it is mentioned, considers it, even as now reformed, as the germ whose development is one day to destroy the fabric we have reared. I did not apprehend this, while I had American ideas only. But I confess that what I have seen in Europe has brought me over to that opinion; and that though the day may be at some distance, beyond the reach of our lives perhaps, yet it will certainly come, when ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... demanded; brilliant black eyes that, like August days, burned dewless and unclouded, a steady blaze; thick, shining, black hair elaborately curled, and a rich tropical complexion, clear and glowing as the warm blood that pulsed through her rounded graceful form. She wore a fleecy fabric, topaz-coloured, with black lace trimmings; yellow roses gemmed her hair, and topaz and ruby ornaments clasped her throat and arms. An Eastern queen she looked, exacting universal homage, and full of fiery jealousy whenever her eyes fell upon one who stood ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... is one of the coolest materials we can have, for it absorbs perspiration; while linen, which is non-hydroscopic, when moist allows the fluid to evaporate rapidly, and thus cools the body too quickly, and therefore dangerously. Hence flannel is a most suitable fabric in which to take exercise, as there is less danger ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... received a sharp wound that thrust him through, body and heart and soul, and cleft his cold pride in two. For days he wandered beneath the pines and the rhododendron trees alone, lamenting for the fabric of mighty philosophy he had built himself, in which no woman was ever to set foot; and which a woman's hand, a woman's eyes had shattered in a day. It seemed as if his whole life were blasted and destroyed, so that he was become even as other men, to ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... embark on his African campaign, a general rebellion broke out all over Sicily against his authority. Some of the people joined the Mamertines, some the Carthaginians. In a word, the whole country was in an uproar, and Pyrrhus had the mortification of seeing the great fabric of power which, as he imagined, he had been so successfully rearing, come tumbling suddenly on all ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... foundation except a massive oblong wooden frame to which all the superstructure was attached. You might, if strong enough, have grasped it by the ridge-pole and carried it bodily away without tearing up any foundation or deranging the fabric. It was kept in order and managed by an elderly sister of Angus, named Martha, for Angus was a widower. His only son Ian dwelt in the school-house, a mile farther up ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... their remains, must have been of great beauty. The Cathedral, or Eglise de St. Laurent, is partly of the twelfth century; the exterior is adorned with carving, and gargouilles, and flying-buttresses, of singular grace; but the whole fabric is so built in with ugly little shops, that all fine effect is destroyed. The galleries in the church of La Trinite are elaborately ornamented, as are some of the chapels, whose roofs are studded with pendants. Much of this adornment is due ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... with scholarship.—The great fabric of Gallican and Benedictine learning rises into being, under the hammer blows of a hostile research. The Catholics of Germany, says Renan, are particularly distinguished for acuteness and breadth of ideas. Why? Because of the ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which lighted up her fine eyes, and glowed on her countenance, on that eventful meeting with you on her return, combined, how often, with subsequent similar observation, would have been quite sufficient proof to me that my expectations were 'baseless as the fabric of a vision.'" ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... masonry, each course forms a species of arch, by virtue of its convexity. At the crown of the four arches on which they rest, these courses meet and form a complete circle, perfectly stable and capable of sustaining any superstructure that does not by excessive weight disrupt the whole fabric by overthrowing the four arches which support it. Upon these pendentives, then, anew dome may be started of any desired curvature, or even a cylindrical drum to support a still loftier dome, as in the later churches (Fig. 71 b). This method of covering a square is simpler than the ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... blushed up to his eyes, took off his hat and wiped his forehead with an indescribable fabric drawn from his pocket. "My name's Rawson, sir. Beyond ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... those who think of his whole achievement altogether—the whole amazing world of his creation—La Comedie Humaine? By the same sort of rule Scott may be judged, and the whole of his work, his vast industry, and all that made the fabric of his life, be allowed to tell on the mind of ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... stores of fish are dried and smoked, and the roes, prepared like caviare, form their winter bread. They drink fish-oil, and mix it with their food. The women go fishing occasionally, and are as skilful as the men; but their usual occupation is within doors, preparing the fabric of which their garments are composed. Captain Cook, in speaking of their houses, says: 'They are as filthy as hog-sties,—everything in and about them stinking of ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... the episode of Haidee, "a long low island song of ancient days," the character of the girl herself being like a thread of pure gold running through the fabric of its surroundings, motley in every page; e.g., after the impassioned close of the "Isles of Greece," we ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... cushioned couch set apart for him, but was unable to pay any real devotion, and passed on to the adjoining apartment before mentioned, where the sacred cows of Isis-Neith and the sparrow-hawk of Horus were kept. These creatures were concealed from the gaze of the worshippers by a curtain of rich fabric embroidered with gold; the people were only allowed an occasional and distant glimpse of the adorable animals. When Psamtik passed they were just being fed; cakes soaked in milk, salt and clover-blossoms ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the fair earth itself, unfixed from its foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in the awful vastness of the universe. In the fabric of habit which they had so laboriously built for themselves, mankind were to remain no longer. And now it is all gone—like an unsubstantial pageant faded; and between us and the old English themselves a gulf of mystery which the prose of the historian ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... resembled the fairer families of the Aryan breed, the Swede or German. The yellow hair, unshaven beard, whiskers, and moustache were all close and short. The dress consisted of a sort of blouse and short pantaloons, of some soft woven fabric, and of a vermilion colour. The head was protected from the rays of an equatorial sun by a species of light turban, from which hung down a short shade or veil sheltering the neck and forehead. His bare feet were ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... atmosphere and the habitability of Mars are still debated; with, we believe, the odds against both. But the star-gazers make their craft useful in a novel way when it reaches the earth. Upon the precession of the equinoxes they erect a fabric of retrograde chronology, and set a clock to geologic time. Here Sir Isaac is brought to grief. His excursions beyond the Deluge are proved blind guides. He misleads us among the ages as sadly as Archbishop Usher. The profoundest of laymen and the most learned of clerics ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... tables massive electric domes concentrated their light. The walls, otherwise severely unadorned, were covered with lustrous golden fabric; the windows were invisible, cloaked in splendid golden hangings; the carpet, golden brown in tone, was of a velvet pile so heavy that it completely muffled the sound of footsteps. The room, indeed, was singularly quiet for one that harboured some two-score players in addition to a full corps of ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... him spread, For noble spirits "war not with the dead;" His friends in tears, a last sad requiem gave, And all his errors slumber'd in the grave. He died an Atlas, bending 'neath the weight, Of cares oppressing our unhappy state; But lo! another Hercules appear'd, Who for a time, the ruined fabric rear'd; He too is dead! who still our England propp'd, With him our fast reviving hopes have dropp'd; Not one great people only raise his urn, All Europe's far extended regions mourn. "These feelings ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... the voyage of Columbus, that, persevered in through trials and perils, ended in triumph—how he studied the stars and the charts, and out of the dreams of ages wove the fabric of fancy that grew to theory, and prophecy, and history, that there was land beyond the Atlantic; and there is no moment in human life supreme above, or of more fascinating interest than, that when, from the deck of his caravel he saw the light on the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... shall be the object of the Black Belt Improvement Society to, as far as possible, eliminate the credit system from our social fabric; to stimulate in all members the desire to raise, as far as possible, all their food supplies at home, and pay cash for whatever may be purchased at ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... out by force of logic and analogy an extensive system of private law from the meagre fabric of the Twelve Tables, so under the lead of American lawyers American judges have applied the processes familiar in the development of unwritten law to the development of our written law, both ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... from Henry IV to Elizabeth; a third the Stuart arms as borne from James I to Queen Anne; yet the work of all three roundels seems to be seventeenth century in character, and does not match that of the rest of the fabric of the staves. ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... that the soldiers were bursting into the palace and monastery. Instantly the service was thrown into the utmost confusion; part remained at prayer, part fled into the numerous hiding-places the vast fabric affords; and part went down the steps of the choir into the transept to meet the little band at the door. "Come in, come in!" exclaimed one of them; "Come in, and let us die together." The Archbishop continued to stand outside, and said, "Go and finish ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... made by withered bracken or bramble leaves, and had nothing to do with the stealthy fall of a poacher's heavy boot. It came again more clearly, and Thurston was almost sure that it was the rustle of a woven fabric, such as a woman's dress. To confirm this opinion a soft laugh followed. He rose, deciding it could only be some assignation with a maid from the Hall, and no business of his. He had turned to retreat when he noticed the eastern side of a silver fir reflect a faint ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... innee, qu'elle est la meme chose que la nature. La sauvagerie est toujours la a deux pas, et, des qu'on lache pied, elle recommence." We have been severely enough taught (if we were willing to learn) that our civilisation, considered as a splendid material fabric, is helplessly in peril without the spiritual police of sentiments or ideal feelings. And it is this invisible police which we had need, as a community, strive to maintain in efficient force. How if a dangerous "Swing" were sometimes disguised in a versatile entertainer devoted to ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... in despair, The Greeks grew weary of the tedious war, And by Minerva's aid a fabric reared Which like a steed of monstrous height appeared. The sides were planked with pine: they feigned it made For their return, and this the vow they paid. Thus they pretend, but in the hollow side Selected numbers ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... summer. The most marvelous example of St. Patrick's wisdom, and at the same time the most wonderful testimony to his personal force, is his action towards the existing civil and religious law of the country, commonly known as the Brehon Law. Principles had by long usage been wrought into the fabric of the Brehon Laws which were in flat contradiction to St. Patrick's teaching of the New Way. Instead of fiercely denouncing the whole system, he talked with the chief jurists and heralds,—custodians of the old system,—and convinced them that changes in their laws ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... not think before he spake? He speaks all in righteousness, and therefore by his word we are to judge how mighty he is to save (Isa 63:1). He speaketh in righteousness, in very faithfulness, when he began to build this blessed gospel-fabric, the text; it was for that he had first sat down, and counted the cost; and for that, he knew he was able to finish it! What, Lord, any him? any him that cometh to thee? This is a Christ worth looking after, this is a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... German critic the great fabric that has been built up on these characteristics and qualities is threatened with ruin by the war; and the heritage which we are supposed to be losing is to fall, by some process which is not made very ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... extent these thieves possessed the Bad Lands. They were here, there, and everywhere, sinister, intangible shadows, weaving in and out of the bright-colored fabric of frontier life. They were in every saloon and in almost every ranch-house. They rode on the round-ups, they sat around the camp-fire with the cowpunchers. Some of the most capable ranchmen were in league with them, bankers ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... second sight, my guide assigned to it. An extensive and increasing trade with the West Indies and American colonies, has, if I am rightly informed, laid the foundation of wealth and prosperity, which, if carefully strengthened and built upon, may one day support an immense fabric of commercial prosperity; but in the earlier time of which I speak, the dawn of this splendour had not arisen. The Union had, indeed, opened to Scotland the trade of the English colonies; but, betwixt want of capital, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the greatness of this idea, the overshadowing glory of this result. This was the dream of the truest friends of man from the beginning; for this the noblest blood of martyrs has been shed; for this has mankind waded through seas of blood and tears. There it is now; there it stands, the noble fabric in all the ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... this kind took place in the convent of the Escurial. For some time the hospitality of this brotherhood allowed me a cell in that magnificent and gloomy fabric. I was drawn hither chiefly by the treasures of Arabian literature, which are preserved here in the keeping of a learned Maronite, from Lebanon. Standing one evening on the steps of the great altar, this devout friar ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... as I come to know them—I mean men who dare to look themselves in the eye—I find a deep desire for more naturalness, more directness. How weary we all grow of this fabric of deception which is called modern life. How passionately we desire to escape but cannot see the way! How our hearts beat with sympathy when we find a man who has turned his back upon it all and who says "I will live it no longer." How we flounder in possessions as in ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... brilliant day is a good day for the swallows, a good day for the haymakers, and a good day for him who sits before his open barn door and weaves his facts and midsummer fancies into this slight literary fabric. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... force, on the outbreak of war, with such rapidity as to strike a disabling blow before the enemy can organize an equal effort. To use a familiar phrase, there will not be time for the whole resistance of the national fabric to come into play; the blow will fall on the organized military fleet, and if that yield, the solidity of the rest of the structure will avail nothing. To a certain extent this is true; but then it has always been true, though to a less extent formerly than now. Granted the meeting of two ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... wares, if of good quality. Larger ones of poorer quality were money. A part of the value was imaginary. Cloth was formerly money in Bohemia. A loosely woven variety of cloth was used for this purpose, the cloth utilities as a textile fabric and as money being separated. On the west coast of Africa little mats were used as money. They were stamped by the Portuguese government. Mat money was also used on the New Hebrides, especially to buy grades in the great secret society. The mats are long and narrow and are ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... upon man. Other attributes are but like his back parts, and he leaves the resemblance of his footsteps upon other creatures. What can be so beautiful as the image of God upon the soul? Creatures, the nearer they are to God, the more pure and excellent. We see in the fabric of the world, bodies the higher they are, the more pure and cleanly, the more beautiful. Now then, what was man that was "made a little lower than the angels"?—in the Hebrew, "a little lower than ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... casement, to be taught of thee. Born of the tear-drop and the smile, methinks, Thou hast affinity with man, for such His elements, and pilgrimage below. Our span of strength and beauty fades like thine, Yet stays its fabric on eternal truth And boundless mercy. The wild floods may come— The everlasting fountains burst their bounds— The exploring dove without a leaf return— Yea, the fires glow that melt the solid rock, And earth be wrecked: What then?—be still, my soul, Enter thine Ark—God's promise cannot fail— ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... looked very charming and imposing in her evening dress, but when Betty ventured to admire it she was informed that it was "A rag, my dear—a prehistoric rag!" and warned that at any moment the worn-out fabric might be expected to fly asunder, when "As you love me, fling yourself upon me, and hurl me from the room! My entertainment comes on last of all. I arranged it so for a special reason," Christabel explained, ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... fifty was also an exceptional man at twenty. On the average, after about thirty years of age, the elasticity of the body to rise to the strain of emergency diminishes, and, when forty years is reached, a man, medically speaking, reaches his acme. After that, degeneration of the fabric of the body slowly and maybe imperceptibly sets in. As the difficulties of exploration in cold regions approximate to the limit of human endurance and often enough exceed it, it is obvious that the above generalizations ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... sepulchral darkness of the catacombs, and found no path emerging from them. The happy may well enough continue to be such, beneath the brilliant sky of Rome. But, if you go thither in melancholy mood, if you go with a ruin in your heart, or with a vacant site there, where once stood the airy fabric of happiness, now vanished,—all the ponderous gloom of the Roman Past will pile itself upon that spot, and crush you down as with the heaped-up marble and granite, the earth-mounds, and multitudinous bricks of its ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to detail the calamities which slavery has entailed upon our race in the domain of the family. Every one knows how it has pulled down every pillar and shattered every priceless fabric. But now that we have begun the life of freedom we should attempt the repair of this, the noblest of all the structures of human life. The basis of all human progress and of all civilization is the family. Despoil the idea of family, assail rudely its elements, its framework, ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... heard him knock at the door of the dwelling. He himself went further into the church. Everything was new, except a few pieces of carving preserved from the wrecked old fabric, now fixed against the new walls. He stood by these: they seemed akin to the perished people of that place who were his ancestors ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... tent outfit was not unpacked until two years after purchase. It had been carefully kept, but was found to be more or less like paper, and only a small portion could be used. One tent served me throughout Bornean travels, but finally the quality of the fabric became impaired to a degree which necessitated constant patching; it was made to last only by the exercise of great care and with the aid of a fly, three of these having been used on this expedition. If a journey ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... Turdine. The arch which crosses the road has a span of 95 ft., the others average 35 ft. About 60,000 men in the town and environs are employed in the manufacture of velvet, embroidery, trimming, and especially in the particular kind of muslin called "tarlatan," athin gauze-like fabric, for which ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... cannot be a spurious passage, nor due to a hasty and mistaken scribe, for if the Bible had ever put forth a different doctrine it would have had to change the whole of its teaching, for this is the corner-stone of religion, without which the whole fabric would fall headlong to the ground. (63) The Bible would not be the work we have been ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... sexes. It is a strange psychological paradox that some can so deliberately prefer to call black white and find distinct inebriation in flying diametrically in the face of truth and fact. The great impostors, whose entire lives have been a fabric of lies, are cases in point. They find a distinct pleasure not only in the sense of power which their ability to make trouble gives, but in the sense of making truth a lie, and of decreeing things into ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... What happened last November might surely happen February next. They may have annoyed you at the time, because they were not what you had meant; but how will they annoy you in the future, and how will they shake the fabric of your wife's confidence and peace! A thousand things unpleasing went on in the chiaroscuro of a life that you shrank from too particularly realising; you did not care, in those days, to make a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Yonder gray old fabric has looked on the scarred ruins of many a life, but never a funeral that has passed down its aisles was so sad as this parting. Good-bye, dearest ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... result of our enquiries into the economic condition of the great bulk of the yeoman farmers of Norway, the ideal fabric reared by Mr. Laing at a time when the Norse old world was still asleep, falls utterly to the ground, and there remains but one of his statements that we can with any advantage submit to the earnest ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... that such a state of insanity is possible. It is against those clear principles of psychology and ethics which are not only speculatively evident, but practically necessary to maintain the fabric of human society. I do not deny that there exists an emotional insanity of another kind, which I will explain further on, but not an insanity of the will, as they understand it, which would excuse a man from the consequences of his wilful acts. Upon this subject ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... historical times, though its fate begins to be realized and suspected only now. What was said is still asserted: every root-race is separated by a catastrophe, a cataclysm—the basis and historical foundation of the fables woven later on into the religious fabric of every people, whether civilized or savage, under the names of "deluges," "showers of fire," and ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Lady did not know this. But she did know that Mrs. Kimball, the storekeeper's wife, presently rustled into the next pew in the very latest fashion of fabric and mode; she and Mrs. Kimball were the same age, and there had been a time when the latter had been content to imitate Margaret Lloyd's costumes at a humble distance. But the storekeeper had proposed, and things were changed now; and there sat poor ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... rather a sinister way of giving, that my mother should want me like this just as her brain was failing. And yet that failure doesn't affect the quality of her love. Is it something that shines through the poor tattered fabric? Anyhow, it has nothing to do with her brain. It is she herself, somehow, not anything of hers, that wants me. And you ask if I can ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... the parish of Newland, was settled in the Bishop's favour, who also obtained the great tithes and the presentation to the living, all of which still continue attached to that see, and in connexion with which it may be observed, that by far the larger part of the fabric of the church at Newland exhibits the style of architecture which prevailed at that period. It is a large building, and ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... a poor crippled man on the way, who was just coming into camp. He was clad in a few cotton rags that he had patched with old stocking-tops and bits of old tent-cloth, to hold them together, and it was impossible to detect the original fabric. In passing down the "Paradise Road" to the camp in Natchez-under-the-Hill, the unruly mule pranced, kicked, and reared, until both of them became unmanageable, and the dust rolled up a thick cloud, hiding the way before us, as well as ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... leisure to examine the interior of Alimami's residence; it consisted of a square of irregular buildings, thatched with bamboo, and covered with roofs, supported by pillars of wood, at about 6 feet distance, projecting about the same number of feet beyond the skeleton of the fabric, and forming a kind of palisado, which serves as a shade for retirement from the heat of the sun, and under which, the inhabitants indulge in repose, or sit in ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... and orderly way—by geometrical progression, so to speak—linking detail to detail in a steadily advancing and remorselessly consistent and unassailable march upon this tinsel toy-fortress of error, the dream fabric of a callow-imagination. To begin with, young sir, I desire to ask you but three questions at present—at present. Did I understand you to say it was your opinion that the supposititious candle was lighted at about eight o'clock ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... caught on the cliff briers; he knelt to release it, she looking down, noting an ugly tear in the fabric. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... gate of marble white; The like adorned the western opposite. A nobler object than this fabric was Rome never saw, nor of so vast a space: For, rich with spoils of many a conquered land, All arts and artists Theseus could command, Who sold for hire, or wrought for better fame; The master-painters ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... argument and induction, or by an immediate feeling and finer internal sense; whether, like all sound judgement of truth and falsehood, they should be the same to every rational intelligent being; or whether, like the perception of beauty and deformity, they be founded entirely on the particular fabric and constitution of the ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... repeated the Phoenix, ruffling its neck feathers angrily, 'and what sort of wishes? Wishing people to be in a good temper, for instance. What carpet did you ever hear of that had such a wish asked of it? But this noble fabric, on which you trample so recklessly' (every one removed its boots from the carpet and stood on the linoleum), 'this carpet never flinched. It did what you asked, but the wear and tear must have been awful. And then last night—I ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... of a single laborer has been increased in the United States has been almost incredible. Instead of weaving cloth by hand, as was done a hundred years ago, "one operative in Lowell, working one year, can produce the cotton fabric needed for the year's supply of 1,500 to 1,800 Chinese." Moreover, there is no question as to the fact that no nation in the world compares with ours in the power to invent, construct, and manage the most ingenious and complicated machinery. The inventive faculty belongs to every class in ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... invading army would be too dubious. I state it in that mild way, for it seems not to have been held that failure was absolutely certain; and rightly, I think, in spite of the dogmas of the strategists—for the ease transcends all experience. No man can calculate the effect on our delicate economic fabric of a well-timed, well-planned blow at the industrial heart of the kingdom, the great northern and midland towns, with their teeming populations of peaceful wage-earners. In this instance, however, joint action (the occasion for which is perhaps not difficult to guess) was distinctly ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... choice element in drama,' he exclaimed, 'you primeval force of the black earth, cornerstone of the social fabric!' ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... with the advanced plant. The organic compounds required to extend the fabric, are formed by the plant, instead of being supplied from without. The tissues of the green surface of the stem and leaves have the peculiar power, when acted on by light, of generating, at the expense ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... which the presence of an army always creates. I have said that the railway bridge which crossed the Green River at this spot had been destroyed by the secessionists. This had been done effectually as regarded the passage of trains, but only in part as regarded the absolute fabric of the bridge. It had been, and still was when I saw it, a beautifully light construction, made of iron and supported over a valley, rather than over a river, on tall stone piers. One of these piers had been blown ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... of the first who called attention to the existence of these village-communities in India, and their importance in the social fabric of the whole country both in ancient and in modern times; and though they have since become far better known and celebrated through the writings of Sir Henry Maine, it is still both interesting and instructive to read Colonel ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... inquire of thee: Whence didst thou derive thy origin?" That is, they (or God) will ask, saying: "What are your works?" But he will not question you, saying: "Who is your father?" The covering of the Caabah at Mecca, which the pilgrims kiss from devotion, is not prized from its being the fabric of a silk-worm; for a while it associated with a venerable friend, and became, in consequence, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... His hip hurt like fury from smashing against the unyielding metal, and the worst part was that he couldn't rub it. The blow had been strong enough to hurt through the heavy fabric and air pressure, but his hand wasn't strong enough to compress the suit. Just ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... attached, when the men fled to holding-vantage just ere the whale arrived. She struck the Mary Turner squarely amidships on the port beam, so that, from the poop, one saw, as well as heard, her long side bend and spring back like a limber fabric. The starboard rail buried under the sea as the schooner heeled to the blow, and, as she righted with a violent lurch, the water swashed across the deck to the knees of the sailors about the boat and spouted ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... day of Rosamund's coming to Chelsea. A week later, Bertha found the sitting-room brightened with the hanging water-colours, with curtains of some delicate fabric at the windows, with a new rug before ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... a fortune, but he bore the hardships and the pinching thrift without grumbling. His moody looks had been succeeded by an expression of radiant hope. He saw the star shining above his head, he had dreams of a great time to come, and built the fabric of his good fortune on M. de Bargeton's tomb. M. de Bargeton, troubled with indigestion from time to time, cherished the happy delusion that indigestion after dinner was a complaint to be ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... possesses superior qualities, in consequence of having been woven without the introduction of any foreign substance. In this manufacture the fibers are prevented from breaking by action of steam, the cloth is made loose in its fabric, and the threads are about the fiftieth ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... scientific theory, which was arrived at in a different way, and has a different signification. Democritus also threw out in vague outline the idea of gravitation. But this was not science: it was guess-work; it afforded no ground on which the fabric of verified knowledge could be erected, and no sure method ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various |
