"Flimsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rather watch the stars shining down through blue immensity, and the cool mists creeping round the purple hills, than feast my eyes on all the tawdry treasures of Ophir and of Ind. I would rather play a corn-stalk fiddle while pickaninnies dance, than build, of widows' sighs and orphans' tears, a flimsy bubble of fame to be blown adown the narrow beach of Time into Eternity's shoreless sea. I would rather be the beggar lord of a lodge in the wilderness, dress in a suit of sunburn and live on hominy and hope, yet see the love-light ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... followed her. Here was my opportunity. The topography of the place was so perfectly suited to the simplest plan of campaign that it may suggest to the suspicious reader a romancist's shift, diaphanous as the "woven wind" of Dacca. Let me repeat, then, that such a flimsy thing is entirely out of my line, and would have been so ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... ages, fragments of only four skeletons of very doubtful character have been found, and upon this flimsy proof, the youth of our land are expected by self-styled "scientists" to believe it, even though it leads them into infidelity and atheism, and causes the loss ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... including one or two large capitalists, some hundreds of minor ones, and, perhaps, a hundred and twenty thousand sooty artisans in metals and chemical produce. The streets are ill-built, ill-paved, always flimsy in their aspect—often poor, sometimes miserable. Not above one or two of them are paved with flagstones at the sides; and to walk upon the little egg-shaped, slippery flints that supply their places is something like a penance. Yet withal it is ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... I told her of the wager at the Leg Tavern, which in my opinion fully explained George's presence on the St. Albans road, but she declared that it was a flimsy excuse, and said she did not want to talk further ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... as bad as Archibald! Notice Afy Hallijohn, when she dresses and flirts and minces as you saw her but now! What creditable servant would flaunt abroad in such a dress and bonnet as that, with that flimsy gauze thing over her face. It's as disreputable ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... you than any furry rabbit, Or glossy goose's oily plumes, or velvet earlap yielding, Or feeble age's heavy thighs, or flimsy filthy cobweb; ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... Away with the flimsy idea that life with a past is attended. There's now—only now—and no past. There's never a past; it has ended. Away with the obsolete story and all of its yesterday sorrow! There's only Today, almost gone, and in front of Today stands Tomorrow. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... about a mile long, spread out on two sides of the main street, graduating from the big buildings of stone and wood in the center to flimsy frame structures and tents along the outskirts. Pan estimated that he must have passed three thousand people during his stroll, up one side of the street and down the other. Even if these made up the whole population ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... sovereign the kiss of peace. It was the usual termination of such discussions, the bond by which the contending parties sealed their reconciliation. But Henry coldly replied that he had formerly sworn never to give it him; and that he was unwilling to incur the guilt of perjury. So flimsy an evasion could deceive no one; and the Primate departed in the full conviction that no reliance could be placed on ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... that Mrs. L'Hommedieu might be the Mrs. Helmuth in whose history I was so interested, but from all I could learn she was a very different sort of person. Mrs. L'Hommedieu was gay, dashing and capable of making a show out of a flimsy silk a shop-girl would hesitate to wear. Yet she looked distinguished and wore her cheap jewelry with more grace than many a woman her diamonds. I would, consequently, have dropped this inquiry if some one had not remarked upon her having had a paralytic stroke ...
— The Gray Madam - 1899 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... overturning the kerosene lamp, and the curtains were all aflame in an instant. It was just after taps—or ten o'clock—when Kate's shrieks aroused the inmates of Sudsville and started the cry of "Fire." The flimsy structure of pine boards burned like so much tinder, and the child and her stupefied father had been dragged forth only in time to save their lives. The little one, after giving the alarm, had rushed again ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... Johnsonian periods; the heroine excels in cheap but glittering repartee, wears "spangled muslin," and has "practised tripping, gliding, flitting, and tottering, with great success." Shreds and patches torn with a ruthless, masculine hand from the flimsy tapestry of romance, fitted together in a new and amusing pattern, are exhibited for our derision. The caricature is entertaining in itself, and would probably be enjoyed by those who are unfamiliar with the romances ridiculed; but the interest of identifying ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... the ostensible purpose of doll's furniture. It is better to get one chair that is of the right size for the doll, well proportioned and strong enough to stand the handling of the owner, than a whole set of "pretty" and flimsy and useless furniture that you can buy in a gay ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... From flimsy net shelters flash the expensive guns, and the bombardment gathers strength, gathers volume, until you'd think something must burst—the world or the universe: either might split from end to end. The dust and smoke are ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... flash the auto had turned the bend in the river road, and the occupants saw the toll-bridge and the peaceful hamlet of Culm Falls. There was no stir there. The toll-bridge keeper was not even out of his cottage, and the light and flimsy gates were down across the driveway at either end of the bridge. The bend in the river hid the advancing wall of water. Perhaps, too, it deadened the sound of the bursting dam and the roar of ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... the State and authority." This at least is explicit enough. The Reformers were actually renewing the civil war on charges so stale and so false. The Duke had possibly promised to desert her if she broke the truce, and now he seized on the flimsy pretence, because the Congregation, as the leaders said, had "tempted him" sufficiently. They had come up to his price. Arran, the hoped-for Hamilton king, the hoped-for husband of the Queen of England, had arrived, and ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... unus'd in pomp of words to raise A courtly monument of empty praise, Where self, transpiring through the flimsy pile, Betrays the builder's ostentatious guile, Accept, oh West, these unaffected lays, Which genius claims and grateful justice pays. Still green in age, thy vig'rous powers impart The youthful freshness of a blameless heart; For thine, unaided by another's pain, The ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... he remembered how two nights before he had seen the breaking of the first wave that had turned it into a seething cauldron of surf. That was what he wanted now—just the first great wave washing over her exquisite feet and flinging its garment of spray like a flimsy veil over her perfect form. He wanted that as he wanted nothing else on earth. And then—then—he would catch his dream, he would chain for ever the fairy vision that might never ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... nauseating in origin, in manner, in the spirit of mean selfishness. These women, too, seemed to enjoy greatly any sort of row and were always ready to combine together to make awful scenes to the luckless girl on incredibly flimsy pretences. Thus Flora on one occasion had been reduced to rage and despair, had her most secret feelings lacerated, had obtained a view of the utmost baseness to which common human nature can descend—I won't ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... she looked at the door and then at Lucy. 'Miss Manisty said, Miss, I was to see you had your key handy. It's there all right—but it is the door that's wrong. Never saw such flimsy things as the doors ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she thought seriously upon what the good woman had said. Memory brought before her mind pictures from which she could not turn. The thin-soled shoes, and silken hose, in which fashion had required her delicate daughters to promenade the damp walks of the city; the flimsy ball-dress, the prolonged dance, and joined with these, the sudden exposure to a wintry air, were shades upon the bright picture of pleasures past,—dark shades ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... watched we soon afterwards saw lowered from the towering height what appeared at first to be a thin black cord, but which, when the end fell at our feet, we found to be a ladder of curiously-knotted ropes about as thick as packing twine, so flimsy in construction that it seemed as though the weight of a single man ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... go to her, with what speed thou mayst, and obtain her pardon, which if she accord thee not, I shall come back hither and give thee belabourings enough with my cudgel to make thee a sad man for the rest of thy days.' What more he said, I dare not tell you, unless you first pardon me." Whereat our flimsy pumpion-pated Lady Lackbrain was overjoyed, taking all the friar's words for gospel. So after a while she said:—"And did I not tell you, Fra Alberto, that my charms were celestial? But, so help me God, I am moved to pity of you, and forthwith I pardon you, lest worse should befall you, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... staring at him solemnly, and as he attempted to rise, they fell prostrate on their faces. Up flew the poor flimsy Scarecrow again, such was the draught, and this time landed on his face. He was beginning to feel terribly annoyed, but before he could open his mouth or stand ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... be said that he has left as memories behind him only three things that will be remembered. The first is the Pavilion at Brighton, with its absurdly oriental decorations, its minarets and flimsy towers. The second is the buckle which he invented and which Thackeray has immortalized with his biting satire. The last is the story of his marriage to Maria Fitzherbert, and of the influence exercised upon him by the affection of ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... has constructed his strongest fortresses and displayed the choicest masterpieces of his skill? 'Intellectual ability wasted' among a people whose scholars smile inwardly at the ignorance of the average Western! Brothers, if God is calling you, be not deterred by flimsy subterfuges such as these. You will need the power of God the Holy Ghost to make you an efficient missionary. You will find your reputation for scholarship put to the severest test in India. Here is ample scope alike for men of approved spiritual power ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... the only real enemy he has to fear. How his heart and his flimsy paper must flutter in the unruly gusts of a March wind! We only imagine him pasting up a "Sale of Horses," in a retired nook, and seeing his bill ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... are to sleep on the ground under those flimsy tents, I suppose?" asked Miss Campbell, who was not taking very kindly to the ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... them at bay for a minute by the quickness of his defence, but being compelled to give back he was parrying a couple of their blades in front, when the third got in a thrust beneath his arm. It was as if the hostile sword had stricken a stone wall. The flimsy and treacherous blade went to flinders, and the would-be robber was left staring at the guard suddenly ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... of necessities is a woollen blanket,—a good stout one, rather than the light or flimsy one that you may think of taking. In almost all of the Northern States the summer nights are apt to be chilly; while in the mountainous regions, and at the seaside, they are often fairly cold. A lining of cotton drilling will perhaps make a thin blanket serviceable. This lining ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... stamped his broad seal on these lawless deeds. What at that time was right, because thou didst it For him, to-day is all at once become Opprobrious, foul, because it is directed Against him. O most flimsy superstition! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... practical, and retained the follies of a woman's dress without the taste. Their shoes were neither stouter nor larger. They wore a thing on their heads more unsightly than a bonnet, and no better a protection against sun or rain. They made their jackets and their trouserettes of the same flimsy stuffs as before, and sprinkled an unusual quantity of incongruous and unsuitable trimmings over all. Luckily they have disappeared, and now are probably devoting their energies to some other right that does ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... little book, which smelled faintly of jasmine. Momentary shame overcame him at thus stealing the secrets of an unknown girl. Necessity, however, left him no choice but to seize any chance of learning more of this ship of mystery and her invisible haunter. He broke the flimsy fastening. ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... turning a handle in the wall, he pulled a flimsy door open and disclosed what seemed a cupboard. The cupboard, however, contained a bed, some bedding, blankets, and washing arrangements; and David joyously announced his discoveries. Louie took no notice of him. She was tired, angry, disgusted. The illusion of Paris was, for the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sharply, to be generally rewarded with a howl of pain from some cutthroat who had been winged. But there could be but one end to such a battle. The convicts were well protected behind big trees, while the flimsy sides of their canoes afforded the brave little band of Seminoles almost no protection. Still they fought stubbornly on, answering shot with shot until the point and canoes were shrouded in ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... lavish, almost with a smack of some of the old days she had known, spending with the easy prodigality of the gambler in luck. There was a near-seal coat from him in her cupboard of near-silks, and the flimsy wooden walls of her rooms had been freshly ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... cunning, the impudent hypocrisy, the leering pretence of reverence, the affectation of penitence, the whole fraudulent design, so flimsy that the writer himself seemed to be mocking at it, was open to Cornelia, and she read the letter through with distinct relief. Whatever the fascinations of Mr. Dickerson were when he was personally at hand, he had none at a distance, and when she ran over the pages a ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... her feet—very slowly—and walked very slowly—across the room. She seated herself on the sofa where Ella had sat, and she remained motionless for some minutes. Then she made a motion with one of her hands as if sweeping from before her eyes some flimsy repulsiveness—the web of an unclean thing flashing in the air. In another instant she had buried her face in the pillow that still bore the impress ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... presume," he announced, thrusting his hand nervously into his pocket and bringing out a fistful of papers. So eager and excited was he that, unnoticed, he dropped one flimsy sheet, many times folded, into ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... about 10 o'clock, clouds began to form high in the sky—not along the horizon, as is generally the case in most countries—and grew in intensity and size during the afternoon. Nearly every day at about sunset a peculiar flimsy, almost transparent, streak of mist stretched right across the sky from east to west, either in the shape of a curved line, or, as we had observed as recently as the day before, resembling with its side filaments a gigantic feather or the skeleton ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... happy moods which are so precisely the converse of ennui—moods of the keenest appetency, when the film from the mental vision departs—the [Greek phrase]—and the intellect, electrified, surpasses as greatly its every-day condition, as does the vivid yet candid reason of Leibnitz, the mad and flimsy rhetoric of Gorgias. Merely to breathe was enjoyment; and I derived positive pleasure even from many of the legitimate sources of pain. I felt a calm but inquisitive interest in every thing. With a cigar in my mouth and a newspaper in my lap, I had been amusing myself for the greater part of the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... for advice and assistance. She now implored Shrewsbury to reconsider his determination, and not to throw away the opportunity of uniting the Whig party for ever. Wharton and Russell wrote to the same effect. In reply came flimsy and unmeaning excuses: "I am not qualified for a court life; I am unequal to a place which requires much exertion; I do not quite agree with any party in the State; in short, I am unfit for the world; I ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... way to the landing immediately outside her door, where she unlocked a roomy cupboard, crammed to its utmost capacity with odds and ends of cheap feminine adornment. Mangy evening boas, flimsy wraps, down-at-heel dancing shoes, handkerchiefs, gloves, powder puffs, and odd bits of ribbon were jumbled together in ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... we have not sought to evade the difficulties of our position; that we have not concealed those difficulties, either from ourselves or from others; that we have not attempted to counteract them by narrow or flimsy expedients; that we have prepared plans which, if you will adopt them, will go some way to close up many vexed financial questions—questions such as, if not now settled, may be attended with public inconvenience, and even with public ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... wise to buy flimsy furniture, however cheap. As a rule, there is too much furniture in the American home. It is better to get along with a few good, durable articles, even though a little expensive, than with a profusion of inferior ones. These soon reveal their "cheap and nasty qualities," ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... own fashion, in the little fishy lodgings; and at every fresh thrust, Herbert parried so much the worse that at last Selah lost patience utterly, and rose in the end to the dignity of the situation. 'Herbert Walters,' she said, looking at him with unspeakable contempt, 'I see through your flimsy excuses now, and I feel certain you don't mean to marry me! You never did mean to marry me! You wanted to amuse yourself by making love to a poor girl in a country town, and now you'd like to throw her ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... "It's true of the flimsy Georgette things women want now. They may be lovely in the box and hideously unbecoming when worn. If Daly's going in for the higher grade stuff he ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... know, Mr. Editor, you intend, so soon as the war is over, to enlarge the Review, without increasing the subscription-price ... and then if Southern patronage ceases to be bestowed chiefly on the flimsy and immoral literature of the North, and Southern pens cease to prostitute themselves for pay by ministering to the vile and sensual literary appetites of the Yankees, then, we say, this Review will rank with the ablest for ability, and far above them for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Iris continued, "you must be more than mortal if my change of costume doesn't excite your curiosity. I found Rhoda Bennet in the garden, exposed to the cold wind in this ugly flimsy thing. After what the doctor had told me, it was high time to assert my authority. I insisted on changing cloaks with Rhoda. She made an attempt, poor dear, to resist; but she knows me of old—and I had my way. I am sorry you have ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... because it rests on no experimental basis. It is a flimsy theory, entirely unsupported by any facts. Never has it been proved that hot iron, at any temperature likely to be obtained in steam boiler tubes, decomposes steam except by itself appropriating the oxygen of the steam, and leaving ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... barely pronounced the last words, when a startling interruption led to consequences which the persons present had not foreseen. A shrill, wailing voice suddenly pierced through the flimsy partition which divided the front room and the back room. "Bread!" cried the voice in ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... with the Spaniards is of the weakest. Naturally, Essex and the war-party in England made the most of these stories, in order to inflame public opinion against Philip, and with no little success. Nevertheless, whatever element of truth they may have contained, they are too flimsy and unsubstantial to be seriously included in the indictments against Philip's character-which are indeed sufficiently grave without them. [Footnote: See Hume's Treason and Plot, cc. iv. v., where the evidence in a series of these plots is impartially set forth. The most notable of the group ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... this class of work, both by French and English firms. The drawing-room of 1850 to 1860 was apparently incomplete without occasional chairs, a screen with painted panel, a work table, or some small cabinet or casket of this decorative but somewhat flimsy material. ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... beard of flies' legs, a flimsy, old, grey, ruined, shaggy beard—beard without comprehension, beard without shame, without any feminine respect—beard which pretends neither to feel nor to hear, nor to see, a pared away beard, a beaten down, disordered, gutted beard. May the Italian sickness deliver me from this vile joker with ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... of her flimsy, incongruous dress, her fatigue, her need of sleep. Her soul was overwhelmed with the Christian desire to save, and in her sudden energy the girl over-awed the reptile ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... had previously removed. The long, glistening, black hair had been brushed back from its owner's forehead by Lawler; and a corner of a blanket had been modestly folded over a patch of white breast, exposed when Lawler had ruthlessly torn away the flimsy, fluffy waist. ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... sottish braves—the Long-Knife's tavern-chiefs— Who sell their honor like a pack of fur, Make favour with the pale-face for his fee, And caper with the hatchet for his sport. I am a chief by right of blood, and fling Your false and flimsy treaties in your face. I am my nation's head, and own but one As greater than ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... stove at the door and the middle bolt crashed. The flimsy impromptu barricade toppled, then swayed back into place and a shuddering sigh went up from the handful of white-faced men. One more drive, and the end ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... broke away under his feet, crackling and falling into black powder. He ran desperately, not feeling the burning breath of the fire, in blind hope of being able to save something. The house itself, he knew, was doomed; no fire-brigade could have checked the flames which had laid hold of the flimsy weatherboard. The fire had divided round it, checked a little by Tommy's flower-garden, which was almost uninjured yet, and by Bob's rows of green vegetables which lay singed and ruined; then, unable to wait, it had swept on its way through the long dry grass, which carried ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... ribbons. Over his pelisse he wore occasionally a long cape or short cloak, which was fastened with a brooch or strings across the breast and flowed over the back and shoulders. The material composing the cloak was in general exceedingly light and flimsy. The head-dress commonly worn seems to have been a round cap, which was perhaps ornamented with jewels. The vest and trousers were also in some cases richly jewelled. Every king wore ear-rings, with one, two, or three pendants. A collar or ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... an effeminate and flimsy opinion, nor more so in pain than in pleasure, in which, while we are at our ease, we cannot bear without a cry the sting of a bee. The whole business is to commend thyself."—Cicero, Tusc. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... landscape became. It was bad enough in our former home in Mitchell County, but my pity grew more intense as I passed from northwest Iowa into southern Dakota. The houses, bare as boxes, dropped on the treeless plains, the barbed-wire fences running at right angles, and the towns mere assemblages of flimsy wooden sheds with painted-pine battlement, produced on me the effect of an almost ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... an eminence, and well detended by palisades. The inhabitants, as usual, had fled; but left in their dwellings a good supply of provisions and some gold trinkets, which the Spaniards made no difficulty of appropriating to themselves. Pizarro's flimsy bark had been strained by the heavy gales it had of late encountered, so that it was unsafe to prosecute the voyage further without more thorough repairs than could be given to her on this desolate coast. He accordingly determined to send her back with a few hands to be careened at Panama, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... in Katharine's hands just now was the one inside her baby boy, a flimsy, fragile little chip upon the tides of time. However, it would not be Katharine's fault, if time were not ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Americans need not make so much fuss about being taxed without being represented, for in that respect they were no worse off than the people of Sheffield or Birmingham. To this James Otis replied, "Don't talk to us any more about those towns, for we are tired of such a flimsy argument. If they are not represented, they ought to be;" and by the New Whigs this retort was ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... 1665, out of 856 burials, 568 in only three months are marked "P.," for Plague. The present church, built in 1830-3, was designed by John Shaw, who died on the twelfth day after the completion of the outer shell, leaving his son to finish his work. The church is of a flimsy Gothic, the true revival having hardly then commenced. The eight bells are from the old church. The two heads over the chief entrance are portraits of Tyndale and Dr. Donne; and the painted window is the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... condition of Yellowhammer had been truly described. The voice of childhood had never gladdened its flimsy structures; the patter of restless little feet had never consecrated the one rugged highway between the two rows of tents and rough buildings. Later they would come. But now Yellowhammer was but a mountain camp, and nowhere in it were the roguish, ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... It was not a specific suspicion upon this point or that. It was a feeling of detachment and unreality at once extraordinarily vague and extraordinarily oppressive. It was as if he discovered himself flimsy and transparent in a world of minatory solidity and opacity. It was as if he found himself made not of flesh and blood but of ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... both almost on shore level, give, with an outcrop of sandy dwarf cliffs, a certain air of balance and strength to the town, though but for these and the two old castles, Accra would be but a poor place and a flimsy, for the rest of it is a mass of rubbishy mud and palm-leaf huts, and corrugated iron dwellings for ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... ask that none shall dare to come in between woman and her Maker, and with unhallowed hands attempt to plant their shallow posts and draw their flimsy cords around the Heaven-wide sphere of an immortal spirit! We maintain that God has not so failed in His adaptations as to give powers to be wasted, talents to be wrapped in a napkin; and that the possession of faculties and capabilities is the warrant of nature, the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... its aspects is, then, a perfect educator for those who do not wish to build on the flimsy foundation of ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... disport their hour: Let them dance, fairy-like, round Ossian's tomb; Let them forge lies, and histories for Hume; Let them with Home, the very prince of verse, Make something like a Tragedy in Erse; Under dark Allegory's flimsy veil Let them with Ogilvie spin out a tale Of rueful length; Let them plain things obscure, Debase what's truly rich, and what is poor Make poorer still by jargon most uncouth; With ev'ry pert, prim prettiness of youth Born of false ...
— English Satires • Various
... distinguished above the general run, or obliged to live more expensively; but, in a manufacturing country, to live without working, implies a degree of gentility that is extremely ruinous to those who enjoy that fatal and flimsy pre-eminence. ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... room" into which Joe, even his apron changed for the occasion, showed them was simply the far end of the long lunch room, half shut off from the rest of the house by a flimsy partition having no door, but a wide, high arch let into it through which a man at the lunch counter might see the little table ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... down off that roof and take your medicine," said Bob, ignoring this flimsy excuse. "You've had a licking coming to you for a long time, and now you're going ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... feeling the furs, examining and weighing the pelts. Then going to the pack horse he returned and spread out upon the rock beside the furs the goods which he proposed to offer in exchange. And a pitiful display it was, gaudy calicoes and flimsy flannels, the brilliance of whose colour was only equalled by the shoddiness of the material, cheap domestic blankets, half wool half cotton, prepared especially for the Indian trade. These, with beads and buttons, ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... the physical appearance of the railroads entirely changed; new and larger locomotives were made, the freight cars, which during the period of the Civil War had a capacity of about eight tons, were now built to carry fifteen or twenty. The former little flimsy iron rails were taken up and were relaid with steel. In the early seventies when Cornelius Vanderbilt substituted steel for iron on the New York Central, he had to import the new material from England. In the Civil War period, practically all American railroads were single track fines—and ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... Prayer if Elizabeth would acknowledge the papal supremacy, are evidently borrowed, word for word, from Dr. Wordsworth's[4] Theophilus Anglicanus, cap. vii. p. 219. A careful examination of the evidence adduced in support of the latter assertion, shows it to be of the most flimsy description, and refers it to its true basis, viz. hearsay: the reasoning and inferences which prop the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... dragged themselves home, slipped into the house, and built up a fine, cheerful fire on the hearth. They proposed to practise a deception on Mrs. Howells by pretending they had been to Concord and returned. But it was no use. Their statements were flimsy, and guilt was plainly written on their faces. Howells recalls this incident delightfully, and expresses the belief that the humor of the situation was finally a greater pleasure to Clemens than the actual visit to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... like-minded friends, hearing Elizabeth perjure herself, as they thought, at the trial of Mrs. Wells (whom Elizabeth never mentioned to Chitty), did not give evidence against her—on the most absurdly flimsy excuses. One man was so horrified that, in place of denouncing the perjury, he fled incontinent! Another went to a dinner, and Nash to Goldsmiths' Hall, to his duties as butler. Such was then the vigour of ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... she should be better able to endure his trial, and until he should have more than his own pure word and character to show. And probably if he had then been tried, with so many things against him, and no production of that poor brother, his tale would have seemed but a flimsy invention, and "Guilty" would have been the verdict. And they could not know that, in such case, the guilty man would have come forward, as we shall see that he meant ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... island, where he could secure the aid of shore batteries and a swarm of 300 or more foists and other small craft in the harbor. Almeida had only 19 ships and 1300 men, but against his vigorous attack the flimsy vessels of the east were of little value. The battle was fought at close quarters in the old Mediterranean style, with saber, cutlass, and culverin; ramming, grappling, and boarding. Before nightfall Almeida had won. This victory ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... trait in illustration of the nature which from time to time pierced through and rent the flimsy fabric of his opinions. This anecdote is ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... even turning a deaf ear to the appeals of the village imam. Thereupon Rogers ordered the constabulary to open fire, their shots being answered by a fusillade from the Moros barricaded in the house. In twenty minutes the flimsy structure looked more like a sieve than a dwelling. When the firing ceased a six-year-old boy descended the ladder and, approaching the Governor, remarked unconcernedly: "You can go in now. They're all dead." Then Rogers called up the census-taker ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... or the immutable workings of fate which took us in time past the house of the cherry tree? In a porch hammock was Rosie, a vision of budding beauty only half clouded in flimsy lawn and lace. Yet with never a turn of the head Dickie swaggered by, talking meanwhile to me in tones meant to carry an idea of much light-heartedness. Over my shoulder I noted that Rosie was standing watching us, a puzzled look ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... its self-respect; while his body, pampered with easily obtained luxuries, instead of having to win the necessaries of life by heavy toil, loses its self-helpfulness; and with self-respect and self-help vanish all the savage virtues, few and flimsy as they are, and the downward road toward begging and stealing, sottishness and idleness, is easy, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... a name, Madame, that everyone remembers, because it means nightingale," said Leontine, gingerly tearing off an end of the flimsy yellow envelope. ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the hard timbers of his seat there was naught but a flimsy and dirty sheepskin. From end to end the bench was not more than ten feet in length, whilst the distance separating it from the next one was a bare four feet. In that cramped space of ten feet by four, Sir Oliver and his six oar-mates had their ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... the flimsy sheet again and re-read the pitiful words. The letter could be answered easily enough. If she replied truthfully, she would relate a tragic history of a winter of lonely despair lived out in the beautiful old house, which to its solitary owner was like a body without ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... her the flimsy scrap of paper, and went quickly into the next room. Honor's eyes took in the curt ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... tail, and tie his hands, and turn him out in a field in the hot sun, with little clothing on, and plenty of flies about. Then we would see if he wouldn't sympathize with the poor, dumb beast. It's the most senseless thing in the world, this docking fashion. They've a few flimsy arguments about a horse with a docked tail being stronger-backed, like a short-tailed sheep, but I don't believe a word of it. The horse was made strong enough to do the work he's got to do, and man can't improve on him. Docking ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... on the same plan. There is one guest-room, a bare carpetless apartment, with a rough wooden bench, a table, and two straight-backed wooden chairs, and the room is heated to suffocation by a huge stove, which occupies a corner of the room. The flimsy plank partition is unpapered, but generally plastered with the cheap, crudely coloured prints sold by pedlars. Some of these depicted events connected with our recent war in South Africa, and it is needless to add that the English troops were invariably depicted in the ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... the evening, however, matters ripened, and after a joyous display of heavenly pyrotechnics and thunder all round the blackening, heavy sky, we were subjected to a violent downpour, accompanied by lurid lightning flashes. Tremendous hailstones came down, smashing through the few remaining flimsy blanket shelters that were still standing, so that we were left in our nakedness to bear the full fury of the storm. We felt that God's spectacular display on the mountains for Elijah's benefit had been at least ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... As it was evident that the Spanish children could not be disposed of in both markets at the same time, it was plain to the dullest comprehension that either the brokerage of Toledo or of Girono was a sham, and that a policy erected upon such flimsy foundations would soon ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... profits are not computable. It is plain, knowing of these patrons and prices, that reasonable profit attends upon the practice of the convenient science of getting without giving, which, notwithstanding its prosperity and antiquity, is yet an infant in the perfection it has attained. Awkward, flimsy, transparent as they ever were, are yet the tricks and devices of the knaves who never want for a dollar, never earn an honest one, but never render themselves amenable to any statute 'in such case made and provided.' To say that the master-workmen in roguery ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... although the attacks became less frequent. The schooners manoeuvring in the river poured broadsides into the Indian villages, battering down the flimsy wigwams. Pontiac moved his camp from the mouth of Parent's Creek to a position nearer Lake St Clair, out of range of their guns, and turned his thoughts to contrive some means of destroying the troublesome ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... pupils, the logical sense is quite strong, and they find their greatest delight in seeing the purpose of each part in a complex mechanism. With others, this work does not afford much pleasure. These are children who, later, can take delight in the flimsy plot of a musical comedy. Such pupils should be encouraged to do their best to discover some points of beauty or skill in the arrangement of the selection. In different lessons there is a difference in construction. In some, the logical ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... show Austin Turold how near he stood to the edge of the precipice. The strain of the interview had told on him. This was the first actual buffet of the beast's paw. He led the way to his son's room and watched Barrant go through his intimate belongings with the feeling that intelligence was a flimsy shield against the brutal force of authority. The law in search of prey cared nothing for such civilized refinements as intellect or self-respect. As well try to stop a tiger ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... in, "I like 'em fine—like 'em better than those flimsy danged skirts! But if you're too good to ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... off and then you'll feel better after such a long ride. Shall I send Polly to the spring-house for some cold milk?" asked the lady of the house, folding the flimsy crepe token of ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... gentleman. "Serves you right for getting inside such a flimsy contrivance. Can't understand how any man can be fool enough to want to career through the air when heaven has blessed him with a pair of sound legs. Perhaps you have no legs, though, for I'm hanged if I can see you," ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... in the sphere of nature? It is not simply an ideal which feeds the fancy, nor the flimsy emotion of a sentimental heart. We should seek for its meaning, not in the flowery vales of imagination, but amid the sober realities of thought ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... small man, with gray hair and gray stubble beard, and is invariably clad in a shabby surtout of snuff color, closely buttoned, and half concealing a pair of gray pantaloons; the whole dress, though clean and entire, being evidently flimsy with much wear. His face, thin, withered, furrowed, and with features which even age has failed to render impressive, has a frost-bitten aspect. It is a moral frost which no physical warmth or comfortableness could counteract. The summer sunshine may fling its white heat upon him, or the good ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... statues stand here and there, one of them without a head, thus disclosing the hollowness of the trunk; there were one or two little drizzly fountains, with the water dripping over the rock-work, of which the English are so fond; and the buildings for the animals and other purposes had a flimsy, pasteboard aspect of pretension. The garden was in its undress; few visitors, I suppose, coming hither at this time of day,—only here and there a lady and children, a young man and girl, or a couple of citizens, loitering about. I take pains ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... nailed on. All the town lay along Montgomery Street, from Sacramento to Jackson, and about the plaza. Gambling was the chief occupation of the people. While they were waiting for the cessation of the rainy season, and for the beginning of spring, all sorts of houses were being put up, but of the most flimsy kind, and all were stores, restaurants, or gambling -saloons. Any room twenty by sixty feet would rent for a thousand dollars a month. I had, as my pay, seventy dollars a month, and no one would even ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... the sage of Donnaville. Let him but get his applications past the land ring's tool in the state land office, and a receipt issued for his first payment, and Donnaville would be no longer a dream. Should the applications be rejected later on some flimsy pretext, he would commence a mandamus suit to enforce the selection of his lands, and force action of the pending applications of the land ring, whereby they so artfully "tied up the basis" of exchange. If he should find himself opposed by a corrupt ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... Venus will not charm so much, without her attendant Graces, as they will without her. Among men, how often have I seen the most solid merit and knowledge neglected, unwelcome, or even rejected, for want of them! While flimsy parts, little knowledge, and less merit, introduced by the Graces, have been received, cherished, and admired. Even virtue, which is moral beauty, wants some of its charms if ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... contained photographs of more or less undressed dancing girls; nondescript packages in wrappers like patent medicines; closed yellow paper envelopes, very flimsy, and marked two-and-six in heavy black figures; a few numbers of ancient French comic publications hung across a string as if to dry; a dingy blue china bowl, a casket of black wood, bottles of marking ink, and rubber stamps; a few books, with titles hinting at impropriety; ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... which are constantly before us that it would be felt by every student to possess a real value, that (from that circumstance) it would dwell in his mind, and that it would enable him to correct a great amount of flimsy education in the country, and, so far, to raise ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... very shipyards whence the Alabama had gone to sea, were approaching completion. Other iron-clads, not less powerful, were under construction in France, with the personal connivance of the Emperor, under the flimsy pretence that they were intended for the imperial government of China. Finally, on the 10th of June, casting all promises and pretexts to the winds, the French troops had marched into the capital ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... ['Under dark Allegory's flimsy veil Let Them with Ogilvie spin out a tale Of rueful length,' Churchill's Poems, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... beginning at all events, witness a great and passionate uprising of imperialistic and capitalistic tendencies. If there is any one who did not understand that a policy based on hopes of other peoples' bankruptcy is the most flimsy and frivolous of all policies, he might well have ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... occupied by an Italian. We had to make a flying start for Naples at 5 A.M., and I got up at 4, in order to shave, dress and breakfast in time to catch the train. I opened the proceedings by starting to strop my razor on a big leather strop; the door being quite flimsy, my Italian neighbor heard me distinctly, and as he was trying to fall asleep he became very angry, jumped out of bed and protested in loud and profane language. I paid no attention to his protest and then he rang his bell long and violently. ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... subject! If the spirit of a People, composed as that of England now is, were once put into a ferment, by organizing a democracy on this scheme, and to this extent, with a Press as free and licentious as our's has long been, what a flimsy barrier would remain to check the impetus of the excluded! When, in thousands, they bore down upon the newly constituted House of Assembly, demanding to be placed upon a level with their fellow-subjects, it would avail little to send a Peace-officer ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... cultivated few, how inadequate it is when it is itself corrupted! The taste of our times, with all our glorious Christian literature, and our public libraries, our lecturers, our preachers, our professors, and our standard classical authorities, is scarcely kept from being perverted by the flimsy literature which has inundated us, and the newspaper platitudes which we devour with our breakfast. With every effort of true and Christian philanthropists, it is questionable whether there is any moral progress among us. There is a material growth; but does the moral correspond, with all ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... period the site of the palace at Knossos was partially reoccupied by a humbler race of men, who used the rooms that had once witnessed the pride of the Minoan Sovereigns, dividing them up by flimsy partition-walls to suit their smaller needs. An age of transition succeeded, during which the character of the Cretan population was gradually modified by successive waves of invasion from the mainland, until Crete assumed the guise of 'the mixed land,' under which Homer knew it; and finally ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... took a firmer hold, in one hand seizing my arm above the elbow, and gripping my shoulder with the other so tightly that, through my flimsy covering, his strong fingers bruised me so severely that in a calmer moment I would have squirmed and cried out ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... in setting up the tent on the leeward side of the ledge. Blinded by the vivid flashes of lightning, and drenched by the rain, which fell in torrents, we crept, half dead with fear and anguish, under our flimsy shelter. Neither the anguish nor the fear was on our own account, for we were comparatively safe, but for poor little Binny Wallace, driven out to sea in the merciless gale. We shuddered to think of him in that frail shell, drifting on and on to his grave, the sky rent with lightning over ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Harrington, pausing and becoming impressive), Newman is a flimsy mystic; he has no foundation, but he builds logically enough—at least as far as I see—on his fancies and other people's fancies. This is to be a simple ninny. But Mr. Rogers fancies he believes a mystical religion, and doesn't; and fancies he is very logical, and isn't. This is to ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... mile farther up, the valley widened somewhat; and finding here some grass for her pony to forage on, she stopped for the night. The flimsy saddle was removed from her horse and converted into a crude pillow, in true cowboy style. Marie was uneasy. This was the first night in all her adventures that she had been absolutely alone, separated ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... a beauty that is short-lived with the people of her race. The afternoon sun shone down fiercely on her waving coal-black locks, and brought a rich colour to her nut-brown cheek; she had one little flimsy, ragged garment, neither long, broad, nor thick, which hung about her picturesquely; and, with her soft, dark, sleepy eyes, the rows of little white teeth behind her laughing red mouth, and the vivid yellow blossoms in her tiny outstretched hand, ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... unnerved and feverish, pulsing, in the dark and narrow hall beside the flimsy rack where several coats and hats were hung. Once before I had visited Krebs in that lodging-house in Cambridge long ago with something of the same feelings. But now they were greatly intensified. Now ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
