"Flimsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The little houses opposite were on a higher level and were surrounded by small gardens. Both street and sidewalks were planked, but I remember that my brother and I, that we might escape the drifting sand, often walked on the flat board that capped the flimsy fence in front of a vacant lot. On the west of Powell, at Market, was St. Ann's Garden and Nursery. On the east, where the Flood Building stands, was a ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... manoeuvred his flimsy craft to the position he desired, within a few yards of the current, which at that point made a sharp bend from the east. He shouted out some words to his wife and Maskull. Gleameil kissed her children convulsively, and broke down a little. The eldest ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... perfectly convenient at another time was out of the question when the house was so full of guests and all torn up with preparations for the wedding. Lloyd had all she could do then to think of the guests in the house, without considering those outside. It certainly is a flimsy sort of a friendship that can't overlook a seeming neglect like that or make due allowances. Besides, if she feels slighted, why doesn't she keep it to herself, and not try to get even by giving Miss Bonham a false impression of her? Rob is right. Boys ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... delightful, dangerous shower, that cools the earth without interrupting our pleasures for dreary days, is approaching. No one whose dwelling is not better protected than most of those which bear the vain and flimsy decorations called "lightning-rods" can know whether his own house may not in a few moments receive a ruinous stroke, or that it may not be his lot to enter eternity with the first flash from that dark, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Jacob's wit, Their verses tallied. Easy was the task: A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race! That blasphemed the bright Lyrist to his face, And did not know it,—no, they went about, Holding a poor, decrepid standard out Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large The ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... 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 ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... the native Prince, whom they had always been accustomed to respect, than to that of a rival trading corporation. This policy may, at that time, have been judicious. But the pretence was soon found to be too flimsy to impose on anybody; and it was altogether laid aside. The heir of Meer Jaffier still resides at Moorshedabad, the ancient capital of his house, still bears the title of Nabob, is still accosted by the English as "Your Highness," and is still suffered to retain a portion of the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... their foreign ally in shape and somewhat in song, have mended their ways, and though it is true they make a bad mess of it, they at least try to build their own nest, and rear their own young with tender solicitude. The nest is usually so sparse and flimsy an affair that you can see through its coarse mesh of sticks from below, the fledglings lying as on a grid-iron or toaster; and it is, moreover, occasionally so much higher in the centre than at the sides that the chicks tumble out ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... Buller had driven with him, it would be impossible for him to decline sailing with Buller; but he must see the boat. There was a train for his home at a quarter past seven; if he were not on the premises he could not be asked to sail. If Buller's boat were a little, flimsy thing, he would take that train—but he ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... were still very numerous, and had become bolder in their advocacy of such principles. A fierce war was carried on by the newspapers of the day against Burke's "Reflections," and pamphlets and volumes of all sizes were published, in order to show that it was a mere flimsy piece of rhetoric and fine writing. The most conspicuous of these volumes were the "Vindictae Gallicae;" or "Defence of the French Revolution," written by Sir James Mackintosh; the "Rights of Man," written by that fierce democrat, Tom Paine; and "Letters ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... response to the often-expressed want of the studious and curious, we have this voluminous yet very low-priced treatise on "Heads and Faces" from the point of view of Phrenology, Physiognomy, and Physiology. Although so low-priced, as we have noted above, it is no flimsy, patched-up volume, but a careful, honest work, replete with instruction, fresh in thought, suggestive and inspiring. There are nearly two hundred illustrations, exhibiting a great variety of faces, human and animal, and many other interesting features of the much-sided subject that is ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... perishable adornments as feathers, artificial flowers, or ribbons. The purchases of his spouse are certain to be governed by extreme frugality. She selects the family raiment with a view to durability. Flimsy finery that the sun would fade, shoddy materials that a shower of rain would ruin, offer no temptations to her. When she expends a few sous on the cutting of her boy's hair, she has it cropped ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... Missouri Compromise, approved the course of the New York senators and representatives who resisted it, declared that it discharged the party from further obligation to support any compromise with slavery, and denounced "popular sovereignty" as a false and deceptive cry, "too flimsy to mislead any but those anxious to be deluded and eager to be led astray." This declaration of principles was summarised as "Justice, Temperance, and Freedom." One delegate, amidst great applause, said he felt glorified that the party was disenthralled and redeemed. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... uniformity, which are the curses of a small society. The revolutionary discontent which vibrates in the deepest depth of Kielland's nature; the profound and uncompromising radicalism which smoulders under his polished exterior; the philosophical pessimism which relentlessly condemns all the flimsy and superficial reformatory movements of the day, have found expression in the history of the childhood, youth, and manhood of Abraham Lvdahl. In the first place, it is worthy of note that to Kielland the knowledge which is offered in the guise of ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... Detroit, Niagara, Oswego, and other posts. The policy of Great Britain was dictated by much the same considerations as was that of Spain. Lord Dorchester, Governor of Canada, assured the home Government that "the flimsy texture of republican government" could not long hold the Western settlements in the Union. In 1789, the Lords of Trade reported that it was a matter of interest for Great Britain "to prevent Vermont and Kentucke, and all other settlements now forming in the Interior ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... no striking victories were anticipated for French's little force. It was to act as a dam, rather than as a weapon of destruction. It was a rather flimsy dam at that. Buller's instructions, which at first spoke of a "flying column," soon declined to suggestions of "a policy of worry without risking men." In particular it was to stop raids on the railway line which might impede Methuen's ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... I 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 ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... doorway stood Iris Wayne, her face very pale, one hand holding a flimsy scarf about her, with Bruce Cheniston by ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... no editor wants to be annoyed by having the writing on the second sheet show through between the lines of the first, when he is reading that. That is the chief, and a sufficient, reason. A second, is that thin paper is flimsy and hard to handle. ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... said Ina. "It is my destiny. And yet," said she, after a pause, "I would not have you remember me by that flimsy thing. Let me sing you a song your mother loved; let me be remembered in this house, as ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... 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
... and tatters of creatures that hang together all right down there with the great weight holding them in one, but come all to pieces as they are hauled up. Just what they look like, just what they do or feed upon, we shall never find out. Only that we have some flimsy fellow-creatures down in the very bottom of the deep seas, and cannot get them up except in tatters. It must be pretty dark where they live, and there are no plants or weeds, and no fish come down there, or drowned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... truth in it, none the less. The life one led out here was not calculated to tone down any innate restlessness of temperament: on the contrary, it directly hindered one from becoming fixed and settled. It was on a par with the houses you lived in—these flimsy tents and draught-riddled cabins you put up with, "for the time being"—was just as much of a makeshift affair as they. Its keynote was change. Fortunes were made, and lost, and made again, before you could ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... 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 ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... daughter very much forward, and Gordon was as easily captivated as a child by the sound of a rattle. Blanche had an affection for him now, however; Bernard saw no reason to doubt that, and certainly she would have been a very flimsy creature indeed if she had not been touched by his inexhaustible kindness. She had every conceivable indulgence, and if she married him for his money, at least she had got what she wanted. She led the most agreeable life conceivable, and she ought to be in high good-humor. It was impossible ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... have said, so long as his goddess smiled, even though it were as a goddess indeed,—as a creature unattainable. But when she frowned, and the heavens grew dark, Richard's sole dependence was in his own will,—as flimsy a trust for an upward scramble, one would have premised, as a tuft of grass on the face of a perpendicular cliff. Flimsy as it looked, however, it served him. It started and crumbled, but it held, if only by a single fibre. When Richard had cantered fifty yards away ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... while she rustled in. Say, who'd have thought that a few clothes could make such a difference? For instead of the big sloppy young female who used to slouch, gigglin' around the basement who should breeze in but a zippy young lady, a bit heavy about the shoulders maybe for that flimsy style of costume, but more or less stunning, for all that. Rowena had bloomed out. In fact, she had the lilies of the field lookin' like crepe ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... the streets could be traced, and enough could be seen of the great design of the principal temple to excite the admiration of the discoverers. This example of the laying out of an ancient Egyptian town still remains almost unique, for of old, as now, private buildings were constructed of flimsy material. That the Tell el Amarna remains have escaped rapid destruction is due entirely to the sudden and violent downfall of the original splendour of the city and the complete desolation which succeeded. The importance of the place was revealed on examination of the surrounding cliffs. ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... introduce any real proof that he is the scoundrel you say he is? Seems to me the poor girl is right in the stand she takes. She wants proof, and positive proof, you know. I don't blame her. How the deuce can she break it off with the fellow on the flimsy excuse that Phil Quentin and Lady Saxondale say he is a rascal? You've all been acting like a tribe of ninnies, if ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... On such flimsy pretexts do men and nations wage war. Why then wonder if historians differ also? In the "Wilderness," each man's view was bounded by a very narrow horizon and few knew what was going on outside their range of vision. What was true of the "Wilderness" was true of nearly every battle ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... her wages and the product of many silk dresses ("scarcely soiled") in furnishing that objectionable and disreputable suitor of hers with funds for his extravagance. He has beggared two or three of her acquaintance already, under the same flimsy pretense of intended marriage, that scarcely deludes poor Abigail; she has sore misgivings as to her own fate. Alternately he bullies and cajoles, but all the while she knows that he is lying, deliberately and incessantly, yet she ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... world, and who took upon himself to say that he specially understood female nature. It was by advice from this friend that he had been instigated to plead his own cause. "Of course she means to accept you," the friend had said. "Why the mischief shouldn't she? But she has some flimsy, old-fashioned country idea that it isn't maidenly to give in at first. You tell her roundly that she must marry you." Mr. Gibson was just reaching that roundness which his friend had recommended when the lady left ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... and advocate of human rights, was quite indignant, that a Convention called for such liberal measures should reject women on the flimsy plea, "that it being contrary to English usage, it would subject them to ridicule and prejudice their cause." She was unremitting in her attentions to the American women, doing many things to make their visit pleasant while in London, and afterward, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... carelessly, 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
... could make out a thin gleaming of wires—a jury-rigged safety field. Within the flimsy-looking protective cage was a double bank of instruments, some of them alive with the flicker and glow of lights. Those must be the very expensive and difficult-to-build items Maulbow had brought out from the Hub. Beside them stood the machine, squat and ponderous. In the ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... Nurtured by foppery and barbarism, ... who went about Holding a poor decrepit standard out, Marked with most flimsy mottoes, and in large The name of ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... mendacity, canard, fib, story. Lie (verb), prevaricate, falsify, equivocate, quibble, shuffle, dodge, fence, fib. Likeness, resemblance, similitude, similarity, semblance, analogy. Limp, flaccid, flabby, flimsy. List, roll, catalogue, register, roster, schedule, inventory. Loud, resonant, clarion, stentorian, sonorous. Low, base, abject, servile, slavish, menial. Loyal, faithful, true, constant, staunch, unwavering, steadfast. Lurk, skulk, slink, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... exclusiveness—their defence under all assaults, their shelter in every emergency—has been that one nation cannot pursue a free system until all others do, or, in other words, that restriction is to be met by restriction. It is a flimsy pretence, but such as it is, has answered the purposes of those who have used ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... flimsy, but they had the bayonets, and the queen was compelled to give way and proclaim ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... clear than all one note, One sudden hail I still remember best, That came on sunny days from one afloat And drew me to the pane in certain quest Of a long brown face, bare arms and flimsy vest, In fragments through the branches, Above the green reflections: Paused by the willows in your varnished boat You, with ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... she heard footsteps approaching, and then rose to welcome her visitor. A woman twenty years her senior, bright, capable, energetic, with a shrewd face and kindly eyes whose keen glance was quick to pierce the flimsy veil of humbug, and a tongue whose good-natured sarcasm had made more than one pretender ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... section 706 of the Penal Code, the highest limit of the amount of bail being $5,000. But although the threats are conceded to have been publicly known in the State, no State officer took any means to provide this flimsy safeguard. And the execution of a bond in this amount to keep the peace would have had no effect in deterring the intended assailants from the, commission of the offense contemplated, when the penalties of the law ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... took it out of her pocket. Nora clutched it very hard, but her trembling fingers could scarcely take the little flimsy pink sheet out of its envelope. At last she had managed it. She spread it before her; then she found that her dazed eyes could not see the words. What was the misery of the morning to the agony of ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... now from each canoe a light frame-work of three bamboo poles, standards and cross-piece, and a thin, unbleached cotton "A" tent, and quickly pitched the four tents on a level piece of ground, in a semi-circle. The tents were flimsy affairs, light to carry, and would not do in rainy weather; but they had picked their day, and it was clear and no danger ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... ever chose this place from which to start his long journey to Tarshish passes my comprehension unless, indeed, it was Hobson's choice. He must certainly have been violently ill ere ever his flimsy boat had crossed the bar—a feat his whale could never have accomplished at all—and for a man of his temperament, soured by many trials, this must have ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... is flimsy. But I am half inclined to believe it because it is so flimsy. I watched him very carefully, as you no doubt did. I was impressed with the belief that the charge of murder surprised him. And it ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... entirely to ask about the little shoe, or the tall gentleman of the attic. Nevertheless I did, as I went out, throw a glance up to the window of the court—alas! there were more panes broken, the placard was gone, the veil was gone—there was nothing but a flimsy web which a bold spider had stretched across one of the comers. I felt sure that the last six months had brought its changes to other houses, as well as the house ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... but carelessly set in order. Scattered upon the flimsy dresser scarf were half a dozen hairpins—those discreet, indistinguishable friends of womankind, feminine of gender, infinite of mood and uncommunicative of tense. These he ignored, conscious of their triumphant lack of identity. Ransacking the drawers of the dresser he came upon a discarded, ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... Harding had told him—at least in discreet outline—of their conversation. She also saw that if she reopened the subject she would find herself straightway whirled out upon a stormy sea of danger that might easily overwhelm her flimsy boat. She silently and sullenly dropped into her place; she ministered to the general's pleasure in packages of finery. But she did not exclaim, or admire, or respond in any way. The honeymoon was over. Her dream of ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... December was truly appalling. All trenches were knee-deep and more in mud and water, and it is on record that the B.G.C., 19th Infantry Brigade, had his boots sucked off by the mud and went round trenches without them. Parapets would not stand and were so flimsy that many men were shot through them. But the weather eventually improved, material for revetment began to appear, and by the commencement of 1915 it was possible to move in the ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... him his griefs; what midnight demons plough The lines of torture on his lofty brow; Unlock those marble lips, and bid them speak The mystery freezing in his bloodless cheek. His secret? Hid beneath a flimsy word; One foolish whisper that ambition heard; And thus it spake: "Behold yon gilded chair, The world's one vacant throne,—thy plate ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Mrs. Ladybug declared. "They're so flimsy and delicate that Betsy Butterfly never dares venture out in bad weather. Of what use would I be to Farmer Green if I had wings like hers? If I stayed under cover whenever the sun didn't shine, the orchard would soon be overrun ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... never acquitted himself so well; he cut, capered, and set to his partner with unusual agility; we naturally participated in the admiration he excited, and in the fullness of our triumph, while brushing past the flimsy nankeens worn by Tibbins, I could not refrain from bestowing a smart kick upon his shins, that brought the tears to his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... never face the sea again. Once before he had given up "sailorising," not then on account of his nerves, but because ambition to possess a sweet-potato patch, pumpkins and a few bananas, melons, mangoes, had got hold of him. He had taken up a piece of land, but having no money his flimsy fencing was no barrier to the wallabies, and he abandoned the enterprise to them. Now he had abandoned his beche-de-mer project, had bought wire netting to keep out the wallabies, and would make a second effort to settle down. A little net fishing would help to keep him going. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... a visitor, Maria?" she asked, flapping the flimsy pink telegram gaily in front of her. "Here's Mr. Tony Brabazon wiring to know if we ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... seek in the world is not the flimsy peace which is merely an interlude between wars, but a peace which can endure ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... alarm, so high did feeling seem to run. The threats of the ranch men, handed about amongst themselves but loud enough for her to catch a word now and then, made her wonder if the town was really safe for her father, or for herself. A storm was coming up, and the rising wind whipped the flimsy lace curtains of the windows and kept them fluttering like flags. The distant muttering of the thunder and an occasional sharp flash of lightning wore on her tired nerves until she could sit still ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... stiff, ornamental, and childishly antithetical style of his day and nation, he welded the flimsy elements of the French language into instruments of strength akin to his own conceptions, and wrought out of them a style for himself in which a Demosthenic simplicity and severity of language is ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... upon it, made it glow a light yellow shade. A small window shot an oblique square of whiter light upon the cluttered floor. The smoke from the fire at times neglected the clay chimney and wreathed into the room, and this flimsy chimney of clay and sticks made endless threats to ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... Shreds of the wreck flapped wildly in its eyes. Spider-like ribs clung to its massive limbs and poked its reeking sides, while the swaying handle kept tapping its cheeks and ears and nose, as if taunting the creature with being held and badgered by a thing so flimsy and insignificant! ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... hanging about, that it puzzled her to think where all the spiders were who had spun them. There were no spiders now, but there were masses of cobwebs in every nook and corner, some of them waving in the dimness like flimsy grey veils, others spread about in such strange shapes that they almost seemed alive. No doubt bats lived up there, Maisie thought, and she even fancied she could see them clinging to the wall, dusky and shadowy as the cobwebs themselves. She turned her eyes with a little shudder, for ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... artists freely adopted Giorgione's ideas, his types, and his compositions for their own purposes. Internal evidence appears to me, moreover, to confirm this view, for the general style of painting seems to indicate a later period than 1510, the year of Giorgione's death. The flimsy folds, in particular, are not readily recognisable as the master's own. A comparison with a portrait in the Gallery of Padua reveals, particularly in this respect, striking resemblances. This fine portrait was identified by both Crowe ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... cripples. The three described are fairly common, and have, therefore, been selected to point a moral. Poisoning fish is a poor sort of sport, perhaps, but there are two classes of fishermen—the hungry and the artistic. The latter use flimsy tackle and complicated gear, and play the game, giving the victims to their wiles a sporting chance. Though not the only representative of the hungry class, the black boy generally fishes on an empty stomach, and his demeanour coincides. No slobbering sentiment affects him. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... he has bid a light No-trump and received little assistance, should play with confidence. His adversaries do not know the flimsy character of his declaration, and will credit him with more powerful cards than he really holds. Even experienced players seem to feel that a No-trump declaration is entitled to greater respect than it deserves when made with the minimum strength which ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... here have we a government insisting upon extending, without a moment's hesitation, this system which has already so deeply injured us, to three-fourths of the commercial marine of this country. And what are the flimsy pretences in addition? Why, that Prussia has threatened on one hand, and the United States coaxed on the other, and that British masters and mates are intemperate, and British seamen insubordinate. I will take the libel ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... I hope, it is clear that the flimsy argument of this prattler fails utterly, and, together with everything he constructs upon it, is found to be without any basis whatever. But that he may the better understand his own mummery, even in case I should ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... about two hours he horrified me by slowly creeping round and round my crazy structure, gradually edging his way nearer and nearer. Every moment I expected him to rush it; and the staging had not been constructed with an eye to such a possibility. If one of the rather flimsy poles should break, or if the lion could spring the twelve feet which separated me from the ground ... the thought was scarcely a pleasant one. I began to feel distinctly "creepy," and heartily repented my folly in having placed myself ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... houses and great people, and all the vapid pomp and idle toil of wealth. All that picture of herself, stooping from place and power, to bind up the wounds of the people, in which she had once delighted, was to her now a mere flimsy vulgarity. She had been shown other ideals—other ways—and her pulses were still swaying under the audacity—the virile inventive force of the showman. Everything she had once desired looked flat to her; everything she ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... poor young man born and reared in the very hotbed of temptation, struggling to break the chain that he had but recently discovered was bound around him, making resolutions many and strong, and gradually awakening to the knowledge that resolutions were flimsy as paper threads compared with the iron bands with which his tyrant held him. After the groan, he opened his eyes, and staring about him in a bewildered way, tried to take in his ...
— Three People • Pansy
... no sound came back except the roar of the fire. It even drowned all the noises of the street. But not for a moment did he think of turning back, though he knew how awful the danger would be if he tried to go up that burning stairway. He cast about for some sort of protection. A flimsy curtain of cotton material was stretched across a doorway. This Hodge pulled down and wrapped round his head, protecting his hands with it also as well as he could. Then he measured the stairway and its direction with a quick glance, and made a ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... Ryder, to whom she confided that a reconciliation had taken place, and, to celebrate it, gave her a dress she had only worn a year. This does not sound queenly to you ladies; but know that a week's wear tells far more on the flimsy trash you wear now-a-days, than a year did on the glorious silks of Lyons Mrs. Gaunt put on; thick as broadcloth, and embroidered so cunningly by the loom, that it would pass for rarest needle-work. Besides, in those ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... lodgings, and half expecting to find the St. Charles Hotel itself transformed by the eager spirit of improvement. But it was still there in all its barbaric and provincial incongruity. Public opinion had evidently recognized that nothing save the absolute razing of its warped and flimsy walls could effect a change, and waited for it to collapse suddenly like the house of cards it resembled. Paul wondered for a moment if it were not ominous of its lodgers' hopeless inability to accept changed conditions, and it was with a feeling of doubt that he even ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... expressed in putting the two side by side! It is as if the author had said, 'Look on this picture and on that!' Two fortresses! Yes! The one is like Gibraltar, inexpugnable on its rock, and the other is like a painted castle on the stage; flimsy canvas that you could put your foot through—solidity by the side of nothingness. For even the poor appearance of solidity is an illusion, as our text says with bitter emphasis—'a high wall ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... helped to ruin Urbain Grandier; his outcast son Jacques, who has turned Spanish officer and general bravo; and a smuggler who has also figured in the Grandier business, forgather; where the mad Abbess dies in terror, and Jacques de Laubardemont by falling through the flimsy hut-boards into the gorge, his father taking from him, by a false pretence before his death, the treaty between the Cinq-Mars conspirators and Spain. All this is sufficiently "horrid," as the girls in Northanger ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... thing which struck me was the utter absence of all the mock-modesty, and the pretended self-underrating, conventionally assumed by persons expecting to be complimented upon their sayings or doings. Jasmin seemed thoroughly to despise all such flimsy hypocrisy. 'God only made four Frenchmen poets,' he burst out with, 'and their names are, Corneille, Lafontaine, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... and gold petticoat under it—were the chief items of Rhoda's wardrobe. A new set of body-linen was also added, made of striped muslin. Since our fair ancestresses made their night-dresses of "muslin," it would appear that they extended the term to some stouter material than the thin and flimsy manufacture to which we restrict it. Rhoda's boots were of white kid, goloshed with black velvet. There were also "jessamy" gloves—namely, kid gloves perfumed with jessamine; a black velvet mask; a superb painted fan; a box of patches, another of violet powder, another of rouge, and a fourth ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... the peons beside him, they snored peacefully without regard to the lack of cleanliness of their bedroom. The first day of his arrival Yeager had knocked a hole in the flimsy wall and had given it out as the result of a chance kick of a bronco. This served to let air into a building which had no other means of ventilation. It also allowed some small percentage of the ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... swallowed her chopsticks in a fit of rage and spite, and died of suffocation. Mien-yaun was then satisfied. He went to the dinner. The noble and the mighty again lavished their attentions upon him, but he turned from them with disgust. He saw through the flimsy tissue of flattery they would fain cast over his eyes. The most appetizing delicacies were set before him, but, like a true poet, he refused to take anything but biscuits and soda-water. As neither of these articles had been provided, he consented ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... work of butchery was going on, numbers were observed pushing off in the barks that lined the shore, and making the best of their way across the lake. They were constantly intercepted by the brigantines, which broke the flimsy array of boats, sending off their volleys to the right and left as the crews of the latter hotly assailed them. The battle raged as fiercely on the lake as on the land. Many of the Indian vessels were shattered ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... but are there any alterations? To begin with, it seems to me hardly possible that the insect can go back to the cutting once the piece is detached from the leaf: it lacks the necessary support to gnaw the flimsy disk with any precision. A tailor would spoil his cloth if he had not the support of a table when cutting out the pieces for a coat. The Megachile's scissors, so difficult to wield on anything not firmly held, would ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... 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 ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... in all the carelessness of our childhood, and perhaps too in the first awakening instincts of our youth. Nothing but a memory remains of that enchanting spot. It was confiscated by Napoleon III. on some flimsy pretext or other, and forthwith cut to pieces, so as to destroy every trace of those who had owned and lived in it. It is as much as I can do, as I drive along the Avenue Bineau, to find, among the villas which have been built all over it, some well-known tree or ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Aphrodite's shrine, Or, with a pen and colours fit, A dove which on a lyre doth sit; The "in memoriam" pages sought, Where many another hand had signed A tender couplet he combined, A register of fleeting thought, A flimsy trace of musings past Which might ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... spoke of in the box? Would he be able to do that? He talked of Taylor as "the pivot of the case," and gibed at the prosecution for not putting Taylor in the box. Would he put Taylor in the box? And why, if he had such witnesses at his beck and call, should he lay stress on the flimsy, weak evidence to be drawn from passages in books and poems and letters? One thing was clear: if he was able to put any of the young men in the box about whom he had examined Oscar, Oscar was ruined. Even if he rested his defence on the letters and poems he'd win ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... the discipline to which her nature had deferred. Twenty years of quiet and atonement were stripped from her like a flimsy garment. The fire was alight in all her vivid face again as she brooded ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... preparing, and her hopes are bright, she may exclaim in a careless tone, "O, we must not forget—" here she mentions the lady to whom, next to her parents she is most indebted; and here finishes her remembrance of school, and the friend of her youth: in bridal favours, or flimsy letters, all her ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... endeavours to prevail on the Council to enforce the recommendation of the assembly by a similar resolution. From your own acknowledgment at the City Tavern, the resolution of the Council was never obtained, or even moved for, by you, and for this flimsy reason, that no formal information, of such resolution having passed, had been communicated to you; though known to all the world; and that it could not be expected that Council would "tag" after the assembly, in a measure relating to the public. Yet you had the effrontery to assert, that "every ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... the Great Chamberlain, "is poetry! this flimsy manufacture of the brain, which in comparison with the lofty and durable monuments of genius is as the gold filigree-work of Zamara beside the eternal architecture of Egypt!" After this gorgeous sentence, which, with a few more of the same kind, FADLADEEN ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... enough. It's a pity somebody don't tell her how it looks to be seen going about with him as she does. She hardly lets him get out of her sight when he's in town. I invited them to tea the last time they were here and she wouldn't let him come; kept him at her house, made some flimsy excuse, and had the evening with him to herself. She's tried her best to get ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... in which it stood, and that yet was a sea-traveller in its younger days, and had come round the Horn piecemeal in the belly of a ship, and might have heard the seamen stamping and shouting and the note of the boatswain's whistle." This cottage was of the variety known as "cloth and paper," a flimsy construction permitted by the kindly climate of California, and on winter nights, when the wind blew in strongly from the sea, its sides puffed in and out, greatly to the amusement of the "Scot," accustomed as he was to the solid buildings of his native ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... rap of a small axe which Garrick had brought sounded on the flimsy outside door, in quick staccato. There was a noise and scurry of feet inside and we could hear the locks and ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... more than he wished her to know, more than was agreeable to his pride. What she had said seemed so perfectly true and real to her that for the time she made it true to him; and yet to admit that his long-standing doubts could not endure so slight an assault as this, was to show that they had a very flimsy basis. Moreover, he knew that when, left to himself, he should think it all over, new questions would rise that could not be answered, and new doubts return. Therefore he could not receive now what he might be disposed to doubt to-morrow. He was a trifle bewildered, and wanted ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... possess'd but an atom of sense, He ne'er would have woman from Paradise driven, But instead of his Houris a flimsy pretence, With woman alone, he had peopled ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... Jorgensen's looked like any other flimsy construction under the dome. We had just passed a row of small warehouses, and the only difference seemed to be the ...
— Fee of the Frontier • Horace Brown Fyfe
... Dagaghiano and Rustichi, both of Florence, the one as a man of experience and the other as a student of cosmography, was equally superfluous in speaking of them to his father. These portions of the letter look like flimsy artifices to give the main story the appearance of truth. They may or may not have been true, and it is not inconsistent with an intention to deceive in regard to the voyage that they should have been either the one or the other. A single allusion, however, is made to the critical condition ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... nature. For all its broad verandas and glaring terraces, its long ranges of windows and glittering crest of cupola and tower, it gradually succumbed to the more potent influences around it, and became their sport and playground. The mountain breezes from the distant summit swept down upon its flimsy structure, shook the great glass windows as with a strong hand, and sent the balm of bay and spruce through every chink and cranny. In the great hall and corridors the carpets billowed with the intruding blast along the floors; there was the murmur of the pines in the passages, ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... pity to which she was not entitled on a fair consideration of her deserts. She had set herself to stand or fall by her qualities, and to waive such merely technical claims upon a strange family as had been established for her by the flimsy fact of a member of that family, in a season of impulse, writing his name in a church-book ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... that that bold libertine, who made you the object of his unrepressed admiration, was your father? Why, that man was not old enough to be your father,—and if ever profligacy was written on a human countenance, its damning lines were traced on his. Your father! Away with a subterfuge so vile and flimsy, a falsehood ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... for which I think he deserves great credit was that in the early days he insisted that, when a refinery was to be put up, it should be different from the flimsy shacks which it was then the custom to build. Everyone was so afraid that the oil would disappear and that the money expended in buildings would be a loss that the meanest and cheapest buildings were ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... ship, far below the water line. An electrically driven horizontal fan, with its motor, can be got into the thickness of a deck with its beams, if needs be. This would clearly be better than depending on a flimsy construction, which would certainly be greatly damaged, if not entirely shot away, in action. If clear decks are wanted, the windsail is about as inconvenient as it is ugly, and that is saying a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... 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 ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... looked for gladiators. Their only very high poet employed his elevation and strength to dethrone and debase the Deity. They had several others, who polished their language and pitched their instruments with admirable skill; several who glued over their thin and flimsy gaberdines many bright feathers from the widespread downs of Ionia, and the richly cultivated ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... poised, 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 ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... that, and then, Chase's amendment being merged, put it in the shape they wanted. They did not choose to do so, but they went into a quibble with Chase to get him to add what they knew he would not add, and because he would not, they stand upon that flimsy pretext for voting down what they argued was the meaning and intent of their own bill. They left room thereby for this Dred Scott decision, which goes very far to make slavery ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... but with everything worse excluded, being of course the most insolently-pleasant thing in the world. In addition to which, when the garden is in the Italian manner, with flowers rather remarkably omitted, as too flimsy and easy and cheap, and without lawns that are too smart, paths that are too often swept and shrubs that are too closely trimmed, though with a fanciful formalism giving style to its shabbiness, and here and there a dusky ilex-walk, and here ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... reconsider their decision, and elected rather to serve their term of two years; and they expressed the conviction at the same time that these promises of the President would not be kept any more than others had been. The result justified their judgment. After a postponement of two days on some flimsy pretext the official intimation of the commutations was given to the prisoners on Wednesday, May 20. Instead of the release positively and definitely promised the term of imprisonment was reduced in the following degree: Ten ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... gone. The tiger cat, forced to relinquish its hold or drown, swam hurriedly back to the bank below the encampment, where it roared and spat and squalled in a blood-chilling paroxysm of baffled fury. And though every man was awakened, not one left the flimsy shelter of his net. Nor did anyone so much as speak until Tim, wearying of the noise, announced his intention to "go bust that critter in the nose and give ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... (we believe we may mention, without offending delicacy, the well-known name of Sir George Flimsy, of the house of Flimsy, Diddler, and Flash,) smilingly asked Mr. James what was the amount of his savings, wondering considerably how, out of an income of thirty guineas—the main part of which he spent in bouquets, silk stockings, and perfumery—Mr. Plush could ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dram swallowed in the forenoon—the first pawning of the silver spoons—or any other terrible first step downwards you may please to liken it to. There is no hope for the patient after this. It rends at once the veil of decorum spun out of the flimsy sophisms by which he has been deceiving his friends, and partially deceiving himself, into the belief that his previous purchases were necessary, or, at all events, serviceable for professional and literary purposes. He now becomes ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... a dislike on the part of antiquaries to take cognisance of matter inserted in popular periodicals upon subjects of an archaeological character; but of course the loose and flimsy treatment which this class of topics as a rule receives in the light literature of the day makes it perilous to use information so forthcoming in evidence or quotation. Articles must be rendered palatable ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... certain day of the month.' And so the game goes on. A dozen such clients give a fellow a very fair income. Now, perhaps, you understand why I am always so well dressed, and always have money in my pocket. When I was shabbily attired, they offered me a five-franc piece, but now they come down with a flimsy." ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... a small and recently rebuilt section in the heart of the town—which boasted some 10,000 inhabitants—flimsy frame houses rose in white poverty upon the ruins of what was once known as "the little Paris of the West Indies." Of the massive buildings of a century ago, not one remained whole. The great earthquake ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... as wholesome a one as ever was writ: the artfullest, the wisest, the most toilsome, and dexterous plot-builders in the world—there always comes a day when the roused public indignation kicks their flimsy edifice down, and sends its cowardly enemies a-flying. Mr. Swift hath finely described that passion for intrigue, that love of secrecy, slander, and lying, which belongs to weak people, hangers-on of weak courts. 'Tis the nature of such to hate and envy the strong, and ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... an hour, though by his watch it was but nine minutes, that he sat watching the little flimsy streamer of white flutter to and fro in the lamplight, his heart beating heavily, as a father's will at sight of the sign ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... edition, except the first, which was from the author's manuscript, has been altered to 'paper-windows.' Bunyan's allusion is to the winkers, called by many 'blinkers,' put by the side of a horse's eyes, to keep him under the complete control of his driver—and by 'paper-winkers' the flimsy attempt of Antichrist to hoodwink mankind by printed legends, miracles, and absurd assumptions—it is one of the almost innumerable sparks of wit, which render all the writings of Bunyan so entertaining ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "but permit me to turn my face towards this stone wall, for I cannot bear to look at the flimsy piece of wire, which is the only battlement of defence that interposes betwixt me and the precipice." He spoke of the bronze balustrade, six feet high, and massive in proportion. Thus saying, and holding fast by the physician's arm, Ursel, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Creeks and especially the Chickasaws were more aggressive. In their government these Muskhogean tribes appear to have attained a position corresponding to their somewhat advanced culture in other respects. Yet their confederacies were loose and flimsy compared with that of the Five Nations. Another phase of the life of the tribes in the southern part of the region of deciduous forests is illustrated by the Natchez of Mississippi. These people were strictly sedentary ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... Balls and skipping ropes are suspended from the awning. On the stall are baby dolls with bodies made of grey cardboard, smiling after the manner of idols, monstrous and serene as they. Little six-penny dolls, dressed like servant girls, stretch out their arms, little stumpy arms so flimsy that the least breath of air sets them a-tremble. But the little maid whose hair is made of liquid light, has no eyes for these dolls and puppets. Her whole soul hangs upon the lips of a beautiful baby doll that seems ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France
... once more on its erring course, or, perhaps, to go forth unfinished, remanded just there to death. The ten-thirty express was now pulling out through the yards in a powerful clamor of clattering switches and hearty pulsations that shook the flimsy walls of St. Isidore's, and drew new groans from the man on the chair. The young nurse's eyes travelled from him to a woman who stood behind the ward tenders, shielded by them and the young interne from the group about the hospital chair. This woman, having ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... still and majestic as the proud swan that basked upon the dark lake before it, secure from intrusion and alarm. Gable-ends and long casements broke the low piebald front into a variety of detail—a-combination of effect throwing an air of picturesque beauty on the whole, which not all the flimsy and frittered "Gothic" can convey to the mansions of modern antiques. For the timber employed in its erection a forest must have been laid prostrate. Huge arched fire-places; chimney-pieces carved with ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... daughters are very expert at that; Emmeline thinks nothing of giving fifty dollars for a flimsy pocket-handkerchief, and as much for a flighty-looking hat. But I've no objections; I'll tell you in confidence, that is what we make our money for, Miss Elinor—for our children to spend," added Mr. Hubbard, smiling good-naturedly. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... knife-stroke across the throat, which was, however, a mere matter of butcher-craft. He was proud of the good strong bay horse that he rode, which so easily carried double, and proud of his big boots and long spurs; and he scorned flimsy town clothes, and thought that good home-woven blue jeans was the gear in which a man who was a man should clothe himself withal. He glanced more than once at the different toggery of his companion, evidently a man of cities, whom he had chanced to meet by the wayside, and ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... be no doubt, though, on the point, no possible doubt. Sabellius states it plainly. Artemidorus Minor, I grant you, holds the question debatable, but his reasons for doing so are tolerably notorious. Besides, what does all his flimsy sophistry avail against Nicanor's fine chapter on this very subject? Crushing, I consider it. His logic is final and irrefutable. What can anyone say against Saevius ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... path torn or broken—articles of little value, strewed by the wanton hand of the ruthless robber. Here a petate, or a palm hat—there a broken olla; a stringless bandolon, the fragments of a guitar crushed under the angry heel, or some flimsy articles of female dress cuffed into the dust; leaves of torn books—misas, or lives of the Santisima Maria—the labours of some zealous padre; old paintings of the saints, Guadalupe, Remedios, and ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... "Flimsy in the extreme, Bates," said the rector triumphantly, and as if relieved of a load. "And you show no more common sense than to charge a gentleman with such a crime solely because you happened to see him walking in ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... space officer held out a sheet of flimsy. It was pale blue, the color used for highly confidential documents. "Sir, this came in Space ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... When deprived of this flimsy veil for a prohibition of our trade with her enemy by the repeal of his prohibition of our trade with Great Britain, her cabinet, instead of a corresponding repeal or a practical discontinuance of its orders, formally avowed ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... It is a kind of sham wit; it reads as if it were wit, but it is not. What poor, poor stuff, about the little blackguard boys! what flimsy ecstasies and silly "smacking of lips" about the plovers. Is this the man who writes for the next age? O fie! ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... might be asked, but staring at the flimsy bit of paper, with its jerky lettering, would not answer any of them. And the issue called for instant decision. Already, in obedience to a signal from Stump, men were standing by the fixed capstans on the mole ready to cast off the yacht's hawsers. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... hereditary Puritanism—now saw a fresh proof that they were the peculiar care of an approving Providence. While they were in camp the weather had been favorable; but they were scarcely housed when a cold, persistent rain poured down in floods that would have drenched their flimsy tents and turned their huts of turf into mud-heaps, robbing the sick of every hope of recovery. Even now they got little comfort from the shattered tenements of Louisbourg. The siege had left the town in so filthy a condition that the ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... the North American federal republic. He decorates it with "social institutions"; he would regulate the property relations "according to rational principles," and the seven great measures wherewith he would abolish the old bourgeois society are by no means wretched flimsy recipes collected from modern, objectionable communist ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... The infamous Jeffreys presided at the trial, and spared neither counsel nor prisoner his insolent invectives. The whole proceedings were nothing less than a farce, and the evidence adduced was of such a flimsy character that Baxter volunteered a remark expressing a doubt whether any jury would convict a man on it. He was, however, mistaken. The sheriffs, like the mayor, were but tools of the court party, and the jurymen selected to sit on the trial did not hesitate to bring in a verdict of guilty. ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... never intoxicated with that madness for Bigness that seemed to sweep over the modern world. What cared she whether her population stood still or not, whether she developed fast or slow, provided she kept the Faith and preserved her national integrity? Flimsy culture had no place in her schools or her social life. A solid basis of the three R's—then educational frills if you like; but the solid basis first. Worship of wealth and envy of material success have almost no part in Canadian life; for the simple reason that wealth and success ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... it is true, not overmuch valued by its recipients, for Mrs. Gurley's bedroom lay just above, and that lady could swoop down on whoever was weak enough to take a little rest. But Laura snapped her fingers at such a flimsy objection; for this was the wonderful room round the walls of which low, open bookshelves ran; and she was soon bold enough, on entering, hastily to select a book to read while she played, always on the alert to ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... preciousness, the innocence thou hadst lost was but a bauble, being but a thing that turned to dross in the first furnace of its temptation? Innocence is indeed priceless—that innocence which God counteth innocence, but thine was a flimsy show, a bit of polished and cherished glass—instead of which, if thou repentest, thou shalt in thy jewel-box find a diamond. Is thy purity, O fair Psyche of the social world, upon whose wings no spattering shower ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... the meaning of that scuffling by the bars a time back?" he asked, eyeing Priscilla with the old look of suspicious antagonism. Every nerve in the girl's body twitched with resentment and her spirit flared forth. She shielded herself behind the one flimsy subterfuge that Glenn could never understand ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... and massive, seemed awkwardly constricted in ill-fitting, blue cotton overalls such as American laborers wear over street-clothes. Their huge bodies seemed about to break through the flimsy bindings, and the carriage of their striking heads made the garments ridiculous. Most of them had fairly regular features on a large scale, their mouths wide, and their lips full and sensual. They wore no hats or ornaments, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... from Ward or Cardinal Manning. In the arguments at the 'Metaphysical Society' he was on the left wing as against both Catholics and the more or less liberal theologians, whose reasoning seemed to him hopelessly flimsy. His first principles in philosophy were those of the agnostics, and in discussing such principles he necessarily took their part. He once told Mr. Harrison that he did not wish to have any more controversies with him, because dog should not fight dog. He sympathised ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... great mass of agricultural laborers, made them paupers and vagrants.[983] Hence England entered the period of maritime discoveries with a redundant population. This furnished the raw material for her colonies, and made her territorial expansion assume a solid, permanent character, unknown to the flimsy trading stations which mark the mere extension of a field ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... to their hawk-like eyes, their rifles cracked 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 a fog ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... 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, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... already too weak. If the blacks make another serious attack upon us we shall have enough to do to hold our own here together, without having part of us defending a flimsy hut, which they would serve at once as they will us here if we ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... blood." This message spread consternation among the native teachers, domestics and adherents, some of whom heard that a royal order had arrived for the banishment of all foreign teachers. Mr. Hough was detained at the court-house from day to day on the most flimsy pretences, ignorant of the language, and with no one to intercede with the government in his behalf, for it was contrary to etiquette for a woman to appear before the Viceroy, his family being absent. Mrs. Judson being at length convinced that the petty officers ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart |
