"Fragile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... DAY-FLOWER (C. erecta), the next of kin, a more fragile-looking, smaller-flowered, and narrower-leafed species, blooms from August to October, from Pennsylvania southward to tropical ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... Northcote, that talking with him was like conversing with the dead: "You see a little old man, pale and fragile, with eyes gleaming like the lights hung in tombs. He seems little better than a ghost, and hangs wavering and trembling on the very verge of life; you would think a breath would blow him away, and yet what fine ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... a huge staircase, of which the lower steps still remained, as did the balustrade, rusty, split, and in places twisted. Then suddenly they turned off by a fragile wooden bridge, resting on the supports of the staircase, between high walls on which were dimly visible the remains of huge frescoes, cracked, decayed, and blackened with soot, the hind legs of a horse, a woman's torso undraped, with inscriptions almost illegible on panels ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Japanese girl led the way, more catlike than ever in her caution. The stairs were quite sound, in spite of their fragile appearance, and they all followed her. The floor above was a duplicate of the room they had entered, and seemed to contain about as many books. Rather than waste time forcing the door here, they returned to the middle ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper
... little need to dwell upon these crepuscular stirrings of popular Latin poetry in the earlier Middle Ages. To indicate their existence was necessary; for they serve to link by a dim and fragile thread of evolution the decadent art of the base Empire with the renascence of paganism attempted in the twelfth century, and thus to connect that dawn of modern feeling with the orient splendours of the fourteenth and fifteenth ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... movement of his hand towards a chair and at the same time sank into a fragile fauteuil, which creaked with his weight. He sighed, obviously bored with the prospect of ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... talk at once. He manfully let her tell of all her silly little presents before talking of his own. He even listened about the doll, whose name Santa Claus had thoughtfully painted on the box in which she came; it was a French name, "Fragile." ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... reverie, after his wont, and he sighed heavily. 'You know 'tis growing late in life with me, Captain Devereux,' he resumed, 'and I would fain see her united to a kind and tender partner, for I think she's a fragile little flower. Poor little Lily! Something, I often think, of her dear mother's delicacy, and I have always nursed her, you know. She has been a great pet;' and he stopped suddenly, and walked to the window. 'A great pet. Indeed, if she could have been spoiled, I should have spoiled her long ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... to suggest the following leading principles; but we do so with diffidence. Rich colours harmonize with rich brunette complexions and dark hair. Delicate colours are the most suitable for delicate and fragile styles of beauty. Very young ladies are never so suitably attired as in white. Ladies who dance should wear dresses of light and diaphanous materials, such as tulle, gauze, crape, net, &c., over coloured silk slips. Silk dresses ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... grow O'er the fragile form below! Violets, bright-eyed pansies wave o'er the lowly, harmless grave; Let the butterfly and bee all the summer flutter free, O'er the flowers grown from a heart which no wrongs could ever part, Nor torture e'er remove from the creatures of its love; With the wild and feverish brain, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Bruise the world, and thus hollow thy basin while falling? Ere the mammoth was born hath some monster unnamed The base of thy mountainous pedestal framed? And later, when Power to Beauty was wed, Did some delicate fairy embroider thy bed With the fragile ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... And tell them that, to ease them of their griefs, Their fears of hostile strokes, their aches, losses, Their pangs of love, with other incident throes That nature's fragile vessel doth sustain In life's uncertain voyage, I will some kindness do them: I'll teach them ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... simplicity combined in due proportions, upon which so much of the safety of a canoe depends, as well as comfort and pleasure in using it during the many days' constant work of a long voyage. The proper rigging of a canoe, so as to be neither fragile like a toy nor clumsy in its small details, is well attended to at the Model Dockyard ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... struggle. forma f. form, shape, figure. formar form, make, engender. frmula f. formula, form. fortuna f. fortune, fate, good fortune. forzoso, -a necessary. fosfrico, -a phosphorescent. fragante adj. fragrant. frgil adj. fragile, frail, weak. fragor m. crash, noise. fragrancia f. fragrance. Franco pr. n. m. Franco. franja f. fringe, band, border. frentico, -a frenzied, mad, furious, frantic. frente f. brow, face, head, forehead, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... went to Gertrude Carleton's room. She found that fragile bit of humanity sleeping peacefully, and ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... impossible. Aerial warfare is still undeveloped, but the war has proved that the aeroplane, even in its present imperfect condition, is a useful instrument. The Zeppelin, on the other hand, seems to be too fragile and too unmanageable for effective use in war. Rifle fire is of far less importance than artillery and machine gun fire; and, indeed, the abandonment of the rifle as the principal arm for ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... used the table with clattering effect. The iron door of the front room gave way, and Shirley carried Helene up the ladder, to the main floor of the old garage. She seemed a sleeping lily—so pale, so fragile, so fragrant in her colorless beauty. He had never seen her so before! For an instant a great terror pierced him: she seemed not to breathe. But as he placed his face close to her mouth, her eyes opened for one divine look, then drooped again. A white hand and arm curled, with childish confidence, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... smooth the torn leaves when he reached her. It had been one of the old textbooks, printed on real paper, and it was fragile with age. She had been trusted by the librarian to take good care of it. Now, page after ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... fragile and distorted a frame has kept the fiery spirit that inhabits it so long its tenant. He accounts for it ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... interior of an East Side tenement. Mrs. Turner lay propped in bed, a ghost of what was once a comely woman. She was barely thirty, yet poverty, disease and the city had drawn their cruel lines across her face. Gloria went to her bedside and gently pressed the fragile hand. She dared not trust herself to speak. And this, she thought, is within the shadow of my home, and I never knew. "Oh, God," she silently prayed, "forgive us for our neglect of such ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... although he and his band had visited the settlements and trafficked with the fur-traders on the Missouri, he did not love the "Pale-faces," whom he regarded as intruders on the hunting grounds of his fathers, and the peace that existed between them at that time was of a very fragile character. Indeed, it was deemed by the traders impossible to travel through the Indian country at that period except in strong force, and it was the very boldness of the present attempt that secured to our hunters ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... you've gone through. I'm going to be awfully good to you, Eve. You sha'n't ever have any more worries, poor old thing." He looked at her affectionately. "I wonder why it is that large men always fall in love with little women. There are you, a fragile, fairy-like, ethereal wisp of a little creature; ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... case?" She was ready to weep; wearily she sat down on the old box. Then she heard Boris laugh softly, it was the quick, proud laugh with which he loved to conceal his agitation. Now he too sat down on the box, took Billy's hand, this cold girlish hand, into his own, as if it were something fragile and precious, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... did not look more than eighteen or nineteen: a slight fragile creature in white, with masses of dusky hair piled high above a delicate, pallid, yet unmistakably beautiful, face. The large dark eyes, the curved, sensitive mouth, the exquisite modelling of the features, ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... period in the road of existence; the river of death flows before him, and he remains at a stand-still. But athwart this river is a viaduct, called 'The turn of Life,' which, if crossed in safety, leads to the valley, 'Old Age.' The bridge is constructed of fragile materials, and it depends upon how it is trodden whether it bend or break. Gout, apoplexy, and other bad characters are also in the vicinity to waylay the traveller, and thrust him from the pass; but let him gird up his loins, and provide himself with a fitting staff, and he may trudge ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... with his upon the devious waterway. The hand which held the wheel was steady and the Petrel plunged boldly on as if bent upon flinging its fragile shell upon the ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... through many various changes, in many countries. The dames of the Decamerone were unlike the fair athlete-seekers of the days of Horace; and the powdered coquettes of the years of Moliere, were sisters only by the kinship of a common vice to the frivolous and fragile faggot of impulses, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... appeared the more delicate and slight when compared with the gigantic inclines below, seemed like the little vertical flame of a taper set in the midst of the vast landscape, those endless waves of valleys and mountains. By the side, too, of the dense greenery of the Calvary hill, it looked fragile and candid, like childish faith; and at sight of it you instinctively thought of the little white arm, the little thin hand of the puny girl, who had here pointed to Heaven in the crisis of her human ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the daintiest little electric brougham in the world, fragile and delicate as a toy—a fairy's chariot. Then the fairy herself descended. She cannot be ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... been welcomed with open arms, I think! And he wouldn't have been set free—consecrated soul that he was. And sensitive, nervous, fragile, hysterical boy—do you think he would ever have written his poems, that he would ever have ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... strong and full of life, speak gently to the fragile, drooping, blighted flowers of cities, and do not scorn them. They once were beautiful; and now they only linger sadly here, with no mother to cherish them. Kind words and gentle looks are everlasting sunshine ...
— Jemmy Stubbins, or The Nailer Boy - Illustrations Of The Law Of Kindness • Unknown Author
... was very small, lying there in the ground. It had to wait. Even when it came up and looked about, it seemed there was hardly a chance for so fragile a stem, but it waited, and while it waited, it grew. After a while it became a full-grown bush, and the birds of the air came and lodged in it. There is a legend about trees longing for birds to come to their branches, some trees growing lonesome or jealous because other trees seemed ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... great beauty was a mass of dark hair which harmonized with the brown eyes and the general gaiety of her expression. A certain daintiness of feature was misleading as to her true character and her almost virile decision. She had small hands and small feet; in fact, there was something fragile about her whole person which excluded the idea of vigor and determination. Having always lived beside her mother, she had a most perfect innocence of thought and behavior and a really remarkable piety. This young girl, like her mother, ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... the beginning of this fragile little life begin the anxieties and sorrow of poor Godwin. The blank lines drawn in his diary for Sunday 10th September 1797, show more than words how unutterable was his grief. During the time of his wife's patient agony he had managed to ask if she ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... The bones generally are fragile and the long bones slender, with no marked impression for muscular attachment. A curious fact is that the ends of all the long bones are absent, presumably from decay, and as these ends are united to the shafts between the age of puberty (14-15) and adult life it is suggestive ...
— A New Hochelagan Burying-ground Discovered at Westmount on the - Western Spur of Mount Royal, Montreal, July-September, 1898 • W. D. Lighthall
... evidently near the sea, because the water was perfectly salt, and we scented also the cool and bracing sea breeze, with feelings of satisfaction and rapture. However, the wind became too stormy for our fragile canoe; the waves leaped into it over the bow, and several times we were in danger of being swamped. Our companion was far before us, and out of sight, so that, for the moment, there was no probability of receiving assistance, or of lightening the canoe, but, happily, in a little ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... hospital. I did not really think myself that I should be able to stand the fatigue, as the pupils of the military academy went over to the army with an equipment that I could scarcely have carried. I could not possibly suppose that the conscription would select me as a private, on account of my fragile build; but like all the rest, I was expecting every day a general ordering out of the fit ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... wonderfully. It is fatal, if they do too little, and disastrous, if they do too much; and between these two opposing perils the process of steering is so difficult that the majority of parents end in letting go the helm and leaving the fragile vessel to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... York to Baltimore, often without knowing where his next meal was coming from, and finally, at Baltimore, his father's widowed sister gave him a home, and he soon married her fragile daughter, Virginia Clemm. But he had long been a prey to intemperance, and his habits in consequence were so irregular that he was unable to retain any permanent position. The truth seems to be that Poe was of a temperament ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... compose the secondary formations of a large portion of Canada, and of nearly all that vast extent of country in the United States drained by the Mississippi. At Niagara the interposing structure of slate is nearly forty feet thick, and fragile, like shale crumbling away from under the limestone, thus strengthening the opinion that there has been for many ages a continual retrocession of the Great Falls. Around Lake St. Clair, masses of granite, mica slate, and quartz are found in abundance. The level shores of Lake Huron ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... till we were gliding southward again, but we had not gone far when Ching uttered a low warning, and I just had time to shift the helm and send the boat gliding round astern of a large junk, which loomed up above us like ebony, as we were going dead for it, and if we had struck, our fragile bamboo boat would have gone to pieces like so much touchwood, leaving us ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... usually employed are almost all based on the expansion of some fluid or other, or upon that of different metals. The first can only be constructed with glass tubes, thus rendering them fragile. The second are often wanting in exactness, because of the change that the molecules of a solid body undergo through heat, thus preventing them from returning to exactly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... should have all these, and more, and yet never see that they have the simple elements of earthly happiness, if they would but use them. And we, outcasts and wanderers, children of sin and darkness, in whose hands one commandment seems hardly less fragile than another, would give anything—had we anything to give—for the happiness of a home, to call our own. How strange it is that what I said to Isaacs should be true. "Do not marry unless you must depend on each other for daily bread, or unless ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... the fragile Miss Hastings a smile so pleasant that it made her instantly determine to find out something about his family and commercial standing. "What time do we start ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... doing it the best you can, and live one day at a time. The man that does this is conserving his God-given energy, and not spinning it out into tenuous spider threads so fragile and filmy that unkind Fate will probably brush ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... kind is extremely bad for Evie," said Meta. "She had a nervous fever four years ago, and has been so fragile and highly-strung ever since. She was sent to Chessington because we hoped the bracing air might do her good. I remember she used to have night terrors when she was a wee child, but we thought she had quite ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... trying. But a resolute spirit had compensated for physical weakness, and, uncomplaining, she had borne up against the hardships of the preceding ten hours. She was pale and harassed; her hair, uncurled by the night fogs, hung in dank masses round her face, and her fragile form was unable to maintain its upright position. Micaela, the waiting-maid, yawned incessantly, and audibly groaned at each rough stumble or uncomfortable movement of her mule. Several times during the drowsy morning hours, she had nearly fallen from her saddle, and had to thank Paco, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... her always; but her saying so only made Fleda cry, and she soon thought it best to say nothing. All the rest of the way Fleda was a picture of resignation; transparently pale, meek and pure, and fragile seemingly as the delicatest wood-flower that grows. Mr. Carleton looked grieved, and leaning forward he took one of her hands in his own and held it affectionately, till they got to the end of their ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of the buttons, switches and other controls. Dewforth leaned close and studied these, but found only mute combinations of letters and numbers, joined by hyphens or separated by virgules.... They made him feel somewhat more fragile, more round-shouldered and colder, but he resisted despair. It was getting a little darker, though. The skimmed-milk light above him was taking on a bluish tint. He had no way of knowing how long he had wandered among ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler
... the talk to his favourite topic of science. "As I felt, in truth, but a slight interest in the subject of his conversation, I had leisure to examine, and I may add, to admire, the appearance of my very extraordinary guest. It was a sum of many contradictions. His figure was slight and fragile, and yet his bones and joints were large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much, that he seemed of a low stature. His clothes were expensive, and made according to the most approved mode of the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... that has no name because there is none heinous enough for it. Thurston! I acted like a very brute! God help me, I was both stunned and maddened, as it seems to me now. For I could not speak. I tore her little, fragile, clinging arms from off my neck, and thrust her from me. And here I am. Don't ask me how I loved her! I have ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... erupted. The roar of the Chill's exhaust nearly drowned the roar of the guns, but the fragile hull of the craft was shaken and rocked by the bursting shells. An occasional bullet thudded into or pinged off the Chill, and, despite Peter's warning that, high or low, they were bound to get it if it came to them, every man on board, including Peter, crouched, with ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... took Margaret's hand her expression of intelligent sympathy went straight to his heart; and he told himself emphatically that after all the familiar graces in women were the most lovable. She was a small fragile girl, with a lovely oval face, nut-brown hair that grew in a "widow's peak" on her forehead, and the prettiest dark blue eyes in the world. Her figure drooped slightly in the shoulders, and was, as Mary Byrd pointed out in her dashing way, "without the faintest ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... his nose. Each saw the other. The bird made a startled rise, but he struck it with his paw, and smashed it down to earth, then pounced upon it, and caught it in his teeth as it scuttled across the snow trying to rise in the air again. As his teeth crunched through the tender flesh and fragile bones, he began naturally to eat. Then he remembered, and, turning on the back- track, started for home, carrying ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... difference between one ordinary berth and a luxuriously private state-room. He realized, with a sense of irritation, that it was of no use. He could not send Sally up into New Hampshire packed in jewellers' cotton, marked "Fragile and Valuable," a registered package conveyed by special messenger. But he could make sure that nobody else shared the section either by night or day, and this he did, and double-tied his reservation until he could get to town to ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... night till he was as stiff as a rheumatic old man when he came down only just in time for luncheon. Mrs. Fordyce did not appear at all. She was a fragile creature, and quite knocked up by the agitations of the night. The gentlemen had visited the desolate rectory, and found that though the fine ancient kitchen had escaped, the pleasant living rooms had been injured by the ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... children. The little red-haired, white-faced things were all Cartaret. Molly, the elder, had a look of Ally, sullen and sickly, as if some innermost reluctance had held back the impulse that had given it being. Even the younger child showed fragile as if implacable memory had come between it ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... was but how! The wings are heavy, moist, transparent, with nervures of a tender green. The thorax is barely clouded with brown. All the rest of the body is a pale green, whitish in places. Heat and a prolonged air-bath are necessary to harden and colour the fragile creature. Some two hours pass without any perceptible change. Hanging to its deserted shell by the two fore limbs, the Cigale sways to the least breath of air, still feeble and still green. Finally, the brown colour appears ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... that I was looking at her, I am sure, for she did not once lift her eyes. As I sat studying her, everything else was crowded out of my mind. She was indeed wonderful—too wonderful and fine and fragile, it seemed to me at that moment, for one so plain and rough as I. "Incredible," thought I, "that she is the child of such a pair as Ellersly and his wife—but again, has she any less in common with them than she'd have with any other pair of human creatures?" Her slender white ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... and against the wall stood richly carved trunks. On the table, beside a bowl of late flowers were a great silver flagon and a number of goblets, some of chased silver and some of colored glass, strangely shaped and fragile as an eggshell. The late sun now shining in at the open window made the glass to glow like ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... least incident is an emotion with her. When she laughs, her laugh is like a cry. Haven't you noticed that? Startle her, and her eyes are the very eyes of fear. Mother was wise, I think, not to pour those old sorrows into her little fragile cup." ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... occasionally had a turn at trawling, and usually caught some fine flat fish, turbot, soles, and plaice. Our net was a very primitive one of our own manufacture, and had to be handled very gingerly, as the netting was old and the ironwork very fragile, but knowing this we did not put undue strain ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... emphatically declared it would be impossible to cross. George Stephenson, however, had a plan for making the impossible possible. He simply floated his line on a broad bottom, like a ship, on the top of the quaking quagmire; and proceeded to lay down his rails on this seemingly fragile support without further scruple. It answered admirably, and still answers to the present day. The other works on the railway, especially the cuttings, were such as might well have appalled the boldest heart in those experimental ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... an amusing talker. Gabrielle would sit on a low stool between them in the white dress that Radway loved. It made the solitude for which they were both waiting seem more precious to see her thus at a distance, pale and fragile and miraculous against the sombre background of the Roscarna oak. Then Jocelyn would begin to yawn, and fidget for the nightcap of hot whiskey that Biddy prepared for him, and at last discreetly vanish. And so the most ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... all he could do not to go back and take her by her fragile old shoulders and force her to sign and seal at once. But then he knew very well that as soon as he found himself in her presence, he would of necessity be obliged to subdue his impatience, and be once more civil, very civil, and try to suggest ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... were somehow often recommended for many of the same diseases. In fact, the Mountain Herb Pills and the Indian Root Pills used identical text in explaining their effect upon several disagreeable conditions. Always prominent in this advertising were reminders of our fragile mortality and warnings, if proper medication were neglected, of an untimely consignment to the ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw
... an invalid who begins to fear, but it is not possible to "create a soul under the ribs of death." Unhappily, people in sickness too seldom repair to such aid as may here be found till the last chances of recovery are exhausted. I have never seen a spot where I thought the fragile and delicate in constitution might pass a winter, sheltered from every storm, more securely than in this place. Tie houses for accommodation are without end, both at the Hot Wells and at Clifton. This last place is on the high ground, ascending up ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... of the Lord, that shall stand.' Compare this fern leaf with the mighty palaces of Babylon and Nineveh. Through untold ages this has kept its wavy fragile outline, they are marked only by 'the line of confusion and ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... vicious and criminal a thing, do they attain their end, and is the effect as salutary as they could wish? We do not dare to say. We may be told that by pointing out the abyss that yawns beneath the fragile crust of opulence, they terrify the wicked rich man, as, in the time of the Danse Macabre, they showed him its yawning ditch, and Death ready to wind its unclean arms about him. To-day, they show him ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... Here am I, a homeless wanderer, living on my pay; in the next room lies she, my sister, a poor little fragile feverish invalid with no social position—and hardly a friend. We two represent the De Stancy line; and I wish we were behind the iron door of our old vault at Sleeping-Green. It can be seen by looking at us and our circumstances that we cry for the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... on her part. She indulged in no sentiment, had no poetic prepossession concerning the people she protected and worked for, but the dominant sense of duty carried her through all difficulties. She never gave a thought to personal danger, and though a fragile creature, not five feet high, she was capable of cowing the most brutal of the barbarians who were gathered around us at Khalepa, and, whether to keep the consulate for me while I was away, or to navigate the yacht ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... thy beauty's blooming hour; Thy youth is yet in pure perfection's prime: Make it thy pride to yield thy fragile flower, Or look to find it paled by envious time: For none to stay the flight of years hath power, And who culls roses caught by frosty rime? Give therefore to thy lover, give, for they Too late repent who act not while ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... were so uncertain, and the captive of one day so often became the victor of the next, that Raymond, who for all his fragile look possessed a large fund of cool courage, did not feel greatly disturbed by the ill-chance that had befallen him. Many French knights were most chivalrous and courteous to their prisoners; some even permitted them to go out on parole to collect ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... his dimly lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away when her slight hold upon the world ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... inheritance, then, nor till then, Thou on the Throne of David in full glory, From Egypt to Euphrates and beyond Shalt raign, and Rome or Caesar not need fear. To whom our Saviour answer'd thus unmov'd. Much ostentation vain of fleshly arm, And fragile arms, much instrument of war Long in preparing, soon to nothing brought, Before mine eyes thou hast set; and in my ear 390 Vented much policy, and projects deep Of enemies, of aids, battels and leagues, Plausible to the world, to me worth naught. Means I must use thou say'st, prediction else Will ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... was undoubtedly the doctor's favourite. She was such a sweet girl, beautiful in face, gentle in her manners. In her black dress she had looked so fragile and broken with grief on the day of her father's funeral. Vainly trying to maintain composure, yet shaken constantly by an involuntary sob, she had marvellously affected the tough old doctor, to whom female beauty appealed, although he ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... with a smile, "that your countrywomen are a far more delicate and fragile race than Englishwomen; pale, feeble hot-house plants, unfit for the wear and tear of life, without energy of character, or any slightest degree of physical strength to base it upon. If, now, you had these large-framed ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... brown ware, or that which shows an admixture of mica. This, although uniformly without color decorations, is occasionally marked with impressed figures and lines. Although inferior in quality, being coarse and fragile, it presents more symmetrical though less varied forms than are usually found in the preceding group. The influence of contact with the European races is here very apparent, as, for example, in the true pitcher and other common utensils and ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... that was only less material than the flavour of its juices. Every angle of the rail fences became a parterre with golden-rod, cat-brier, and the red-and-yellow pied leaves of blackberries, while a fringe of purple and white asters thrust fragile fingers through the rails below, or the stout iron-weed pushed its purple-red blooms into view at the head ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... misery. What are our woes and sufferings? Come and see The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, ye! Whose agonies are evils of a day— A world is at our feet as fragile as ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... of the mountain would roll down on the feet of clay and break them, and then the great image, golden head, and silver breast, and brazen body, and iron legs, would all go to pieces—they rested on an infirm footing, fragile clay. ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... resume her ancient kindness. But these fluctuations shook to its depths the soul of the sensitive youth; he no longer deemed the world subject to him, because he possessed Evadne's love; he felt in every nerve that the dire storms of the mental universe were about to attack his fragile being, which quivered at the expectation of ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... blue, between which the widely spaced teeth gleamed white. His neck was slender, flaccid as a wilted stem, and seamed with tiny creases. The jointure of the arms at the shoulder looked feeble. The arms themselves were fragile, and covered with a down similar to the fine plumage which clothes the bodies of newly hatched birds. The whole outline of the ribs was distinctly visible; down the middle of the breast the skin was divided by ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... stoutish gentleman in gray and a thinnish lady in beige and a fragile looking girl in white wound their way from the outer to the inner circle of tables next the dancing floor of ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... can be used of finer gauge. Woven steel wire gauze is employed with good effect in some mills where especially fine trituration is required. This class of screen requires special care as it is somewhat fragile, but with intelligent treatment ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... think,—a very sweet, pale woman,—daughter of the usual country-clergyman,—thrown on her own resources from an early age, and the rest: a common story, but an uncommon person,—very. All conscience and sensibility, I should say,—a cruel worker,—no kind of regard for herself, seems as fragile and supple as a young willow-shoot, but try her and you find she has the spring in her of a steel cross-bow. I am glad I happened to come to this place, if it were only for her sake. I have saved that girl's life; I am as ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of the inner rooms Banneker was introduced to a fragile, desiccated-looking man languidly engaged in scissoring newspaper after newspaper which he took from a pile and cast upon the floor after operation. The clippings he filed in envelopes. A checkerboard lay on the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... needlework, of course. In your pocket, sir,—the left one!" So, perforce, Barnabas came back, and standing again beneath the finger-post, gave the Duchess her very small piece of embroidery. But, behold! his hand was caught and held between two others, which, though very fragile, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... and on her birthday, with a grateful heart, Moor gathered the first snow-drops of the year. All day they stood beside her couch, as fragile and as pale as she, and many eyes had filled as loving fancies likened her to the slender, transparent vase, the very spirit of a shape, and the white flowers that had blossomed beautifully through the snow. When the evening lamp was lighted, she took ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... bamboo; this was probably their practice for some few generations after they began to acquire the Kayan culture. At the present day those Punans who have only recently taken to the settled mode of life generally make large use of the bamboo in building their small and relatively fragile houses. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... was particularly small and fragile, Abijah generally chose feats of strength and skill ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... place in the light, four-wheeled vehicle, and found it difficult to keep it, for the trail was villainous, and Stirling drove rapidly. Their way led between shadowy colonnades of towering firs, and the fragile, two-seated frame bounced and lurched into and out of deep ruts, and over the split trees that had been laid flat-side downward in the quaggy places—like a field gun going into action was the best comparison Weston could think of. The horses, however, ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... spire as it exists to-day, in reality an abomination of abominations, is naturally enough admired by all when first viewed from afar. It certainly looks not dwarfed, or even fragile, but simply delicate, and withal graceful, an opinion which ultimate association therewith speedily dispels. It must be one of the very first examples of modern iron or steel erection in the world, dating from 1827, following three former spires, each of which was burned. The architect responsible ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... as if Redon had surely walked amid gardens, so much of the morning is in each of his fragile works. There seems always to be hovering in them the breath of those recently spent dawns of which he was the eager spectator, never quite the full sunlight of the later day. Essentially he was the worshipper of the lip of flower, of dust upon the moth wing, of the throat of young girl, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... duly sworn, saith: My taste in poetry is for delicate and fragile things—to be honest, for artificial things. I like a frail but perfectly articulated stanza, a sonnet wrought like ivory, a song full of glowing nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions and participles, but without too much hard sense to it. Poetry, to ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... He had been awakened by the opening of the door, and had not realized what the question meant. But the soft, straying tenderness of her hand on his face startled something out of his soul. He was a charity boy, aloof and more or less at bay. The fragile exquisiteness of her caress startled him most, revealed ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... grace of life. The husband is not to dwell on this, that the wife is weak and fragile, but on this, that she also is baptized, and has the same that he has,—all blessings in Christ. For inwardly we are all alike, and there is no difference between man and woman, but as to the outward condition, it is God's pleasure ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... his whole instruction and moral education to Stepan Trofimovitch. At that time her faith in him was unshaken. One can't help believing that the tutor had rather a bad influence on his pupil's nerves. When at sixteen he was taken to a lyceum he was fragile-looking and pale, strangely quiet and dreamy. (Later on he was distinguished by great physical strength.) One must assume too that the friends went on weeping at night, throwing themselves in each other's arms, though their tears ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... lake of fire rolled beneath him. The door of the room pointed out by Twitter was opposite—fortunately on the side furthest from the centre of fire, but the floor was gone. Only two great beams remained, and the one Giles had to cross was more than half burned through. It was a fragile bridge on which to pass over an abyss so terrible. But heroes do not pause to calculate. Giles walked straight across it with the steadiness of a rope-dancer, and burst in the scarred ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the nicest kind of men. But Jack was an angel—she repeated the rather absurdly incongruous word to herself with a very tender feeling in her heart. He always treated her not only as if she were something beautiful and rare, but something fragile, to be respected as ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... thoughtfully at his brown bottle, shook his head and returned it to its drawer. He looked at a desk watch. "Don't read into the United Planets organization more than there is. It's a fragile institution with practically no independent powers to wield. Every member planet is jealous of its prerogatives, which is understandable. It's no mistake that Articles One and Two are the basic foundation of ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... iron hand of misfortune press hard upon you, and disappointments well-nigh sink your despairing soul'? Have courage! Mighty ones have been your predecessors, and have withstood the current of opposition that threatened to overwhelm their fragile bark. ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... south-west of Liege, on the left bank of the Meuse, the remains of at least three human individuals were disinterred. The skull of one of these, that of a young person, was embedded by the side of a mammoth's tooth. It was entire but so fragile, that nearly all of it fell to pieces during its extraction. Another skull, that of an adult individual, and the only one preserved by Dr. Schmerling in a sufficient state of integrity to enable the anatomist to speculate on the race to which ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... rosemary and geranium, lemon verbena, tuberose, and heliotrope, fragile and whitened, but still sweet, fall from the opened letters and rustle softly ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... received the felicitations of the Corps de l'Etat. Many addresses were delivered. "All contained the expression of the public love," said Marshal Marmont in his Memoirs, "and I believe that they were sincere; but the love of the people is, of all loves, the most fragile, the most apt to evaporate. The King responded in an admirable manner, with appropriateness, intelligence, and warmth. His responses, less correct, perhaps, than those of Louis XVIII., had movement and spirit, and it is so precious to hear from those invested with the sovereign powers things ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... so easily described! I can only appeal to your memory of other women like her, whom you must often have seen—women who are tall and fair, and fragile and elegant; who have delicate aquiline noses and melting blue eyes—women who have often charmed you by their tender smiles and their supple graces of movement. As for the character of this popular young lady, I must not influence you either way; ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... little volume. He took it as though it were something fragile, and—the sculls fixed under ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... brilliant, she became more grave and explicit. The subject soon turned to that of punishments, and few men could have reasoned more sensibly, justly or forcibly, on such a subject, than this slight and fragile-looking young woman. Without the least pedantry, with a beauty of language that the other sex seldom attains, and with a delicacy of discrimination, and a sentiment that were strictly feminine, she rendered a theme interesting, that, however important in itself, is forbidding, veiling ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... came and placed the coffee things at his elbow. He didn't heed. The waiter poured a demi-tasse, and inquiringly lifted a lump of sugar in the silver tongs. Still Mr. Grimm didn't heed. At last the waiter deposited the sugar on the edge of the fragile saucer, and moved away as silently as he had come. A newspaper which Mr. Grimm had placed on the end of the table when he sat down, rattled a little as a breeze from the open window caught it, then the top sheet slid off and fell to ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... been saved by feminine tact. There was the cabinet-member's wife who drank out of her finger-bowl because her guest, a senator, had done so. And the general's wife who, when a clumsy tea drinker smashed a priceless cup, picked up another of the fragile affairs and crushed it between her fingers with a "They do break easily, don't they?" And the woman who, when M. Blanc was mistaken at an English garden party for a page, replied, "Well, M. ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... a room of old chintzes and old china, of fragile, distinguished furniture, of family portraits, of miniatures in medallions, and great bowls of roses everywhere. The whole house had a strange feminine atmosphere, a warm look as if a woman's hand had passed over it. Yet it was Nicky who was ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... finance,—and this is the lowest in the scale of real values,—is not that fragile but mighty factor we call credit based on Public Opinion? For, credit is but the general opinion of the community on the possibilities of the industry or undertaking in which its capital is involved, and on the honesty and ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... the last of these three Christian heroines who has so lately departed from among us, as full a sketch as practicable is given, from a wish to embalm in one urn—perhaps a fragile one—the memories of all those whose virtues and affections have contributed so largely to the happiness and usefulness of one of the noblest and most successful of modern missionaries—the Rev. ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... like young lives pushing shyly out into the bustling world; when the fruit-tree blossoms, pink and white, like village maidens in their Sunday frocks, hide each whitewashed cottage in a cloud of fragile splendor; and the cuckoo's note upon the breeze is wafted through the woods! And summer, with its deep dark green and drowsy hum—when the rain-drops whisper solemn secrets to the listening leaves and ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... nature of Maude's thoughts, as she lay day after day upon the couch, too weak to do more thin lift her hands or rise her head when the dreadful paroxysms of coughing seized her and racked her fragile frame. Still she was very happy, and the happiness showed itself upon her, where there rested a look of perfect content and peace, which her father and mother had noticed and commented upon, and which Jerrie saw the moment she entered the room and ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... not matter; he would take her away from it. It was very sweet to him, the thought of putting a protective arm about this little fragile creature whose weakness gave him strength. He was not always going to be a clerk in an office. He was going to write poetry, books, plays. Already he had earned a little. He told her of his hopes, and her great faith in him gave him new courage. ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... chase, a fragile, white-faced girl, had fought with the mammoth waves as with inveterate beasts seeking to stifle her in icy embraces. A mere atom plunged in their depths as in cavernous and boundless darkness, she had struggled with an ocean the whole of ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... endangered marine species include walruses and whales; fragile ecosystem slow to change and slow to recover from disruptions or damage; thinning ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... and find Dick Lane and bring him back to the woman who, the restorer believed, loved him, Echo Payson realized the supremacy over her soul—her pure ideals, her lofty sense of justice—of its tenement, the woman's body—that fair but fragile fabric which trembled responsive to the wild wind of emotional desire, and the seismic shock of the passion of sex. Ever since Jack had revealed to her his jealousy of Dick Lane, she knew that he was living on a lower ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... up from poverty, and never lost an active sympathy with the struggling. He helped more than fifty young men to get an education. He was of a slight and fragile frame, and had much physical suffering, which he bore with indomitable courage. His conscientiousness was almost morbid. His temperament was melancholy, and his life was lonely. In early life he was ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... plainly was far beyond her strength. The rashness of benevolence overcame the not too energetic Rokuzo. Sigh as he did over the conveyance of his carcass up the steep hill, he sighed still more at thought of this fragile creature attempting ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... a boy, almost of a woman. The heavy hair cut straight above the forehead and straight over the shoulders, falling in massive clusters. A delicately sculptured laurel-branch is woven into a victor's crown and laid lightly on the tresses it scarcely seems to clasp. So fragile is this wreath that it does not break the pure outline of the boy-conqueror's head. The armor is quite plain. So is the surcoat. Upon the swelling bust, that seems fit harbor for a hero's heart, there lies the collar of an order composed of cockle-shells; and this is all the ornament given ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... suppose that if Mirabeau had married Hannah More, the union would have turned out ill, and Diderot's marriage was unluckily of such a type. His wife's narrow pieties and homely solicitudes fretted him. He had not learned to count the cost of deranging the fragile sympathy of the hearth. While his wife was away on her visit to his family, he formed a connection with a woman (Madame Puisieux) who seems to have been as bad and selfish as his wife was the opposite. She was the authoress of some literary pieces, which the world willingly ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... no worse, if no better," was her sustaining thought; and she leaned upon it, fragile reed as ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... which was clotted with blood. His small eyes were open, and a red tongue just visible between his parted teeth. One short, rigid, foreleg was stretched out as though in remonstrance, and just within its embrace a fading spray of gilia lifted its fragile blossoms. ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... nevertheless possesses astonishing vitality, and exhibits remarkable breadth of treatment. Sydney Smith did not disdain to honour it with a joyous and unclerical quatrain; and the agreeable author of "Rab and his Friends" has told us the story of his fragile little schoolmate whose mother had destined him for a missionary, "though goodness knows there wasn't enough of him to go ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... way of escape from the deepening opposition in me between physical passions and the constructive career, the career of wide aims and human service, upon which I had embarked. All the time that I was seeing her as a beautiful, fragile, rather ineffective girl, I was also seeing her just as consciously as a shining slender figure, a radiant reconciliation, coming into my darkling disorders of lust and impulse. I could understand clearly that she was incapable of the most necessary subtleties of political thought, and ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... her father and mother, are very fond of her and proud of her. Every day she goes to the palace to see them, and they weigh her in a pair of scales. They put her in one scale and five lotus flowers in the other, and she's so delicate and fragile she weighs no heavier than the five little flowers, so they call her the Panch-Phul Ranee. Her father and mother are very ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... whole emotion, a storm in its might, 'Twas deep as the ocean, and silent as night; It swept down life's flowers, the fragile and fair, The heart had no ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... the vestibule they found Mrs. Batterby patiently awaiting her lord. She rose from her seat at the approach of the two men, a fragile flower of a girl, about three-and-twenty, pale as a lily, with exquisite though rather large features, and with eyes of the blue of the pervenche (in deference to Aristide I use the French name), which seemed to smile trustfully through perpetual ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... Mr. Stutchbury's collection, there was a specimen, with the scuta, broad, smooth, thin, and fragile, without any ridge running from the umbo to the apex, and with the occludent margin reflexed. This seemed caused by the shell having been attacked by some boring animal, and from having supported Balani. In the same specimen the first ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin |
