"Fragility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the possible use of these specimens it should be noticed that similar stool-like objects are made of clay, the softness and fragility of which would render them unsuitable for use as mealing plates or mortars, and it would also appear that they are rather fragile for use as stools. I would suggest that they may have served as supports for articles such ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... seem the very essence of fragility, as they break from the parent tree at a touch; and yet one of the willows furnishes the tough, pliable and enduring withes from which are woven the baskets of the world. The willows, usually thin in branch, sparse of somewhat pale foliage, of so-called mournful mien, are yet bursting with ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... her fixed idea, which soon became a monomania, that she alone was to blame for the Judge's death. It now seemed to him, in his sympathy with her grief, that she had been like a child entrusted with some frail, priceless object and not warned of its fragility. She herself cried out constantly with astonished hatred upon a world ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... seat across the hearth. A book was on her knees, but she had not been reading, for her fingers were playing carelessly with the uncut leaves. Against her soft black dress the whiteness of her face and hands showed almost too intense a contrast, and yet there was no hint of fragility in her appearance. From head to foot she was abounding with energy, throbbing with life, and though Carraway would still, perhaps, have hesitated to call her beautiful, his eyes dwelt with pleasure on the noble lines of her relaxed figure. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... most spiritual feminine conceptions of the classic painters, had he seen a loveliness more ethereal. Her skin was so exquisite, the coloring of her hair and eyes and of her lips was so delicately fine that it gave her the fragility of things bordering upon the supernal—of rare exotics, of sunset and moonbeam effects. No, he had been under no spell of illusion as to her beauty. It was a reality—the more fascinating because it waxed and waned not with regularity of period ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... to find how his premonitions in regard to her had come true. One year he had said to himself: she will be paler than usual; I wonder if she has been ill. And he had found that she had been ill, and there was a fragility and pallor about her that seemed to him quite heart-breaking. Again he had said to himself: she will be wearing crape as in the old times; I wonder why. And when he had come to her she had told him of her mother's death a few months previous. So to-day he had known of that ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... which were preferred for the royal inscriptions. The clay documents, when wanted for instruction or as evidence, were carefully baked; and thus it is that they have come down to us, despite their fragility, often in as legible a condition, with the letters as clear and sharp, as any legend on marble, stone, or metal that we possess belonging to Greek or even to Roman times. The best clay, skilfully baked, is a material quite as enduring ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... humid, tranquil or agitated, impresses on the medium through which the observations have inevitably to be made; the feeble being resumes all his advantage; by the side of such wonderful labours of the mind, what signifies the weakness, the fragility of our body; what signify the dimensions of the planet, our residence, the grain of sand on which it has happened to us to appear for ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... having passed the night in tedious languor, he called to him Almamoulin, his only son, and dismissing his attendants, "My son," says he, "behold here the weakness and fragility of man; look backward a few days, thy father was great and happy, fresh as the vernal rose, and strong as the cedar of the mountain; the nations of Asia drank his dews, and art and commerce delighted in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... a part of his propaganda, a part of his hope: during which period he had been scrupulous not to use force of any kind, spiritual or physical, on the girl whom he doubly loved—the girl whom he held in his arms every night for years with a passionate tenderness due to his feeling of her physical fragility and her social unhappiness, rather than to any ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... the natural product of such treatment. There had ever been something so appealing in her lovely helplessness and fragility that all her life others had been concerned to shelter her from every wind that blew. Because it was so she was what she was; and because she was what she was it would continue to ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... fantastic waywardness. Nothing more common than the name of Fantasia, here we have the thing! The music falls on our ears like the insuppressible outpouring of a being stirred to its heart's core, and full of immeasurable love and longing. Who would suspect the composer's fragility and sickliness in this work? Does it not rather suggest a Titan in commotion? There was a time when I spoke of the Fantasia in a less complimentary tone, now I bow down my head regretfully and exclaim peccavi. The disposition of the composition may be thus ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... merely an epoch of discovery; it is also a period of revision of the various elements of knowledge. Having recognised that there are no phenomena of which the first cause is still accessible, science has resumed the examination of her ancient certitudes, and has proved their fragility. To-day she sees her ancient principles vanishing one by one. Mechanics is losing its axioms, and matter, formerly the eternal substratum of the worlds, becomes a simple aggregate of ephemeral ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... as she uttered these words that Brigit leant forward with a gesture of reassurance. In spite of her fragility she was, from the habit of ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... must have been hurrying towards them, it was reached so soon. Wentworth, after a momentary surprise at beholding it, stopped the cob, and helped Fay with extreme care to the ground. One of Fay's attractions was her appearance of great fragility. Men felt instinctively that with the least careless usage she might break in two. She must be protected, cheered, have everything made smooth for her. She was in reality much stronger than many of her taller, more robust-looking ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... especially to show how dainty little maidens may be. Eight years she might have been, and, possibly, a trifle more, or less. Her little waist and little black-stockinged calves showed how delicately fragile she was; but the fragility was of mould only. There was no hint of anaemia in the clear, healthy complexion nor in the quick, tripping step. She was a little, delicious blond, with hair spun of gossamer gold and wide blue eyes that were but slightly veiled ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... barrack-room term for receptacles for money-hoarding purposes. The weak vessels, those who mistrust their own constancy under the varied temptations of dry throats, empty stomachs, and a scant allowance of tobacco, manage to cheat their fragility of "saving grace" by requesting their sergeant-major to put them "on the peg,"—that is to say, place them under stoppages, so that the accumulation takes place in his hands and cannot be dissipated by any premature weaknesses ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes |
