"Fabric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sense of lattice structure about it, is not to our old-fashioned minds nearly so fascinating as the wooden fabric of our early memories at more than one seaside resort of our boyhood. St. Sennan was of another school, or had become a convert or pervert, if a Saint may be judged by his pier. For this was iron or steel all through, barring ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... blow," thought Timar; and on the most tender point for a great financier. It touched him in what he was most proud of, and what had obtained for him the rank of a privy councilor. And so falls the brilliant fabric erected by Timea—Timea again! ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... who was something of a dreamer when Life let her alone long enough, rode home through the moonlight and wove cloth-of-gold from the magic of the night, and with the fairy fabric she clothed Starr—who was, as we know, just an ordinary human being—so that he walked before her, not as a plain, ungrammatical, sometimes profane young man who was helping her home with her goats, but a mysterious, ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... very zenith of a shout, was he frozen to silence by a vision—this time one too obviously of no ponderable fabric. There in the corner, almost at his hand, seemed to be a thing that he had dreamed of possessing only after he entered Heaven—a candy cane: one of fearful length, thick of girth, vast of crook, and wide in the spiral stripe that seemed to run a living ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... Cimmerian caves, robed my soul in a mourning garb. The generations I had conjured up to my fancy, contrasted more strongly with the end of all —the single point in which, as a pyramid, the mighty fabric of society had ended, while I, on the giddy height, saw ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Hall.—Keep pretty straight along after entering the Garden,—you will not care to inspect the little figure of the military gentleman to your right.—Yes, the Cochituate water is drinkable, but I think I would not turn aside to visit that small fabric which makes believe it is a temple, and is a weak-eyed fountain feebly weeping over its own insignificance. About that other stone misfortune, cruelly reminding us of the "Boston Massacre," we will not discourse; it is not imposing, and is rarely ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... instinct alongside of consent, the perception that reason alone will not explain political facts, the emphasis upon resistance as of last resort, the denial that allegiance is a mere contract to be presently explained, the deep respect for order—all these are, after all, the fabric from which the thought of Burke was woven. Nor is there in Bentham's defence of Utilitarianism argument in which he would have recognized novelty. Herein, at least, his proof that morality is no more than general opinion of utility constructs, in briefer form, the later ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... confiscation, and a lawsuit with the underwriters, was too painful to be dwelt upon at length. "It's proved a disappointment," was as far as my friend would go with me in words; but I knew, from observation, that the fabric of his fortunes tottered. For the rest, it was only by accident I got wind of the transaction; for Pinkerton, after a time, was shy of introducing me to his arcana: the reason you are to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... figure. The very fact that they are so distinct and separately evident throughout, the very emphasis of individuality they carry with them, but proves their distinct origin. The other elements of our life, various though they be, and of the very fibre, giving toughness and consistency to the fabric, are merged in its texture, united, confused, almost indistinguishable, so thoroughly are they mixed, intertwined, interwoven, like the essential strands of the stuff itself: but these of the Puritan and the Southerner, though they run everywhere with the rest and seem upon a ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... Considine's real work had only begun. He had to readjust the whole financial fabric of Roscarna, to find out what money was owed or owing, to decide how much of Gabrielle's paper inheritance was tangible. He unearthed the firm of Dublin solicitors in whose hands the business of the estate had been allowed to drift for the last twenty years. They seemed to him a pack of shifty ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... Caesars Roman architecture had, from the huge size of the buildings, a character of grandeur and magnificence. Columns and arches appeared in all the leading public buildings,—columns generally forming the external and arches the internal construction. Fabric after fabric arose on the ruins of others. The Flavii supplanted the edifices of Nero, which ministered to debauchery, by structures ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... progressive hopes out of this static medievalism is one of the epic occurrences of history. The causes which furthered the movement seem now in retrospect to be woven into a fabric so tightly meshed as to resist unraveling. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to see at least some of the major factors which furthered this revolutionary change from a static to a ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... frail bark directly into the turbulent stream. For many minutes the struggle between the light bubble in which they floated and the swift current was severe and doubtful. Forbidden to stir even a hand, and almost afraid to breath, lest they should expose the frail fabric to the fury of the stream, the passengers watched the glancing waters in feverish suspense. Twenty times they thought the whirling eddies were sweeping them to destruction, when the master-hand of their pilot would bring the bows of the canoe to stem the rapid. A long, a vigorous, ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... the prospect of a plenteous harvest of excellent grain, but principally of wheat, which the land in Walney generally produces of a superior quality, we again came to the shore, and having a pretty distinct view of several parts of the ruinous fabric which was the object of our excursion, we took the distant castle for our guide, and entered upon a trackless sand, which, by the route we pursued, is about two miles and a half over. It is soft and disagreeable travelling in many places; ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... and allows freedom of action. It is of khaki because this has been found to be the best wearing fabric and color. It is not easily torn and does not readily soil. Wearing it gives the girls a sense of belonging to a larger group, such as it is hard to get in any other way. It keeps constantly before them the fact that they represent a community to whose laws they have voluntarily subscribed, and ...
— Educational Work of the Girl Scouts • Louise Stevens Bryant
... did put out her hand. By chance, as he shifted back, afraid of her hand, it touched the coarse fabric of his shirt sleeve. Had it fallen further she might have felt his arm, bare; might have discovered the sleeve itself to be ragged and fringed with long-continued use. But ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... and would doubtless have done so but for the support of sundry iron curves and crosses, which held the bricks together, and of two adjacent houses of more solid construction. From the lower part of the ricketty fabric the plaster had peeled off in large scales, exposing the foundation wall; whilst the upper stories, better preserved, exhibited traces of old pink paint, as if the poor house blushed for shame of its miserable condition. Near the roof of broken and disorderly tiles, which marked out ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... its lawns and walks and waterfowl, harbours still its associations with a bygone order of men and women, whose happiness and sadness are woven into its history, dim and grey as they were once bright and glowing, like the faded pattern worked into the fabric of an old tapestry. It was here that Francesca had made her way when the intolerable inaction of waiting had driven her forth from her home. She was waiting for that worst news of all, the news which does not kill hope, because there has been none to ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... individuals, are fast losing our reputation for honest dealing. Our nation is losing its character. The loss of a firm national character, or the degradation of a nation's honour, is the inevitable prelude to her destruction. Behold the once proud fabric of a Roman empire—an empire carrying its arts and arms into every part of the Eastern continent; the monarchs of mighty kingdoms dragged at the wheels of her triumphal chariots; her eagle waving over the ruins of desolated countries; where is her splendour, her wealth, her power, her glory? ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... Where is our manhood? Where are our men? Is there any wonder that we are losing what is best in life when only women are left to defend it? Believe me, the degradation of marriage is the tune to which the whole fabric of ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... quickly learned about the wealth, charities, happiness, and splendid palace of Prince Aladdin. Directly he saw the wonderful fabric, he knew that none but the genies, the slaves of the lamp, could have performed such wonders, and, piqued to the quick at Aladdin's high estate, he ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... ultimate passing of the great historic document, but in its affirmation of the intelligent stand taken by the Colonies against England and her monarch, and in its pointed definition of the theory of democratic government on which the new fabric of popular rule in the New ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... has trinkets out of number, brooches, backed with every kind of hair, from "the flaxen-headed cow-boy" to the deep-toned "Jim Crow." Then her rings—they are the surprise of her staring acquaintances; she has them from the most delicate Oriental fabric to the massiveness ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... affairs nowise take up What honoured sage, Democritus, lays down— That proposition, that primordials Of body and mind, each super-posed on each, Vary alternately and interweave The fabric of our members. For not only Are the soul-elements smaller far than those Which this our body and inward parts compose, But also are they in their number less, And scattered sparsely through our frame. And thus This canst thou guarantee: ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... perspiration; while linen, which is non-hydroscopic, when moist allows the fluid to evaporate rapidly, and thus cools the body too quickly, and therefore dangerously. Hence flannel is a most suitable fabric in which to take exercise, as there is less danger of ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... honey, each in his degree, The youthful swain, the grave, experienced bee; That in the field; this in affairs of state, Employed at home, abides within the gate, To fortify the combs, to build the wall, To prop the ruins, lest the fabric fall: But late at night, with weary pinions come The laboring youth, and heavy laden home. Plains, meads, and orchards, all the day he plies, The gleans of yellow thyme distend his thighs: He spoils the saffron flowers, he sips the blues Of violets, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... an aged rifted tower, Meet habitation for the Ghost of Time, Where fearful ravage makes decay sublime, And destitution wears the face of power? Yet is the fabric deck'd with many a flower Of fragrance wild, and many-dappled hues, Gold streak'd with iron-brown and nodding blue, Making each ruinous chink a fairy bower. E'en such a thing methinks I fain would be, Should Heaven appoint me to a lengthen'd age; So old in look, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... superstitious weakness concerning hers.—Every dress had its own peculiar chronicle of the scenes where it had been, the enjoyments she had shared in it. Particular dresses were special memorials of her loves, her pleasures, her little passing pains; as long as a bit remained of the poor old fabric the sight of it ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... clever fingers were more effective than those of her maids. She was in her robe de chambre, a dark blue wrapper, embroidered with white, and put on more neatly than was always the case with French ladies in deshabille. The hoop, long stiff stays, rich brocade robe, and fabric of powdered hair were equally unsuitable to ease or exertion, and consequently were seldom assumed till late in the day, when the toilette was ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... considerable tent outfit was not unpacked until two years after purchase. It had been carefully kept, but was found to be more or less like paper, and only a small portion could be used. One tent served me throughout Bornean travels, but finally the quality of the fabric became impaired to a degree which necessitated constant patching; it was made to last only by the exercise of great care and with the aid of a fly, three of these having been used on this expedition. If a journey to ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... was because she remembered that the whole fabric of the Church rested upon Parliamentary enactment, and that she herself was Queen of England by Parliamentary sanction, that she viewed so complacently the growing power of that body in dealing more and more with matters supposed to belong exclusively to the Crown, ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... harder-worked person than a lady in the season, let us say in Washington, where the etiquette of visiting is carried to a perfection that it does not reach even in New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, and where woman's effort to keep the social fabric together requires more expenditure of intellect and of physical force than was needed to protect the capital in its peril a quarter of a century ago. When this cruel war is over, the monument to the women who perished in it will need to be higher than that to the Father of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Warlock, Wrangler. Wrangler, Warlock. And now the formalities have been observed. I don't know how it is with you, Warlock, but I'm a great stickler for the formalities. 'Pon my life, I consider them the web upon which the social fabric hangs together. They're not to be dispensed with upon any account whatever. While I was abroad recently, the American Minister and I were walking along the Mall together. 'Ah,' he suddenly said, 'My dear Wrangler, here comes the Prince. ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... aisle I felt a sudden tug, then an ominous ripping. The floating chiffon overdrapery of my gown had caught in a seat. As Dicky bent to release me his face showed consternation. Almost a length of the dainty fabric trailed ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... Netherlandish contrapuntists, the primary impulse in musical creation has been the musical ideal—the creation of tonal fancies, novel, inspiring, musical, satisfactory. Out of this desire has arisen the entire fabric of fugue, sonata, symphony and the whole world of free music. And at every period there have been those also who sought to connect these tonal fancies with the inner life of the spirit—to awaken feeling, inspire imagination, deepen dramatic impression; in short, to give us in place of irresponsible ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... When the thread was finished, the old woman hid it away under lock and key in a secret chamber, where her daughters were never allowed to set foot. The spinners knew not how the golden flax came into the house, nor for what fabric the thread was used, for the mother never replied to any questions on these subjects. The old woman went off on a journey two or three times every summer, and sometimes stayed away more than a week, but her daughters never knew where she went or ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... warming with his own inward fervour. "The Rock, on which our Lord builds the real fabric of the Universe!" And his tall form dilated with the utterance of his blasphemy. "The learning, the science, the theoretical discussions of men, shall pass as dust blown by the breath of a storm-wind—but the Church shall remain, the ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... tools, forging-pressing machines, electric motors, tires, knitted wear, hosiery, shoes, silk fabric, chemicals, trucks, instruments, microelectronics, gem cutting, jewelry manufacturing, software ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... gold eyeglass appeared, a memorable figure, on the threshold. In one hand she bore a bedroom candlestick; in the other, with the steadiness of a dragoon, a horse-pistol. She was wound about in shawls which did not wholly conceal the candid fabric of her nightdress, and surmounted by a nightcap of portentous architecture. Thus accoutred, she made her entrance; laid down the candle and pistol, as no longer called for; looked about the room with a silence more eloquent ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... child, thy happiness is engraved in golden characters upon the tablets of my heart; and their impression is indelible: for, should the rude and deep-searching hand of Misfortune attempt to pluck them from their repository, the fleeting fabric of life would give way; and in tearing from my vitals the nourishment by which they are supported, she would but grasp at a shadow ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... nothing so much as the rumbling of the tide among the arches of London Bridge. What immensely perplexed me was a sharp, angry sort of rattle, in all quarters, far off and close at hand, and sometimes right at my own back, where it sounded as if the stout fabric of my English surtout had been ruthlessly rent in twain; and everybody's clothes, all over the fair, were evidently being torn asunder in the same way. By-and-by, I discovered that this strange noise was produced by a little instrument called "The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... these two conditions we have the division into Logical and Natural, but the fundamental principle of classification is the same in both—it being simply the law of intellectual action—just as the law which governs the action of the levers of a loom will determine the pattern of the woven fabric. There can, therefore, be no conflict between the methods of Logic and those of Nature. The determining element in all classification, whether of the phenomena of Mind or of the grosser phenomena of Matter is uniformly and always the ...
— The Philosophy of Evolution - and The Metaphysical Basis of Science • Stephen H. Carpenter
... about twenty-five years since the Faculties of Letters began to transform themselves, and during this period their progressive transformation has occasioned changes in the whole fabric of the higher teaching of historical science in France, which up to that time had remained unshaken, even by the ingenious addition ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... improvement of which for common uses became afterwards his life-work. "He happened to take up a thin scale of India-rubber," says his biographer, "peeled from a bottle, and it was suggested to his mind that it would be a very useful fabric if it could be made uniformly so thin, and could be so prepared as to prevent its melting and sticking together in a solid mass." Often afterward he had a vivid presentiment that he was destined by ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... there will go on accumulating in society a mass of hopeless, physically incompetent, and morally degraded people, who are, as it were, a sort of dynamite which, sooner or later, when its accumulation becomes sufficient and its tension intolerable, will burst the whole fabric. ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... the hall and peered down the dark stairs. He listened; all was silent. A dozen perfectly simple accidents might have caused the sound the three had heard; and yet, although he had not made up his mind that the stranger's whole story was not the fabric of delirium, he had an uncomfortable feeling that someone really was below. Neither seeing nor hearing, he knew by some sixth sense that another human being stood within a few yards of him waiting. Who that human being was, what he wished, what he was willing to venture was a mystery. Sorez ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... room. Ripples of the evening air, entering through the windows, flowed over her, lifting the thick curling locks at the nape of her neck, creeping forward over her shoulders and passing along her round arms under the thin fabric of ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... shod with silver. The cushions were of brocaded Delhi silk, and the curtains which once hid any glimpse of the beauty of the king's palace were stiff with gold. Closer investigation showed that the entire fabric was everywhere rubbed and discolored by time and wear; but even thus it was sufficiently gorgeous to deserve housing on the threshold of a royal zenana. I found no fault with it, except that it was in my stable. Then, trying to lift it by the silver-shod shoulder-pole, I laughed. The road from Dearsley's ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... the state they would fain beguile themselves to suppose her sex has reached, for their benefit; where she may be queen of it in a corner, certain of a loyal support, if she will only give men her half-the-world's assistance to uplift the fabric comfortable to them; together with assurance of paternity, case of mind in absence, exclusive possession, enormous and minutest, etc.; not by any means omitting a regimental orderliness, from which men are privately exempt, because they are men, or because they are grown ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Republic of the West had completed a century of independent national existence, its political fabric was subjected to the strain of a terrible internecine war. That the true cause of conflict was the antagonism between the spirit of Federalism and the theory of "States' Rights" is very clearly explained in the following pages, and the author exactly expresses the feeling with which ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... worth far more than their weight in gold; nor did these jewels make up the cost of these, together with the warm cloak for him, and the linen for her child that she had been purchasing. I tell you, sir, the babe must have no linen but the finest fabric of Cambrai—yes, and even carnation-coloured ribbons—though, for herself, I saw the homespun she was sewing. As she mused over what she could throw back, I asked if she had no other gauds to make up the price, and she said, almost within herself, "They are my child's, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on the day of Rosamund's coming to Chelsea. A week later, Bertha found the sitting-room brightened with the hanging water-colours, with curtains of some delicate fabric at the windows, with a new ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... come irresistibly to lodge myself somewhere on the firm flesh, in the robust spine, wherever I can penetrate or find foothold on the person, in the soul, of Moggridge the man. The enormous stability of the fabric; the spine tough as whalebone, straight as oak-tree; the ribs radiating branches; the flesh taut tarpaulin; the red hollows; the suck and regurgitation of the heart; while from above meat falls in brown cubes and beer gushes to be churned to blood again—and so we reach the eyes. Behind the aspidistra ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... the boat construction, and by the occasional aid of George was bringing the hull to a completed state. While this was being done, George was at work with the loom, slowly weaving out the fabric for the sails. As the mast had been stepped back over six feet from the prow, it was concluded to make a mainsail and a jib, a small triangular sail which is attached to the forwardly projecting jib-boom. The two sails would afford ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... memory compartments in his brain. Thus, on the subject of sailing he had an immense store. On the subject of woman he had a fairly large store. But these two subjects had been unrelated. Between the two memory compartments there had been no connection. That, in the fabric of knowledge, there should be any connection whatever between a woman with hysterics and a schooner carrying a weather-helm or heaving to in a gale, would have struck him as ridiculous and impossible. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... loved to adorn their trusty rapiers,—the shortness of their hair, which made their ears appear of disproportioned size,—above all, the stern and gloomy gravity of their looks, announced their belonging to that class of enthusiasts, who, resolute and undismayed, had cast down the former fabric of government, and who now regarded with somewhat more than suspicion, that which had been so unexpectedly substituted in its stead. There was gloom in their countenances; but it was not that of dejection, far less of despair. They looked like veterans after a defeat, which ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Richard's child, Richard's friend, in the deft interweaving of fragmentary truths into a whole plausible fabric. She knew that, if necessary, she would deceive again, trailing her wings, fluttering on before, as the golden plover lures the footsteps of the stranger from ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and leagues, put out the stars, and made the sky resemble a canopy of yellow satin; we on the ship saw one another's faces as if by daylight; the shrouds and masts and our own figures cast jet-black shadows on the deck; the whole ship flashed out to that amazing radiance like a fabric sun-touched. The column of fire then fattened and disappeared, and the night rolled down upon our blinded eyes as ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... tenderness passing across her stern face, as swiftly and gently as the breeze stirs a cornfield. "Nor is there anything in this world so perfect as the truth. If the truth opened an abyss which plunged me into hell, I would sooner know it, than attempt to enter Paradise across the flimsy fabric of a lie!" ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... dead, Come, let us drink in silence ere we part. To every fervent yet resolved heart That brought its tameless passion and its tears, Renunciation and laborious years, To lay the deep foundations of our race, To rear its stately fabric overhead And light its pinnacles with golden ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... lose heart at this fabric of lies; after the pleadings of the advocates whose ruinous eloquence he had bought with heavy gold, he defended his son himself, and put so much truth, so much passion, and so many tears into his speech, that the whole audience was moved, and three of the judges voted for an acquittal; but the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ceases. Under the shock of mighty upheaval it has been dislocated by the most drastic strain ever put upon the economic fabric. But it will march on long after Peace will have mercifully sheathed the Sword. Therefore the permanent world problem is ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... the sunshine that streamed in above the sheet tacked across the lower part of the west window lighted up a scene of cheerful disorder, pervading which was a pleasant odor of newness. With her back toward him, the lady began to measure off lengths of some green fabric, standing ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... its minerals are there, and one day, becoming too full of richness, it bursts, and throws open a five-roomed granary, stored with richer fabric than ever came from the shuttles of Fez and holding globes of oil such as the olives of Hebron ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... and bolder hand, Ne'er formed a fabric fair As Southern wisdom can command, And Southern valor rear. Though kingdoms scorn to own her sway, Or recognize her birth, The land blood-bought for Liberty Will ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... and scarcely reaching the top of his patched and broken hob-nailed boots. The knees and the bottoms of the legs of his trousers had been patched with square pieces of cloth, several shades darker than the original fabric, and these patches were now all in rags. His coat was several sizes too large for him and hung about him like a dirty ragged sack. He was a pitiable spectacle of neglect and wretchedness as he sat there on an upturned pail, eating his bread and cheese with fingers that, like his clothing, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... power, would have done their utmost to exact a reckoning for past abuses. Upon the whole, then, Sir Francis had materially strengthened his position. But the strength was fictitious rather than real, and the baseless fabric which he had reared with such pains quickly tottered and fell. The three new Councillors were not long in discovering that their places were sinecures. His Excellency wanted none of their counsel, and had no intention of permitting them to have any real voice in the carrying-on ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... not without distinction—she who could spin the greatest number of cuts of cotton, or weave the greatest number of yards of cloth, was most distinguished, and most admired; but especially was she distinguished who could spin and weave the neatest fabric for her own wear, of white cloth with a turkey-red stripe—cut, and make it fit the labor-rounded person and limbs—or make, for father's or brother's wear, the finest or prettiest piece of jean—cook the nicest dinners for her beau, or ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... people insist that the flames burst out at once in different parts of the city; not allowing the wind to have any hand in it. So much for the plot. But the fabricators of plots in all countries build their conjectures on the "baseless fabric of a vision;" and it seems even a sort of poetical justice, that whilst this Minister is crushing at home plots of his own conjuring up, on the Continent, and in the north, he should, with as little foundation, be accused of wishing to set the ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... interposed between them and the river gambling den—for the moment. There is no use seeking the method of the river, nor endeavouring to discover the processes by which the lives of thousands who go afloat down the Mississippi are woven as woof and warp in the fabric of river life and river mysteries. The more faithful an effort to select one of the commonest and simplest of river complications, the more improbable ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... marvelous adventure. It seems that he began to make it when he was a boy, and for many years worked upon it steadily until it was stiff as cloth of gold and voluminous as a puffed-out summer cloud. Some think that much of it was such stuff as dreams are made of. Probably some breadths were the fabric of vision. Still it seems certain that he did have some kind of an extraordinary coat or mantle. The adventures which he relates of himself are those of a paladin. Born in 1579 or 1580, he was at this time still a young man. But already he had fought in France and in the Netherlands, and ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... ship, therefore, the indomitable Spaniard made sail southward. He landed at various places, getting everywhere little food and less gold, but everywhere gaining more and more confirmation that the foundation of his dreams was not "the baseless fabric of a vision." ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... his bedroom and took off his coat and vest. He searched his drawer and found what looked to be like a pair of braces made of light fabric. These he slipped over his shoulder, adjusting them so that beneath his left arm hung a canvas holster. From another drawer he took an automatic pistol, pulled the magazine from the butt and examined it ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... careworn face. At one of the articles included they widened with almost awe. This was an enormous hat made of white fluffy felt, with vast contorted brims, and great blue velvet rosettes and streamers. Its fabric was very stout and substantial, and withal quite new, for its original owner had speedily found it so stiff and heavy that to wear it gave her a headache and a crick in her neck. Mrs. M'Bean, for her part, could not entertain the idea of carrying anything so sumptuous upon her grizzled head; ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... us in such a state that we appear every moment to be upon the verge of some great mutations. There is one thing, and one thing only, which defies all mutation,—that which existed before the world, and will survive the fabric of the world itself: I mean justice,—that justice which, emanating from the Divinity, has a place in the breast of every one of us, given us for our guide with regard to ourselves and with regard to others, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... The fabric of the world—earth, air, and skies— Each particle thereof and tiniest part Designed for special ends—proclaims the art Of an almighty Maker good and wise. Nathless the lawless brutes, our crimes and lies, The joys of vicious men, the good man's smart, All creatures ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... camel's hair stuff, very laboriously made by the women, which swells up in the rain and completely excludes moisture. They are striped brown and yellow, but a splendid tabernacle in the centre, of richer colors and finer fabric, bears at the apex a golden ball with plumes of ostrich feathers, the sign of authority. This tent is oval in form, resembling an overturned ship. It is the residence and office of the sheikh, or chief of the douar: several douars united form ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... just opinion can be formed of the correctness of the writer's views, it is necessary to take to pieces this skilful fabric, and to bring the parts together in a different connection and with greater succinctness, following out each doctrine to its inevitable, but most remote, conclusions, so as to obtain a just idea of the position in which we should ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... vent to my reproaches, without interruption or restraint. My heart was ready to burst with indignation and grief. Pleyel was not the only object of my keen but unjust upbraiding. Deeply did I execrate my own folly. Thus fallen into ruins was the gay fabric which I had reared! Thus had my ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... was of good family, and he was rich; these statements, artistically interwoven by him with the lighter fabric of his letter, were confirmed by an acquaintance of mine in Providence, of whom, in writing, I had incidentally inquired concerning ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the baseless fabric of a vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all things which inherit, shall dissolve, And, like an unsubstantial pageant faded, Leave not ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... have they completed their goodly superstructure when in trudges a phalanx of opposite authors with Hans de Laet, the great Dutchman, at their head, and at one blow tumbles the whole fabric about their ears. Hans, in fact, contradicts outright all the Israelitish claims to the first settlement of this country, attributing all those equivocal symptoms, and traces of Christianity and Judaism, which have been said to be found in divers provinces of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... its artificial habits and its jealous class distinctions on its back, took a sudden unprepared leap from the heights it had been centuries constructing—into a gold mine; it emerged, its delicate fabric crushed out of all recognizable shape, its petty prides annihilated, and even its just distinctions turned topsy-turvey. For mind is really more honorable than muscle, yet when these two met in a gold mine it fared ill with ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... screech-owls in which his heart really delights. The only character really worked out so as to live and grow under his hand is Bosola, who, of course, is the villain of the piece, and being a rough fabric, is easily manufactured with rough tools. Still, Webster has his wonderful touches ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... were like burning imperial cities under rainbows that arched nearly to the zenith; sunsets that bathed the purple sea in rivers of rose- coloured light, flowing from a sun whose diverging, heaven-climbing rays were of the purest blue. Overside, in the heat of the day, the sea was an azure satiny fabric, in the depths of which the sunshine focussed in funnels of light. Astern, deep down, when there was a breeze, bubbled a procession of milky-turquoise ghosts—the foam flung down by the hull of ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... evidence of any Teutonic attempt to weave together separate lays into an epic work, the answer might be, first, that the separate lays we know are too much separate and individual, too strong in themselves, to be satisfactorily cobbled into a more expansive fabric; and, secondly, that it has not yet been proved that epic poems can be made by process of cobbling. The need of a comprehensive epic of the Niblungs was not imperative. Neither was there any demand in Athens, in the time of Sophocles and Euripides, ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... "Liberator" opened its batteries, the controversy now working itself out by trial of battle was foreseen and predicted. Washington warned his countrymen of the danger of sectional divisions, well knowing the line of cleavage that ran through the seemingly solid fabric. Jefferson foreshadowed the judgment to fall upon the land for its sins against a just God. Andrew Jackson announced a quarter of a century beforehand that the next pretext of revolution would be slavery. De Tocqueville recognized with that penetrating insight which analyzed ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... scattered over our land as beacon lights in our national life, building up Christian character as the best legacy for present and future generations. Some of the colleges are yet weak and struggling, but they glory in their aspirations and prospects of future grandeur. The great fabric of our national life is radiant with the golden threads of good influences emanating from these centers of superior intelligence and instruction, where time is given for careful thought and reflection on the great problems ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... is often times made in a press, like corrugated matting. The varieties, however, known as gum core have to go through a different process. Usually a core is squirted through a tube machine and the outside covering of jute or cotton, or whatever the fabric may be, is put on by a braider or is wrapped about it somewhat after the manner of the old fashioned cloth-wrapped tubing. The fabric is either treated with some heat-resisting mixture or something that is a lubricant, plumbago and oil being the compound. Other packings are made from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... as he had not yet completed his arrangements, he was afraid his penitent might slip from him in the crowd and be exposed to temptations that might discourage her; the cold blast of the world might shake to the ground the fabric he had commenced to build. He bent his venerable countenance to her ear, whispered a word of consolation, and bade her not leave till ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... to conceal the buttresses of the nave and its aisles, give this portion of the church an awkward perspective, and tend to diminish the apparent height of the whole facade. The screen itself was the last important addition to be made to the fabric by Bishop Brantyngham (1370-94), and it is little more than a low stone scaffolding for holding the rows of figures of saints, kings, and other distinguished persons which fill the niches. An attempt to identify these sixty-five individuals, with the aid of early drawings and ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath
... which it would be wicked to treat with impatience. She even struck her mother with awe by the grandeur of her ideas and the depth of her theories. Nor let it be supposed that she rushed away at once to the consideration of the great fabric which was to be the ultimate sign and mark of her status, the quintessence of her briding, the outer veil, as it were, of the tabernacle—namely, her wedding-dress. As a great poet works himself up by degrees to that inspiration which is necessary ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... of the time were on the one hand developing by dialectic discussion the oral tradition into a vast system of religious ritual and legal jurisprudence; on the other, weaving around the law, by way of adornment to it, a variegated fabric of philosophy, fable, allegory, and legend. Simultaneously the Alexandrian preachers—they were never quite the same as the rabbis—were emphasizing for the outer world as well as their own people the spiritual side of the ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... Wilkie Collins weaves elaborate plots of hair-raising events. The charm of The Moonstone and the Woman in White is independent of character or literary finish. It consists in the unravelling of a skilfully woven fabric. Le Fanu, who resented the term "sensational" which was justly applied to his works, plays pitilessly on our nerves with both real and fictitious horrors. He, like Wilkie Collins, made a cult of terror. Their literary descendants may perhaps be found ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... the attorney for the plaintiff closed this man's mouth by means which we can only guess at, and sent him forth to hide among the moral and the social wrecks that constitute the flotsam and the jetsam of society. But his words, declaring Simon Craft's bold scheme a fabric built upon a lie, had already struck upon the ears and pierced into the heart of one whose tender conscience would not let him rest with the burden of this knowledge weighing down upon it. What was it that he heard, gentlemen? We can only conjecture. ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... seems to have existed that woman was semi-divine, because she was the mother, the creator of man. And we know that she was credited among the Norsemen with supernatural powers. But upon this Northern foundation there was built up a highly complex fabric of romantic and artistic sentiment. The Christian worship of the Virgin Mary harmonized with the Northern belief. The sentiment of chivalry reinforced it. Then came the artistic resurrection of the Renaissance, ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... and press with all his force some plain views of the case. Some lawyers are successful in the elenchical mode of argument—to use a logical term—that is, in demolishing the structure of their opponents, while they fail in the deictic, that is, in raising on its ruins an impregnable fabric of their own; but it was difficult to decide which process was the most thorough in the reasoning of Tazewell. In putting his arguments before a jury he showed great adroitness. He either knew himself or learned from others the calling of ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... Taglioni, with trimmings just bordering upon frogs, gave dignity to his demeanour and twofold amplitude to his chest. The horn eyeglass was exchanged for one of purest gold, the dingy high-lows for well-waxed Wellingtons, the Paisley fogle for the fabric of the China loom. Moreover, he walked with a swagger, and affected in common conversation a peculiar dialect which he opined to be the purest English, but which no one—except a bagman—could be reasonably expected to understand. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... mutely, not hearing her answer to Mayakin, nor what his father was saying to him. The lady stared at him steadfastly and smiled to him affably and serenely. Her childlike figure, clothed in some kind of dark fabric, was almost blended with the crimson stuff of the armchair, while her wavy, golden hair and her pale face shone against the dark background. Sitting there in the corner, beneath the green leaves, she looked at once like a ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... What! The kingly crowned head, the vigilant eye, The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier, Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter, With other muniments and petty helps Is this our fabric, if that they,— ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... in a house. But for my condition of absolute calm, owing to skilful treatment, open air, and physical robustness, the scene would have been of a kind to scatter the busy little workmen setting up the fabric of my wits. A lighted oil-cup stood on a tripod in the middle of a tent-roof, and over it the creased neck and chin of a tall old woman, splendid in age, reddened vividly; her black eyes and grey brows, and greyishblack ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... love the Union may I not speak? Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would it not be well to ascertain why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate a step while any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... In this there was much that reminded one of the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... and barely six feet away from him one of the main power cables of the cavern was suspended from heavy insulators. If the cable had ever had an insulating sheath around it the fabric had vanished during the centuries for the dull silver-colored metal was ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... was wholly at his ease. The evening was as still as night, except for the faint peaceful country sounds that came up from the valley below—the song of a lad riding home; the barking of a dog; the bleat of sheep—all minute and delicate, as unperceived, yet as effective, as a rich fabric on which a design is woven. It seemed to him as he listened to the talk—the brisk, shrewd remarks of Mr. Garlick; the courteous and rather melancholy answers of his host; as he watched the second priest's eyes looking gently and pleasantly about ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... to them, do so much as meet us midway; but they flee from us,(333) quam longissime; their over-passing and over-reaching Pharisaical zeal, makes them hold fast the least point of their religion, and adhere to the whole entire fabric of the Roman ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... ascended higher and higher in the clouds, conveying the astonished king far beyond his own country; but after long and fruitless exertion their strength failed them, and unable to keep their way, the whole fabric came tumbling down from the sky, and fell upon a dreary solitude in the kingdom of Chin. There Kaus was left, a prey to hunger, alone, and in utter despair, until he was discovered by a band of Demons, whom his anxious ministers had sent in search ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... after you are married, one of those little slips were to befall you. What happened last November might surely happen February next. They may have annoyed you at the time, because they were not what you had meant; but how will they annoy you in the future, and how will they shake the fabric of your wife's confidence and peace! A thousand things unpleasing went on in the chiaroscuro of a life that you shrank from too particularly realising; you did not care, in those days, to make a fetish of your conscience; you would recognise your failures with a nod, and so, good day. But the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Unfortunately the half-sovereigns did not come in very fast, and the landlord, though he knew "Nap" to be a very favourite game, did not choose, to be caught napping, and therefore "took his rest" at the end of the fifth half-year, and in so doing rent the whole fabric of the club.—The Edgbaston Art Club was organised in 1878; the Chess Club in 1841; the Germania Club in 1856; the Gymnastic Club in 1866; the Dramatic Club in May, 1865; the Farmer's Club in May, 1864, the Pigeon flying ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... refused to proceed unless their wages were augmented; but two Indians who had worked under the Englishmen had privately made themselves acquainted with every branch of the art, and offered to complete the fabric, which they did with as much skill as their masters. The following edifices in the capital are also deserving of notice. The barracks for the dragoons; the mint, lately built by a Roman architect; and the hospital for orphans, founded by the Marquis ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... was merged in a spirit of compromise, and the result has consecrated their disinterested devotion to the general weal. Unless the American people have degenerated, the same result can be again effected whenever experience points out the necessity of a resort to the same means to uphold the fabric which their fathers have reared. It is beyond the power of man to make a system of government like ours or any other operate with precise equality upon States situated like those which compose this Confederacy; nor is inequality always injustice. Every State can not expect to shape the measures ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... assembly, high-pooped junks, steamboats, passenger sampans, cargo craft, such a water town in streets and lanes, endless miles of it, as no other part of the world save China can display. In the daylight it was gay with countless sunlit colours embroidered upon a fabric of yellow and brown, at night it glittered with a hundred thousand lights that swayed and quivered and were reflected quiveringly upon the ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... a woven fabric of great beauty out of the delicate fibre of the egg-cocoon of a worm could only have originated among a people who had attained the highest degree of civilization; it implies the art of weaving by ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... Spain is the grand romance of European history. The splendid but mysterious fabric of Asiatic power and science is seen for age after age, like the fairy castle of St John, exalted far above the rugged plain of Frank semi-barbarism—till the spell is at last broken by the iron prowess of Christian chivalry; and the glittering edifice vanishes from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... merely with us a question of self-preservation, of safeguarding against hostile design and attack the fabric which has withstood so many storms of our corporate and national life. That in itself would justify all our endeavours. But there is something even larger and worthier at stake in this great testing trial of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... another pony, and was looking the picture of peaceful beauty. Other young people followed, also on horseback. The day was most lovely, and an inspiriting canter along lane and over moor soon brought them to the ruin. It was a stately moss-embroidered fabric, more picturesque in its decay than it ever could have been in its completeness. Its shattered columns, solitary mullions, and pendent fragments of tracery hoary with age, and in parts half concealed by the negligent profusion of ivy, entranced the mind by their suggestive and melancholy beauty; ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... of any clearer theoretic or abstract definition of that ideal commonwealth, but rather as if in search of its visible locality and abiding-place, the walls and towers of which, so to speak, he might really trace and tell, according to his own old, natural habit of mind. It would be the fabric, the outward fabric, of a system reaching, certainly, far beyond the great city around him, even if conceived in all the machinery of its visible and invisible influences at their grandest—as Augustus or Trajan might have conceived of them—however ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... attempting to restore the conditions of 1914. But there is a danger that we may throw the masses of the population throughout Europe into the arms of the extremists, whose only idea for regenerating mankind is to destroy utterly the whole existing fabric of society. These men have triumphed in Russia. They have done so at a terrible price. Hundreds and thousands of the population have perished. The railways, the roads, the towns, the whole structural organization ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... us long to get rid of our bric-a-brac and then pull down the draperies that keep out the sunlight. The simpler the window draperies in a room, the more easily washed, the better and more attractive. For wholesome attractiveness there is no fabric that can excel a flood of warm sunshine. Any girl or woman who has curtains which she must protect from strong light by drawing down the shades is guilty of a household sin whose greatness she cannot know. That same sunshine, freely admitted, will do more to cleanse a house than ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... indicated—how great this evil is in our city. But there is something more menacing than vice,—namely, an ill-controlled and hysterical anti-vice crusade, rushing on and intoxicating itself with its own sensations, and shaking the business fabric of ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... and scarlet, Trims in gold the ship's forecastle, Decks the prow in molten silver; Sings his magic ship down gliding, On the cylinders of fir-tree; Now erects the masts of pine-wood, On each mast the sails of linen, Sails of blue, and white, and scarlet, Woven into finest fabric. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... suffragans, and a large proportion of the Norman nobility. Some English barons likewise crossed the sea to attend upon the occasion. The vigor of Geoffrey's character was never more strikingly exemplified, than in connection with this fabric.[210] In the earliest years of his prelacy, he undertook a voyage to Apulia, for the express purpose of obtaining from Robert Guischard, and his companions in arms, pecuniary assistance towards the building; and, during the whole course of a long life, he appears to have been ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... wrote to his friend Dayrolles, 'did me more good than I thought anything could do me; but all that good does not amount to what builders call half-repairs, and only keeps up the shattered fabric a little longer than it would have stood without them; but take my word for it, it will stand but a very little while longer. I am now in my grand climacteric, and shall not complete it. Fontenelle's last words at a hundred and three were, Je souffre d'etre. deaf and infirm ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... submitted to microscopic examination, either as opaque or as transparent objects. By combining the views obtained in these various methods, each of the rounded bodies may be proved to be a beautifully-constructed calcareous fabric, made up of a number of chambers, communicating freely with one another. The chambered bodies are of various forms. One of the commonest is something like a badly-grown raspberry, being formed of a number of nearly globular chambers ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... the advanced plant. The organic compounds required to extend the fabric, are formed by the plant, instead of being supplied from without. The tissues of the green surface of the stem and leaves have the peculiar power, when acted on by light, of generating, at the expense of carbonic acid, water and ammonia, with various ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... an exquisite net-work of iron wrought by hand, with an art emulous of that of Nicolo Caparra at Florence. The chief device employed is a ladder (scala) constantly repeated in the centres of quatre-foils; and the whole fabric is still so flexible and perfect, after the lapse of centuries, that the net may be shaken throughout by a touch. Four other tombs of the Scaligeri are here, among which the "Notices" particularly mention that of Alboin della Scala: "He was ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... Domitian, towards the close of the first century A.D., a dark period, which saw the utter moral degradation of the people, and the bloodiest tyranny and oppression on the part of their rulers. The picture of Roman manners, as painted by his glowing pencil, is truly appalling. The fabric of society was in ruins, the popular religion was rejected with scorn, and the creed of natural religion had not occupied its place. The emperors took part in public scenes of folly and profligacy, and exposed themselves as charioteers, as dancers, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Danton of the Revolution, and decreed the Reign of Terror. Tales of appalling atrocity, some true, some false (no one can tell how true or how false), came through to France and England. It was certain that the whole fabric of society in Russia had dissolved in the wildest anarchy the world has seen in modern times, and that the Bolshevik gospel of "brotherhood" with humanity was, at least, rudely "interrupted" by wholesale murder ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... stem, and he filled out the drams upon the table, removing with some embarrassment before he did so the book of arms. It surprised Count Victor that he should not be in the native tartan of the Scots Highlander. Instead he wore a demure coat and breeches of some dark fabric, and a wig conferred on him all the more of the look of a lowland merchant than of a chief of clan. He was a man at least twenty years the senior of his visitor—a handsome man of his kind, dark, deliberate of his movements, bred in the courtesies, but seemingly, to the acuter ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... and then, amid deafening salvos a dazzling vision appeared upon the platform, came forward with the carriage of a conscious queen, stood bowing and beaming in the gloss and glitter of fabric and of gem that were yet less radiant than herself. Stingaree stood inanimate between stamping feet and clapping hands. No; he would never have connected this magnificent woman with the simple bush girl in the unpretentious frocks that he recalled ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... Universe, History, Life are before us. Why should they not be investigated? It is not true that science leads to Atheism or Fatalism. What science does is to destroy that fabric of Aberglaube or superstition which chokes and asphyxiates the best parts of religion. What science does is to set up a new, purer creed based on ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... that part of the building wherein the powder was being taken. At my request he took a look through my glass, and, having satisfied himself, he lay the gun as ordered. I, with my glass, watched the spot aimed at. I saw one plank of the building fall out, and at the same instant the whole fabric went up in a pillar of black smoke, with but little noise, as it was no more. Horses, waggons, men, and building all disappeared; not a ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... 'Mark his majestic fabric! He's a temple Sacred by birth, and built by hands divine; His soul's the deity that lodges there; Nor is the pile unworthy ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... desirable result, is the purest joy the human mind can experience. Fourteen hours a day is not too much for this kind of task. The difficulty is to gain skill of hand and eye, or training of mind, to this end. A fallacy, a canker at the heart of our social fabric today, is that the daily task is something to ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... going to our beds whilst such a tempest was raging around us, so we sat up, listening to the creaking of the boards, and anticipating every moment that the whole fabric would be blown to pieces. Fortunately, the bark with which I had covered the roof, in a great measure protected us from the rain, which came down in torrents; but every part was not equally impervious, and our discomfort was increased ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... in the slight sketch given by the pastor one evening, as we all assembled round the blazing log-fire, that was piled half-way up the chimney, which reared its stone fabric so as to form deep recesses at either side ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... breathes mythological air. That is why all vehemence, the cry of Nature, all suffering, thoughtless familiarity, and every frank sign of love shock this delicate medium like a bombshell; they shatter this collective fabric, this palace of clouds, this enchanted architecture, just as shrill cockcrow scatters the fairies into hiding. These fine receptions are unconsciously a work of art, a kind of poetry, by which cultivated society reconstructs an idyll ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the two minds into communion with one another by unanimity and friendship, and having perfected the noblest and best of all the webs which political life admits, and enfolding therein all other inhabitants of cities, whether slaves or freemen, binds them in one fabric and governs and presides over them, and, in so far as to be happy is vouchsafed to a city, in no particular fails ...
— Statesman • Plato
... manual labor which tends to make a mere machine of God's likeness. But oh, for all that, how incomparably inferior is the finest, faultless, machine-made lace and muslin to the exquisite irregularity of the human fabric!... Good-bye, my dearest Harriet. We start for Aix-la-Chapelle at eight to-morrow. I am not in very good strength; the fact is, I am now never in thoroughly good plight without exercise on horseback, and it is a long time since I have had any, and, of course, it is now quite out ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... hazards, and they watched the slightest change with the interest of men who had so much at stake. At first the movement of the ship was sluggish, and such as ill-suited the eagerness of the crew. Then her pitching ceased, and she settled into the enormous trough bodily, or the whole fabric sunk, as it were, never to rise again. So low did she fall, that the foresail gave a tremendous flap; one that shook the hull and spars from stem to stern. As she rose on the next surge, happily its foaming crest slid beneath her, and the tall masts rolled ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... so indissolubly interfused that it is impossible to say how much is to be attributed to the one, and how much to the other, in the building up of a society. But if, it is impossible to estimate the value of the several elements composing the fabric of society, it is easy to ascertain the dominating idea on which all forms of society are based. That dominating idea, if it may for the moment be called such, is the instinct of self-preservation, and it exercises just as great a power in determining the formation and play of the social ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... estimates of the future population of the world which are from time to time put forward on the basis of the present birth-rate are quite worthless. A brilliantly insubstantial fabric of this kind, by B.L. Putnam Weale (The Conflict of Colour, 1911), has been justly criticized by Professor Weatherley (Popular ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Catholic Cathedral is said to be the finest in Ireland. It was over thirty years in building, and although the stone of the main fabric cost nothing, the structure cost more than a hundred thousand pounds. The interior is more gorgeous than beautiful, and the money seems to have been expended with execrable taste. The marble mosaic of the chancel ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.) |
