"Flimsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... against Napoleon; on the petition of his friends, he was respited and deported to France; he died at Orthez early in the following year. His verses are modelled on those of Melendez Valdes; though not deficient in technique or passion, they are often disfigured by spurious sentimentality and by the flimsy philosophy of the age. Cienfuegos was blamed for an unsparing use of both archaisms and gallicisms. His plays, Pitaco, Zoraida, La Condesa de Castilla and Idomeneo, four tragedies on the pseudo-classic French model, and Las Hermanas generosas, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... his elevation and strength to dethrone and debase the Deity. They had several others, who polished their language and pitched their instruments with admirable skill; several who glued over their thin and flimsy gaberdines many bright feathers from the widespread downs of Ionia, and the richly cultivated rocks ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... afraid of a little talk, are you? Everyone is saying how brave you were, and, here, when the danger's over, I find you a flimsy little coward!" ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... as they call it, acted like a mordant in fixing the black dye of slavery in regions which would but for that have washed themselves free of its stain in tears of penitence. It is a delusion and a snare to trust in any such false and flimsy reasons where there is enough and more than enough in the institution itself to account for its growth. Slavery gratifies at once the love of power, the love of money, and the love of ease; it finds a victim for anger who cannot smite back his oppressor; and it offers to all, without measure, the ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... I told her of the wager at the Leg Tavern, which in my opinion fully explained George's presence on the St. Albans road, but she declared that it was a flimsy excuse, and said she did not want to talk ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... have answered. But the gauzy curtain that was covered over this foul tableau, has been lifted up, and you see it in all it hideous deformity. As I have before stated, you have seen, gentlemen, the flimsy evidence upon which is attempted to predicate a conviction for grand larceny. I am confident that in spite of all the attempts that have been made by a shameless wanton and her pretended husband, to crush this ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... newspapers. It is there that all the provincial journals are received, the news of the day gathered up, digested, and multiplied by means of lithography; which is found more efficacious than the stylet and oiled "flimsy" paper of our Penny-a-liners. It is from these latter places too, that the country journals, as well as many of the foreign press, the German, the Belgium, and the Spanish, are supplied with Paris news. England is a good market, as most of our newspapers are wealthy enough ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... you pluck up the nerve to shoot, and be done with it? I'll make it still more binding upon you: if you don't kill me now, while you have the chance, as God is my witness I'll hang you both for those murders last night at Silver Switch. I know you, in spite of your flimsy disguise: I can call ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... tunnel cut through rock, while the deep prisons below are hewn out of the rock itself. Up to what we should call the third story, every room is vaulted. Above that the floors are laid on beams, and the walls are not more than eight feet thick—comparatively flimsy for such a place! Nine-tenths of it was built for strength—the small remainder for comfort; there is not a single large hall in all the great fortress, and the courtyard within the main gate is a gloomy, ill-shaped ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... of that sort do not go well with juries, and, of course, the whole story is so flimsy and so improbable that it will go for no more than a piece of ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... Mississippi dreams! A rage that time seems only to redouble— The Banks, Joint-Stocks, and all the flimsy schemes, For rolling in Pactolian streams, That cost our modern rogues so little trouble. No matter what,—to pasture cows on stubble, To twist sea-sand into a solid rope, To make French bricks and fancy bread of rubble, Or light with gas the whole celestial cope— Only propose to blow a bubble, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... time, Sire," said Howard. "But not crudely, not crudely. This is one of those flimsy times when no man has a settled mind. Your awakening—no one expected your awakening. ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... too much money, more money than she could possibly have used for herself in any legitimate way. First, she got her father to give her all she could get out of him. Her second step would be to write to me for all I could spare, making flimsy excuses for her ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... of course, without chest or bag, without even bedding, so that he had worked his way around the Horn in shoddy clothes and flimsy oilskins obtained from the ship's slop-chest. There was little that he had a mind to take ashore with him; it went quickly into a small enough bundle. While he turned out his bunk, old Noble sat watching him without moving, with judgment in his face, and sorrow. He was looking ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... to decline sailing with Buller; but he must see the boat. There was a train for his home at a quarter past seven; if he were not on the premises he could not be asked to sail. If Buller's boat were a little, flimsy thing, he would take that train—but he would ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... surrendering her right to that. What was a year out of her life if afterward she would be in comfortable circumstances, free to love where she willed? She wasn't cheating herself or Cutty: she was cheating convention, a flimsy ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... disdain Flimsy safeguards raised by man, Struck a blow more swift and sure In that I was ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... manoeuvred his flimsy craft to the position he desired, within a few yards of the current, which at that point made a sharp bend from the east. He shouted out some words to his wife and Maskull. Gleameil kissed her children convulsively, and broke down a little. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... Othello, but of an Iago (need it be said) immeasurably less deeply rooted in malignity than Shakespeare's. It was a source of weakness as well as of strength in Browning as a dramatist that the evil things in men dissolve so readily under his scrutiny as if they were mere shells of flimsy disguise for the "soul of goodness" they contain. He has, in fact, put so much strong sense on the side of the jealous Florentine masters of his hero that his own sympathies were divided, with paralysing effect, it would seem, upon his interest in drama.[23] ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... there are others who are stoutly resisting all appeals, and who see in such a step dire calamity for the country. The fact that China has no real reason to break with Germany makes the decision more difficult. A plausible excuse of some kind must be offered the country, and such flimsy pretexts as the necessity of upholding the sanctity of international law are difficult to get away with. The Chinese press is full of the incongruity of the situation, ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... Holland. They have undoubtedly forgotten the true and well-recognized policy of this country in regard to Portugal in permitting the war faction in France to take possession of the Tagus, and to bully the Portuguese upon so flimsy—indeed, false—a pretext[1] yet, in this instance, something may ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... over to his car to get his camera as the disk approached. When it plunged toward the lake, he was so startled that he failed to snap the picture until the moment it struck. This story sounded so flimsy that I ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... any other person, Francine would have instantly seen through that flimsy pretense. But the love which accepts the meanest crumbs of comfort that can be thrown to it—which fawns and grovels and deliberately deceives itself, in its own intensely selfish interests—was the love ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... either belonged to the company, or were too flimsy to go on such a voyage, it was for a short time doubtful whether one could be procured: at length, the Shebander hearing that a snow of 250 tons or upwards lay at a port called -Samarre, on the ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... small feet. Besides, whatever of loss or gain had marred her once fine proportions, was entirely concealed by the beautifying, graceful, veiling folds of her mantilla. There was the flash of diamonds, and the moonlight glimmer of pearls beneath this flimsy covering; and at her belt a few white lilies. She was exceedingly pleased with her own appearance, and her satisfaction gave an ease and a sense of authority to her air ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... fence, as erected by dogmatic theologians and scholasticists, was but a flimsy structure at best, and one that was ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... word; but can you imagine his astonishment a little later, when two of that second squad came running in, all breathless, and told him that though they fully explained the magnificence of the wedding supper, some turned upon their heels with a flimsy excuse, others rudely laughed outright in the messengers' faces, and—oh, the horror of it!—still others actually stoned and beat some of the messengers to death!—and their bodies were even at that moment lying in the ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... of their design, or the value of their antiquity, they did not interest her. She liked the look of them glittering there; they conveyed a sense of the embarrassment of riches which touched her ideas of romance. It was the tray of old-fashioned ornaments, brooches in the design of flimsy baskets of flowers, each flower represented by a different coloured stone—old signet rings, old seals, quaint little figures of men and beasts in silver, sometimes in gold; these were the things that caught her fancy; she pored over ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... The links were small and yielding and so cunningly joined that it was as pliable as knitted wool, and much less bulky. Indeed, when rolled into a ball, it was no bigger than a man's fist. It looked quite too flimsy to afford any protection; yet, when I saw it proof against a bullet fired from a revolver and also turn repeated sword thrusts, I was, perforce, convinced. And I was completely won when I donned it; it was ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... things to do in no more than a pair of hours. They were not to be done, but he did them. A couple of donkeys were procured without difficulty; he knew of a stable with a flimsy door. A revolver, his own small odds and ends, all his money, and such food as he could lay hands on—by rousing reluctant storekeepers with outcries and expediting commerce with violence—were got together. Then Incarnacion must be fetched. She came at once, smiling drowsily, with a flush of sleep ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... she had come out fresh and blooming, and now she was prematurely aged, fat and stupid—more stupid, perhaps, than the rest. Yet somehow, because there was nothing else to do, Mercier pushed open the flimsy bamboo gate, walked up the gravelled path, and flung himself dejectedly upon a chaise longue which was at hand. And the woman talked to him, asked him how many cattle had come over that morning, whether they were yet unloaded, when they would be finally landed ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... p. 91) places the scene of such a conversation in the house of the Bishop of Salisbury. 'Boscovitch,' he writes, 'had a ready current flow of that flimsy phraseology with which a priest may travel through Italy, Spain, and Germany. Johnson scorned what he called colloquial barbarisms. It was his pride to speak his best. He went on, after a little practice, with as much facility as if it ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... sufficiently strong and well organised, its control over the money power is unlimited. If it can rule its people, and if it has the necessary resources of men and material within its borders, it can go on in a state of war so long as these things last, with almost any flimsy sort of substitute for money that it chooses to print. It can enrol and use the men, and seize and work the material. It can take over the land and cultivate it and distribute its products. The little ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... however, seemed to him from the outside a poor, flimsy thing, unworthy of the old farm buildings. He could see that the walls of it were only a brick thick, and in spite of the pretty curtains, he was struck by the odd feature of the two large windows exactly opposite each other, so that a spectator on either ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... support of Messrs. Wilberforce, William Smith, Brougham, Lushington, and others, urged the necessity of interference upon the representatives of a people unanimous in demanding it; and he repeatedly urged it in vain. The Government always leaned towards the planter, and the most flimsy excuses were constantly given for preferring to the effectual measures propounded by the Abolitionists, the most flimsy of expedients, useless for any one purpose, save that of ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... think," said St. John, when he had done describing him, "that kind of thing makes this kind of thing rather flimsy? Did you notice at tea how poor old Hewet had to change the conversation? How they were all ready to pounce upon me because they thought I was going to say something improper? It wasn't anything, really. If Bennett had been there ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... the morning when the terrific earthquake shook San Francisco and the surrounding country. One shock apparently lasted two minutes and there was an almost immediate collapse of flimsy structures all over the former city. The water supply was cut off and when fires broke out in various sections there was nothing to do but to let the buildings burn. Telegraphic and telephone communication was shut off. Electric light and gas plants ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... inspiration, born of a growing fear for the stability of his house of cards, so flimsy in construction, he ran down to Jitomir, and the half-crazed adventurer only lingered an hour with the Intendant of Madame Alixe Delavigne's grand old domain. He found the bird flown. Had he been duped? A permission to view the old chateau was courteously accorded, and then Alan Hawke soon realized ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... and his officers were sentenced to imprisonment in Holloway jail, the rumors died out. They revived again as one man after another was released from jail before his time was up. The various excuses offered were so flimsy that the public began to think that it was true that they had powerful friends ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 34, July 1, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... made connecting Cooch Behar with his great camp, and had caused temporary bridges to be built over all the streams on the way. Owing to the convenient bamboo, this is fairly easy of achievement, for the bamboo is at the same time tough and pliable, and bamboo bridges, in spite of their flimsy appearance, can carry great weights, and can be run up in no time, and kindly Nature furnishes in Bengal an endless supply ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... I see of the ways of men, the less I verily think of them. Their good esteem, their cap in hand, their fair fame, as they call it, goes by accident, and fortune, the whim of the moment, and the way the clever ones have of tickling them. A great man laughs at the flimsy of it, and a good one goes to his conscience. Your father saw these things at their value. I have often grieved that you can not see them so; but perhaps I have liked you ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... as one of the illiterate vulgar"; and indeed to so good purpose, that I would by all means recommend the performer to the army of the braying Faction, recorded by Cervantes. The testimony of his contemporaries is again disputed; constant tradition is opposed by flimsy arguments; and nothing is heard but confusion and nonsense. One could scarcely imagine this a topick very likely to inflame the passions: it is asserted by Dryden, that "those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greatest ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the West Indies. The Spanish ladies in the Philippines are dressed as in the ancient cities of their own renowned peninsula. The Filipinos are of the varied styles that adorn Africans and the Asiatics. They are gay in colors and curious in the adjustment of stuffs, from the flimsy jackets to the fantastic skirts. The first essential in the dress of a Filipino is a jacket cut low, the decolette feature being obscured to some extent by pulling out one shoulder and covering the other, taking the chances of the lines that ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... opinion in a free and educated country as to where the right lay in the subsequent Roman struggle. What sensible or honest Protestant would not sympathize with the indignant eloquence of this earnest Italian protesting against the flimsy ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... both by French and English firms. The drawing-room of 1850 to 1860 was apparently incomplete without occasional chairs, a screen with painted panel, a work table, or some small cabinet or casket of this decorative but somewhat flimsy material. ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... troops for the Canadian Red River Expedition have been supplied by Gen. LINDSEY, and are commanded by Col. WOLSLEY—a fact oddly co-incidental with the reported flimsy character of the expedition, so far ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... comfort me I prepared to enter. My first care was the jewels, so, feeling them precarious in my shirt, I twined the collar round my neck and clasped it. The snake-clasp was no flimsy device of modern jewellery, and I had no fear but that it would hold. I held the pistol between my teeth, and with a prayer to God slipped ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... to buy flimsy furniture, however cheap. As a rule, there is too much furniture in the American home. It is better to get along with a few good, durable articles, even though a little expensive, than with a profusion of inferior ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... gust of wind more furious than ever struck the hut and shook it to its foundations. At the same time a loud rumbling sound was heard outside. Most of the men leaped up, caught hold of spears or knives, and rushed out. Through the driving drift they could just see that the observatory, which was a flimsy structure, had been swept clean away, and that the more solid hut was following it. Even as they gazed they saw its roof caught up, and whirled off as if it had been a scroll of paper. The walls fell immediately after, and the stones rolled down the rocky ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... "These flimsy rags, that scarcely hide Our forms, can naught discourage us; But Hunger—ah! it may be thus That Fortune ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... up the flimsy sheet again and re-read the pitiful words. The letter could be answered easily enough. If she replied truthfully, she would relate a tragic history of a winter of lonely despair lived out in the beautiful old house, which to its solitary owner was like a body without a soul, ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... 'Departure of Mary Queen of Scots from Paris.' The story is not told; the figures are not grouped but huddled together; they are not well-drawn individually; the character is vulgar and tame; there is no taste in the disposal of the drapery and ornaments, no effect of chiaroscuro. It is flimsy and misty, and, as to color, the quality to which I was specially directed, if total disregard of arrangement, if the scattering of tawdry reds and blues and yellows over the picture, all quarrelling for ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... such of our readers as take interest in genuine records of glowing patriotism, to turn to general Miller's "Memoirs"—for such volumes of exhaustless variety and importance are seldom met with in these days of flimsy literature. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... Claes was uneducated. She knew how to read and write, but up to the age of twenty, at which time her parents withdrew her from a convent, she had read none but ascetic books. On her first entrance into the world, she was eager for pleasure and learned only the flimsy art of dress; she was, moreover, so deeply conscious of her ignorance that she dared not join in conversation; for which reason she was supposed to have little mind. Yet, the mystical education of a convent had one good result; it left her feelings in full force and ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... suspiciously; his food is poisoned, and he is kept in a weak and helpless condition, all out of fear of him. It is impossible to argue the patient out of his delusions by pointing out to him how clearly they conflict with reality; he evades any such test by some counter-argument, no matter how flimsy, and sticks to ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... because Adam constrains his own high esteem,—which are to him the reflection of his own self-worship. Repentance comes to him at last, because conscience has never in him been entirely overlaid and crushed. It comes when the whirlwind of anguish has swept over him, scattered all the flimsy mists of self-excuse in which self-love had sought to veil his wrong-doing, and bowed him to the dust; but who shall estimate the remediless ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... cold and secret nature was the place occupied by the memory of the Professor. Her pride in his scientific achievements, and her mortification at finding them but little known out of his own country, were genuine feelings. Never had Captain Wragge burned his adulterated incense on the flimsy altar of human vanity to better purpose than he was burning ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... laughable superstructure of fantastic farce. I remember hearing one of the two great comedians of the Theatre Francais, M. Coquelin, praise a comic actor of the Varietes whom we had lately seen in a rather cheap and flimsy farce, because he combined "la verite la plus absolue avec la fantasie la plus pure." And this is the merit of La Boule: its most humorous inventions have their roots ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... hold him aloft very carefully, oh, my brother warriors! He needs much "keeping up." He has no bones and sinews of his own, the poor old flimsy fellow! If we take our hands from him, he will fall a heap of worn-out rags, and the angry wind will whirl him away, and leave us forlorn. Oh, let us spend our lives keeping him up, and serving him, and making him great—that is, evermore puffed out ...
— Clocks - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... the house, and built up a fine, cheerful fire on the hearth. They proposed to practise a deception on Mrs. Howells by pretending they had been to Concord and returned. But it was no use. Their statements were flimsy, and guilt was plainly written on their faces. Howells recalls this incident delightfully, and expresses the belief that the humor of the situation was finally a greater pleasure to Clemens than the actual visit to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... scoundrel, no matter who it was, must be allowed to escape in order that he turn his attention to the burning shed and try to save the airship from destruction. Once the fire got inside, there was enough of the dangerous gasoline about to insure the speedy burning of the whole flimsy fabric, all ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... from a large number of original compositions; they are not chosen as his favourites, but as what he esteems most faultless. This appeared the safer method; since it is impossible that "the flimsy productions of a youth of seventeen," as Kirke White expresses it, should be free from considerable errors; and we are apt to think our most irregular flights, our most vigorous ones. On these pieces, however, he places little stress; his principal ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... to get up a sensation in the interest of their own flimsy sheets. There is some disturbance, but nothing like what people are made believe ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... fringe-like edge of mingled rose and cream dropping over the green handle. All at once he remembered one of Rebecca's early confidences,—the little pink sunshade that had given her the only peep into the gay world of fashion that her childhood had ever known; her adoration of the flimsy bit of finery and its tragic and sacrificial end. He entered the shop, bought the extravagant bauble, and expressed it to Wareham at once, not a single doubt of its appropriateness crossing the darkness of his masculine mind. He thought only of the joy in Rebecca's ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... been appeased. The place was deserted and lay bare and ugly in the dull light. The gallant ship of the night before was seen to be a poor, flimsy make-shift. No wonder Mr. Rosenblatt had wished billows to engulf it and mist to shroud it. He sat on a beam lying at the ship end of the pool and stared moodily at the ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... and an apologetic manner. I think he rather prided himself upon his familiarity with the English language—especially that part which is censored so severely by editors that only a half-dozen words are permitted to appear in cold type, and sometimes even they must hide their faces behind such flimsy veils as this: d——n. So if I never quote Mr. Pochette ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... were thumps and bangs as grapplers clanged on the surface of the craft. Mud gurgled around them as they were hauled up and out with the sound of a giant sipping soup. A mud-encrusted hatchway flew open, and Kielland stepped down on a flimsy-looking platform below. Four small rodent-like creatures were attached to it by ropes; they heaved with a will and began paddling through the soupy mud dragging the platform and Kielland toward a row of low wooden ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... can see my darling yet: the little form In slip of flimsy stuff all creamy white, Pink-belted waist with ample bows, Blue shoes scarce bigger than the house-cat's ears—Capering in ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... arrest, after her long struggle for respectability, that she gave a false name and became involved in a story to which she could devote but half her attention, being still absorbed in an undercurrent of speculative thought which continually broke through the flimsy tale ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... and ordered a disposition of my half of the party so as to command the space in front of the line of tents. In another instant the flames were ascending two tree-trunks, and the rapid cracking of rifles broke our long reserve. With the first scream of a bullet through their flimsy shelters the Indians leaped out and ran for the river. Few fell. Rapid zigzags and the swinging of blankets and arms as they ran confused the aim of the soldiers. In less than five minutes the last Apache was out of sight, and the ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... from my bonds after a time, and I undid Quarles. The cellar door was a flimsy affair, my shoulder against the lock burst it open at once. No one rushed to prevent our escape. The house was as silent as ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... should have these honest naive notions regarding the beau monde, the characteristics of which a namby-pamby tea-party painter could hit off far better than he. He is a great deal too downright and manly to appreciate the flimsy delicacies of small society—you cannot expect a lion to roar you like any sucking dove, or frisk about a drawing-room like a ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... many—soon disillusioned Hyde. The great hopes which he had formed from estimating the splendid chances opened by the Restoration, were grievously dispelled. He learned how selfish and how flimsy was much of the noisy loyalty. He soon learned, also, to take a just estimate of the character of the King. During the time of exile he had formed a high opinion of Charles's abilities, and had frequent cause to appreciate his tact and abundant fund of humour and of common-sense. ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... memory. Now, if he had bought that house, the sort of life we were then leading might have become habitual, and he might possibly have been saved from the sad fate that awaited him. However, though tempted for a moment, he refused because it did not seem a good investment, being a flimsy little ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... the big pot and the little," it ran, "and to kill the fatted calf. I am going to cheer up my gloomy household by bringing four men home to dinner. If it were not for these flimsy little card houses, I would suggest a dance afterwards, but I couldn't answer for the walls and roof if two young Americans danced a two-step in ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... Number One: this in addition to his saloon in Sycamore Flats. The roadhouse was, as a matter of fact, on government land, but Austin established the shadow of a claim under mineral regulations, and, by obstructionist tactics, had prevented all the red tape from being unwound. His mineral claim was flimsy; he knew it, and everybody else knew it. But until the case should be reported back, he remained where he was. It was up to Plant; and Plant had been lenient. Probably Austin could have ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... ship. Some of the houses are curious to look at, for they have neither windows nor doors; for the best dwellings are built round an open court, and the windows, or air-holes as they might more properly be called, open on to that. Instead of being light and built of some flimsy stuff, as you might expect, the houses are all put up 'on the heat-resisting principle,' as I heard an engineer describe them— just like the Irishman that wore his Connemara frieze coat in summer to keep out the sun, as he said, in the same way ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... you. Do you think I could forget what I read in your eyes that day in the forest? Could you forget what you wrote there? Only your lips refused me. Even when they refused me, they were warm with my kisses. They were mine, as you were, body and soul. You loved me, Hermia—from the first. These flimsy barriers you're raising, I'll ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... to know it only possible— Some wishes cross'd my mind and dimly cheer'd it— And one or two poor melancholy Pleasures— In these, the pale unwarming light of Hope Silv'ring their flimsy wing, flew silent by, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... distributed town-garden, with the vague hum of big grudging boundaries all about it, but with everything worse excluded, being of course the most insolently-pleasant thing in the world. In addition to which, when the garden is in the Italian manner, with flowers rather remarkably omitted, as too flimsy and easy and cheap, and without lawns that are too smart, paths that are too often swept and shrubs that are too closely trimmed, though with a fanciful formalism giving style to its shabbiness, and here and there ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... about taking up a proposition that may mean war. May I ask you to come at once to me with their answer. It is possible that they will call for a consultation with the ministers, nobles and high officers. Still, I fear they will be unwilling to risk much on the rather flimsy proof you can give. Gabriel is powerful and we do not seek a war with him. There is another foe for whom we are quietly whetting our swords." The significant remark caused both listeners to prick up their ears. But he disappointed, their curiosity, and they were left to speculate ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... closer at the fingers for signs of force and suddenly caught his breath. Under the woman's flimsy sleeve was a wrought gold bracelet, smaller than that one he himself had worn in Delhi and up the Khyber—exactly like the little one that Yasmini wore on her wrist in the Cavern of Earth's Drink! He raised the loose sleeve to ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... look all about them in order to find an adequate means of expression for their most precious message: One day a serious young man came to Hull-House with his pretty young sister who, he explained, wanted to go somewhere every single evening, "although she could only give the flimsy excuse that the flat was too little and too stuffy to stay in." In the difficult role of elder brother, he had done his best, stating that he had taken her "to all the missions in the neighborhood, that she had ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... attract the attention from the inferior material of which it was composed. The softer and poorer the wood, the deeper it was possible to stamp it at a single blow. The same principle applies to much work in metal. Flimsy bits of silverware stamped with cheap designs of flowers or fruits are attached to surfaces badly finished, while the work involved in making such a piece of plate with a plain surface would increase its cost ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... the cinder pathway so close that he could touch it with his stick. It was incredible that so terrible a thing could dwindle in a few years to the dimensions of a motor piston. The crank that moved up and down like a bending, gigantic knee looked almost flimsy now. ... ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... that the byways leading to the abbey from the north of the Tweed were not very practicable for motors and we therefore approached it from the other side. This made it necessary to cross the river on a flimsy suspension bridge for foot-passengers only, and a notice at each end peremptorily forbade that more than half a dozen people pass over the bridge at one time. After crossing the river it was a walk of more ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... that be?" inquired this very sensible man. "Surely her mother must be crazy, to let her go out in such bitter weather as it has been to-day, with only that flimsy white gown ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... cuckoos, while suggesting their foreign ally in shape and somewhat in song, have mended their ways, and though it is true they make a bad mess of it, they at least try to build their own nest, and rear their own young with tender solicitude. The nest is usually so sparse and flimsy an affair that you can see through its coarse mesh of sticks from below, the fledglings lying as on a grid-iron or toaster; and it is, moreover, occasionally so much higher in the centre than at the sides that the chicks tumble out of bed ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... cow-byres, like dog-kennels. The horseman hammered with the butt of a heavy revolver at the doors of low pulperias, of obscene lean-to sheds sloping against the tumble-down piece of a noble wall, at the wooden sides of dwellings so flimsy that the sound of snores and sleepy mutters within could be heard in the pauses of the thundering clatter of his blows. He called out men's names menacingly from the saddle, once, twice. The drowsy answers—grumpy, conciliating, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... much to tempt a man like myself to run the risk of penal servitude. In this new agitation, scarcely knowing what I did, I caught the surrounding strap in my fingers just above the fastening and tore the staple out of the lock. These locks, you know, are pretty flimsy as a rule." ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... The moral of the Jesuit's story I think as wholesome a one as ever was writ: the artfullest, the wisest, the most toilsome, and dexterous plot-builders in the world—there always comes a day when the roused public indignation kicks their flimsy edifice down, and sends its cowardly enemies a-flying. Mr. Swift hath finely described that passion for intrigue, that love of secrecy, slander, and lying, which belongs to weak people, hangers-on ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... flimsy cassock, Pierre was looking on when Abbe Rose, who seemed to have sheltered himself behind a pillar of the porch on purpose to watch for him, came forward: "Ah! it's you at last, my dear child," said he, "I ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of plaster from the wall would slide and smash, and now some loosened tile would rattle down the roof and crash into the empty greenhouse below. Elizabeth shuddered, and was still; Denton wrapped his gay and flimsy city cloak about her, and so they crouched in the darkness. And ever the thunder broke louder and nearer, and ever more lurid flashed the lightning, jerking into a momentary gaunt clearness the steaming, dripping room in ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... ships of war were in hot chase after the enemy, who were scampering away over the hills as fast as their legs could carry them, leaving their baggage ingloriously scattered over the road, as many a cheap lacquered hat and flimsy paper cartridge-box, preserved by our Blue Jackets as trophies, will testify. So good was the stampede, that the enemy's loss amounted only to one aged coolie, who, being too decrepit to run, was taken prisoner, after having had seventeen revolver shots fired at him without effect; and ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... amending it at the time, they could pass that, and then, Chase's amendment being merged, put it in the shape they wanted. They did not choose to do so, but they went into a quibble with Chase to get him to add what they knew he would not add, and because he would not, they stand upon that flimsy pretext for voting down what they argued was the meaning and intent of their own bill. They left room thereby for this Dred Scott decision, which goes very far to make slavery ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... are to come up has to be posted in the Agora. But if there is a sudden crisis, formalities can be thrown to the winds; a sudden bawling of the heralds in the streets, a great smoky column caused by burning the traders' flimsy booths in the Agora,—these are valid notices of an extraordinary meeting to confront an ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... beauty might have baffled the most ideal painter of the fair Hebrew saints. Raffaelle himself could not have designed a brow of more delicate supremacy. Her lofty but gracious bearing, the vigour of her clear, frank mind, her earnestness, free from all ecstasy and flimsy enthusiasm, but founded in knowledge and deep thought, and ever sustained by exact expression and ready argument, her sweet witty voice, the great and all-engaging theme on which she was so content to discourse, and which seemed by right to belong ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... presuming a fall of exports from a regulation which took place only in November, 1766; whose effects could not appear until the following year; and which, when they do appear, utterly overthrow all his flimsy reasons and affected suspicions upon the effect ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with old-fashioned heavy sash windows opening on a narrow brick-walled town-garden sloping down to a river, and neatly kept. The same might be said of the room, where heavy old-fashioned furniture, handsome but not new, was concealed by various flimsy modernisms, knicknacks, fans, brackets, china photographs and water-colours, a canary singing loud in the window in the ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... escape. So when I turn to the rest of the evidence, ghosts and all, I cannot carry with me the irreversibly negative bias of the 'rigorously scientific' mind, with its presumption as to what the true order of nature ought to be. I feel as if, though the evidence be flimsy in spots, it may nevertheless collectively carry heavy weight. The rigorously scientific mind may, in truth, easily overshoot the mark. Science means, first of all, a certain dispassionate method. To suppose that it means ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... thinking a great deal of you and the Monument of late, and even tried to get my thoughts into a poem, hitherto without success. God knows how you are: I begin to weary dreadfully to see you - well, in nine months, I hope; but that seems a long time. I wonder what has befallen me too, that flimsy part of me that lives (or dwindles) in the public mind; and what has befallen THE MASTER, and what kind of a Box the Merry Box has been found. It is odd to know nothing of all this. We had an old woman ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... connected in a thousand places with the affairs of the Roman Empire, of which we have several credible histories. Now, there are two modes of investigation open to us, the dogmatic and the inductive. We may take either. We may construct for ourselves, from the most flimsy suppositions, a metaphysical balloon, inflated with self-conceit into the rotundity of a cosmogony, according to which, in our opinion, the world should have been made, and we may paint it over with the figures of the various animals and noble savages which ought to have sprung ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... their rifles cracked sharply, to be generally rewarded with a howl of pain from some cutthroat who had been winged. But there could be but one end to such a battle. The convicts were well protected behind big trees, while the flimsy sides of their canoes afforded the brave little band of Seminoles almost no protection. Still they fought stubbornly on, answering shot with shot until the point and canoes were shrouded in a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... trusting to the potato, and the potato happens to fail—are we to be punished for that defect, be it one of carelessness, of improvidence, or of misgovernment? Better that we had no reason at all than one so obviously flimsy. If we turn to the petitions which, about the end of autumn, were forwarded from different towns, praying for that favourite measure of the League, the opening of the ports, it will be seen that one and all of them were founded on the assumed fact, that the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... alternative of disunion, the people of the border States were eager to espouse their quarrel, and join them in a contest for alleged political rights. Nearly half the people of the North were ready to acknowledge the justness of their complaints. The election of Lincoln was indeed a flimsy pretext for separation, but it had the merit of universal publicity, and of rankling irritation among the unthinking masses of the South. Agriculture was depressed, commerce was in panic, manufacturing populations were in want, the national treasury ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... await our advance here before they found their retreat was cut off. They have thrown up some shelters. We noticed from afar off several very conspicuous stone sangars, but coming close, we were surprised to find that they were made of stones loosely put together with big chinks, very flimsy and frail, and much too high for their purpose, too. They evidently were not intended for shelters at all. What were they there for? We looked carefully round, and at last the meaning of the device struck us. A hundred yards to the right the ground dropped sharp, leaving an edge; here was the ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... dress fabrics, rubbing each between her work-hardened fingers and thumb till the shopkeeper winced, expecting to see it torn. After trying several and getting the counter covered she would push them aside, contemptuously remarking, 'I don't like this yer shallygallee (flimsy) stuff. Haven't'ee got any gingham tackle?' Whereat the poor draper would cast down a fresh roll of stoutest material with the reply: 'Here, ma'am. Here's something that will wear like pin-wire.' This did better, but was declared ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... its ravages, and the people in their wild terror resorted to the bal-shem for amulets and talismans. On every door could be read the inscription, "Not at home." But the cholera would not be put off by so flimsy a device and entered unbidden. Even the death of a grave-digger did not stay the dread disease, although it had been prophesied that such an event would end the trouble. The cabalistic books were ransacked for charms and ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... some of the tobacco smoke the windows were pulled down partly from the top. The bottom sashes were covered with half-curtains of imitation lace, but so flimsy that the boys saw through them ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... produce the impression that it is beyond defence and impossible to justify. It is not surprising that people begin to say: "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Let us experience all we desire. Let us act like the normal healthy creatures that we are. Let us ignore the flimsy barriers a corrupt and imbecile moral code would erect between us and what ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... has only got one-eighth part of his wits at home to govern the doings of his arms, legs, and tongue. A large half is occupied with his fancy, in all the wanderings of that creature, dreamy, flimsy, anchoring with gossamer, climbing the sky with steps of fog, cast into abysms (as great writers call it) by imaginary demons, and even at its best in a queer condition, pitiful, yet exceeding proud. A quarter of the mental power is employed in wanting to know what the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... On such flimsy pretexts do men and nations wage war. Why then wonder if historians differ also? In the "Wilderness," each man's view was bounded by a very narrow horizon and few knew what was going on outside their range of vision. What was true of the "Wilderness" was true of nearly every ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... mother, all these became easily apparent. With difficulty Ranald restrained his indignation. He let him talk for some time and then opened out upon him. He read him no long lecture, but his words came forth with such fiery heat that they burned their way clear through all the faults and flimsy selfishness of the younger man till they reached the true heart of him. His last words Hughie ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... the telephone business have grown up together, he always a little distance in advance. No other man has touched the apparatus of telephony at so many points. He fought down the flimsy, clumsy methods, which led from one snarl to another. He found out how to do with wires what Dickens did with words. "Let us do it right, boys, and then we won't have any bad dreams"—this has ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... not. It is sufficient to say that in their decorations, pictures, bacchanalian ornaments, and general suggestion, they were a reflex of Mr. Van Dam's character, in the more refined and aesthetic phase which he presented to society. Indeed, in the name of art, whose mantle, if at times rather flimsy, is broader than that of charity, not a few would have admired the exhibitions ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... are making my life miserable," sobbed Mrs. Winstanley, feebly dabbing her forehead with a flimsy Valenciennes bordered handkerchief, steeped in eau-de-cologne, "and I am sure Conrad would ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... down with him. For a moment he lay where he had fallen, too dazed and befuddled to rise, but presently he clambered up, his eyes wide and terrified, for his rising was Phoenix-like—mantled in flame. With incredible swiftness the flimsy coverings of his bed had burst into a crimson glare and even ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... about his way of living, about all his persuasions. It was a general doubt. It was not a specific suspicion upon this point or that. It was a feeling of detachment and unreality at once extraordinarily vague and extraordinarily oppressive. It was as if he discovered himself flimsy and transparent in a world of minatory solidity and opacity. It was as if he found himself made not of flesh and ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... her flimsy green satin and point-lace, was one of the first victims, and fell from the bough in company with a sad shower of last year's leaves. The worthy Cricket family, however, avoided Jack Frost by emigrating in time to the chimney-corner ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... the sphere of nature? It is not simply an ideal which feeds the fancy, nor the flimsy emotion of a sentimental heart. We should seek for its meaning, not in the flowery vales of imagination, but amid the sober realities of thought ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips |
