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Fabric   Listen
noun
Fabric  n.  
1.
The structure of anything; the manner in which the parts of a thing are united; workmanship; texture; make; as cloth of a beautiful fabric.
2.
That which is fabricated; as:
(a)
Framework; structure; edifice; building. "Anon out of the earth a fabric huge Rose like an exhalation."
(b)
Cloth of any kind that is woven or knit from fibers, whether vegetable, animal, or synthetic; manufactured cloth; as, silks or other fabrics; made of a fabric that is 50% cotton and 50% polyester.
3.
The act of constructing; construction. (R.) "Tithe was received by the bishop,... for the fabric of the churches for the poor."
4.
Any system or structure consisting of connected parts; as, the fabric of the universe. "The whole vast fabric of society."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fabric" Quotes from Famous Books



... journeys; and the sea-side should be of a strong fabric, simple cut, and plain color. Things which will wash are better for our climate. Serge, tweed, and piqu, are ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... governed despotically, but always by the advice of my counsellors and Cabinet Ministers. If they have erred, my conscience is void of reproach. I wish the National Assembly may govern for the future with equal prudence, equity, and justice; but they have given a poor earnest in pulling down one fabric before they have laid the solid foundation of another. I am very happy that their agents, who, though they call themselves the guardians of public order have hitherto destroyed its course, have, in the courage of this English lady, met with some resistance to their insolence, in foolishly ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... to the welfare of the whole, to the RES PUBLICA. After all, "love to our neighbour" is always a secondary matter, partly conventional and arbitrarily manifested in relation to our FEAR OF OUR NEIGHBOUR. After the fabric of society seems on the whole established and secured against external dangers, it is this fear of our neighbour which again creates new perspectives of moral valuation. Certain strong and dangerous instincts, such as the love of enterprise, foolhardiness, revengefulness, astuteness, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... indication of puling Infancy here.] These four great Empires of the world had run their course when our SAVIOUR CHRIST was born. GOD sent His own Eternal SON into the world; and lo, a change passed over the whole fabric of the world's polity. The old forms of social life became, as it were, dissolved; or rather, a new spirit had been breathed into them all. A new era had commenced; and a new principle henceforth animated mankind. That peculiar system of Divine ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... ambled gently along together. Miriam had discarded her little fur pelerine and her double-breasted jacket bulged loosely over the thin fabric of her blouse. She breathed in the leaf-scented air and felt it playing over her breast and neck. She drew deep breaths as they went slowly along under the Waldstrasse lime-trees and looked up again and again at the ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson

... villages, he buys almost nothing; he is carpenter, farmer, blacksmith, shoemaker; and, if not he, his wife is weaver and tailor. The waggon he drives is his handiwork; so is the harness; the home-spun cloth of his suit is made by his wife from the wool of his own sheep: it is an excellent fabric but, alas, the young people now prefer the machine-made cottons and cloths of commerce and will no longer wear homespun. Sometimes the habitant makes his own boots, the excellent bottes sauvages of the country. The women make not only home-spun ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... field and watery waste and fruit and flower, she knew nothing. But what of that! had she not secured this bit of rosy radiance, and might it not in time be added to, until it should incarnadine the whole fabric ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris

... so, had Webster taken half as much pains with her as he has with the madmen, ruffians, ghosts, and 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 here ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... foundation except a massive oblong wooden frame to which all the superstructure was attached. You might, if strong enough, have grasped it by the ridge-pole and carried it bodily away without tearing up any foundation or deranging the fabric. It was kept in order and managed by an elderly sister of Angus, named Martha, for Angus was a widower. His only son Ian dwelt in the school-house, a mile farther ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne

... foreign and domestic foes, could, nevertheless, always find time to promote the internal prosperity of his much afflicted country. For the dissolution of Denmark, during the long anarchy, had been internal as well as external. The whole social fabric had been convulsed and transformed. The monarchy had been undermined. The privileged orders had aggrandized themselves at the expense of the community. The yeoman class had sunk into semi-serfdom. In a word, the natural cohesion of the Danish nation had been loosened ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... of the room. The frock which she had prepared for Amy's use in the mill was remodelled from an old one of her mistress's. As has been said, Amy had never worn any sort of dress except white. The fabric was changed to suit the season, but the color was not. Even her warm winter cloak was of heavy white wool, faced here and there with scarlet, to match the simple scarlet headgear that suited her dark face so well. Quite against the habits of her own upbringing, Mrs. Kaye had clothed her ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... the luxurious citizens of Syracuse and Alexandria, who were delighted with the poems of Theocritus, were less cold, cruel, and sensual than the remnant of their tribe. But corruption must utterly have destroyed the fabric of human society before poetry can ever cease. The sacred links of that chain have never been entirely disjoined, which descending through the minds of many men is attached to those great minds, whence ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... my hand in contact with the shawl, ascertained its exact texture, and saw that both its tint and its fabric were unquestionably the same as the knotted fragment I held in my hand. Chenille shawls, as every woman knows, must be handled carefully or the lightly-made fringe will come asunder; for the kind of cord of floss silk is generally made upon a ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... soul. There is a vine growing in the islands of the tropic seas that thrives best upon the ancient ruins or crumbling walls of some edifice built by man; yet ever as it thrives, the tiny tendrils penetrate between the fibres of the stone, cutting and cutting till the whole fabric disappears, leaving only the verdant mass of the foliage of the living vine. Spiritualism is to the future humanity what this vine is to the ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... small ears,—and native refinement or the other thing shows very plainly in the ears,—it lay full, and shaped into a soft curve. She was only plain, not ugly, after all; and they are very different things,—there being a beauty of plainness in men and women, as there is in a rich fabric, sometimes. ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... metal-cutting machine tools, forging-pressing machines, electric motors, tires, knitted wear, hosiery, shoes, silk fabric, chemicals, trucks, instruments, microelectronics, jewelry manufacturing, software development, ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... because they are "new" and "different" and "pretty"? She selects a "rich" paper for her hall and an "elegant" paper for her drawing-room—the chances are it is a nile green moire paper! For her library she thinks a paper imitating an Oriental fabric is the proper thing, and as likely as not she buys gold paper for her dining-room. She finds so many charming bedroom papers that she has no trouble in selecting a dozen of them for insipid blue rooms and pink rooms ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... temporary boarders, daughters of good houses, generally pretty girls looking forward with some confidence to managing houses of their own. At that time every girl who set up to be anything in our part of the country aspired to make her own dresses and build the imposing fabric of her own bonnets. ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... my achievements never went so far as concrete capuality, but stopped short in the later stages of abstract idealism. However, prejudice is stronger than truth; and, as I said, every fragment of every fabric that could not give an account of itself was charged with being a nightcap till it was proved to be a dish-cloth or a cart-rope. I at length surrendered at discretion, and remembered that somewhere in my reading I had met with exquisite lace caps, and I did not that ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... much as song, action, and scenery concerns itself with the exposition of the drama. That it may do this the agencies, spiritual as well as material, which are instrumental in the development of the play, are identified with certain melodic phrases, out of which the musical fabric is woven. These phrases are the much mooted, much misunderstood "leading motives"—typical phrases I call them. Wagner has tried to make them reflect the character or nature of the agencies with which he has associated them, and therefore we find the giants in the Niblung tetralogy ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... a condition of mental paralysis. The whole fabric of his thinking and feeling for months of intense emotional experience had instantly been annihilated, and he was left in the midst of a great void in his consciousness out of touching-reach of anything. There was no sharp pang, but just a bewildered numbness. ...
— Lost - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... these jagged misshapen distichs the neat fabric which Hoole's machine produces in unlimited abundance. We take the first lines on which we open in his version of Tasso. They are neither better nor worse than ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... nor Bonbright realized, perhaps would never realize, that it is not the individual who brings about changes in the social fabric. It is not fanatics, not reformers, not inspired leaders. It is the labored working of the mass, and the working of the mass brings forth and casts up fanatics, reformers, leaders, when it has gestated ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... alienation, enmity, have arisen between the North and the South, and those who, from "the times that tried men's souls," have stood shoulder to shoulder in asserting their rights against the world; who, as a band of brothers, had combined to build up this fair fabric of human liberty, are now almost in the act of turning their fratricidal arms against each other's bosoms. All other parties that have existed in our country, were segregated on questions of policy affecting the whole nation and each individual composing it ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... think there is some analogy between the tale of this humble man and the history of your great University. It seems to me I see the huge frame of a large fabric which has stood for centuries glorious and proud. The stones are changed, the bricks, the mortar, or the roof are renewed; and the fabric still stands through the ages, through the storms, glorious and proud. And I hope it will so remain and stand everlasting, with ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... heating these substances. He immersed cotton in solutions of these salts as a variation of the regular means for studying elements by injecting them into flames. After burning the cotton he found that he had a replica of the original fabric composed of the oxide of the metal, and this glowed brilliantly ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... tufts of beard here and there, on account of his habit of plucking the hairs out one by one when he was absorbed in thought, not to mention those plucked out by his wife without the excuse of thinking. His black cap shone like a buttered roll, his linen shirt was neither an Egyptian nor a Swiss fabric, and his chest, overgrown with long black hair, always showed bare through the slit of his unbuttoned shirt. His linen trousers had been white once upon a time, but now they were picturesquely variegated from ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... to reconnoitre and rule the whole enormous field. It is now necessary that a generation of anti-Alexanders should arise, endowed with the supreme strength necessary for gathering up, binding together, and joining the individual threads of the fabric, so as to prevent their being scattered to the four winds. The object is not to cut the Gordian knot of Greek culture after the manner adopted by Alexander, and then to leave its frayed ends fluttering in all directions; it is rather to bind it after it has been loosed. That ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... 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, ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... having been seriously disturbed, it becomes indispensable to look to their permanent security, whatever may be the temporary inconvenience arising from the necessary destruction of portions of the old fabric. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... in despair, The Greeks grew weary of the tedious war, And by Minerva's aid a fabric reared Which like a steed of monstrous height appeared. The sides were planked with pine: they feigned it made For their return, and this the vow they paid. Thus they pretend, but in the hollow side Selected numbers of their soldiers hide; With inward arms the dire machine they load, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... world do not lend themselves well to making over. "Tales from Shakespeare" are apt to leave out Shakespeare's genius, and "Stories from Homer" are not Homer. In cutting the doublet to fit, the most precious part of the fabric is ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken

... up by two corners, and then his puzzle became solved. In the cloth were two small holes, and round one of them the fabric was charred and bore the characteristic smell of burned powder. It was clear what had been done. With the object doubtless of hiding the flash as well as of muffling the report, the murderer had covered his weapon with a double thickness ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... furnished in like manner by the Crown, took the place, to a certain extent, of wool,— the people were required to labor for the Inca. The quantity of the cloth needed, as well as the peculiar kind and quality of the fabric, was first determined at Cuzco. The work was then apportioned among the different provinces. Officers, appointed for the purpose, superintended the distribution of the wool, so that the manufacture of the different articles should be intrusted to the most competent hands.20 They did not leave ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... such a pillow! From its depths I extracted the parting gifts bestowed upon me by my Great-Aunt Paulina and adjusted them to my chilled extremities. Ah, little had she recked, as her deft fingers wove the several skeins of wool into the finished fabric, that under such circumstances as these, in such a place as this, and almost within sound of war's dread alarums, I should now ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... of intellect and will, but by adroitness; not by masterful authority, but by pliant diplomacy; not by forcing but by following the current of events. Since Gregory VII., no Pope had done so much as Pius IV. for bracing the ancient fabric of the Church and confirming the Papal prerogative. But what a difference there is between a Hildebrand and a Giovanni Angelo Medici! How Europe had changed, when a man of the latter's stamp was the right instrument of destiny for starting ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... on a five-franc piece as a fortune, but he bore the hardships and the pinching thrift without grumbling. His moody looks had been succeeded by an expression of radiant hope. He saw the star shining above his head, he had dreams of a great time to come, and built the fabric of his good fortune on M. de Bargeton's tomb. M. de Bargeton, troubled with indigestion from time to time, cherished the happy delusion that indigestion after dinner was a complaint to be cured by ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... Flanders to the Danube, had extricated the Imperialists from a state of the utmost peril, and elevated them at once to security, victory, and conquest. The decisive blow struck at Blenheim, resounded through every part of Europe; it at once destroyed the vast fabric of power which it had taken Louis XIV., aided by the talents of Turenne, and the genius of Vauban, so long to construct. Instead of proudly descending the valley of the Danube, and threatening Vienna, as Napoleon afterwards did in 1805 and 1809, the French were driven in the utmost disorder across ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... I say the fabric Was wrought of faery woof, Not made in walls of drab brick Nor won with mortal oof; Delicate, dream-like, pretty As sunshine after rain, Worn by Miss Hodgson ("Kitty")— It seems a dreadful pity She spilled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various

... has been only a rudimentary beginning of the development of international tribunals of justice, and there has been no development at all of any international police power. Now, as I have already said, the whole fabric of municipal law, of law within each nation, rests ultimately upon the judge and the policeman; and the complete absence of the policeman, and the almost complete absence of the judge, in international affairs, prevents there being as yet any real homology ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... neckband or collar of a shirt which turned down over the shoulders]. Three shirts. One waste-coate. One suite of Canvase [a suit made of coarse cloth, such as cotton, hemp, tow, or jute]. One suite of Frize [a woolen fabric with a nap]. One suite of Cloth. Three paire of Irish stockins. Foure paire of shooes. One paire of garters. One doozen of points [a point was a tie or string ending with an anglet and used to join parts of a costume as doublet ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter

... and has been growing every day for many years. He has given up the idea of eternal punishment, and that of necessity destroys it all. The Christian religion is founded upon hell. When the foundation crumbles the fabric falls. Beecher was to have answered my article in the North American Review, but when it appeared and he saw it, he agreed with so much of it that he concluded that an answer would ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... habitations the abodes of wretchedness? Surely this consideration is of itself sufficient to arouse the slumbering energies of woman, for the overthrow of a system which thus threatens to lay in ruins the fabric of her domestic happiness; and she will not be deterred from the performance of her duty to herself, her family, and her country, by ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... to detail the calamities which slavery has entailed upon our race in the domain of the family. Every one knows how it has pulled down every pillar and shattered every priceless fabric. But now that we have begun the life of freedom we should attempt the repair of this, the noblest of all the structures of human life. The basis of all human progress and of all civilization is the family. Despoil the idea of family, ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various

... come To break my iron-sleep again, Till Lok[3] has burst his tenfold chain; 90 Never till substantial Night Has re-assumed her ancient right; Till, wrapp'd in flames, in ruin hurl'd, Sinks the fabric of the world. ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... rest of the country for the last nine months deeper and more intense than any during the war, because mixed with an angry sense of unexpected and treacherous disappointment, instead of setting their strength to the rebuilding of their shattered social fabric, they are waiting, as they waited four years ago, for a division in the North which will never come, and hailing in Andrew Johnson a scourge of God who is to avenge them in the desolation of our cities! ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... Phyllis. On one occasion Phyllis procured a most marvellous fabric of gold brocade in order to eclipse her rival, but Brunetta arrayed her train-bearer in a dress of the same material and cut in the same fashion. Phyllis was so mortified that she went ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... dealing with men was to mystify them. He was pleased to pose as a faithful ally, but human intellect was insufficient to fathom what he meant. On this system, skilfully pursued, was reared the whole fabric of Louis Napoleon's reputation for being a profound politician. Bearing the fact in mind, we can easily see why that reputation crumbled away almost entirely when the present became the past. There are few cases in ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... like me, and oh, I must show you something!" She sprang up, and from a box lying on the sofa she took a filmy, rose-coloured fabric. "What do you think of this?" she demanded, shaking out the shimmering folds ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard

... iron fingers pick and sort, and the muscles of steel retain their faithful gripe, and enormous energies run to and fro with an obedient click; while forces that tear the arteries of the earth and heave volcanoes, spin the fabric of an infant's robe, and weave the ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... up on a plateau to look at her battery. She noted the edge of a brake-band peeping beyond the drum, in a ragged line of fabric and copper wire. Then she knew that she didn't know enough to conquer. "Do you suppose it's dangerous?" she asked her father, who said a lot of comforting things that didn't ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... form; contains one man, who, on reaching the shore, shoulders his coracle, deposits it in safety, and covers it with dried rushes or heather. The Arctic baidar is of similar construction. It is probably of the like primitive fabric with ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... high good-humor, having done her errand quite to her satisfaction. The bell rings and they gather slowly. Madame Lepelletier is more enchanting still in some soft black fabric, with dull gold in relief. Floyd has washed and brushed and freshened, but still wears his travelling suit for a very good reason. Cecil is in white, with pale blue ribbons, which give her a sort of seraphic look. Yet she is tired with all the jaunting about, and after ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... the Indians they could induce to unite in the enterprise. They drew a written constitution, the provisions of which were to govern and direct the conduct of the members and the workings of the community. Of course, the fundamental principles upon which the whole fabric rested were similar to those taught by the ten commandments. The Indians, with the advice of the missionaries, elected a president for the young republic, and the choice fell upon a wise and upright man, about fifty years ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... her niece's dress was, Miss Belinda could not have told. It was a silken and soft fabric of a pale blue color; it clung to the slender, lissome young figure like a glove; a fan-like train of great length almost covered the hearth-rug; there were plaitings and frillings all over it, and yards of delicate satin ribbon cut into loops in ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... foregoing confession is made more significant by the author's subsequent comment on it. 'Though my dejection,' he says, 'honestly looked at, could not be called other than egotistical, produced by the ruin, as I thought, of my fabric of happiness, yet the destiny of mankind was ever in my thoughts, and could not be separated from my own. I felt that the flaw in my life must be a flaw in life itself; and that the question was whether, if the reformers ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... them poured the ceaseless shot, 160 With unabating fury sent From battery to battlement; And thunder-like the pealing din[oj] Rose from each heated culverin; And here and there some crackling dome Was fired before the exploding bomb; And as the fabric sank beneath The shattering shell's volcanic breath, In red and wreathing columns flashed The flame, as loud the ruin crashed, 170 Or into countless meteors driven, Its earth-stars melted into heaven;[ok] Whose ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... into a Stamp Office, that business being at present carried on in chambers in Lincoln's Inn." So much for the history and ownership of a place which played a considerable part in London history. The fabric itself must have been very magnificent. There was a venerable hall 74 feet long, with six Gothic windows. At Ely House were held magnificent feasts by the Serjeants-at-Law, one of which continued for five days, and was honoured on the first ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... trouble on his own part. His house assumed an air of lighter and more tasteful elegance,—flowers, always arranged by Thelma herself, adorned the rooms,—birds filled the great conservatory with their delicious warblings, and gradually that strange fairy sweet fabric known as "Home" rose smilingly around him. Formerly he had much disliked his stately town mansion—he had thought it dull and cold—almost gloomy,—but now he considered it charming, and wondered he had missed so many ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... of heavy fabric, hung from brass or plush mounted poles, may be gracefully draped to the sides, while the inner lace ones should be hung straight and be fastened in the center with some ornament or bow of ribbon corresponding in shade to the general tone of the room. The straight shades next to the glass ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... 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 insensible to ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... the wilderness, under the protection of the Indians themselves. And yet these very men and women, had La Salle been captured in battle, would have shouted and leaped for joy in seeing him writhing and shrieking beneath fiend-like tortures. Such is fallen man. He is the ruin of a once noble fabric. But many fragments of his former grandeur still remain. There is no philosophy, save the religion of the Bible, ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... contrary, behold an elegant of latest fashion—that is, the fashion of his country and class, the men of the river. He wears neither coat nor vest while in the exercise of his office, but his shirt will merit an observation. It is of the finest fabric of the Irish loom—too fine to be worn by those who have woven it—and no Bond Street furnishing-house could equal ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... receive Senator Stone, he sent him a letter in which the cardinal points of his position were underlined. "Once accept a single abatement of right," he insisted, "and many other humiliations would certainly follow, and the whole fine fabric of international law might crumble under our hands piece by piece. What we are now contending for in this matter is the very essence of the things that have made America a sovereign nation. She cannot yield them without conceding her own impotency as a Nation and making virtual surrender of her ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... Upon that fabric fair "Here is she!" Seems written everywhere Unto me. But to friends and nodding neighbours, Fellow-wights in lot and labours, Who descry the times as I, No such lucid legend ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... often used, together with the fiber from any cocoons through which the worms have made their way out. This is real silk, of course, but it is made of short fibers which cannot be wound. It is carded and spun and made into fabric called "spun silk," which is used extensively for the heavier classes of goods. Then, too, silks are often "weighted"; that is, just before they are dyed, salts of iron or tin are added. One pound of silk will absorb two or three pounds of these chemicals, ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan

... our landlord would indeed have been astonished if he had suddenly looked in. The bed was a triumph of artistic skill, designed and arranged under her own directions, the curtains enclosing it were delicate in colouring and so soft in fabric that the bed seemed enveloped in a mass of blue clouds, gold-lined, and all the sheets and clothing were filmy and lace-edged, and must have been the despair of the steam laundry; a blue silk covering, the colour of her own eyes, and embroidered ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... In all parts round about this chosen site, For love or fear, he master-masons found; And, making full six thousand men unite, Stript of their heavy stones the mountains round, And raised a fabric ninety yards in height, From its extremest summit to the ground; And he within its walls the church enclosed; Wherein entombed ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... experience do not proceed from minute or partial imperfections, but from fundamental errors in the structure of the building, which can not be amended otherwise than by an alteration in the very elements and main pillars of the fabric. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... merely misty day. The transport plane stood by the door of a hangar on this military field, and mechanics stood well back from it and looked it over. A man crawled over the tail assembly and found one small hole in the fabric of the stabilizer. A shell fragment had gone through when the war rockets exploded nearby. The pilot verified that the fragment had hit no strengthening member inside. He nodded. The mechanic made very neat fabric patches over the two holes, upper and lower. He began to ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... in his own person for the post in question. Though of Greek origin he looked like a Spaniard. He spoke the Spanish language fluently. He had the procedure of the State Department at his finger's ends. He was the head of a charming domestic fabric—his daughters the prettiest girls in Washington. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... how admirable are their vastness and solidity—each arch in itself a fabric, and the whole so venerable and beautiful. After all my delight at Naples I infinitely prefer Rome; there is a tranquil magnificence and repose about Rome, and an indefinable pleasure in the atmosphere, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... these occasions when he needed it was approaching. He had made a "killing" at Desmond's, and had used the money to stop up the more threatening gaps in the tottering financial fabric known as his "personal accounts." The fabric would hold for a while, but meantime he needed money to go on with. And Leila evidently had none. He tried everybody except Plank. He had scarcely the impudence to go to Plank just yet; but when, completing the vicious circle, he found his borrowing ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... Councillor of Bursley was no more to him than a petty tradesman to a man of fashion. He was youthfully enthusiastic for the majesty and the impartiality of English justice, and behaved as though the entire responsibility for the safety of that vast fabric rested on his shoulders. He and the barrister from Hanbridge had had a historic quarrel at Cambridge, and their behaviour to each other was a lesson to the vulgar in the art of chill and consummate politeness. Young ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... wood. And the explanation was not far to seek. After luncheon Karstens and the writer had smoked their pipes, and one or the other had thrown a careless match away that had fallen unextinguished upon the silk tents that covered the cache. Presently a little wind had fanned the smouldering fabric into flame, which had eaten down into the pile of stuff below, mostly in wooden cases. All our sugar was gone, all our powdered milk, all our baking-powder, our prunes, raisins, and dried apples, most of our tobacco, a case of pilot bread, a sack full of woollen socks and ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck

... the period of its accomplishment. But, alas! that moment can never arrive. The whole is little better than a dream, a beautiful phantom of the imagination. These 'gorgeous palaces' of happiness and immortality, these 'solemn temples' of truth and virtue will dissolve, 'like the baseless fabric of a vision', when we awaken to real life and contemplate the true and genuine situation of man on earth. Mr Godwin, at the conclusion of the third chapter of his eighth book, speaking of ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus

... dressing-maid laid it lightly on her shoulders, and holding out a white nubia of zephyr worsted, she said, "P'r'aps missis would like to war dis ere." She stood watching while her mistress twined the gossamer fabric round her head with careless grace. She opened the door for her to pass out on the veranda, and as she looked after her she muttered to herself, "She's a pooty missis; but not such a gran' hansom lady as turrer." A laugh shone through ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... gladiatorial theory of existence. It demands that each man who enters into the enjoyment of the advantages of a polity shall be mindful of his debt to those who have laboriously constructed it, and shall take heed that no act of his weakens the fabric in which he has been permitted to live. Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic process, and reminding the individual of his duty to the community, to the protection and influence of which he owes, if not existence itself, at least the life ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda

... many a summer, indeed the tucks had been let down to accord with her growth, and showed in bars of brighter pink around the skirt. But the color of the dress became her well, her young shoulders filled out the thin fabric with sweet curves that overcame the old fashion of its make; her slender arms showed through the sleeves; and her small fair face was set in a muslin frill like a pink corolla. She had to pass the cemetery on her way home. As she came in sight of its white shafts, and headstones gleaming ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the colonial policy of Spain impoverished and degraded the Spaniards at home, through the injustice, greed and profligacy of those abroad, that the huge structure, once so great an imposition upon mankind, a rotten fabric so gilt that the inherent weakness was disguised, has finally fallen into universal and ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... arms, and we watched the storm by the lightning-flashes and waited for the end. But the end came not. The galley was light, broad, and buoyant as a life-boat; at the same time it was so strongly constructed that there was scarcely any twist or contortion in the sinewy fabric. So we floated buoyantly and safely upon the summit of vast waves, and a storm that would have destroyed a ship of the European fashion scarcely injured this in the slightest degree. It was an indestructible as a raft and as ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... all over the country, And deceiving the inexperienced youths with her cunning; No! the harsh destiny link'd with this war, so destructive of all things, Which is destroying the world, and already has wholly uprooted Many a time-honour'd fabric, has driven the poor thing to exile. Are not brave men of noble birth now wand'ring in mis'ry? Princes are fleeing disguised, and monarchs in banishment living. Ah, and she also herself, the best of her sisters, is driven Out of her native land; but her own misfortunes forgetting, Others she ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... with a gesture of fierce impatience. He flung the doubt away. Her love was not fashioned of so slender a fabric as this. What right had he to question ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... a great privilege to live, to work, to feel, to endure, to know: to realize that one is the instrument of Deity—being used by the Maker to work out His inscrutable purposes; to see vast changes occur in the social fabric and to know that men stop, pause and consider: to comprehend that this world is a different place because you have lived. Yes, it is a great privilege to live! Gainsborough lived—he reveled in life, and filled ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... Claybrook. She felt momentarily sorry for him, regretted that their friendship had come to its abrupt close. And yet there was no reason why she should feel sorry for him, he had so much of everything. But he and his world were woven out of different fabric from this world about her. She could not keep one and still have the other. Anyway, she had made up her mind. She had escaped; her feeling was one of definite escape. She banished ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... with fashioning silk purses out of fabric thou 'lt find to hand," cried the captain, his temper flashing up again; but Barbara neither turned nor replied as she fled down the hill to hide the tears she could ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... 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 ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks

... I received yours of the 4th, containing the revolutions in the fabric and pictures of the palace Pitti. My dear sir, make no excuse; we each write what we have to write; and if our letters remain, posterity will read the catastrophes of St. James's and the Palace ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... The existing cathedral, its later representative, is still an early and very simple Tuscan basilica, with picturesque crypt and raised choir, of a very plain Romanesque type. It looks like a fitting church for the mother-town of Florence; it seems to recall in its own cold and austere fabric the more ancient claims of ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... did I say? nay, by Heav'n, that we found; For their fame it shall last while the world goes round. The next in succession, I'll give you—the King! Whoe'er would betray him, on high may he swing; And here's the grand fabric, our free Constitution, As built on the base of the great Revolution; And longer with politics not to be cramm'd, Be Anarchy curs'd, and be Tyranny damn'd; And who would to Liberty e'er prove disloyal, May his son be a hangman, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... family, the home, the state, have all felt its transforming might. The aggregate of these changes is the profound social revolution that has been for some time, and that is at present tearing the fabric of the old society to tatters, while beneath its surface-chaos is forming the nucleus of ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing

... the Venetians made their glasses,—a most pure kind of glass, with a long stalk, within which was a curved elaboration of fancy-work, wreathed and twisted. This old glass was an heirloom of the Feltons, a relic that had come down with many traditions, bringing its frail fabric safely through all the perils of time, that had shattered empires; and, if space sufficed, I could tell many stories of this curious vase, which was said, in its time, to have been the instrument both of the Devil's sacrament in the forest, and of ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... bowed, and started to leave. He was a tall and shapely young man, with a waist, with a carriage. His garb was up-to-the-minute fashion—repressed. He was a study in brown, as to fabric of attire and its accessories. One of those white-faced chaps who always look a bit bored, with a touch of up-to-date cynicism! One of those fellows who listen much and ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... English; but it was not so in Ireland, where the Round Towers still stand to show (as some authorities hold) how the terrified native Irish sheltered from the Danish fury which nearly destroyed the whole fabric of Irish Christianity. The legends of Ireland, too, are full of the terror of the men of "Lochlann," which is generally taken to mean Norway; and the great coast cities of Ireland—Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Wexford, and others—were ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... to it, and that is a matter of my own private opinion, which is, that Richard Pardon is the most irritating idiot ever created by an author. For the sake of the story, it was necessary that he should be weak; but he is such a very backboneless man, and yet quite strong enough to support the fabric of the plot. Then one is cleverly put off the scent by a certain Richard Mortlock, from whom the reader expects much more than ever comes out. The sequel of this capital novelette must be Richard Mortlock. ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various

... crude petroleum, textile fabric, telecommunications equipment, wheat, gas and electricity, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... sudden awe stole upon me. I looked at Zara. She laid her finger on her lips and smiled, enjoining silence; then drawing my hand close within her own, she led me to the door of the chapel. There she took a soft veil of some white transparent fabric, and flung it over me, embracing and kissing me tenderly as she did so, but uttering no word. Taking my hand again, she entered the chapel with me, and accompanied me through what seemed a blaze of light and colour to the high altar, ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... particularly important star. If the sun and the earth, and all which it contains, were to vanish, the effect in the universe would merely be that a tiny star had ceased its twinkling. Viewed simply as a star, the sun must retire to a position of insignificance in the mighty fabric of the universe. But it is not as a star that we have to deal with the sun. To us his comparative proximity gives him an importance incalculably transcending that of all the other stars. We imagined ourselves to be withdrawn from ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... To play our part, we must not only resolutely carry out the foreign policies we have adopted but also follow a domestic policy which will maintain full production and employment in the United States. A serious depression here can disrupt the whole fabric of the world economy. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman

... 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 golden ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... the plaintive voices of the feathered choristers, the owls, the occasional striking of the Abbey clock, and the monotonous dash of the sea on its low and level shore. In the mean time, he drank Madeira, and laid deep schemes for a thorough repair of the crazy fabric ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock

... do with all work everywhere, child," returned the man in the wheel chair, while his busy fingers wove the fabric of a basket. "Every idle hand in the world, Helen, whatever the cause of its idleness, compels some other's hand to do its work. The work of the world must be done, child—somehow, by some one—the work of the world must be done. The little Maggies and Bobbies of the Flats down there must be fed, ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... into the nearest hiding-place; their high State Tragedy (Haupt- und Staats-Action) becomes a Pickleherring-Farce to weep at, which is the worst kind of Farce; the tables (according to Horace), and with them, the whole fabric of Government, Legislation, Property, Police, and Civilised Society, are dissolved, in wails ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... amongst the noblest, if not the most ancient, triumphs of human art. Many of the specimens of former ages are admired for their massive solidity, as well as for the beauty of their architectural decoration. The present bridge, a fabric of the last century, has neither of these attractions, though it is constructed upon the best principle of modern bridge-building—that of having one single arch. Peronnet and De Chezi, two celebrated engineers, who are regarded as the founders of a new ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various

... the acting judge. "Inasmuch as your countess appears to be constituted of that thin fabric of which dreams are made; inasmuch as there ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... sprang toward her, and, seizing the skirt of her gay-striped, bombazine dress with his glistening ivories, rent it from the waist, flew through the parlor window, and rushed through streets, by-lanes and alleys, rending the flaring fabric, and dragging it through mud-holes till it looked like some fiery-colored flag borne away by the ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... available as free laborers on this soil. I, for one, believe they can, and I am more than ever in earnest to show it, for the importance of this question is greater than ever, now that we are so near a general crash of the whole social fabric in the Southern States. I don't think the old masters will ever be successful in employing the blacks, but I do believe that ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... had made up his mind that there had been no supernatural agency; after he had been indulging in visions of future bliss and repose, was a shock that transfixed him where he stood, and for some time he remained in his attitude of surprise and terror. Down at once fell the airy fabric of happiness which he had built up during the last two hours; and as he gradually recovered from his alarm, his heart filled with melancholy forebodings. At last he dashed forward, seized the letter, and burst out of the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... officers were the professed-houses, with each a praepositus at its head, and the colleges, with each a rector. In the latter there were also novices. The mutual dependence of all parts of the system resemble the structure of a well-built fabric. The relations of subordination are so well ordered that the society is simplex duntaxat unum, without interrupting the free will of the individual, as is said, who only had to obey ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... remembers the voyage of Columbus, that, persevered in through trials and perils, ended in triumph—how he studied the stars and the charts, and out of the dreams of ages wove the fabric of fancy that grew to theory, and prophecy, and history, that there was land beyond the Atlantic; and there is no moment in human life supreme above, or of more fascinating interest than, that when, from ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... the great amusement of the soldiers; until an unlucky turn brought them down upon our house, which had been excavated out of the face of the hill, on which the upper part of the roof rested, and in they went, heels over head, butcher, bullock, tail and all, bearing down the whole fabric ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid

... made him forever ineligible a second time. Indeed, I think all the good of this new constitution might have been couched in three or four new articles, to be added to the good, old and venerable fabric, which should have been preserved even as a religious relique. Present me and my daughters affectionately to Mrs. Adams. The younger one continues to speak of her warmly. Accept yourself, assurances of the sincere esteem and respect with which I have the honor to be, dear ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... to inlay and the glory of gems, with the most prized of precious stones to set with high art;— and in a silver chest secure enlock:— so there the Tree of life dearest of trophies thenceforward dwelt; fabric ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... was rising redly, and the hurrying ripples were all tipped with gold, and the sky above a bewildering, tumbled fabric of barbaric coloring. Would the sun rise like that in New Mexico? Billy wondered, and watched the coming of his last day here, where he had lived, had loved, had dreamed dreams and builded castles—and had seen the dreams change to bitterness, and the castles go toppling to ruins. He would ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower

... 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)

... controversial stage; out of these will emerge the astronomy of the future. But we have seen enough to convince us that, whatever advances the future holds in store, the science of the heavens constitutes one of the most important stones in the wonderful fabric of human knowledge. ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... enterprise. To meaner men we might have granted the privilege of marrying and giving in marriage, even although they care not for the sorrows of Jacob; but you, my lord, are a main prop of our enterprise, and, being withdrawn, the whole fabric may fall to the ground. Who in England will deem himself obliged to press forward, when Hugo de Lacy falls back? Think, my lord, less upon your plighted bride, and more on your plighted word; and believe not that a union can ever come to good, which shakes your purpose ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... remark, as well as somewhat ludicrously self-betraying, that no sooner did I mentally see myself in the presence of the police, and was thus forced to confront my suspicions with some appearance of evidence, than the whole fabric of my vision rattled to the ground. What had I to say to the police? Simply that, on the evening of the night when Lieschen was murdered, I had passed in a public thoroughfare a man whom I could not identify, but who as I could not help fancying, seemed to recognize me. This man, I had persuaded ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... stories are based upon a very slender fabric of history, which would have been long since forgotten had not legend clung to it with so loving a hand, and credited its hero with such a multitude of marvellous deeds. The history of the event is preserved for us by Eginhard, the secretary ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... architect. This, it may be noted, is conformation of the statement that there is a strong similarity between the art of architecture and the art of the drama, due to the fact that both arts are under the necessity of providing a solid structure to sustain the fabric and ...
— How to Write a Play - Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, - Labiche, Legouve, Pailleron, Sardou, Zola • Various

... survey of the various elements which have entered into the composite fabric of the Grail Legend, the question naturally arises where, and when, did that legend assume romantic form, and to whom should we ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... scheme can only provoke universal opposition. Five years have already passed since the friendly Powers accorded their recognition of the Chinese Republic and if we think we could afford to amuse ourselves with changes in the national fabric, we could not expect foreign powers to put up with such childishness. Internal strife is bound to invite foreign intervention and the end of the country will ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... racing in from the open. To Carroll, watching breathless and wide-eyed in that strange passive and receptive state peculiar to imaginative natures, they seemed alive. And the SPRITE, too, appeared to be, not a fabric and a mechanism controlled by men, but a sentient creature struggling gallantly on her ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... temple, reared by Virtue's hands, Circled with palms and laurels, crown'd with light, Darting Truth's piercing sun on mortal sight: Then rushing on, leagued fiends of hellish birth Level the mighty fabric with the earth! Slept the red bolt of Vengeance in that hour When virtuous Freedom fell the slave of Power! Slumber'd the God of Justice! that no brand Blasted with blazing wing the impious band! Dread God of Justice! to thy will I kneel, Though ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... regular seven months to make the voyage home and out again. If our vessels fall into this lazy train, we shall never get a skin to Bristol, till it is past use. What have we here, niece? Merchandise! and of a suspicious fabric!—who has the invoice of these goods, and in what vessel were ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... cases the Cypress is not the name of the plant, but is the fabric which we now call crape, the "sable stole of Cypre's ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... possession. This has been pleasantly spoken of as an instance of poetical justice. It is but fair that spiders should, at times, have the best of astronomers, for astronomers rob spiders for the completion of their choicest instruments. No fabric of human construction is fine enough to strain across the eyepiece of an important telescope, and opticians preserve a particular race of spiders, that their webs may be taken for that purpose. The spider lines are strained across the best instruments at Greenwich and elsewhere; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... our senses. But when Berkeley speaks of the cause of these impressions, Hume points out that we have no right to speak of anything like cause and effect, and that the idea of causality, of necessary sequence, on which the whole fabric of our reasoning rests, is an assumption; inevitable, it may be, yet an assumption. Thus English philosophy, which seemed to be so settled and positive in Bacon, ended in the most unsettled and negative skepticism in Hume; and it was only through Kant that, according to the Germans, the great ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... from herself that her faith was feeling, her principles sentiments. Deeply as her own feelings had been impressed in the convent, and much as she loved the gentle sisters there, she sought in vain for a foundation for the gigantic fabric of spiritual dominion towering above her. She looked upon the gorgeous pomp of papal worship, with its gormandizing pastors and its starving flocks, with its pageants to excite the sense and to paralyze the mind, with its friars and monks loitering in sloth ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... on, we richly deserve it! but, consider the fearful influence of worn-out cloth! Can a long series of unchanging kindness balance patched elbows? are not cracked boots receipts in full for hours of anxious love and care? does not the kindness of a life fade "like the baseless fabric of a vision" before the withering touch of poverty's stern stamp? Have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various

... in this wrapper my father gave me!" So he took it together with a candle and descended from the couch leaving Sa'id sleeping and carried the bundle into a closet, where he opened it and found within a tunic of the fabric of the Jann. He spread it out and saw on the lining[FN386] of the back, the portraiture wroughten in gold of a girl and marvellous was her loveliness; and no sooner had he set eyes on the figure than his ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... were brought before the House of Commons, Mr. Fox said that it was 'the Lord-Advocate's fervent wish that his native principles of justice should be introduced into this country; and that on the ruins of the common law of England should be erected the infamous fabric of Scottish persecution. ... If that day should ever arrive, if the tyrannical laws of Scotland should ever be introduced in opposition to the humane laws of England, it would then be high time ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... white dress gave her the dainty atmosphere of an early spring flower, fragile and frigid, but full of charm for some connoisseurs of human beauty. She had also acquired in Mexico a note of her own, which was perhaps due to the clothes she had bought in Mexico City on her way home, of filmy fabric and prominent colors; and her usually taciturn speech had taken on a languorous slowness in imitation of the Mereldas' way of speaking English. In the drawling manner in which she said,—"Hello, Rosy," and nonchalantly ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... to deter us from touching the sacred fabric, we must find out whether it is not already coming to pieces in all directions by the continuous strain of circumstances. No doubt, if it were all that it pretends to be, and human nature were working smoothly within ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... the world lasts there will be rich men and poor, but you must always remember in considering this that it is character as well as circumstances which is at the root of the acquisition of wealth. Generations have gone to the formation of our social fabric. It is the slow evolution of the human laws of necessity. The socialist and the sentimentalist and the philanthropist, dropping gold through his fingers, have each had their fling at it, but their cry is like the cry from the wilderness—a ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... just as we were hoisting sail on our boat, this lady appeared, walking rapidly down to our beach. She was dressed in a light morning costume, with some sort of a gauzy fabric thrown over her head, and if I had not hated her so thoroughly I should have considered her a very ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton

... have always believed that any political change is too dearly purchased by a single drop of blood, and who think that any political superstructure based upon other opinion is like the sand-supported fabric,—beautiful in the brief hour of sunshine, but the moment one drop of rain touches the arid basis melting away in wreck and ruin! I am an accountable being; I have a soul and a God to answer to, in another and better world, for my ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... India muslin, and rejoice in the disuse of every minute 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 ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... naturally desire to know something of the manner in which the rough material was shaped into order, and the workmanship by which the whole was "fitly joined together." It can not be said of this fabric of legislation that it went up without "the sound of the hammer." The rap of the gavel was often heard enforcing order or limiting the ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... predecessor. He removed the whole of the timber, substituting stone and iron for it, and while adhering to Mr. Dance's general design, improved upon it by introducing fresh details of his own, more in harmony with the fabric in which it was enclosed. The church has since been restored, but the incongruity is still obvious enough, especially from the outside, where the octagon projects above the ancient walls, and the small pentagonal chancel beyond them ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... second bones and flesh were in a manner separable, as is proven by the fact that they were separately considered, separately fashioned. Ruined Karnak, the ruined Parthenon, wrecked Rheims, show ornament so integral a part of the fabric—etched so deep—that what has survived of the one has survived also of the other; while the ruined Baths of Caracalla the uncompleted church of S. Petronio in Bologna, and many a stark mosque on many a sandy desert show only bare ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... [11] A textile fabric of cotton made by the natives of the Philippines; see Zuniga's Estadismo (Retana's ed.), ii, 88, where the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair

... curves by small successive angles (which sounds like a contradiction in terms). The size of these angles or points, of course, varies very much in the different kinds of textile with which pattern is incorporated, from the fine silk fabric, in which they are almost inappreciable, to carpets of all kinds, where they are emphatic; so that a certain squareness of mass becomes a desirable and characteristic feature in designs for these purposes, and, indeed, I think it should be more or less acknowledged ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane

... solitude of the nursery above. And so it came about that a sense of mystery, of large issues, of things at once strong and hidden, impenetrable to his understanding and concerning which no questions might be asked, encircled Dominic's childhood and passed into the very fabric of his thought. While through it all his mother moved, to him tender and wholly exquisite, but with the reticence of some deep-seated enthusiasm silently cherished, some far-reaching alarm silently endured, always ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... mine dynamite was lifting thousands of tons of ore. The entire aggregation of effort and expenditure had been so systematically interwoven that Brewster there and then decided that if one link in the chain should part, the whole fabric of the thing would dissolve. It was true that he made no advances without authority from his headquarters, but he had long been aware that Clark's was the largest commercial account in Canada and, he reflected gravely, it all went through his own office. Two days later he reached Toronto, ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... came the pretty reveille in a fabric of music, indescribably interwoven; sharp and staccato from the neighboring walls; the lightest of whispers from the distance, turning and twisting upon itself and starting afresh ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips

... Goodwin)—to invent new dreams on the subject; and these had recently been adopted by Mr. Burroughs. The purport of their doctrine was that in the year 1650, or, at the furthest, 1695, Christ was to reappear in human form at Jerusalem, destroy the existing fabric of things in a conflagration, collect the scattered Jews, raise martyrs and saints from their graves, and begin his glorious reign of a thousand years. [Footnote: Paget, 136, 137; Baillie's Letters, II. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... variations on a chivalrous theme, with an introduction and finale." In this way, Strauss's art, one of the most literary and descriptive in existence, is strongly distinguished from others of the same kind by the solidarity of its musical fabric, in which one feels the true musician—a musician brought up on the great masters, and a classic ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... themselves to effect a compromise, and the rafters were lengthened, so as to give a descent that should carry off the frozen element. But, unluckily, some mistake was made in the admeasurement of these material parts of the fabric; and, as one of the greatest recommendations of Hiram was his ability to work by the square rule, no opportunity was found of discovering the effect until the massive timbers were raised on the four ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... was already ruined. Jefferson, goaded into action, had issued a proclamation for his arrest; and even before this proclamation was issued, the fabric of the conspiracy had crumbled into shifting dust. The Ohio Legislature passed resolutions demanding prompt action against the conspirators; and the other Western communities followed suit. There was no real support for Burr anywhere. All his ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... a red lamp made darkness darker; but the high altar was a blaze of lights. The faces, scared or sharp-set, of the worshippers fronted the glory open-mouthed, but all dull. Hunger makes a bad altar-flame; when it burns not sootily it fires the fabric. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... insubstantial was the shell, that Winny's slight figure in the doorway showed in proportion solid and solitary and immense, as if it sustained the perishable fabric. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... him? Ah! Like a bar of light the memory of it returned to him. The mysterious woman of the Corne d'Abondance! But this mask could not be hers, since she was by now in Spain. With a movement almost unconscious he held the silken fabric close to his face and ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath



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