"Brittle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fugitive from the bridge. It was long before the first dim birches rose up against the sky, and the white wilderness was very still and the frost intense when they floundered into the gloom of the bluff at the hour that man's vitality sinks to its lowest. Every crackle of a brittle branch rang with horrible distinctness, and now and then a man turned in his saddle and glanced at his neighbour when from the shadowy hollow beneath them rose the sound of rending ice. The stream ran fast just there, and there had been but ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... door was open. In it, lyin' across the steam steerin' wheel, was Captain Freeman, unconscious. His face was so blistered that his eyes were nearly shut. His hair was singed right down to the skull. His hands were raw an' bleedin'. His clothes were scorched into something that was black an' brittle. The harbor-master lifted him, an' laid ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... brittle and semi-transparent. It keeps for an unlimited time in alcohol, putrefies very soon in water exposed to the air, and is easily dissolved in a wash of soda or potash. Finally 100 ounces of ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... it is no use hitting and trying to crush his head. The bones of the head are composed of the densest material, affording effectual protection to the brain underneath: a wise provision for the animal's preservation; for were his skull brittle, his habit of crawling on the ground would render it very liable to be fractured. The spinal cord runs down the entire length of the body; this being wounded, the animal is disabled or killed instanter. Strike therefore his tail, and not his head; for at his tail the spinal cord is ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the Wind; "but I only fanned the glowing coals, and accompanied him through the door to where his daughters sat shivering. His coat was powdered with ashes, and there were ashes in his beard and in his tangled hair. He stood straight up, and held his costly treasure on high, in the brittle glass. 'Found, found!—Gold, gold!' he shouted, and again held aloft the glass to let it flash in the sunshine; but his hand trembled, and the alchymic glass fell clattering to the ground, and broke ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... know, gentlemen, the pawpaw—not the pawpaw (Carica papaya), but a small tree of the anonas or custard apple tribe, common in the woods of western America—is one of the softest and most brittle of our trees, and the hog seemed to have discovered this, for he suddenly changed his tactics, and instead of shaking at the sapling, commenced grinding it between his powerful jaws. The others assisted him, and the tree fell in a few seconds. As soon as the top branches touched the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... opinion about the relations of God and man, and then grew out of it. He held now this, now that view of nature, and of man in contact with nature. There was always battle in his soul; although he won his brittle in the end, he had sixty years of war. Browning was at peace, firm-fixed. It is true the inward struggle of Tennyson enabled him to image from year to year his own time better than Browning did. It is ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... The beastly, brittle voice drifted into silence as though halted by an intruding thought. Then the thought voiced—voiced with a yearning at once pathetic and terrible: "It would be nice to kill you. Someday I will. Someday I'll kill you if I ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... is between one and two miles long, and resembles the rest of the cluster in being hilly, woody, and rocky, with small beaches on the leeward side. The stone is granitic and brittle; but there is also porphyry, and in one place I found streaks of verdegrease, as if the cliffs above had contained copper ore. A log of wood, resembling the cedar of Port Jackson, was thrown up on the beach, but none of the trees were seen; those scattered over the island, though of various ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... the skin pliable and light pink in color. When the coat loses its lustre and gloss and the skin becomes hard, rigid, thickened and dirty, it indicates a lack of nutrition and an unhealthy condition of the body. In sheep, during sickness, the wool may become dry and brittle and the skin pale and rigid. When affected with external parasites, the hair or wool becomes dirty and rough, a part of the skin may be denuded of hair, and it appears thickened, leathery and scabby, or shows pimples, vesicles ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... have been won by the forces of stability and freedom. Slowly but surely, the free world gathers strength. Meanwhile, from behind the iron curtain, there are signs that tyranny is in trouble and reminders that its structure is as brittle as its ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... chalk; some of such a hard, smooth and workable material that, as will be seen presently, the columns in some of the Downland churches are made from this native "rock." While the upper strata is soft and contains great quantities of flints, the middle layers are brittle and yield plenty of fossils, lower still is the marl, a greyish chalk of great value in the fertilization of the gault. This latter forms an enormous moist ditch or gutter at the foot of the escarpment, and from the farmer's point of view is essentially bad land, requiring many tons of marl to ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... trouble, and guilt of shedding human blood, tho it be their foes; what reason then or what wisdom shall any man show in glorying in the largeness of empire, all their joy being but as a glass, bright and brittle, and evermore in fear and danger of breaking? To dive the deeper into this matter, let us not give the sails of our souls to every air of human breath, nor suffer our understanding's eye to be smoked up with the fumes of vain words, concerning ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... respecting the Duchesse du Maine are abroad; some say she has beaten her husband and broken the glasses and everything brittle in her room. Others say she has not spoken a word, and has done nothing but weep. The Duc de Bourbon has undertaken the King's education. He said that, not being himself of age, he did not demand this office ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... brittle; they kept on filling with tears, burned themselves dry and filled again. His hand clutched the edge of the footrail as if only so he could keep his ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... this pottery, look down to the ground, Where bottle and mug, jug and pottle abound; From the plebeian throng see the graded array; There is shelf above shelf of brittle display, As rank above rank the poor mortals arise, From menial purpose to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... she watched the first opportunity to get possession of the doll. She soon succeeded, and for some time played with it very carefully, but having acquired a negligent habit of using her toys, she soon forgot its brittle texture, and when tired of nursing it, threw it down on the ground. The face was immediately broken to pieces, and while she was picking up the scattered remains of the once beautiful features, Julia entered the room. On seeing her favourite thus destroyed, she could not help ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... the little brittle caddy-spoon. He wanted to think it was correct; but his reason told him it was absurd to attempt to dig up a man with such a pitiful tool. If his father would only have got off his chest and reasoned with him he would not have cared; but here ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... extraneous rock are not unfrequently found embedded in the midst of masses of scoriae. Lieutenant Evans, to whose kindness I am indebted for much information, gave me several specimens, and I found others myself. They nearly all have a granitic structure, are brittle, harsh to the touch, and apparently of ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... sat, and spread out the crushed, brittle spikes, so fondly won, so dearly held. She was sure Hector had not one leaf, riband, or ring which she had given him. Once when he was gayer than his wont, and plagued her with his jesting petting, she took ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... rock—a sort of combination of glass and flint for hardness," Tom explained. "It is brittle, black in color, and the natives of the Admiralty Islands use it for tipping their spears with which they slay ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... not yet dressed) into my slippers, when I found that, for the first time during sixteen days, the snow had ceased falling. I threw up the sash, the cold air cut me like a knife. Mechanically I threw up the sponge; it struck hard against the ceiling, and fell back a mass of brittle, jingling icicles, so severe was the iron frost that had ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... "Arkansas" being used for the smaller tools. The "Arkansas" slip should be what is called "knife-edged." This is required for sharpening such tools as the veiner and V tool; it is a very fine marble-like stone, and exceedingly brittle; care must be taken in handling it, as a fall would in all ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... young rancher and three other boys rode into camp, saying they would like to go with us to see the fun. We were glad to have them, and we rode off through the frosted sage that crackled like brittle glass under the hoofs of the horses. Our guide led toward a branch of a park, and when we got within perhaps a quarter of a mile Teague suggested that R.C. and I go ahead on the chance of surprising the bear. It was owing to this suggestion that my brother and I were well ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... to find it brittle, Surprised at the surprise that was your plan, Who, shaking and breaking barriers not a little, Find never more ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... or branches. These sombre trees are, however, very useful for timber, and they grow to an astonishing height, often rearing up their lofty heads to 150 feet or upwards. The woods, in general, are very brittle, partly, it may be, owing to the number of acacias which are to be found among them; and no experienced bushman likes to sleep under trees, especially during high winds. We must by no means form our ideas of the appearance of an Australian forest from that of ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... The inhabitants of Ormus eat no flesh, or bread made of corn; but live upon dates, salt fish, and onions. The ships of this country are not very stout, as they do not fasten them with iron nails, because the timber is too brittle, and would split in driving these home; but they are fastened with wooden pins, and sewed with twine made from the husks of certain Indian nuts, prepared in a peculiar manner; this twine or thread is very strong, and is able to endure the force and violence of the waters, and is not easily ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... was formerly called Ariosto by Titian. And, most suggestive of all, there are the Mycenaean bay leaves of beaten gold, so incredibly thin one might imagine them to be the withered crown of a nameless singer in a forgotten tongue, grown brittle through three thousand years ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... most in him was not his mind—which lacked elasticity—but his religion, his unquestioning obedience to the will of God and his perfect freedom from cant. His mentality was brittle and he was as quick-tempered in argument as he was sunny and serene in games. There are people who thought Alfred was a man of strong physical passions, wrestling with temptation till he had achieved complete self-mastery, but nothing was ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... valuable natural product is the bezoar stone. These stones are found in the gall-bladder and intestines of the long-tailed monkey SEMNOPITHECUS (most frequently of S. HOSEI and S. RUBICUNDUS). They are formed of concentric layers of a hard, brittle, olive-green substance, very bitter to the taste. A soft brown variety is found in the porcupine. Both kinds are highly valued by the Chinese as medicine. The monkeys and porcupines are hunted for the sake of these ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... him a sword, made like Excalibur, and a scabbard also, and said to him, "Morgan le Fay sendeth you here your sword for her great love's sake." And the king thanked her, and believed it to be as she said; but she traitorously deceived him, for both sword and scabbard were counterfeit, brittle, and false, and the true sword Excalibur was in the hands of Sir Accolon. Then, at the sound of a trumpet, the champions set themselves on opposite sides of the field, and giving rein and spur to their horses ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... she was married," said Hepzibah to Phoebe. "She was a Davenport, of a good family. They were almost the first teacups ever seen in the colony; and if one of them were to be broken, my heart would break with it. But it is nonsense to speak so about a brittle teacup, when I remember what my heart ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cavity large enough for his purpose in this depth of wood, and his disappointment was great when, underneath the planks, he came to a marble pavement which resisted his one tool. But he remembered having read of a general who had broken with an axe hard stones, which he first made brittle by vinegar, and this Casanova possessed. He poured a bottle of strong vinegar into the hole, and the next day, whether it was the effect of the vinegar or of his stronger resolution, he managed to loosen the cement which bound the pieces of marble ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... more than a mile), the ground became more and more full of pitch, and the vegetation poorer and more rushy, till it resembled, on the whole, that of an English fen. An Ipomoea or two, and a scarlet flowered dwarf Heliconia, kept up the tropic type, as does a stiff brittle fern about two feet high. We picked the weeds, which looked like English mint or basil, and found that most of them had three longitudinal nerves in each leaf, and were really Melastomas, though dwarfed into a far meaner habit than that of the noble ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... Well, life would be nothing without paper-credit and other fictions; so let them pass current. Don't steal their chips; don't puncture their swimming-bladders; don't come down on their pasteboard boxes; don't break the ends of their brittle and unstable reputations, you fellows who all feel sure that your names will be household words a thousand ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... less brittle than bone or celluloid, and not likely to chip. Any one who has eaten cottage cheese that has been too long on the stove will believe that the new substance has powers of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 17, March 4, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... was thrown out with a rapidity that seemed almost the quick result of the working of some machine; and those closest to the grave's brink crouched down, and, intent as they were upon the progress of events, heeded not the damp earth that fell upon them, nor the frail brittle and humid remains of humanity that occasionally ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... the same size, if the surface covered by the interrupted circuit is more than three or four inches in width. The phosphor bronze wire is more difficult to wind satisfactorily, for it is harder to bend than the copper wire, and it has the further disadvantage of being more brittle. But when once placed properly, it forms a far more lasting and satisfactory interrupted circuit for such experiments as those to be described than does copper wire. In the case of the electric-boxes under consideration, ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... and it looked at them. Its veil of myrtle, trembling yet with the shock of its entrance, gave it the semblance of movement and of life. It towered in the majesty of its insistent whiteness. It trailed its mystic modesties before them. Its brittle blossoms quivered like innocence appalled. The wide cleft at its base betrayed the black and formidable heart beneath the fair and sugared surface. These crowding symbols, perceptible to Edith's subtler intelligence, massed themselves in her companions' ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... and seek the angle of repose; it gives way in masses like a brick wall. It is architectural soil, it seeks approximately the right angle—the level plain or the vertical wall. It erodes easily under running water, but it does not slide; sand and clay are in such proportions as to make a brittle but ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... had literally to break their way forward. The elder trees grew from ten to twelve feet in height and so close together that to squeeze between them was impossible. Payne went ahead at first, walking sidewise, throwing his shoulder against the brittle stems and crashing a path through. Higgins soon stepped to the fore and did likewise. At the end of an hour, when they had covered ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... dark waters that were bubbling around us, but he held me back as if I were a child; and in impotent rage I wept at my weakness. Slowly our perilous situation again forced itself upon my mind. I became conscious that a platform, brittle as the thread of life, was all that separated me from a watery grave; and I fancied the wind was murmuring our requiem as it passed. Hope died within me; but ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... sand, And thence defy With a fearless eye And a burst of rollicking high-pitched laughter The stealthy trickling waves that lap you And the crested breakers that tumble after To souse and batter you, sting and sap you— All you roll-about rackety little folk, Down-again, up-again, not-a-bit brittle folk, Attend, attend, And let each girl and boy Join in a loud "Ahoy!" For, lo, he comes, your tricksy little friend, From the clear caverns of his crystal home Beyond the tossing ridges of the foam: Planner of sandy romps and wet delights, Robin ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... to stuff it with chestnuts, but Ollie thought chestnuts too much of an old joke, so she stuffed it with peanut brittle. ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... center of the endosperm, but if water charged or saturated with sea salt be used, it will be seen that the liquid immediately passes through the teguments Nos. 2, 3, 4, and 5, and stops abruptly before the embryo membrane No. 6, which will remain quite dry and brittle for several days, the berry remaining all the time in the water. Should the water penetrate further after several days, it can be ascertained that the entrance was gained through the part No 10 free of this tissue, and this notwithstanding the cells are full ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... Ruth Fielding. "If you are so anxious, why don't you run and bring a pan in? We'll see if it's brittle enough to ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... publishing Beautiful women in her position provoke an intemperateness Beauty is rare; luckily is it rare Between love grown old and indifference ageing to love Beware the silent one of an assembly! Brittle is foredoomed But they were a hopeless couple, they were so friendly By resisting, I made him a tyrant Capacity for thinking should precede the act of writing Capricious potentate whom they worship Carry explosives and must particularly guard against sparks Charitable mercifulness; better than sentimental ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... temporary bond was correct, or whether it had been developed to harden relentlessly only over unyielding surfaces of horn such as the termites' deadliest enemy, the ants, wear for armor, will never be known. But in a matter of moments it became apparent that it was going to prove too brittle to continue clamping flesh as elastic as ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... and staggering knees, And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, 35 As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank. So we were left galloping, Joris and I, Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; 40 Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white, And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... thinks it has not succeeded anywhere, as we have had no account of its being practised; but Mr. Ford, of Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, from iron-ore and coal, both got in the same dale, makes iron brittle or tough as he pleases, there being cannon thus cast so soft as to bear turning like wrought-iron." Most probably, however, it was not until the time of Richard Reynolds, who succeeded Abraham Darby the second in the management of the works in 1757, that pit-coal came into large and regular ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... ballad-singer fluttered in the rich light that showed the goldsmith's treasures, pale and pinched-up faces hovered about the windows where was tempting food, hungry eyes wandered over the profusion guarded by one thin sheet of brittle glass—an iron wall to them; half-naked shivering figures stopped to gaze at Chinese shawls and golden stuffs of India. There was a christening party at the largest coffin-maker's and a funeral hatchment had stopped some great improvements in the bravest mansion. Life and death ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... attendant want in the front room, where were still so many of the precious glass cases unharmed, and the Bugologist's favorite books and his big desk, littered with papers, etc.? Blakely thought to hail and warn him against moving about among those brittle glass things, but reflected that he, the new man, had done the reshifting under his, Blakely's, supervision, and knew just where each item was placed and how to find the passage way between them. It really was a trifle intricate. How could he have gone into the spare room ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... will be a specimen of the great purple heart-urchin (Spatangus purpureus), clothed in pale lilac horny spines, and other Echinoderms, for which you must consult Forbes's "British Star-fishes:" but perhaps the species among them which will interest you most, will be the common brittle-star (Ophiocoma rosula), of which a hundred or so, I can promise, shall come up at a single haul of the dredge, entwining their long spine- clad arms in a seemingly inextricable confusion of "kaleidoscope" patterns (thanks to Mr. Gosse for the ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... and if we were not weak 175 Should we be less in deed than in desire?' 'Ay, if we were not weak—and we aspire How vainly to be strong!' said Maddalo: 'You talk Utopia.' 'It remains to know,' I then rejoined, 'and those who try may find 180 How strong the chains are which our spirit bind; Brittle perchance as straw...We are assured Much may be conquered, much may be endured, Of what degrades and crushes us. We know That we have power over ourselves to do 185 And suffer—what, we know not till we try; But something nobler ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the fragments of his father's sword, which had been shattered upon Wotan's spear, the only legacy left her son by Sieglinde, and tells him that he who can weld them together again will have power to conquer all before him. Mime had long tried to forge a sword for Siegfried, but they were all too brittle, nor had he the skill to weld together the fragments of Siegmund's sword, Nothung. The only one who can perform that task is the hero without fear. One day Siegfried returns from a hunting expedition and undertakes it himself. He files the fragments into dust and throws it ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... love. The death of her sister Bayley may have been caused by the unhappy controversies in the village parish. We have seen, and shall see, the all but maniac condition to which excitement brought her own mind. At last, the heaviest blow that can fall upon a fond wife suddenly snapped the brittle cord of her life. These considerations must be borne in mind, while we attempt to explain her conduct, and should throw the weight of pity and charity into the scales, if mortal judgment ventures to estimate her guilt. They are ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... from a scrub oak a handful of leaves. They were very brittle and crumbled in his hand. A match flared out. His palm cupped it for a moment to steady the blaze before he touched it to the crisp foliage. Into a nest of twigs he thrust the small flame. The twigs, dry as powder from a four-months' drought, crackled like miniature ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... there is no parity between the liquid produced and the two gases. At 32 deg. F., oxygen and hydrogen are elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to fly away from one another; water at the same temperature is a strong though brittle solid. Such changes are called the properties of water. It is not assumed that a certain something called "acquosity" has entered into and taken possession of the oxide of hydrogen as soon as formed, and then guarded the particles in the facets of the crystal ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... and fled. Mrs. Morgan was helped out and sent plodding and tottering unaided on her way to the end of the sand stretch. Miss Drexel and Juanita joined Charley in spreading the coats and robes on the sand and in gathering and spreading small branches, brush, and armfuls of a dry, brittle shrub. But all three ceased from their exertions to watch Wemple as he shot the car backward down the V and up. The car seemed first to stand on one end, then on the other, and to reel drunkenly and to threaten to turn over into the sump-hole ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... extensive tracts in England, but has greatly disappeared before the genius of agricultural improvement. Charcoal is a kind of artificial coal, used principally where a strong and clear fire is desired. It is a black, brittle, insoluble, inodorous, tasteless substance, and, when newly-made, possesses the remarkable property of absorbing certain quantities of the different gases. Its dust, when used as a polishing powder, gives great brilliancy to metals. It consists of wood half-burned, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... hot but triumphant in a petticoat that crackled like brittle ice beneath her black alpaca skirt and a pair of white cotton gloves at the fingers of which she was continually tugging. Both her hat and Mary's gleamed ebon under a recent coat of blacking—so recent that they entertained ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... who levy tribute on the Mason-bee. Does that end the list? Not at all. The old nests are cities of the dead. They contain Bees who, on achieving the perfect state, were unable to open the exit-door through the cement and who withered in their cells; they contain dead larvae, turned into black, brittle cylinders; untouched provisions, both mouldy and fresh, on which the egg has come to grief; tattered cocoons; shreds of ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... he murmured with difficulty. "My life was in the instrument, as brittle as the glass. ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... the tables of the South, which, with coffee, I like very much. The wheat dough is rolled very thin, cut in strips the width of a table-knife, and about as long, baked until well done; if browned, all the better. They become crisp and brittle, and better ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... unusual polyparies that congregate to form entire islands that will one day turn into continents. Among the echinoderms, notable for being covered with spines: starfish, feather stars, sea lilies, free-swimming crinoids, brittle stars, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, etc., represented a complete collection of the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... mothers, and their offspring are not closely grouped in lower life. The relation of the sexes, even when the human was reached, seems not to have carried with it a sense of the double obligation of parenthood. "Marriage was brittle in the early times," says Sir John Lubbock. The obvious relationship of mother and child, the lack of such irrefutable testimony to parenthood in the case of man, and other elements of primitive experience lending confusion to the situation, made it a process of time and a test of growing ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... 100 deg. C. it parts with nearly the whole of its water and becomes hard, horny and brittle, exposed to the air, the dry wool again absorbs water and is restored to its former condition. When heated to 100 deg. C. wool becomes somewhat plastic, so that whatever form is then imparted to it it will retain when it becomes cold, this property is very useful in certain processes ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... flowed in chilly gusts of wind, they reminded each other of the first time they had come there, and of every detail of the elopement. When they sat down under the locust tree, Eleanor opened her pocketbook and showed him the little grass ring, lying flat and brittle in a small envelope; and he laughed, and said when he got rich he would buy her ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... scaly scape 4 to 10 in. tall. Calyx of 2 to 4 early-falling white sepals; 4 or 5 oblong, scale-like petals; 8 or 10 tawny, hairy stamens; a 5-celled, egg-shaped ovary, narrowed into the short, thick style. Leaves: None. Roots: A mass of brittle fibres, from which usually a cluster of several white scapes arises. Fruit: A 5-valved, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... with even a moderate amount of force in tying will cut the tube through in almost any part of its length. The mucous lining is so thrown into folds that its thickness in relation to the peritoneal layer is considerable. Because of this, the tube when tied alone is brittle, and a ligature applied to it will very easily cut through, and either allow of reunion of the severed ends or leave a patent stump. In a recorded case in which pregnancy occurred after each tube was ligatured in two places, and ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... thus by a rash use of the instrument the dura mater may possibly be injured. The tough outer table is more difficult to cut than the softer and more vascular diploe, and the inner table is denser than either, but more brittle. In many old skulls, however, the diploe is wanting altogether, and the two tables are amalgamated, and ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... would have bent, not broken. There is no doubt on that head: if Polybius is not romancing, the Celtic sword of 225 B.C. doubled up at every stroke, like a piece of hoop iron. But Mr. Leaf tells us that, "by primitive modes of smelting," iron is made "hard and brittle, like cast iron." If so, it would be even less trustworthy for a sword than bronze. [Footnote: Iliad (1900), Book VI, line 48, Note.] Perhaps the Celts of 225 B.C. did not smelt iron by primitive methods, but discovered some process for ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... began to depart. How many they were! How many, many! We had too lightly let them go. And when all were gone, and they of Carondelet street and its tributaries, massed in that old gray, brittle-shanked regiment, the Confederate Guards, were having their daily dress parade in Coliseum place, and only they and the Foreign Legion remained; when sister Jane made lint, and flour was high, and the sounds of commerce were quite hushed, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... anything is there the brilliancy of these Oriental fragments. How strange that decay, in dark places, and underground, and where there are a billion chances to one that nobody will ever see its handiwork, should produce these beautiful effects! The glass seems to become perfectly brittle, so that it would vanish, like a ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... job in the weavin' room of his mill. Do you know what that's like, Henry?" Henry shook his head. He had never been inside a linen-mill. "The linen has to be woven in a moist atmosphere, or else it'd become brittle an' so it wouldn't be fine," Mr. Quinn went on; "an' the atmosphere is kept moist by lettin' steam escape from pipes into the room where the linen is bein' woven—a damp, muggy, steamy atmosphere, Henry ... an' Lizzie McCamley left this village ... left work in the fields there to go up to Belfast ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... to be some danger; for the wind that had loved Seth from the first was apparently jealous of Celia. It tore at her as though to toss her to unreachable distances in the way it ripped the tumbleweeds from their small brittle stems and ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... sapwood. Hence the first labor of the woodpecker must consist in finding a place in which it can dig. If there is an old stump of a limb sticking up, the problem is readily solved. Such wood has no sap in it, and is brittle enough to be easily dug out. But, if there be no such stub, the woodpecker will find a suitable place in most trees. At some time or other almost every tree loses a big limb. When such accident occurs there will always be in the old trunk a region through which sap once went ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... The principal traces we see of him now are in the trees that he planted, chiefly introduced from America. He thought the robinia, or false acacia, would make good hedges, because of its long thorns and power of throwing up suckers, and many people planted them, but they proved too brittle to be of much use, though some are still growing. He was a friend of Mr. Harley, who then owned Otterbourne House, and planted many curious trees there, of which two long remained—a hickory nut and a large tree in the drive. There was also an oak with enormous ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were. Remember, Merle. Think. Be honest with yourself." Blanche put her nervous, blue-veined hand on his arm. A detached part of his brain noted how bony and brittle her hand was. ...
— Second Sight • Basil Eugene Wells
... when growth is finished and the strength is greatest, and when nutrition is required only to repair waste, the proportions are changed, and the solid or earthy part exceeds the vital or animal; and in extreme old age, the earthy part so predominates as to cause the bones to become very brittle. ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... easily distinguished from any other of their congeners. The most remarkable feature is the shape of the leaves. They are broader and shorter, and especially at the base they are broadened in such a way as to become apparently sessile. The stalk is very brittle, and any rough treatment may cause the leaves to break off. The young seedlings are recognizable by the shape of the first two or three leaves, and when more of them are produced, the rosettes become dense and strikingly different from others. Later leaves are more nearly ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... in good condition quite easily. But they will need a careful soap-and-water washing every little while, besides. The liquid best for use in this cleaner is the common kerosene or coal oil. Never use turpentine to rinse your brushes. It will make them brittle and harsh; but the kerosene will remove all the paint, and will not ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... saplings of certain introduced varieties about the farmyard or along the streets. In this way a forest growth of oak, elm, beech, butternut, hemlock, basswood, and birch is cleared off to give room for saplings of soft maple, cottonwood, and brittle willow. It is felt that the inexpensiveness of leaving the forest trees standing would derogate from the dignity that should invest an article which is intended to serve a ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... make the distance. There were quite strong indications that the water had run here not so very long ago, and we could trace the course of the little streams round among little sandy islands. A little stunted brush grew here but it was so brittle that the stems would break as easy as ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... of feeling which we should expect in everything of hers; but they have no stamp of genius or individual character: they are, to the "Maxims" of La Rochefoucauld, what the vase moulded in dull, heavy clay is to the vase which the action of fire has made light, brittle, and transparent. She also wrote a treatise on Education, which is much praised by La Rochefoucauld and M. d'Andilly; but which seems no longer to be found: probably it was not much more elaborate than her so-called "Treatise on Friendship," which is but ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... abandoned hole. About her comfort he seems shamefully unconcerned. Intent only on his own, he drills a perfectly round hole, usually on the underside of a limb where neither snow nor wind can harm him, and digs out a horizontal tunnel in the dry, brittle wood in the very heart of the tree, before turning downward into the deep, pear-shaped chamber, where he lives in selfish solitude. But when the nesting season comes, how devoted he is temporarily to the mate he has neglected and even abused ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... brittle. It was friable, as if it had been in a fire. Coburn plucked it open, and it came apart in his hands. Inside there was the smell of scorched things. There was a gritty metallic powder. Nothing else. The other carrying-case was in exactly the ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... fled overseas, and the Dutch King William reigned in his stead. The event was a godsend to our trade, for with Scotland in a bicker with Covenants and dragoonings, and new taxes threatened with each new Parliament, a merchant's credit was apt to be a brittle thing. The change brought a measure of security, and as we prospered I soon began to see that something must be done in our Virginian trade. Years before, my uncle had sent out a man, Lambie by name, who watched his interests in that country. But ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... locomotive boilers, the evaporative value being about the same as, or somewhat greater than, that of coal. The principal seat of the manufacture in Great Britain is in South Wales, where the dust and smalls resulting from the handling of the best steam coals (which are very brittle) are obtainable in large quantities and find no other use. Some varieties of lignite, when crushed and pressed at a steam heat, soften sufficiently to furnish compact briquettes without requiring any cementing material. Briquettes of this kind are made to a large extent from the tertiary ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Those that were on the outside are not burned enough; those next it are not well baked, but can be used for the middle of thick walls. The next ones are of good quality; but those directly over the fires are so hard and brittle that they are of little use ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... traveled at a cup-racing clip along a road that first wound like a coiling snake and then straightened like a striking snake, and that always we traveled through dust so thick it made a fog. In this chalky land of northern France the brittle soil dries out after a rain very quickly, and turns into a white powder where there are wheels to churn it up and grit it fine. Here surely there was an abundance of wheels. We passed many marching men and many lumbering supply trains which were going our way, ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... packing-cases for them all. It was with some difficulty that I contrived, by means of tackles, to lower them to the hold, which I succeeded in accomplishing with safety excepting in one instance, when, from the tackle-fall giving way, the image fell to the bottom of the vessel, and being very brittle, was broken into pieces. As it was no longer of any value as a statue, I broke it up to examine it, and I can assure your highness that it was very wonderful to witness how every part of the human body was changed into flint, of a colour corresponding with that which it had ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... together with the sledge and drag-ropes, which were made of horse-hair, to prevent their becoming hard and brittle from frost, weighed 120 ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... they were used by the Arabs of the 8th century, and in Europe till the 12th; at first long strips were rolled up, but later rectangular pages were cut and bound together book fashion; though age has rendered the soft white pages brown and brittle, much ancient literature is still preserved on papyrus; the use of papyrus was superseded by that of parchment ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... She has of course had the advantage of teachers of all sorts, but the claims made upon her time by thoughtless parents have usually been so great as to leave her at the end of her school-room period with a few brittle fragments of knowledge, which shift and change in her mind as the bits of glass might shift in a kaleidoscope from which the looking-glass had been omitted. It is enough for her if, in place of historical dates, she knows the fashionable fixtures, whilst Sandown ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... support a man's weight near the trunk, will not do so when the branch is green and alive, but that a dead branch of similar size will. Contrariwise, even a small green limb of a bitternut-hickory will bear my weight, but an old limb, though several inches thick, becomes so brittle after it is dead for several years that it will break under slight pressure. Fortunately, falls from trees do not usually result in serious injuries but I did acquire quite a few ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... spring that released the eyelid on the carved lion on the other side of the panel. He glanced into the little opening and, to his delight, saw the end of a bit of paper tucked away there. He dug it out with the blade of his pocket knife and unfolded it. It was yellow and brittle with age, covered with writing in a fine clear hand. But he was annoyed to discover, as he bent closely over to read it, that it was written in French, still worse, part of the paper was missing, for one side of it was ragged as if it ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... broad shafts of orange, and as they watched, it settled slowly and then dipped behind the dim blue of the distant hills. As at a signal, a bird in a thicket somewhere over beyond them began a long throaty warble. Another answered over to the left. Faint, liquid trip-hammerings, they were, upon brittle anvils. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... its light seemed concentrated in its own glittering disk and the world was visible in an uncanny darkness that was not dark. The magic of the night had vanished and the beat of vast, winding melodies melted from Karen's mind leaving her dry and brittle and empty, like a shell from which the ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... a sleepless night, however, and arose to find a foot of snow glistening on the ground and the air keen and brittle with cold. No word came from Dan, and in the afternoon she threw discretion to the winds and went boldly ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... through all his limbs. The bell-rope lengthened downward, and became a white, transparent, gigantic serpent, which encircled and crushed him, and girded him straiter and straiter in its coils, till his brittle, paralyzed limbs went crashing in pieces, and the blood spouted from his veins, penetrating into the transparent body of the serpent, and dyeing it red. "Kill me! Kill me!" he would have cried, in his horrible agony; but the cry was only a stifled gurgle ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... who shared Herbert's meringue at dinner (a brittle one, which exploded just as he was getting into it) ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... Guides us through the haggard night; When the warning bugle blows; When the lettered doorways close; When our brittle townships press, ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... of vegetation in these countries. There is a saying among the Indians, that when the wind blows the sloth begins to travel. In calm weather he remains tranquil, probably not liking to cling to the brittle extremities of the branches, lest they should break with him in passing from one tree to another; but as soon as the wind arises, and the branches of the neighbouring trees become interwoven, the sloth then seizes hold of ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... House, having glazed all my Chimney-pieces with Looking-glass, and planted every Corner with such heaps of China, that I am obliged to move about my own House with the greatest Caution and Circumspection, for fear of hurting some of our Brittle Furniture. She makes an Illumination once a Week with Wax-Candles in one of the largest Rooms, in order, as she phrases it, to see Company. At which time she always desires me to be Abroad, or to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... struck the tents, and Captain Lyon set off to the southward, while we drove over to the lake, which is one mile N.N.W. of the head of the creek, and, after three or four hours' labour, completed a hole through the ice, which was very dark-coloured, brittle, and transparent, and, as Toolemak had said, about five feet thick. The water, which was eleven fathoms deep, flowed up within a couple of inches of the surface, over which lay a covering of snow eighteen inches in depth. In confident hope of now obtaining some ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... we climbed to the top of the rock. It was hard work climbing over the brittle rocks and up perpendicular and shaky ladders. On reaching the summit we got a splendid view of the surrounding country, and could plainly see the distant sea; but all else was thick, billowy forest, dotted at long intervals with limestone ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... because it was Russia I was flying over. No. The earth itself, this flat surface which lay spread out beneath me; the whole earthly globe, with its populations, multitudinous, feeble, crushed by want, grief and diseases, bound to a clod of pitiful dust; this brittle, rough crust, this shell over the fiery sands of our planet, overspread with the mildew we call the organic, vegetable kingdom; these human flies, a thousand times paltrier than flies; their dwellings glued together with filth, the pitiful traces of their ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... pieces in water with peach or grape leaves and soda, in the proportion of a dozen leaves and a teaspoonful of soda to two quarts of water. When tender, take them out of the water and put them in cold water that has had half a large spoonful of alum dissolved in it. They will then become brittle and green. Let them soak in the alum water for an hour; then rinse in clear, cold water, and boil in a syrup made of equal weight of white sugar. Boil with them lemons cut in thin slices, allowing one lemon to two pounds of rind. Boil fifteen or twenty minutes. When a little cool, ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman
... of Egypt, being more frail and brittle, may seem to be open to greater doubt; yet there are not wanting books of great antiquity, by which its durability may be established. To go no further, there is in the Royal Library a very old codex written upon the philyra (or bark of the linden tree) containing the homilies ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... and January, or according to the Indians, Yeyekoopewe Pesim—"The Rime Moon," and Kakisapowatukinum—"The Moon When Everything Is Brittle," there is always a lull in the trapping, for the reason that then the days are shorter and the weather colder, and on that account and also on account of the fact that the sun and winds of March have not arrived to ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... bought from the old applewoman two Banbury cakes for a penny and broke the brittle paste and threw its fragments down into the Liffey. See that? The gulls swooped silently, two, then all from their heights, pouncing on prey. Gone. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... have made most exquisite and wonderful carvings of the coral of the Mediterranean, and there is such a thing as black coral, also known as brain coral, but it is too brittle ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... The heat was sometimes as high as 130 deg. in the shade, and in the sun it was altogether intolerable. They were unable to write, as the ink dried at once on their pens; their combs split; their nails became brittle and readily broke, and if they touched a piece of metal it blistered their fingers. In their extremity they dug an underground room, deep enough to be beyond the dreadful furnace-glow above. Here they spent many a long day, as month after ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... firm, elastic, rigid and, to a certain point, brittle. I do not hesitate to look upon it as consisting of a silken tissue which the larva, towards the end of its task, has steeped thoroughly in a sort of varnish prepared not by the silk-glands but by the stomach. The cocoons of the Sphex have already ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre |
