"Flimsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... between floe and iceberg exhibited itself there in a fearful manner; for the former pressing onward against the huge grounded masses was torn into shreds, and thrown back piecemeal, layer on layer of many feet in elevation, as if mere shreds of some flimsy material, instead of solid, hard ice, every cubic yard of which weighed ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... and I had a liking for the county as the home district of Champ Clark, a politico-newspaper comrade of several legislative sessions and conventions. Newspaper experience in those days, before the "flimsy" and the "rewrite," emphasized the value of going to the place in order to report the occurrence; and I knew that, aside from these three characters and their official and sentimental relationships, the rest of my people and my play were waiting for ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas
... only repay you in this the old paper of unproductive thanks, but the sincerity of them will be held in some estimation by the mind actuated by the kindness that has excited them, and, therefore, flimsy as they are, I venture to beg your acceptance of them. I have nothing new, Madam, to send you for your entertainment from this great city. That the Regent is going to divorce the Princess of Wales, and excite the hope of the husbands and the fear of the wives—that under such an example, all the ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... branches and sticks about the opening, and placed myself with my face towards it and my hand upon my revolver, the exhaustion of the last thirty hours claimed its own, and I fell into a light slumber, hoping that the flimsy barricade I had erected would cause sufficient noise in its removal to save me ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... who was she? The signature gave no clew; the date was two years before, and from New York—sufficiently vague! She would have to read until she found the thread, and as she read the wonder grew that so flimsy a personality could have held her boy. One letter, two, three, six, and yet no sign to identify the writer. She wrote first from New York on the point of starting for a long stay abroad, and the other letters were all from different places on the other side. ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... heavy storm set in, and next day the boys found their flimsy wigwam blown down—nothing but a heap ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... self-confidence. The pendulum had at last swung safely in the right direction, and henceforth California could be and was reckoned as a loyal asset to the Union. Such expressions of disloyalty as her secessionists continued to disclose, were of a sporadic and flimsy nature, never materializing into a formidable sentiment; and, adding to their discouragement, the failure of the Confederate invasion of New Mexico in 1862, was no doubt an important factor in suppressing any ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... marble treads to the stairs. The divans may be rendered things of beauty by designing ornamental, open-work wood partitions, in either an Oriental style or otherwise. It is not easy to make small dwarf partitions, enclosing a couple of couches, look handsome. As a rule, they are of a flimsy and gimcrack order of architecture. They should be made as solid as possible. For effect there is nothing ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... on the right, both almost on shore level, give, with an outcrop of sandy dwarf cliffs, a certain air of balance and strength to the town, though but for these and the two old castles, Accra would be but a poor place and a flimsy, for the rest of it is a mass of rubbishy mud and palm-leaf huts, and corrugated iron dwellings for ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the Cascine and the workmen sleep on the bridges, and dear old ladies knit in the streets, that is only one of the thousand things we have had to do. It would take years to give you an account of what we have done and why we do it. It is like a game of whist and poker combined and we bluff on two flimsy fours, and crawl the next minute to a man that holds a measly two-spot. There is not a wire we have not pulled, or a leg, either, and we go dashing about all day in a bath-chair, with a driver in a bell hat and a blue nightgown, leaving cards and writing notes and giving ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... red pepper I used to warm up our bread and mush, and give some different taste to the corn meal, which had now become so loathsome to us. The peanut oil served to give a hint of the animal food we hungered for. It was greasy, and as we did not have any meat for three months, even this flimsy substitute was inexpressibly grateful to palate and stomach. But one morning the Hospital Steward made a mistake, and gave me castor oil instead, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... demeanor; Scattergood Baines marveled at it, for it was not the demeanor of a man—even of an innocent man—accused of a crime for which the penalty was death. Abner sat upon the hard bench and looked quietly, even placidly, out at the brightness of day, as it was apparent beyond flimsy iron bars, and his expression was the ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... appealed to writers, and not the smallest of them; Flaubert for one—this Queen Balkis, Mekida or Nicaule. But in the 'Tentation de Saint Antoine' she has failed to assume any form but that of a puerile and flimsy creature, a skipping and lisping puppet. In fact, no one but Gustave Moreau, the painter of Salome, could represent the woman, a virgin and a courtesan, a casuist and a coquette. He only could give life, under the flowered panoply of dress and the blazing gorget ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... that I should array myself in these gorgeous gowns to compete with that Indian in her few flimsy calicoes and silks? The contrast is out of all proportion. It's the sublime and the ridiculous. And yet she looks well in anything! Dress her in rags and she is picturesque; robe her in silks and ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... so named it have been deceived by the flimsy veil of oriental legend in which your figures are enveloped, they have seen the Eastern priest with the woman he loves succumb to an iron, inhuman law. Perhaps you are a great poet, perhaps you will astonish the world with your fame, but to me ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... mostly compounded of powders while the customer waited—there seemed to be a brisk demand for these—fish, presumably from the lake, alive and swimming about in a large tank from which they were withdrawn as required by means of a hand net; light flimsy muslins, white or dyed in a number of brilliant colours; lengths of exquisite embroidery in gold, silver, or silk thread, and in some cases studded with what looked very much like uncut gems; saddlery and harness, ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... heat from the earth toward space than to the inflow from the sun toward the earth. The elevation of our planet's temperature is therefore a direct consequence of the existence of aqueous vapor in our air. Flimsy as that garment may appear, were it removed terrestrial life would probably perish ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... disturbed the peace of his country. The funeral of the late emperor was accelerated with singular and even suspicious haste: the claim of Demetrius to the vacant throne was justified by a trite and flimsy sophism, that he was born in the purple, the eldest son of his father's reign. But the empress-mother, the senate and soldiers, the clergy and people, were unanimous in the cause of the lawful successor: and the despot Thomas, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... glimpse I stole of him, I could easily discover a person far from promising any such doughty performances as the storming of maidenheads generally requires, and whose flimsy consumptive texture gave him more the air of an invalid that was pressed, than of a volunteer, on ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... I told her of the wager at the Leg Tavern, which in my opinion fully explained George's presence on the St. Albans road, but she declared that it was a flimsy excuse, and said she did not want to talk further on ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... foot one passes from Alaska into British Columbia. Along its shores were scores of miners, busily engaged in building boats with which to make the rest of the journey. Sad to say, owing to their impatience and lack of skill, some of the boats were so flimsy and ill-constructed that they were certain to go to pieces in the fierce rapids below, and add their owners to the long list of victims whose bodies strew the pathway from Chilkoot ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... wailing sigh, Sad as the gust that sweeps the clouded sky. Ask him his griefs; what midnight demons plough The lines of torture on his lofty brow; Unlock those marble lips, and bid them speak The mystery freezing in his bloodless cheek. His secret? Hid beneath a flimsy word; One foolish whisper that ambition heard; And thus it spake: "Behold yon gilded chair, The world's one vacant throne,—thy plate ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... rifles cracked sharply, to be generally rewarded with a howl of pain from some cutthroat who had been winged. But there could be but one end to such a battle. The convicts were well protected behind big trees, while the flimsy sides of their canoes afforded the brave little band of Seminoles almost no protection. Still they fought stubbornly on, answering shot with shot until the point and canoes were shrouded in a fog ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... 'stationary age' of science. The words with which Whewell closes his chapter on the 'Mysticism of the Middle Ages' have their application to the mysticism of the nineteenth century:—'Experience collects her stores in vain, or ceases to collect them, when she can only pour them into the flimsy folds of the lap of Mysticism, who is, in truth, so much absorbed in looking for the treasures which are to fall from the skies, that she heeds little how scantily she obtains, or how loosely she holds, such riches as ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... smoked on; he was thinking of Evelyn Langham. After his interview with her husband that afternoon he had gone to his own apartment. His bedroom adjoined North's parlor and through the flimsy lath and plaster partition he had distinctly heard a woman's voice. The sound of that voice and the suspicion it instantly begot added to his furious hatred of North, for he had long suspected that something more than friendship existed between Marshall Langham's wife and ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... and to its effects we owe some of the most graphic and entertaining of modern writings. If we were, through any misadventure, sent to jail, we would stipulate for permission to carry into our cell Hakluyt's Voyages. The narratives of modern travellers are often learned, more often flimsy, and from the universality of locomotion, much given, like the prayers of the old Pharisees, to tedious repetitions. A tour in Greece or Italy now affects us with unutterable weariness. A journey from London to York affords more real novelty than many of these ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... be admitted that we have not sought to evade the difficulties of our position; that we have not concealed those difficulties, either from ourselves or from others; that we have not attempted to counteract them by narrow or flimsy expedients; that we have prepared plans which, if you will adopt them, will go some way to close up many vexed financial questions—questions such as, if not now settled, may be attended with public inconvenience, ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... there were so many cobwebs hanging about, that it puzzled her to think where all the spiders were who had spun them. There were no spiders now, but there were masses of cobwebs in every nook and corner, some of them waving in the dimness like flimsy grey veils, others spread about in such strange shapes that they almost seemed alive. No doubt bats lived up there, Maisie thought, and she even fancied she could see them clinging to the wall, dusky and shadowy as the cobwebs themselves. She turned her eyes ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... that many women do.... In this country the difficulty of giving a girl a good education is even greater, I am afraid, than with us, in some respects. I do not think even accomplishments are well taught here; at least, they seem to me for the most part very flimsy, frivolous, and superficial, poor alike both in quality and quantity. More solid acquirements do not abound among my female acquaintance either, and the species of ignorance one encounters occasionally is so absolute and profound as to be almost amusing, and quite curious; while there is, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... three minutes more Dick led the way. Of a sudden he halted—-right up against a huge surprise. For the boys had suddenly broken into a little circular clearing, not much more than thirty feet in diameter. Near the center of this clearing, under a flimsy shelter he had made of poles and branches, crouched Amos Garwood. He was at work over a low bench built of a board across two boxes. So intent was Garwood on what he was doing that he appeared not to have heard ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... Iris continued, "you must be more than mortal if my change of costume doesn't excite your curiosity. I found Rhoda Bennet in the garden, exposed to the cold wind in this ugly flimsy thing. After what the doctor had told me, it was high time to assert my authority. I insisted on changing cloaks with Rhoda. She made an attempt, poor dear, to resist; but she knows me of old—and I had my way. I am sorry you have been prevented from seeing her; ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... we had entered the flimsy-looking building the door was quickly slammed-to behind us; while a gang of ruffians of the same kidney as the treacherous old scoundrel who had beguiled us, threw Ned and myself on the ground and gagged and pinioned us like a pair of trussed fowls, before ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... down in the ship, far below the water line. An electrically driven horizontal fan, with its motor, can be got into the thickness of a deck with its beams, if needs be. This would clearly be better than depending on a flimsy construction, which would certainly be greatly damaged, if not entirely shot away, in action. If clear decks are wanted, the windsail is about as inconvenient as it is ugly, and that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... Miss Hawkins, if you were to give out that you composed my speech, you know very well that people would say it was only your raillery, your fondness for putting a victim in the pillory and amusing the public at his expense. It is too flimsy, Miss Hawkins, for a person of your fine inventive talent—contrive an abler ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... that both of them thought of him more than once those long, soft, autumn nights—nights when Tinkletown's beaux were fairly tumbling over themselves in the effort to make New York life seem like a flimsy shadow in comparison. ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... was easy to infect these men with their own spirit. They declared their gun hadn't had half a chance, and were burning to show what it could do. Directed by the newcomers, they made a trench and bank about the mounting of the piece, and constructed flimsy shelter-pits ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... August I lost all traces of Mr. Buckhurst near the frontier, in the village of Morsbronn. The remainder of the day I spent in acquiring that "general information" so dear to the officials in Paris whose flimsy systems of intelligence had already ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... John heaved against the flimsy door and it broke on its hinges. He rushed into the inner room. Judith, her great eyes blazing, stood with one hand on ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... Mr. Bourdillon is a very flimsy affair, reminding one much of the nest of Graucalus macii and not in the smallest degree of that of an Oriole. A mere pad, some 4 inches in diameter, composed of very thin twigs or dry flower-stalks with a couple of dead leaves intermingled, and an external ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... Birds' nests: —Flimsy structure of the cuckoo's, 26; song-sparrow's, 30; oriole's swinging hammock; cobweb structure of the vireo's, 32; size of yellow-bird's; summer yellow-bird's beautiful home, 47; a four-story house, a possible fashion in featherdom, 51; pipit's, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... them as fools? Who dares interfere with these liberties, who dares intrude uninvited into their premises and paint out the signs they have permitted to occupy their fences and barns and sheds? Who would do these things but an impertinent meddler who is so inexperienced in life that he sets his own flimsy judgment ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... ['Under dark Allegory's flimsy veil Let Them with Ogilvie spin out a tale Of rueful length,' Churchill's Poems, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... radiantly beautiful. The old dowager, broad as she was high, her face rouged, her short snub nose always carried in the air, her light eyes unmeaning, her flaxen eyebrows heavy, her flaxen curls crowned by a pea-green turban. Her choice attire was generally composed, as to-day, of some cheap, flimsy, gauzy material bright in colour. This evening it was orange lace, all flounces and frills, with a lace scarf; and she generally had innumerable ends of quilted net flying about her skirts, not unlike ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the telephone business have grown up together, he always a little distance in advance. No other man has touched the apparatus of telephony at so many points. He fought down the flimsy, clumsy methods, which led from one snarl to another. He found out how to do with wires what Dickens did with words. "Let us do it right, boys, and then we won't have any bad dreams"—this has been his motif. And, as ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... prevailed with the gouvernante, whom I regularly followed, not from preference, but from the singular horror my otherwise worthy and wellbred old lady manifested, when, by being approached by the children, her full round coats risked the danger of being modernised into the flimsy, falling drapery ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... dreams! A rage that time seems only to redouble— The Banks, Joint-Stocks, and all the flimsy schemes, For rolling in Pactolian streams, That cost our modern rogues so little trouble. No matter what,—to pasture cows on stubble, To twist sea-sand into a solid rope, To make French bricks and fancy bread of rubble, Or light with ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... more of such exceptions to the rule of inconsiderate, exaggerated and recklessly mendacious talk that wounds ear and heart, the "society lie" would be no more, and this flimsy excuse for falsehood would be voted an article too tenuous ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... With hum'rous Scots let them disport their hour: Let them dance, fairy-like, round Ossian's tomb; Let them forge lies, and histories for Hume; Let them with Home, the very prince of verse, Make something like a Tragedy in Erse; Under dark Allegory's flimsy veil Let them with Ogilvie spin out a tale Of rueful length; Let them plain things obscure, Debase what's truly rich, and what is poor Make poorer still by jargon most uncouth; With ev'ry pert, prim prettiness of youth Born of false Taste, with Fancy (like a child Not knowing what it ...
— English Satires • Various
... to use life to feed the imagination, not to use imagination to feed life. In these sad weeks I have been like a sleeper awakened. The world of imagination, in which I have lived and moved, has crumbled into pieces over my head; the wind and rain beat through the flimsy dwelling, and I must arise and go. I have sported with life as though it were a pretty plaything; and I find it turn upon me like a wild beast, gaunt, hungry, angry. I am terrified by its evil motions, I sicken at its odour. That is the deep mystery ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... investigation, which had grown lusty by long exercise, rose within him triumphing over his personal inclinations. Too much was at stake to miss a chance like this. Honour in this situation seemed like a flimsy sentiment. He waited for the answer of the girl's lover with ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... was better pleased. Man had done little, but nature was prodigal to make up for his omissions. The buildings were poor and flimsy, but in the middle of December the flowers bloomed, vines were green, bushes sent forth their leaves, and the beauty of the scene even under the leaden skies and rising gale made it ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... would be her protector. But she was not always timid. He had discovered courage in her and something uncommonly like obstinacy of mind. She uttered opinions which startled him, less because of the flimsy grounds on which they were built, than because of the queer chivalry that made her utter them. She defended the weak because they were weak, whereas he would have had her defend the truth because it was the truth. The attacked ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... her pardon, which if she accord thee not, I shall come back hither and give thee belabourings enough with my cudgel to make thee a sad man for the rest of thy days.' What more he said, I dare not tell you, unless you first pardon me." Whereat our flimsy pumpion-pated Lady Lackbrain was overjoyed, taking all the friar's words for gospel. So after a while she said:—"And did I not tell you, Fra Alberto, that my charms were celestial? But, so help me God, I am moved ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... fleet steamed to sea in the afternoon, returning just before dark. The fort, showing signs of reanimation, was treated to another bombardment, which effectually settled it. A small fishing hamlet composed of a dozen flimsy huts of bamboo was set on fire and burned to the ground. When we left Guantanamo shortly after dark, bound back for Santiago, we had the satisfaction of knowing that one more blow had been struck against Spanish rule in ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... would write with his heart's blood." This message spread consternation among the native teachers, domestics and adherents, some of whom heard that a royal order had arrived for the banishment of all foreign teachers. Mr. Hough was detained at the court-house from day to day on the most flimsy pretences, ignorant of the language, and with no one to intercede with the government in his behalf, for it was contrary to etiquette for a woman to appear before the Viceroy, his family being absent. Mrs. Judson being ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... have to lie at home and she did it. Some fabrication about the girls at the watchworks did the trick. Fried chicken, chocolate cake. She packed them deftly and daintily. High-heeled shoes, flimsy blouse, rustling skirt. Nap Ballou was waiting for her over in the city park. She saw him before he espied her. He was leaning against a tree, idly, staring straight ahead with queer, lackluster eyes. ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... college to which no man was admitted, he sings; and the princess, suspecting the fraud, says to him, "Not for thee, O bulbul, any rose of Gulistan shall burst her veil," i.e., "O singer, do not suppose that any woman will be taken in by such a flimsy deceit." The bulbul loved the rose, and Gulistan means the "garden of roses." The prince was the bulbul, the college was Gulistan, and the princess the rose sought.—Tennyson, ...
— 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.
... lawyers take money for nothing," he said, again assuming a pleasant expression. "I succeeded in obtaining the discharge of an insolent debtor who was incarcerated on flimsy accusations of fraud, and now they all run after me. And every such case requires great labor. We, too, you know, leave some of our flesh in the ink-pot, as ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... Excepting the General's most flimsy attempt at mystification, in regard to a discrepance between Talbott and myself, he has not denied a single statement that I made in my hand-bill. Every material statement that I made has been sworn to by men who, in former times, were thought as respectable ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... fixed upon the sidewalk. There was a flimsy piece of paper fluttering about impelled by the wind. He stooped ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... this makes for better social and intellectual relations, good understanding and friendship, and so for political relations much more substantial in the case of many of the republics than the rather flimsy Pan-Americanism celebrated in eloquent speeches and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... profess to think that Northern fanaticism, as they call it, acted like a mordant in fixing the black dye of slavery in regions which would but for that have washed themselves free of its stain in tears of penitence. It is a delusion and a snare to trust in any such false and flimsy reasons where there is enough and more than enough in the institution itself to account for its growth. Slavery gratifies at once the love of power, the love of money, and the love of ease; it finds a victim for anger who cannot smite back his oppressor; and it offers to all, without measure, the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... wagon, easily dragged through sloughs and heavy roads, is covered with a white cotton cloth, and drawn, by either two yokes of oxen, or a pair of lean horses. A "patch-work" quilt is sometimes stretched across the flimsy covering, as a guard against the sun and rain. Within this vehicle are stowed all the emigrant's household goods, and ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... a mountain lake. This came to me secondhand. The lone witness was said to have rushed over to his car to get his camera as the disk approached. When it plunged toward the lake, he was so startled that he failed to snap the picture until the moment it struck. This story sounded so flimsy that I ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... wondering which dead Caesar my saucy Burt boot No. 2 is walking over. I shouldn't mind trampling old Caligula, but I don't like the thought on general principles. I feel all out of place, so modern and fixed up and flimsy. If I could get into old picturesque clothes and out of the English-speaking quarter, I should not be so oppressed and might worship Rome. But I seriously think I shall die if I stay here much longer. There's ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... serpent's head, and refuses to withdraw it, can afford to disregard the tortuous writhings of the long supple body.—Again. These attacks are seven. Must seven men with "concert and comparison,"—with leisure and inclination too,—be procured to demolish this flimsy compound of dogmatism and unbelief? to disperse these cloudy doubts, and to analyse and repel these many ambiguous statements?—Once more. A fool can assert, and in a moment, that 'There is no GOD.' But it requires a wise man to refute the lie; and his refutation ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... some of the tobacco smoke the windows were pulled down partly from the top. The bottom sashes were covered with half-curtains of imitation lace, but so flimsy that the boys saw through them ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... Elizabeth!" she cried. "I have told you to wear those stockings, and you are to wear them. Remember, I mean what I say. I wonder your father has not insisted long before this on your wearing flannel next your skin. Don't you know that by going about in flimsy cotton things in all weathers you are laying up for yourself a rheumatic old age, and all ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... ever interfered? He it is who created the sexes and placed between them the strong attraction that often works more evil and misery than good; and what barrier has He ever interposed between woman and man, her natural destroyer? None!—save the trifling one of virtue, which is a flimsy thing, and often breaks down at the first temptation. No, my dear Princess; the 'Eternal God,' if there is one, does nothing but look on impassively at the universal havoc of creation. And in the blindness and silence of things, I cannot recognize an ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... admired her had not been a mistaken one. Sydney had always been susceptible to the charms of a pretty face; and Nature had preordained a certain measure of excuse for any man who felt impelled to look twice at Milly, or even to speak to her on a flimsy pretext. And Milly was on Nature's side, for she did not resent being looked at or spoken to, although there was more innocence and ignorance of evil on her side than men were likely to give her credit for. Therefore Sydney had for some time been on speaking terms with her, over and ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... such a flimsy, round-about, unmeaning commencement as this, would expect the delightful, unexaggerated, home-felt descriptions of natural scenery, which are scattered in such unconscious profusion through this and the following cantos? For instance, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... the little shoe, or the tall gentleman of the attic. Nevertheless I did, as I went out, throw a glance up to the window of the court—alas! there were more panes broken, the placard was gone, the veil was gone—there was nothing but a flimsy web which a bold spider had stretched across one of the comers. I felt sure that the last six months had brought its changes to other houses, as well as the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... living in a neighboring State once sent five dollars to one of these fellows for his machine, and received in return a flimsy little instrument, so small that she could put it in her pocket. The needle could not be used at all, and after turning the handle a few times the cranks and wheels became bent, and twisted into one confused and useless mass. The machine was ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... most beautiful eyes I have ever seen in my life. She was dressed in some dark green material, wore a fawn jacket, and, because the afternoon was cold, had a boa of marten fur round her neck. I can remember also that her hat was of some flimsy make, with lace and glittering spear points in it, and that the whole structure was surmounted by two bows, one of black ribbon, the ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... will tell you the sort of girl I request the ten lines for. Somewhat of a pensive cast what you admire. The lines may come before the Law question, as that cannot be determined before Hilary Term, and I wish your deliberate judgment on that. The other may be flimsy and superficial. And if you have not burnt your returned letter pray re-send it me as a monumental token of my stupidity. 'Twas a little unthinking of you to touch upon a sore subject. Why, by dabbling in those accursed Annuals I have become a by-word of infamy all over the kingdom. I have ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... close that he could touch it with his stick. It was incredible that so terrible a thing could dwindle in a few years to the dimensions of a motor piston. The crank that moved up and down like a bending, gigantic knee looked almost flimsy now. ... ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... Away with the flimsy idea that life with a past is attended. There's now—only now—and no past. There's never a past; it has ended. Away with the obsolete story and all of its yesterday sorrow! There's only Today, almost gone, and in front of ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... impose on me in the least. I was too much accustomed to analytical labors to be baffled by so flimsy a veil. I determined to probe the mystery ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... independent of the newspapers. It is there that all the provincial journals are received, the news of the day gathered up, digested, and multiplied by means of lithography; which is found more efficacious than the stylet and oiled "flimsy" paper of our Penny-a-liners. It is from these latter places too, that the country journals, as well as many of the foreign press, the German, the Belgium, and the Spanish, are supplied with Paris news. England is a good market, as most of our ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... the morning when the terrific earthquake shook San Francisco and the surrounding country. One shock apparently lasted two minutes and there was an almost immediate collapse of flimsy structures all over the former city. The water supply was cut off and when fires broke out in various sections there was nothing to do but to let the buildings burn. Telegraphic and telephone communication was shut off. Electric ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... outer wrapper of discolored brief-paper; a pretty little document of sixty-eight small pages in a feminine hand, perfect in its slightly archaic grammar, gracefully composed, and, in spite of its flimsy yellowed paper, as legible as print: "Histoire d'Alix de Morainville ecrite a la Louisiane ce 22 Aout 1795. Pour mes cheres amies, Suzanne et ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... complexion, with a soft and delicate bloom that would by itself have given her a right to claim her possession of a full share of good looks. She was dressed quite simply in a white frock with a touch of colour at the waist and she had a very flimsy lace shawl thrown over her shoulders, presumably intended as a protection against ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... two met, Cerissa was immediately reduced to a state of flimsy apology which she made up for by being particularly hot and self-assertive in speaking ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... slowly—and walked very slowly—across the room. She seated herself on the sofa where Ella had sat, and she remained motionless for some minutes. Then she made a motion with one of her hands as if sweeping from before her eyes some flimsy repulsiveness—the web of an unclean thing flashing in the air. In another instant she had buried her face in the pillow that still bore the ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... less. The life one led out here was not calculated to tone down any innate restlessness of temperament: on the contrary, it directly hindered one from becoming fixed and settled. It was on a par with the houses you lived in—these flimsy tents and draught-riddled cabins you put up with, "for the time being"—was just as much of a makeshift affair as they. Its keynote was change. Fortunes were made, and lost, and made again, before you could ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... astonishment a little later, when two of that second squad came running in, all breathless, and told him that though they fully explained the magnificence of the wedding supper, some turned upon their heels with a flimsy excuse, others rudely laughed outright in the messengers' faces, and—oh, the horror of it!—still others actually stoned and beat some of the messengers to death!—and their bodies were even at that moment lying in the street, ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... extreme distaste he began to untie the soft flimsy lavender ribbon that encompassed them. "In their native state, you know," he confided, "one very seldom finds them growing with—sashes on them." From her nest of cushions across the room little Eve Edgarton loomed ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... a club-room, where the poor could not see how their betters ordained one thing for the vulgar, and another for themselves; or in an easy-chair, in the study, whither my lord retires every Sunday for his devotions. It dealt in private scandal and ribaldry, only the more piquant for its pretty flimsy veil of double-entendre. It was a fortune to the publisher, and it became a necessary to the reader, which he could not do without, any more than without his snuff-box, his opera-box, or his chasse after coffee. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "criticism is a kind of brush which must not be used upon flimsy stuff, or it carries it all away with it. That is enough of the craft, now listen! Do you see that mark?" he continued, pointing to the manuscript of the Marguerites. "I have put ink on the string and paper. If Dauriat reads ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... able to await our advance here before they found their retreat was cut off. They have thrown up some shelters. We noticed from afar off several very conspicuous stone sangars, but coming close, we were surprised to find that they were made of stones loosely put together with big chinks, very flimsy and frail, and much too high for their purpose, too. They evidently were not intended for shelters at all. What were they there for? We looked carefully round, and at last the meaning of the device struck us. A hundred yards to the right the ground dropped sharp, ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... last Wednesday: we will refer to it. Mum! mum! Ah, here it is. 'The Chancellor of the Exchequer rose and—' mum! mum! ah—'I am of—o-pinion that—if, upon a fair review of our situation, there shall appear to be nothing hollow in its foundation, artificial in its superstructure, or flimsy in its general results, we may safely venture to contemplate with instructive admiration the harmony of its proportions and the solidity of ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... through the flimsy modern folding-doors, at those times when he was most angry, and she most distracted. That is to say, we heard them when they spoke in ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... there to prevent anyone going in at the first alarm and saving anything," Tom said. "They didn't count on the roof burning through first, giving me a chance to use the sand. I made the roof of the red shed flimsy just on that account, so the force of the explosion if one ever came, would be mostly upward. You know the expanding gases, caused by an explosion or by rapid combustion, always do just as electricity does, seek the shortest and easiest ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... preference for men as their source of nourishment is partly explained by the nature of the remains of the victims they had brought with them as provisions from Mars. These creatures, to judge from the shrivelled remains that have fallen into human hands, were bipeds with flimsy, silicious skeletons (almost like those of the silicious sponges) and feeble musculature, standing about six feet high and having round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets. Two or three of these seem to have been brought in each cylinder, and all were killed before ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... wars, even, may have been necessary to wipe out evils, such as slavery or the oppression of neighboring peoples. But in modern times the moral justification of war on such grounds has usually been a flimsy pretext; and certainly the occasion for legitimate warfare is becoming steadily rarer. Nearly always the good aimed at could have been attained without the evils of war. If the American colonies had had a little more patience, they could have won the liberty they craved ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... newspapers exaggerate dreadfully—shamefully, to get up a sensation in the interest of their own flimsy sheets. There is some disturbance, but nothing like what people are made believe by the ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... being repaired by the present Rana, under the superintendence of our host and a party of native workmen. Masons and most skilful carvers in stone were busily engaged in the restoration of parts that had fallen into dangerous decay—an extremely flimsy-looking scaffolding, made apparently of light bamboos, tied together in wisps, and forming a fragile-looking ramp, wound spirally up the outside of the tower. My host seemed to consider it a perfectly safe means of ascent, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Dan Hicks knew it, but he was not to be beaten out of his share of the salvage by such flimsy argument. "Jack," he pleaded, "don't be a hog all the time. The Yankee Prince is an eight thousand ton vessel and it's a two-tug job. Better send us both, Tiernan, and play safe. Chances are our competitors have three tugs on the way ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... trait in illustration of the nature which from time to time pierced through and rent the flimsy fabric of his opinions. This ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... laughing. "I see through your flimsy veil. We won't say any more: you either argue in a circle, or ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... You may as well think the garden of the Tuileries was well protected with the cords of ribbon insultingly stretched by the National Assembly to keep the sovereign canaille from intruding on the retirement of the poor King of the French as that such flimsy cobwebs will stand between the savages of the Revolution and their natural prey. Deep philosophers are no triflers; brave sans-culottes are no formalists. They will no more regard a Marquis of Tavistock than an Abbot of Tavistock; the Lord of Woburn will not be more respectable in their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... product of many silk dresses ("scarcely soiled") in furnishing that objectionable and disreputable suitor of hers with funds for his extravagance. He has beggared two or three of her acquaintance already, under the same flimsy pretense of intended marriage, that scarcely deludes poor Abigail; she has sore misgivings as to her own fate. Alternately he bullies and cajoles, but all the while she knows that he is lying, deliberately and incessantly, yet ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... wrong, and often am no doubt, But right or wrong with friends with foes 'twill out. Thus 'tis perhaps my fault if I complain Of trite invention and a flimsy vein, Tame characters, uninteresting, jejune, 205 And passions drily copied from [A]Le Brun. For I would rather never judge than wrong That friend of all men, generous Fenelon. But in the name of goodness, must I be 210 The dupe of charms I never yet could see? And then to flatter where there's ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... any one you so speak, the answer is—"Pooh, pooh, my dear fellow, never fear—don't fuss yourself —take it easy—to-morrow will do just as well." If, on the other hand, however, you reject such flimsy excuses, and simply say, "I'm booked in the mail," the opposition at once falls to the ground, and your quondam antagonist, who was ready to quarrel with you, is at once prepared to ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... years old at the time. The date of his birth has become a fascinating problem, over which many critics have argued and disagreed. As to the exact year it is best frankly to confess our ignorance. The information is so flimsy and conflicting as to make the acutest critics waver. While a perfectly unwarranted importance has been given to a passage in Vicente's last comedia, the Floresta de Enganos (1536), in which a judge declares that he is 66 (therefore Gil Vicente was born ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... guest-room, a bare carpetless apartment, with a rough wooden bench, a table, and two straight-backed wooden chairs, and the room is heated to suffocation by a huge stove, which occupies a corner of the room. The flimsy plank partition is unpapered, but generally plastered with the cheap, crudely coloured prints sold by pedlars. Some of these depicted events connected with our recent war in South Africa, and it is needless to add that ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... Dressgoods was being looted by a howling mob of women, who were pulling bolts of material from shelves and fighting among themselves over them. Somebody had turned on the electric fans, and long streams of flimsy fabric were blowing about like a surrealist maypole dance. Somebody in Household Furnishings had turned on a couple of fans, too, and a mob of hoodlums were opening cans of paint and throwing them ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... that could be found. There was a strong smell throughout the house, but whether it was bugs, or rats, or cats, or drains, or a compound of all four, I could not determine. The sashes did not fit, the flimsy doors hung badly; the skirting was gone in several places, and there were not a few holes in the floor; the locks were loose, and paper was torn and dirty; the stairs were weak and one felt the treads give as one went ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... one or the other,—smoking, gambling, or putting final touches to their toilet in the broad light of day. The native officers alone aspired to a certain degree of privacy. Their huts were detached a little space from those that guarded the horses; and flimsy walls of grass matting, set around them, imparted a suggestion of dignity and ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... with all the prisoners identified, and some of them doubly. The defence was scarcely more than a sham. The flimsy alibis were destroyed even by the incompetent, unready Rocklin, and when the charge came blackness fell upon the citizens of Tucson. The judge's cold statements struck them as partisan, and they murmured and looked darkly at him. But the jury, with its Meakums, wore no expression at all during ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... broad, generous lines—even had One-Eye and Big Tom known how to wage such a bout; and both men knew little concerning the science of self-defense. What happened—without any further abusive language—was this: the longshoreman and the cowboy (while using due caution against coming too close to the flimsy railing of the stairs) each set about ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... fabrics, rubbing each between her work-hardened fingers and thumb till the shopkeeper winced, expecting to see it torn. After trying several and getting the counter covered she would push them aside, contemptuously remarking, 'I don't like this yer shallygallee (flimsy) stuff. Haven't'ee got any gingham tackle?' Whereat the poor draper would cast down a fresh roll of stoutest material with the reply: 'Here, ma'am. Here's something that will wear like pin-wire.' This did better, but was declared to be ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... more sultry and oppressive every moment; a heavy storm was evidently gathering—already a few heat-drops had fallen. Malcolm was a man who noticed details; he perceived at once that the ragged cover of the perambulator offered a flimsy and insufficient protection. Then he glanced at the umbrella in his hand; it was a dandified article, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... floor and, lifting the candle, looked in at the yellowed old playthings, the flimsy, spineless paper-dolls, the faded silk rags, the discolored bits of papers, the misshapen staggering paste-board chairs and bed, which had seemed so delightful and enchanting to her then, far better than any ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... never wise to buy flimsy furniture, however cheap. As a rule, there is too much furniture in the American home. It is better to get along with a few good, durable articles, even though a little expensive, than with a profusion of inferior ones. These soon reveal their ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... down and fire showered thick upon it. Timbers and beams crumbled like paper things and were no more. The whole flimsy structure had ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... natural riches than the West Indies. The Spanish ladies in the Philippines are dressed as in the ancient cities of their own renowned peninsula. The Filipinos are of the varied styles that adorn Africans and the Asiatics. They are gay in colors and curious in the adjustment of stuffs, from the flimsy jackets to the fantastic skirts. The first essential in the dress of a Filipino is a jacket cut low, the decolette feature being obscured to some extent by pulling out one shoulder and covering the other, taking the chances of the lines that mark the concealment and disclosure ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... unnecessary. It is rather a moment when the commentator should step forward. Ought the Wilcoxes to have offered their home to Margaret? I think not. The appeal was too flimsy. It was not legal; it had been written in illness, and under the spell of a sudden friendship; it was contrary to the dead woman's intentions in the past, contrary to her very nature, so far as that ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... a foundation either in history or in reason. But the popular fancy was fascinated. The whole flimsy furniture in the chambers of the general mind vanished. New emotions, new purposes, new sanctions appeared in its stead. There was a sad lack of ethical definitions, an over-zealous iconoclasm as to religion, but there were many high ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... minutes regularly every day to the system? And yet such a great deal could be done for health in that time! No, we "haven't time," or we "oversleep ourselves so often," or we make some such other flimsy excuse; but of course we ought to "make time," we ought not to "oversleep ourselves." The fact is, rather, that most of us are too lazy to go through the exercises, even though we may know of their transcendent ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... fool,' replied the first speaker, 'in matters where my own advantage is staked, but my eye is keen enough to see through the flimsy disguise of a country damsel at a glance; and I tell you, as surely as I hold this ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... god, he says, being good and well-disposed, it is not necessary to propitiate him. But his devil is ugly, and must be won over by offering and petition. Once a year, wherever collected in any number, he builds a flimsy sort of temple, decorates it with ornaments of tinsel, lays piles of fruit, meats and sugared delicacies on an altar, keeps up night and day a steady crash of gongs, and installs therein some great, uncouth wooden idols. When this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... after a minute's scurrying of figures on the deck a flimsy companion-ladder rattled down over ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... and educated country as to where the right lay in the subsequent Roman struggle. What sensible or honest Protestant would not sympathize with the indignant eloquence of this earnest Italian protesting against the flimsy oratory ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... deported to France; he died at Orthez early in the following year. His verses are modelled on those of Melendez Valdes; though not deficient in technique or passion, they are often disfigured by spurious sentimentality and by the flimsy philosophy of the age. Cienfuegos was blamed for an unsparing use of both archaisms and gallicisms. His plays, Pitaco, Zoraida, La Condesa de Castilla and Idomeneo, four tragedies on the pseudo-classic French model, and Las Hermanas ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... lady-loves gained such a strong hold upon his affections that he was induced by the mother, being the elder sister of the two, to nominate her own son as his heir to the exclusion of the three elder brethren, who were sent on various flimsy pretexts to defend the northern frontiers against the more hostile Tartars. To complicate matters, the Marquess's legitimate or first spouse, the Ts'i princess, besides bearing a son, had also given him a daughter, who had married the powerful ruler of Ts'in to the west. Thus not only were Ts'in ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... inconvenient and uncomfortable articles arises rather from their age than from anything else. But oftentimes the very simplicity, solidity, and strength of old furniture, for instance, is charming, in contrast with the elaborate, unmeaning carvings and flimsy character of more modern productions. We are beginning to see how much more sensible the Chippendale and other styles commended by Eastlake and some other writers on household art are to much that has been produced in ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... remarkable at eighteen is not so striking at twenty-eight. So when their extreme youth was no longer a cause for surprise, the boy preachers settled down into every-day dulness, with nothing except the memory of a flimsy fame to compensate the ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... awaken the blaze Those bright burning-glasses contain, Whose lens with concentrated rays Proved fatal to old Drury Lane? 'Twas all accidental, they cry, - Away with the flimsy humbug! 'Twas fired by a flash from the eye Of Lady ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... "Flimsy in the extreme, Bates," said the rector triumphantly, and as if relieved of a load. "And you show no more common sense than to charge a gentleman with such a crime solely because you happened to see ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... statesmanship of the same magnificent kind. McClellan had become the Democratic candidate for President, to the well-founded alarm of all who put the Union first. In June, when Grant and Lee were at grips round Richmond, Lincoln was invited to a public meeting got up in honor of Grant with only a flimsy disguise of the ominous fact that Grant, and not Lincoln, might be the Union choice. Lincoln sagaciously wrote back: "It is impossible for me to attend. I approve nevertheless of whatever may tend ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood |
