"Fragile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the iron hand of misfortune press hard upon you, and disappointments well-nigh sink your despairing soul'? Have courage! Mighty ones have been your predecessors, and have withstood the current of opposition that threatened to overwhelm their fragile bark. ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... eastern world. The first figure in the former group was the father of our host; the acrid humours of extreme age had crimsoned his eye-lids, and his head shook from side to side, as he attempted to rise to salute me, but I held him to his seat. The wife of our host was a model of fragile delicate beauty. Her nose, mouth, and chin, were exquisitely chiselled, and her skin was smooth and white as alabaster; but the eye-lid drooped; the eye hung fire, and under each orb the skin was slightly blue, but so blending with ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... bids me rise and strip, and, naked all from toe to lip, To wander where the dewdrops drip from off the silent trees, And where the hairy spiders spin their nets of silver, fragile-thin, And out to where the fields begin, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... caught Gilbart's eye, and somehow it seemed to lift and remove her and the house she was entering—the lit windows, the guests, the Admiral himself—into another world. If it were real, then (like enough) this fragile thing, this Dresden goddess, owned a brother, perhaps a lover, on board the Berenice. If so, here was another world waiting to be shattered—a world of silks and toys and pretty uniforms and tiny bric-a-brac—a sort of doll's house inhabited by angels ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Redon had surely walked amid gardens, so much of the morning is in each of his fragile works. There seems always to be hovering in them the breath of those recently spent dawns of which he was the eager spectator, never quite the full sunlight of the later day. Essentially he was the worshipper of the lip of flower, of dust upon the moth wing, of the ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... until she brought forward a daughter of fifteen with the request that she be given a job; anything—walk-on, extra, chorus. Lyddy, she called her. The girl seldom spoke. She was extremely stupid, but a marvellous mimic, and pretty beyond belief; fragile, and yet with something common about her even in her fragility. Her wrists had a certain flat angularity that bespoke a peasant ancestry, but she had a singular freshness and youthful bloom. The line of her side face from the eye socket to the chin was a delicious ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... said Alice, with a smile, "that your countrywomen are a far more delicate and fragile race than Englishwomen; pale, feeble hot-house plants, unfit for the wear and tear of life, without energy of character, or any slightest degree of physical strength to base it upon. If, now, you had these ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The wings are heavy, moist, transparent, with nervures of a tender green. The thorax is barely clouded with brown. All the rest of the body is a pale green, whitish in places. Heat and a prolonged air-bath are necessary to harden and colour the fragile creature. Some two hours pass without any perceptible change. Hanging to its deserted shell by the two fore limbs, the Cigale sways to the least breath of air, still feeble and still green. Finally, the brown colour appears and rapidly covers the whole body; the change of colour is ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... of oxen, and Catullus went off to look at the bee-hives in their sheltered corner near a wild olive tree. When he came back he found his brother seated on a stone bench, carving an odd little satyr out of a bit of wood and talking to a fragile looking boy about twelve years old. Valerius's sympathetic gravity always charmed children and Catullus was not surprised to see this boy's brown eyes lifted in eager confidence to ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... poet, and few poets have rushed so quickly into fame. He received few of the buffets which young authors have as a rule to bear. Instead, many a kindly helping hand was stretched out to him by the great men of the day, for there was much in this young genius to draw out the pity of others. He was fragile and sickly. As a full grown man he stood only four feet six inches high. His body was bent and deformed, and so frail that he had to be strapped in canvas to give him some support. His fine face ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... and her wings, which were of the most delicate gauze, glistened like dew-drops in the sun. All day long she was busy at work tending her flowers, bathing them in the fresh morning dew, painting them anew with her delicate fairy brush, or loosening the clay when it pressed too heavily upon their fragile roots; and at night she joined the elves in their merry dance upon the greensward. She was not alone in the great forest; near her were many of her sister fairies, all old friends and playmates. There ...
— How the Fairy Violet Lost and Won Her Wings • Marianne L. B. Ker
... my weary life depends So fragile is and weak, If none kind succour lends, Soon 'neath the painful burden will it break; Since doom'd to take my sad farewell of her, In whom begins and ends My bliss, one hope, to stir My sinking spirit ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... milestones had loitered past, he overtook a boy who was stooping to light a cigarette. He wore no overcoat, and looked unspeakably fragile against the snow, "Are you on the road, guv'nor?" asked the ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... "Lovely and good, to tender pity true, Queen of a virtuous King, this trophy view; Cold ice and snow sustain its fragile form, But ev'ry grateful heart to thee is warm. Oh, may this tribute in your hearts excite, Illustrious pair, more pure and real delight, Whilst thus your virtues are sincerely prais'd, Than pompous domes by servile flatt'ry rais'd." The theatres generally rang with praises of the ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... house—would see for himself this wonderful Maggie—and, though he had been warned against it, would possibly win her from his friend, who, unconsciously perhaps, had often crossed his path, watching him jealously lest he should look too often and too long upon the fragile Rose, blooming so sweetly in her bird's-nest of a home among the tall ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... she was trying to carry, and which plainly was far beyond her strength. The rashness of benevolence overcame the not too energetic Rokuzo. Sigh as he did over the conveyance of his carcass up the steep hill, he sighed still more at thought of this fragile creature attempting to carry such ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... looked down and saw the heavens figured in a sphere of glass, he laughed and said to the other gods: "Has the power of mortal effort gone so far? Is my handiwork now mimicked in a fragile globe?" An old man of Syracuse had imitated on earth the laws of the heavens, the order of nature, and the ordinances of the gods. Some hidden influence within the sphere directs the various courses of the stars and actuates the lifelike mass with definite motions. A false zodiac ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... require a power equal to 400 horses for the sails of a ship to struggle on equal terms with the wind. Suppose an impossibility, namely, that a balloon could carry with it a force equal to 400 horse-power; this result would be of little use, for under the immense weight the fragile covering of the balloon would instantly collapse. If all the horses of a regiment were harnessed to the car of a balloon by means of a long rope, the result would be that the balloon would fly into shivers, being ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... vast of night, so do all joys Life strews along her passing to the grave Prevail not o'er the shadow of sure death. And O Humanity, long-suffering Harp Of passion-strings unnumbered, shall His skill Flung thus forever o'er thy fragile rest Build but these harmonies that seem sometimes Unworth the misery of the trampled worm? Would, would I were not vibrant with all strains He strikes from thee, or else more perfect tuned! World-sorrow have I ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... easily generating electricity, the next natural step was to find a means of storing it or accumulating it. This, however, proved no easy matter, and as yet a practical storage or secondary battery that is neither too cumbersome, too fragile, nor too weak in its action has not been invented. If a satisfactory storage battery could be made, it is obvious that its revolutionary effects could scarcely be overestimated. In the single field of aeronautics, it would probably solve the question of aerial navigation. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... thorns, "the most precious piece of Gothic," says Ruskin, "in Northern Europe." Michelet saw a whole world of religion and poetry—tears of piety, mystic ecstasy, the mysteries of divine love—expressed in the marvellous little church, in the fragile and precious paintings of its windows.[59] The work was completed in three years, and has been so admirably restored by Viollet le Duc that the visitor may gaze to-day on this pure and peerless gem almost as St. Louis ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... this stranger, for such she was, entirely, to Elizabeth, was light and fragile. Her dress was neat and becoming; and her countenance, though pale and slightly agitated, excited deep interest by its sweet and melancholy expression. A second and third response was made by this juvenile assistant, when the manly sounds of a male voice proceeded from the opposite ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... captain, she shall die the death," exclaimed the elder striding about the room, and pausing before the great chair where his pale and fragile wife sat looking up at ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... perfect autumn weather, I was walking down the main road of a residential suburb, and observing the fragile-wheeled station-wagons, and the ice-wagons enormously labeled "DANGER" (perhaps by the gastric experts of the medical faculty), and the Colonial-style dwellings, and the "tinder" boarding-houses, and the towering boot-shine stands, and the roast-chestnut ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... now about his methods—or ours, Stevens, when a bull like Langdon breaks loose in the political china shop. Fortune and reputation are both fragile." ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... winter of 1910 the old man left the home where he had lived in domestic security since the first years of his happy marriage. It was severe weather, and his fragile frame was too weak for the long difficult journey he planned in order to reach a place of retreat in the {227} Caucasus Mountains. He had resolved to spend his last days in complete seclusion, and to give up the intercourse with the world which made too many claims ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... favourite topic of science. "As I felt, in truth, but a slight interest in the subject of his conversation, I had leisure to examine, and I may add, to admire, the appearance of my very extraordinary guest. It was a sum of many contradictions. His figure was slight and fragile, and yet his bones and joints were large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much, that he seemed of a low stature. His clothes were expensive, and made according to the most approved mode of the day; but they were ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... annoying!" she cried. "I must go. I have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to some absurd meeting at Willis's Rooms, where he is going to be in the chair. If I am late, he is sure to be furious, and I couldn't have a scene in this bonnet. It is far too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it. No, I must go, dear Agatha. Good-bye, Lord Henry, you are quite delightful, and dreadfully demoralising. I am sure I don't know what to say about your views. You must come and dine with us some night. ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... upon her, and the mortal frames of those who, in their day, had suffered as she suffered, and ages since had found the rest that she in time would reach, scattered all around—fit emblems of the fragile vanity of passions which suck ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... mentally, as a burden. It was a new sensation and he felt like putting up a plea; but before he could frame one Heathcote gave a low whistle and almost at once a door at the rear opened, admitting a fragrance of delectable food and the smallest woman Northrup had ever seen. That so fragile a creature could bear any responsibility outside that due herself, was difficult to comprehend until one looked into the strange, clear eyes peering through glasses, set awry. Unquenchable youth and power lay deep in those piercing eyes; there was force that could command ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... Sara's feet, where a bit of the dimple lay on the taffy (looking very much like a fragile bit of a Christmas-tree ornament), was a real Snimmy, vest-pocket and all. His tail was longer than that of most Snimmies, and his nose was sharper and more debilitating, but you would have known him at once, ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... leaves; stiff, thick, fragile branches, and round, fleshy berries containing a high percentage of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Notwithstanding his familiarity with misery in all its shapes, he was one of the most cheerful of beings; and, but for his cheerfulness he could never, with so delicate a frame, have got through so vast an amount of self-imposed work. He dreaded nothing so much as inactivity. Though fragile, he was bold and indefatigable; and his moral courage was of the first order. It may be regarded as a trivial matter to mention that he was the first who ventured to walk the streets of London with an umbrella over his head. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... to Edward,—to sympathize with the youth's horror at the sight of this obnoxious husband, "who seems to him," as M. Janin says in his preface, "a hero—what do I say?—a giant!—to the loving, timid, fragile child." "In fine, a certain air of calm rectitude pervaded his person." Execrable wretch! could anything be more repulsive to true and delicate sentiment (as before, a la Francaise) "I should say his age was about forty." Our wrath at this last atrocity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... cylinders is of no possible use to the Osmia, who knows nothing of the art of perforating a woody wall. The gallery of an internode has to be wide open before the insect can take possession of it. Also, the clean-cut stump must be horizontal, otherwise the rain would soften the fragile edifice of clay and soon lay it low; also, the stump must not be lying on the ground and must be kept at some distance from the dampness of the soil. We see therefore that, without the intervention of ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... when we have resisted a temptation and ask ourselves why, at that moment, we did right and not wrong. Was it the deep virtue, the high ideals in our souls, or was it the compulsion of the Society around us? And I think most of us will be astonished to discover what fragile ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... filament of wire, the more economical would be the light. Edison sought, thirty years ago, for just the qualities now found in tungsten metal. Tungsten metal was first used for incandescent lamps in the form of a paste, squirted into the shape of a thread. This proved too fragile. Later investigators devised means of drawing tungsten into wire; and it is tungsten wire that is now used so generally in lighting. A tungsten lamp has an average efficiency of 1-1/4 watts per candlepower, compared with 3-1/2 to 4 watts of the old-style carbon lamp. In larger ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... Edward endured the accident with miraculous courage—he did not utter a single cry, but fell lifeless into my arms; nor did a tear fall from his eyes after it was over. I doubt not you will consider these praises the result of blind maternal affection, but there is a soul of iron in that delicate, fragile body. Valentine sends many affectionate remembrances to your dear Eugenie. I embrace you with all ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he places stone on stone; He scatters seed: you are at once the prop Among the long roots of his fragile crop. You manufacture for him, and insure House, harvest, implement and furniture, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... Don Andres, his saddle-galled person reclining at ease in a great armchair behind the passion vines, with the fragile stem of a wine-glass twirling between his white, sensitive, gambler-fingers while he listened to the don's courtly utterances as translated faithfully by Dade (Jack being absent on some philandering mission of his own), big Bill Wilson opened his eyes to the other side of the ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... fragile mirror name, Reflecting all creation on its limpid face; 'Tis closed within a narrow frame, Yet compasses high heav'n's blue vault of endless space. This crystal is of priceless worth, But yet the poor possess it, nor possession pay; It is the brightest ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... gives me the creeps to look at her. She's so slight and fragile, I expect to see her go to pieces like ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... Countess, who had just taken her opiate in the increased doses, was out of pain, and wished to make her toilet. Roma brought up the night-table and the mirror, the rouge-pot, the rabbit's foot, the puff, the pencil, and the other appurtenances of her aunt's toilet-box. And when the fragile thing, so soon to be swallowed up by the earth in its great earthquake, had been propped by pillows, she began to paint her wrinkled face as if going to dance a minuet with death. First the black rings about the languid eyes were whitened, then the earthen cheeks were rouged, and ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... permitted to suggest the following leading principles; but we do so with diffidence. Rich colours harmonize with rich brunette complexions and dark hair. Delicate colours are the most suitable for delicate and fragile styles of beauty. Very young ladies are never so suitably attired as in white. Ladies who dance should wear dresses of light and diaphanous materials, such as tulle, gauze, crape, net, &c., over coloured silk slips. Silk dresses ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... him come," pleaded Alphonso, a fragile-looking boy a year younger than Joanna, whose violet-blue eyes and fair skin were in marked contrast to her gipsy-like darkness of complexion; and this request was echoed eagerly by another boy, a fine, bold-looking lad, somewhat older than Alphonso, by name Britten, who was brought up with the ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... head, smiling. She looked less tired now. She was pretty and fragile, with fair hair and blue eyes. She was very pale and was rather shabbily and ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... his "Open Boat," one felt that he was of those whom fate seldom allows to make a safe landing after much toil and bitterness at the oar. I confess to an abiding affection for that energetic, slight, fragile, intensely living and transient figure. He liked me, even before we met, on the strength of a page or two of my writing, and after we had met I am glad to think he liked me still. He used to point out to ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... So fragile a membrane scarcely possesses the reliability which should be possessed by a structure whose presence or absence has often meant so much. Its absence by no means necessarily signifies that a woman has had intercourse ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... we look sharply into every group of myrtle warblers, we are quite likely to discover some of their dainty, fragile cousins that gladly seek the escort of birds so fearless as they. By the last of May all the warblers are gone from the neighborhood except the constant ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... till he was as stiff as a rheumatic old man when he came down only just in time for luncheon. Mrs. Fordyce did not appear at all. She was a fragile creature, and quite knocked up by the agitations of the night. The gentlemen had visited the desolate rectory, and found that though the fine ancient kitchen had escaped, the pleasant living rooms had been injured by the water, and the place could hardly be made habitable before the ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sink down with fatigue like all the rest—nay, even more than the rest, for we were not used to it, and for my part I had altogether lost the habitude of long walks. But then you could see what Madame Martin was. She is slight and fragile and pale, not strong, as any one can perceive; but she rose above the needs of the body. She was the one among us who rested not. We threw open all the rooms, and the poor people thronged in. Old Leontine, who is the garde of the house, gazed upon us and the ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... Fragile in every sense of the word, they are obliged to look up to man for every comfort. In the most trifling dangers they cling to their support, with parasitical tenacity, piteously demanding succour; and their NATURAL protector extends his arm, or lifts up his voice, to ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... is a boy about six years of age—akin in his fragile body and his serious mien—a youngster that is very precious to me. I first saw this boy on a little balcony about three feet by four, projecting from the window of a poverty-stricken fourth floor. He was leaning over the railing, his white, thoughtful head just clearing the top, holding a short, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... with cool water daily soaking into the rich soil, a green covering sprang into life, and everywhere upon it, as if by magic, many colored flowers rose in the sweet air. Pale wild flowers, lavender daisies, fragile bluebells, white four-petaled lilies like Eastern mayflowers, and golden poppies, deep sunset gold, color of the West, bloomed in happy confusion. California roses, crimson as blood, nodded heavy heads and trembled with the weight of bees. Low down in ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... sapphires and diamonds; the sixth a number of finely worked chains of gold with a pendant of a gold filigree fish set with diamonds; the seventh, what they all wear, a massive gold chain, which looked heavy enough even by itself to weigh down the fragile little wearer, from which depended a gold shield, on which the Chinese characters forming the child's name were raised in rubies, with fishes and flowers in diamonds round it, and at the back a god in rubies similarly surrounded. Magnificent diamond earrings and ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... decries the greatness of the campaign may perhaps no less hesitate to approve the fitness of its chosen annalist. His fame was due to the perfection of a single book; he ranked as a potentate in STYLE. But literary perfection, whether in prose or poetry, is a fragile quality, an afflatus irregular, independent, unamenable to orders; the official tributes of a Laureate we compliment at their best with the northern farmer's verdict on the pulpit performances of ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... in eyes of the lady who sat at Lecour's left, the Baroness de la Roche Vernay. She was one of those startlingly beautiful beings whom one meets only once in a lifetime. Less than eighteen, and fragile-looking at first glance, Nature had given her an erectness and grace and a slender, unconscious symmetry which, characterising every feature, seemed to suggest the analogy of the upward growth of a flower. The purity of innocence ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... you that the Comtesse de Montcornet is a fragile, timid, delicate little woman. What do you think of such a marriage as that? To those who know society such things are common enough; a well-assorted marriage is the exception. Nevertheless, I have come ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... as a child, and on which instead he seems a giant. Viewed from a height, this region looks like a yellow sea, tempestuous yet motionless. The dreariness of this desert is increased by a wild vegetation, which seems like the mourning of the dead and abandoned nature—thin, fragile grass, flowers with almost transparent petals, juniper, sweet-broom, rosemary, through which every now and then skips a rabbit. Neither house, tree, nor human being is to be seen for miles. Now and then ravens, curlews, and ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... through unexpected agencies and conflicting events, which is very gradually approximating human affairs to a state of truthfulness. Hawthorne was one of the great believers of his generation; but his faith expressed itself in the negative way of showing how fragile are the ordinary objects of reverence in the world, how subject the best of us are to the undermining influence of very great sin; and, on the other hand, how many traits of good there are, by consequence, even in the worst of us. This, however, is a mere skeleton ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... which blazed brightly on the hearth, in a low chair made somewhat easy with cushions, sat a fair, fragile-looking, girlish figure, in whose mournful dark eyes was something so pathetic that it suggested the old-time prophecy that such "die young." Clarissa Verplanck in that resembled none of her family, and the one reason ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... such a dear!" Conny murmured, looking at him with her full soft eyes, realizing in her own way that in this fragile body there was the soul of the lover,—born to love, to burn in some fashion before some ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... could in reason have been urged against the arrangement, that thing was his wife. She was a fragile, delicate girl, whom he had married in obedience to that instinct of attraction towards the opposite which Nature, for the purpose of maintaining her average, has implanted in our breasts—a timid, meek-eyed creature, one of those ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... obediently beside him, a fragile dainty figure; carried limply, however, and little more distinguished than flappers of inferior origin. He led her to a rather luxurious delicatessen not far from his hotel, kept by enterprising Italians who never closed their doors. They seated themselves uncomfortably at the high ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Sunday morning after breakfast. The lady stood like a rival head among the other guests, listening, gloved and bonneted, to the bells of Wrexby, West of the hills, and of Fenhurst, Northeast. The squire came in to them, groaning over his boots, cross with his fragile wife, and in every mood for satire, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the clock whose dial records the moments of plenty; they are the untiring wing on which delicate perfumes float; the guide of the quivering light-ray, the song of the slumberous, languid air; and their flight is the token, the sure and melodious note, of all the myriad fragile joys that are born in the heat and dwell in the sunshine. They teach us to tune our ear to the softest, most intimate whisper of these good, natural hours. To him who has known them and loved them, a summer where there ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... came here some time ago. She was very pale and fragile when she came. She was in sore distress, too. But she received the consolation of the Church, and died ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... was eighteen[11] that Destiny, with inhuman cunning, caught up in his net the fragile ball of ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... the door, walked to the window, and stood looking through the panes until the slight figure had reached the street, where she caught up her skirt, to free her steps the better, and started on a run for the car line. When the fragile form was lost in the whirl of the traffic, Martha walked slowly to the table and sank into a chair, her elbows resting on its top, her face in ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... qui jadys pleine cacque Heut de ducatz et pouvoir magnifique, Est en exil, sans targe, escu ne placque, Captif, afflict, plus mausain que cung heticque, Et que, de main hostile et inimique, Malheur le fiere rudement et estocque— Gloire mondaine est fragile et caducque." ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... preserved from all these calamities because the destroyer and the convoy solved the problem of the submarines, and because back of these agencies of victory lay Admiral Beatty's squadrons, holding at arm's length the German surface ships while these comparatively fragile craft were saving the liberties ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... own room Marguerite Verne gave full vent to her pent-up feelings in an outburst of tears. Hers was not a nature that could endure with fortitude the ills that oftentimes befall humanity; but like the fragile reed that bends with the storm, and when the force of nature has spent ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... dear Miss Dabney, if you could walk to church, I'm sure I can walk home with you," was the ready response; nevertheless, the rather fragile-looking young man shuddered a little in sympathy with the rawness of the wind. He was from well-sheltered New England, and he had not yet acquired the native Southron's indifference to weather discomforts; would never ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... reduce the strength of; mettre de l'eau dans son vin [Fr.]. Adj. weak, feeble, debile^; impotent &c 158; relaxed, unnerved, &c v.; sapless, strengthless^, powerless; weakly, unstrung, flaccid, adynamic^, asthenic^; nervous. soft, effeminate, feminate^, womanly. frail, fragile, shattery^; flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, gimcrack, gingerbread; rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky; craichy^; drooping, tottering &c v.. broken, lame, withered, shattered, shaken, crazy, shaky; palsied &c 158; decrepit. languid, poor, infirm; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... its waste? Seen from without, these apparently tame and lusterless lives rouse pity rather than envy. Those who approach gently sometimes divine sad secrets, great trials undergone, heavy burdens beneath which too fragile shoulders bend; but this is only the side of shadow. We should learn to know and value this richness of heart, this pure goodness, this power to love, to console, to hope, this joyful giving up of self, ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... a glance at poor Miss Eunice, behind her fragile battlement of the tea-set, and was deeply touched at the glance of sympathy which dimly flickered in the lonely eyes. "I do think, mother, that Anna is right about single women's having some occupation," was timidly suggested. "Of course, I mean those who have no special home duties; I can ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... deformed thee, will die with me. You will exist to reflect other images in other minds, and ever will remain the same, although your reflected semblance vary in a thousand ways, changeable as the hearts of those who view thee. One of these fragile mirrors, that ever doted on thine image, is about to be broken, crumbled to dust. But everteeming Nature will create another and another, and thou wilt loose nought by ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... White hands to grasp and weld again into a vast unhappy whole its former constituent republics of Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Esthonia, Tauride, and White Russia. There seemed every chance that it would shortly succeed in doing so. The nations growled everywhere like sullen dogs on fragile chains. Never had the League of Nations, in all its brief career, been more necessary, never less available. Not a grievance could be given that public airing from what is called a world platform, which is so beneficial ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... living compressed into two short weeks. A flower blooms but once. That was my time of bloom—Lilolilo beside me, myself on my wonderful Hilo, a queen, not of Hawaii, but of Lilolilo and Love. He said I was a bubble of colour and beauty on the black back of Leviathan; that I was a fragile dewdrop on the smoking crest of a lava flow; that I was a rainbow riding the thunder cloud . . ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... hated him. He was a young man, as fair and as fragile as a porcelain figure, a combination of such striking beauties that his face was almost a caricature. His hair, parted in two waves over his pale forehead, was black, very black and shining with bluish reflections, his eyes, as soft as velvet, showed the read spot of ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and preciousness of the surpassing friendship, but no idea of the high and varied range of intellectual and religious interests that entered into it. "I always," Madame Swetchine writes, "have your little ring on my finger. This symbol, fragile as all symbols, will outlive me; but I grieve not for that, since I am sure that the sentiment which makes me prize it so highly will survive it in turn." Dora Greenwell says, "The letters of Madame Swetchine are full of an intimate sweetness that ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... thirst for work, and the power of application; and, thirdly, he must possess tact and discretion. A universal and comprehensive knowledge of human nature must also be his, for not only has he to be capable of judging and humouring the overstrung men and women of talent with whom he deals—those fragile, sensitive flowers from whom he extracts the honey wherewith to gratify the palate of a journalistically epicurean public—but he must also have a thorough knowledge of that public to enable him to direct those who work for him, for they, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... surveying instruments and fragile articles to come respectable old savage, whose infirmities compel him to walk steadily. He will be delighted at the prospect of picking up a living ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... occasionally had a turn at trawling, and usually caught some fine flat fish, turbot, soles, and plaice. Our net was a very primitive one of our own manufacture, and had to be handled very gingerly, as the netting was old and the ironwork very fragile, but knowing this we did not put undue ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... indigo-bird, to-morrow creeping through the grass to the secreted nest of the Maryland yellow-throat, or Wilson's thrush, or chewink. And, unaccountable as it would appear, here we find the same deadly token safely lodged in the dainty cobweb nest of the vireo, a fragile pendent fabric hung in the fork of a slender branch which in itself would barely appear sufficiently strong to sustain the weight of a cow-bird without ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... ocean a mass of foam, and with the wind howling and whistling as if eager to carry the masts out of her, I was born. My poor mother had a heavy time of it, and it was a mercy she did not die. But oftentimes delicate, fragile-looking women go through far more than apparently strong and robust persons. She had a fine spirit and patient temper, and what is more, she put a firm trust in One who is all-powerful to save those who have faith in him, both for this ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... past which women go and come with necks all bare, and through the mire. These women, too, were pure once. Think of your sisters, those of you who have them. Misery, prostitution, the police, Saint-Lazare—that is what those beautiful, delicate girls, those fragile marvels of modesty, gentleness and loveliness, fresher than lilacs in the month of May, will come to. Ah! you have got yourselves killed! You are no longer on hand! That is well; you have wished to release the people from Royalty, and you deliver over your daughters to the police. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... The marquee-like rotunda rose to a height of two hundred and fifty feet, with a diameter at base of three hundred and fifty-four. The principal entrance, with piers and arches of cut stone profusely decorated with statues and reliefs, was in highly satisfactory contrast to the fragile shells of glass and cast iron that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... people, whose shield he was destined to be, and a sharp, redeeming pang pierced his dull heart. He thought of them doomed to perish, and he was filled with anguish. First they seemed bright shadows in the gloom of the Infinite.—How terrible! Then they appeared as fragile vessels with life-agitated blood, and hearts that knew both sorrow and great joy.—And he ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... an exceptional class—as rare as heroines always are—a class, representing no social grade, but coming from all—belonging to no rank or age of life in particular; sometimes young and sometimes old, sometimes refined and sometimes rude; now of fragile physical aspect and then of extraordinary robustness—but in all cases, women with a mighty love and earnestness in their hearts—a love and pity, and an ability to show it forth and to labor in behalf of it, equal to that which in other departments of life, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... what it must have cost her. Not that Cecile had told her her secret. But she would sometimes come and lay her head on Madame Arnaud's bosom. She would weep a little, without a word, kiss her, and then go away laughing. She adored this friend of hers, in whom, though she seemed so fragile, she felt a moral energy and faith superior to her own. She did not confide in her. But Madame Arnaud could guess volumes on a hint. The world seemed to her to be a sad misunderstanding. It is impossible to dissolve it. One can only love, have ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... of God say? That was a strange shrine for God, that poor, ragged, dry desert bush, with apparently no sap in its gray stem, prickly with thorns, with 'no beauty that we should desire it,' fragile and insignificant, yet it was 'God's house.' Not in the cedars of Lebanon, not in the great monarchs of the forest, but in the forlorn child of the desert did He abide. 'The goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush' may dwell in you and me. Never mind how ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... over, a clearing was made of the articles of more fragile virtue, and Timothy, entering in state, was off-loaded from his nurse's arms ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... connection with his Gissing volume, for which I possessed some material he needed, that I first made his acquaintance. He has had something of Gissing's restricted and grey experiences, but he has nothing of Gissing's almost perverse gloom and despondency. Indeed he is as gay a companion as he is fragile. He is a twinkling addition to any Christmas party, and the twinkle is here in the style. And having sported with him "in his times of happy infancy," I add an intimate and personal satisfaction to my pleasant task of saluting this fine work that ends a brilliant apprenticeship and ranks Swinnerton ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... nodded listlessly, sat down on his bag and emitted a deep sigh. He was a small, fragile-looking young man with a pale, intellectual face. Dark hair fell in a sweep over his forehead. He looked like a man who would write vers libre, as indeed he did. "Hullo!" he ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... forms of ware can be made almost as thin as an egg shell or a piece of heavy paper, and after being allowed to become thoroughly dry can be safely burned in the kiln. It can readily be understood that it would not be possible to make such fragile pieces by the usual processes with plastic clay, which must be of the consistency of putty or dough, on the potter's wheel ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... opened and a little old lady in widow's cap and gown came forward. She was a fragile, delicate-looking little woman, with a very bright face and smile, and she beamed ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... loose stones to form a foundation, I heard you and another comrade talking me over in the way to which you refer in your letter? Well, it was either you or the other comrade who said you had given me something to eat, and I know that I must have seemed very fragile, and at times woe-begone. I was possibly the youngest in the crowd. I was nineteen, and ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... method to Newton Forster, which, in a short time, he acknowledged himself to have been premature in having conceived. Where you have to provide for such a number, to separate the luggage of so many parties, from the heavy chest to the fragile bandbox, to take in cargo, and prepare for sea, all at the same time, there must be apparently confusion. In a few days everything finds its place; and, what is of more consequence, is itself to be found as soon as it ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... broken; grief consumed mind and body. He would sit silently brooding throughout the livelong day, and neither the entreaties of Lenore nor the companionship of his wife availed to rouse him. When the fatal tidings were first communicated to the baroness, Anton had feared that the fragile thread that bound her to the earth would burst, and for weeks Lenore never left her side; but, to the astonishment of all, she rallied, her husband's state so claiming her care that her own sorrows and weakness seemed to pass away. She appeared stronger than ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... two—a condition inconsistent and out of tune with the beautiful things he had built up in his mind about the woman. In his soul he had enshrined her as a lovely wildflower, easily crushed, easily destroyed, a sweet treasure to be guarded from all that was rough and savage, a little violet-goddess as fragile as she was brave and loyal. And St. Pierre, standing there at the edge of his raft, looked as if he had come up out of the caves of a million years ago! There was something barbaric about him. He needed only a club and a shield and the skin of a beast about his loins to transform ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... opened at once," said Karen. "But I must be here when it is opened." She drew her arm from Gregory's and made the tour of the case. "It is probably something very fragile and that is why it is packed in such a great box; it cannot ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... woman! They talk of ambition and of avarice and of self-preservation as the keys of character and action, but what force is there to move us like a woman? A little thing, a weak fragile thing—a toy from which the rain will wash the paint and of which the rust will stop the working, and yet a thing that can shake the world and pour out blood like water, and bring down sorrow like the rain. So! I stand by the boulder. A touch and it will go crashing down the mountain-side ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... privacy. She was very young—at the most nineteen, with a pale somewhat refined face, yellow hair, merry blue eyes, and shining teeth. Her beauty was of an ethereal type. She looked so white and light and fragile that she might have been the spirit of that storm-foam from out of which I plucked her. She had wreathed some of Madge's garments round her in a way which was quaint and not unbecoming. As I strode heavily up the pathway, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pass, and the trams are a long way off. And I shall lift up my eyes and behold once more the hill of gardens across Arno, with the Belvedere just within the old walls, and S. Miniato, like a white and fragile ghost in the sunshine, and La Bella Villanella couched like a brown bird under the cypresses above the grey olives in the wind and the sun. And something in the gracious sweep of the hills, in the gentle nobility of ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... as the nearest of the soldiers reached out for them, the termite-ruler lay helpless on the backs of its living crutches, with its attenuated body quivering convulsively, and its balloonlike, fragile head cleft almost in two halves. It was possible that even that terrific injury might not be fatal to a thing so great and flexible of brain, and so divorced from the ills as well as the powers of the flesh. But for the moment at least it was helpless, an inert mass on the patient backs of ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... you; I don't think I can eat a thing!" said Midge, dropping her eyes, and trying to look fragile and delicate. ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... Gave a bluff rock his humble name: A yew-tree clasps its rugged base; The boatman knows its reverend face; And with his memory and his fee, Rests the result that time shall see. Yet e'en if time shall sweep away The fragile whimsies of a day; Or travellers rest the dashing oar, To hear the mingled echoes roar; A stranger's triumph—he will feel A joy that death alone can steal. And should he cold indifference feign, And treat such ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... it will wear down my fragile strength?" she asked, looking at him good-humouredly. "Is it too much ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... The roar of the Chill's exhaust nearly drowned the roar of the guns, but the fragile hull of the craft was shaken and rocked by the bursting shells. An occasional bullet thudded into or pinged off the Chill, and, despite Peter's warning that, high or low, they were bound to get it if it came to them, every man on board, including Peter, crouched, with chest ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... until we are clear on all matters. I haven't finished your case. And don't marry that foreign-looking cavalier you were riding with to-day in the park. You are too American ever to be at home over there. You would smash their fragile china, and you wouldn't understand. England might fit you, though, for England is something like that dark green, prairie park, with its regular, bushy trees against a Gainsborough sky. You live deeply ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... lady: It is delightful, when one is aged and fragile, to replace a feeling of general ill health by that of refreshment and general well-being, and M. E. Coue's method can, I affirm for I have proved it, produce this happy result, which is all the more complete and lasting since it relies on the all-powerful ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... although she had not seen it for four years, so long it was since she had been in Tideshead before. After seeing the stonewalled and thatched or tiled roofs of foreign countries, the wooden buildings of New England had a fragile look as if the wind and rain would soon spoil and scatter them. The villages and everything but some of the very oldest farms looked so new and so temporary that Betty Leicester was much surprised, knowing well that she was going through some of the very oldest New England towns. ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... put the pencil in too," said he; and, as he returned the box to his pocket he added: "you had better get one of these little boxes from Polton. If is often useful to have a safe receptacle for small and fragile articles." ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... had no poetic prepossession concerning the people she protected and worked for, but the dominant sense of duty carried her through all difficulties. She never gave a thought to personal danger, and though a fragile creature, not five feet high, she was capable of cowing the most brutal of the barbarians who were gathered around us at Khalepa, and, whether to keep the consulate for me while I was away, or to navigate the yacht to meet me on my return from my visits to Greece, nothing made ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... verdure, interspersed with the darker green foliage of the nutmeg and wax-like clove-tree. Here reigned in all its majesty the bread-fruit tree, with broad serrated leaves, like a gigantic horse-chestnut, sheltering the more fragile trees that grow only beneath its shadow, and acting as the "mother of the cocoa"—el madre del cacao—as the ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... And so that ardour, which in the case of the Bāb was confined to the sphere of religious thought and speculation and to the unlocking of metaphorical prison-gates, was displayed in the case of Mullā Ḥuseyn both in voyages on the ocean of Truth, and in warfare. Yes, the Mullā's fragile form might suggest the student, but he had also the precious faculty of generalship, and ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... him was that of giving his shafts a penetrating point. Being of a very hard-fibered cane, akin to bamboo, they would take a kind of splintering-point of almost needle sharpness. But it was fragile; and the cane being hollow, the point was necessarily on one side, which affected the accuracy of the flight. There were no flints in the neighborhood, or slaty rocks, which he could split into edged ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... difference of opinion about Brie's being the queen of all cheeses, and if there is any such difference, I shall certainly ignore it. The very shape of Brie—so uncheese-like and so charmingly fragile—is exciting. Nine times out of ten a Brie will let you down—will be all caked into layers, which shows it is too young, or at the over-runny stage, which means it is too old—but when you come on the tenth Brie, coulant to just the right, delicate creaminess, and the color of fresh, ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... tranquil leisure enfolded us; day followed day in an order unbroken and peaceful as the unfolding of the flowers and the silent march of the stars. Time no longer ran like the few sands in a delicate hour-glass held by a fragile human hand, but like a majestic river fed by fathomless seas. . . . We gave ourselves up to the sweetness of that unmeasured life, without thought of yesterday or to-morrow; we drank the cup to-day held to our lips, and knew ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... until he earns enough money to send for her. Four of our women were girl-wives, and mostly pretty. One little handful of a thing had a fine baby boy, nearly as big as herself, and she looked so fragile and pale, and pretty and lonely, and had such an appealing light in her big shadowed brown eyes, and such a pathetic droop at the corners of her sweet little mouth, that you longed to take her in your manly ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... through the water, caused it to resound on the plank, and scrubbed it powerfully with soap; "that a what's-'is-name, belongs to me. I know it by the cut of its collar. Formerly, I used to know it chiefly by its fair and fragile texture. I shall know it hereafter as an amazing illustration of the truth of the proverb, that no one knows what he can stand till he is tried. The blows which she is at present delivering to it with her mallet, are fast ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... groaned from his dark hole. He complained about pains in all his bones, he whimpered pitifully. "He won't go," exclaimed a contemptuous voice, "your turn, Davis." The young seaman rose painfully, squaring his shoulders. Donkin stuck his head out, and it appeared in the yellow light, fragile and ghastly. "I will giv' yer a pound of tobaccer," he whined in a conciliating voice, "so soon as I draw it from aft. I will—s'elp me..." Davis swung his arm backhanded and the head vanished. "I'll go," he said, "but you will pay for it." He ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... camping-grounds which they always select in preference to a valley. The yellow tussocks were bending all one way, perfectly flat to the ground, and the shingle on the gravel walk outside rattled like hail against the low latticed windows. The uproar from the gale was indescribable, and the little fragile house swayed and shook as the furious gusts hurled themselves against it. Inside its shelter, the pictures were blowing out from the walls, until I expected them to be shaken off their hooks even in those rooms which had plank walls lined with papered canvas; whilst in the kitchen, ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... plainly in the darkness, and it was exactly as Uncle Dick described, but I leaned towards its being a fragile shell trodden on by some big ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... intervals, and she fell into the snare, as she said, "of being carried away with it," with the result that at night she was down with fever. This kept recurring every alternate night. It was the harmattan season, in which she always wilted like some delicate flower in the sun, and she grew so limp and fragile that she could not sit up. She felt that she would be compelled to go home in the summer with the Macgregors, but the idea frightened her, chiefly because of the stir that had been caused by the honour she had received. "I dare not appear at home after all this publicity," ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... am giving these details so that the size of this little floating world which holds twenty-two men may be appreciated. It is a very little world, a mote, a speck, and I marvel that men should dare to venture the sea on a contrivance so small and fragile. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... an apartment there. I opened the door to the concierge's loge to put my question. I stopped short. In the window, at the back of the half dark room, sat the concierge, whom I had known for nearly twenty years, a brave, intelligent, fragile woman. She was sitting there in her black frock, gently rocking herself backward and forward in her chair. I did not need to put a question. One knows in these days what the unaccustomed black dress means, and I knew that the one son I had seen grow from childhood, for whom she and the father ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... with vague and wondering eyes; and the thin face, drawn by suffering, the pallid complexion, which light could never have tinged, and the fragile, slender figure, gave her an appearance at once singular and attractive. Jack Ryan declared that she seemed to him to be an ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... What a fragile, gracile thing is the mind that can leap thus from nine bargain basement hours of hairpins and darning-balls to the downy business of lining a crib in Never-Never Land and warming No Man's slippers before the fire ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... the Albert Hall when that little fragile building is packed from the expensive fringe of the stalls and the boxes to the mysterious height of the gallery, then magnify many times, and change wood into hewn rock, and take off the roof, and give Roman air and sunlight, and change ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham |
