"Frail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... frail, in that they are products of the human mind, in which everything is essentially reactive, spontaneous, and volatile: but as in passion and in language, so in philosophy, there are certain comparatively steady and hereditary principles, forming a sort of ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... very frail old minister who shook as he walked, as if his feet were striking against stones. He was to depart on the morrow to the place of his birth, but he came to the manse to wish his successor God-speed. ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... lent to the nursery, and another little house was taken for the month. How Ponnamal kept all four houses going in an orderly fashion, how she kept her nurses together through that time of almost panic, and how she herself, frail and delicate as she is, kept up till all was over, we cannot understand from any point of view but the Divine. She only broke down once. It was when her dearest child, our merry, beautiful little Heart's Joy, who, having more strength ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... should like to see me. O dear! do you remember the mysteries we boys used to invent about his room, in the old Intrepid days? Well, I went in, and there, to be sure, the poor fellow lay in his berth, smiling pleasantly as he gave me his hand, but looking very frail. I could not help a glance round, which showed me what a little shrine he had made of the box he was lying in. The stars and stripes were triced up above and around a picture of Washington, and he had painted a majestic eagle, with lightnings blazing from his beak ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... such events to record in the course of a few days! And to witness scenes of terror, or to contemplate them in description, is as different, my dearest Matilda, as to bend over the brink of a precipice holding by the frail tenure of a half-rooted shrub, or to admire the same precipice as represented in the landscape of Salvator. But I will ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... sockets, gleaming like black diamonds. And he was holding his audience spellbound:—Hindus of every calling; students in abundance; a sprinkling of Sikhs and Dogras from the lines. Some form of hypnotism,—was it? Perhaps. Even Roy could not listen unmoved, when the spirit shook the frail creature like a gust of wind and the hollow chest-notes vibrated with appeal or command. Such men—and India is full of them—are spiritual dynamos. Who can calculate their effect on an emotional race? And they no longer confine their influence to things spiritual. They, too, have caught the modern ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... another man's way of doing it. He collected from his notebooks such thoughts as seemed to bear upon his subject, strung them together, and made an end when he had enough. The connection or relation between his thoughts is always frail and often invisible; some compare it with the thread which holds the pearls of a necklace together; others quote with a smile the epigram of Goldwin Smith, who said that he found an Emersonian essay about as coherent as a bag of marbles. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... poet's patriotic love and inherited martial instinct urged him to the battle, but his frail physique withheld him from the field, and he took service as an aide on ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... over shortly after eleven o'clock. Besides Mrs. Condor, there had been a 'cellist, very masculine in his looks but rather forceless in his playing, and a young, frail girl who brought great breadth and vigor to her interpretations at the piano. But Claire was really too excited for calm enjoyment. Supper followed—creamed minced chicken and extraordinarily thin sandwiches, and a dry, pale wine that Claire found at first rather distasteful. ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... before their eyes, but so far away that they can not tell the ships and steamers which sail by them voiceless and without greeting; and of the events passing on the planet with which they have so frail a social tie they learn only at long and irregular intervals. The change from sunshine to fog is the chief variety in their lives; the hasty landing of supplies the great event in their months. They can ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... me; the masts; the rigging, the hull of the vessel—all had disappeared, and I was floating by myself upon a large, beautifully-shaped shell on the wide waste of waters. I was alarmed, and afraid to move, lest I should overturn my frail bark and perish. At last I perceived the fore-part of the shell pressed down, as if a weight were hanging to it; and soon afterwards, a small white hand, which grasped it. I remained motionless, and would have ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... boarder was a rather frail man with an easy cough and a confidential manner, lie wrote the 'Obituaries of Distinguished Persons' for one of the daily papers. Somebody had told him once, his head resembled that of Washington. He had never forgotten it, as I have reason to remember. His mind lived ever among the dead. ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... I that did it, but indeed it was so poor and frail a note, compared with such as I am wont to furnish, yt in sooth I was ashamed to call the weakling mine in so august a presence. It was nothing—less than nothing, madam—I did it but to clear my nether ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... souvenir to be preserved forever in commemoration of the small beginnings from which all the naval greatness of the empire had sprung. The name which he had given to the skiff was The Little Grandfather, the name denoting that the little craft, frail and insignificant as it was, was the parent and progenitor of all the great frigates and ships of the line which were then at anchor in the Roads about Cronstadt and off the mouth ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... rising above the water-level, which fringed the headlands with perilous reefs, against which the waves broke continuously at the slightest wind. It required some bravery to approach them, and no little skill to steer one of the frail boats, which these people were accustomed to employ from the earliest times, scatheless amid the breakers. The coasting trade was attracted from Arvad successively to Berytus, Sidon, and Tyre, and finally to the other towns of the coast. It was in full operation, doubtless, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... with flame Where the frail glories tremble— Fair fallen stars of fire! The valleys green acclaim The legions that assemble In royal robe and tire, With timbrel, ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... de Luna, and leave your niece to herself on this subject: a young female heart cannot be made, like one of your soldiers, to march and countermarch at the word of command; it is, besides, of very frail materials, and, when once injured or broken, can never be repaired. The happiness of one so dear to you as your niece, may be destroyed forever, by forcing her into a match she detests; but it will then be too late to repair your ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... had worn black and a widow's goffered cap. The hair beneath it was thin now, and her body frail and very far on its decline to the grave. On the table at her elbow lay a letter beside a small field-glass, towards which, once and again, ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... visiting cards, H.A.C. Stubbs) had taken up his abode in one of the demi-fashionable squares, among judges, physicians, barristers, and merchants, at the north side of the metropolis. Being the only lawfully begotten issue of his father, when the frail Angelina made it impossible he should have any brothers and sisters, he succeeded, by will, to three-fourths of the late Mr. Jonathan Stubbs's property, and, by oxalic acid, to the remaining fourth;[5] the affair being too sudden to permit of any further testamentary dispositions, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... at the two tables were momentarily suspended, whilst Gros Jean, a corpulent man above the middle height, whose legs seemed to be too frail to support his rotund body, advanced, peering curiously beneath his bushy eyebrows to get a glimpse of the newcomer, for the shaded light did not fall on Brett's features, and M. Beaucaire wondered who the stranger could be. The barrister almost started ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... a cold stormy night in December, and the green logs as they blazed and crackled on the Cotter's hearth, were rendered more delightful, more truly comfortable, by the contrast with the icy showers of snow and sleet which swept against the frail casement, making ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... hour of your loss Or if aye on a lover they've looked. Nay, an ye believe not their tale, My heart, since the leave-taking day afflicted, will tell of my case, And my body, for love and desire grown wasted and feeble and frail. Could they who reproach me but see my sufferings, their hearts would relent; They'd marvel, indeed, at my case and the loss of my loved ones bewail. Yea, they'd join me in pouring forth tears and help me my woes to lament, And like unto me they'd become all wasted and tortured ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... not frail, dear; but I have got into an idle habit of taking my outings in the carriage; and ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... heart of the already crushed and quivering penitent. He shows how one need not look far to find enough to prompt the confession of utter helplessness and the casting of self unreservedly upon God's mercy. "Bring to the confession only those sins that occur to thee, and say: I am so frail and fallen that I need consolation and good counsel. For the confession should be brief....No one, therefore, should be troubled, even though he have forgotten his sins. If they be forgotten, they are none the less forgiven. For what God considers, is not how thou hast confessed, ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... passed—Oh!" as a more fearful roar and dash sounded as if the waves were about to sweep away their frail shelter—"you will come with me and save Mr. Archfield's ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... probably no one had eaten anything during the day. Would it not be wise to take something, he suggested, if the investigations were to be pursued till night? This appeal to the trivial necessities of our frail humanity highly displeased the worthy mayor; but the rest readily assented to the suggestion, and M. Courtois, though not in the least hungry, followed the general example. Around the table which was yet wet with the wine spilt ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... one frail woman, a woman not of noble birth, with only beauty, sweetness of disposition, amiability, goodness, and brilliant accomplishments as her weapons! It was not a case of the moth and the flame, but the operation of a wise philosophy, the precepts of which were decently, moderately and carefully ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... a rather desirable result, and Basil Valentine, ever on the search for the practical, thought that he might use the remedy to good purpose on the members of the community. Some of the monks in the monastery were of rather frail health and delicate constitution, and most of them were rather thin, and he thought that the putting on of a little fat, provided it could be accomplished without infringement of the rule, might be a good thing for them. Accordingly, he administered, surreptitiously, some of the salts of antimony, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... How tiny, how frail they were: three boys darting in a man-made machine high above their own realm! What ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... my dear Bonstetten, to what a tedious length the few short moments of our life may be extended by impatience and expectation, till you had left me; nor ever knew before with so strong a conviction how much this frail body sympathizes with the inquietude of the mind. I am grown old in the compass of less than three weeks, like the Sultan in the Turkish tales, that did but plunge his head into a vessel of water and take it out again, as the standers by affirmed, at the command of a Dervish, and found he ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... arms around Aunt Mary and clung to her. How small and frail she was! Somehow Honora had never realized it in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... him but Mike pushed her back almost roughly. "There is no time," he said. "We've got to get out of here." He picked the frail Brandon up in his arms. "You take the lead, Nicko. Take my club. It's up to you to cut ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... proved but a frail barrier to crime of this character in all parts of the world, and the facts of Chinese infanticide are indisputable. The witnesses are too numerous, the crime is too public, and the evidences of it too ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Robinson. Attracted by her lovely verse, the intellectual companionship ripened into love, and for his half-dozen final years he enjoyed her wifely aid and sympathy in what seems to have been an ideal union. The end, when it came, was quick and painless. Always of a frail constitution, stunted in body from childhood, he died in harness, October 19th, 1894, his head falling forward on his desk as he wrote. The tributes that followed make plain the enthusiastic admiration James Darmesteter ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... understood that English domination will also bring English intolerance and servitude, for it is only a very frail link which separates the English State Church from actual Romanism, and its proselytism en bloc is only a ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... My frail appearance, on which the neighbors jested, caused my father to look on me sometimes with an anxious eye, and he would question the housekeeper and the maids about my appetite, and whether I slept well ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... work for good, this pain and separation," murmured she. "I'm no' like the minister, but frail and foolish, and wilful too whiles, but I humbly hope that I am one of those ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... me was clearly expectant, and my part was to speak for my brother from the realm of forgetful shade. I was deeply moved at my responsibility and at her distress. I would have given anything for the power to soothe her frail soul, tormenting itself in its invincible ignorance like a small bird beating about the cruel wires of a cage. Nothing easier than to say, Have no fear! Nothing more difficult. How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... with flowers to-day, the bouquetieres having resumed their stalls; and many a pedestrian might be seen bargaining for these fair and frail harbingers of ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... this point the young sailor looked over his brother's shoulder and saw his mother coming along the hall. A second later he held her clasped in his arms. She looked very small and frail while standing beside that tall, broad-shouldered son, who was as fine a specimen of an American sailor as could be found anywhere outside of New England. Although he was but three years older than Marcy, ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... he hovered behind the counter, his coat shabbily buttoned over his narrow chest, his face agitated. He had shaved his side-whiskers, so that they only grew becomingly as low as his ears. His rather large, grey moustache was brushed off his mouth. His hair, gone very thin, was brushed frail and floating over his baldness. But still a gentleman, still courteous, with a charming voice he suggested the possibilities of a pad of green parrots' tail-feathers, or of a few yards of pink-pearl trimming or of old chenille fringe. The women would pinch ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... the wild red strawberry Spread their freckled trammels frail; In the pathway creeping brambles Catch her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 98:15 Beyond the frail premises of human beliefs, above the loosening grasp of creeds, the demonstration of Christian Mind-healing stands a revealed and practical 98:18 Science. It is imperious throughout all ages as Christ's revelation of Truth, of Life, and of Love, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... Lambeth et Whitehall. God forbid it should ever be said of us with justice. It is pleasant to loll and roll and to accumulate—to be a purple-and-fine-linen man, and to be called by some of those nicknames which frail and ephemeral beings are so fond of accumulating upon each other;—-but the best thing of all is to live like honest men, and to add something to the cause of liberality, ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... now," called John, pointing as he spoke to a nearby canoe in which two young girls were seated. One of them was paddling, while her companion was seated in the opposite end of the frail little craft. ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... his daughter Nora; but at the present moment he was in danger. In the barn, too, he was in much greater danger than he had been when in the safe seclusion of the Castle. It would be possible for any one to creep up to the barn at night, to push open the somewhat frail windows or equally frail door, and to accomplish that deed which had already been attempted. Nora knew well that she must act, she must do something—what, was the puzzle. Squire O'Shanaghgan was one of the most generous, open-hearted, and affectionate ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... ask such questions! yet any claim but one tittle less urgent I should have bantered aside. I seemed to realize the torture described in the dream of Dante,—two souls struggling together in one frail body. I had been applauding good and condemning evil when it cost me nothing but the sentiment; but when the fiery test came, my purpose cracked and shrivelled before it. Yes, I conquered; but the scars that purchased the victory ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... but for the next three nights she suffered from severe attacks of the croup. Her sisters had not known how they loved her till she showed her frail side, and they saw how slender was the thread which bound her to earth. When she was strong, and roguish, and wilful, they forgot that she was only a tender flower after all, and might be nipped ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... Lincolnshire, about a half-mile from Colsterworth, and eight miles south of Grantham. His father, Mr. Isaac Newton, had died a few months after his marriage to Harriet Ayscough, the daughter of Mr. James Ayscough, of Market Overton, in Rutlandshire. The little Isaac was at first so excessively frail and weakly that his life was despaired of. The watchful mother, however, tended her delicate child with such success that he seems to have thriven better than might have been expected from the circumstances of his infancy, and he ultimately acquired a frame strong enough to outlast the ordinary ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... he noted the purity of her face, the beautiful pose of her body, stretched in the deck-chair, her fine white hands and arms that hung there, slender, inert and frail. He admired these things so much that he failed to see that they expressed not only beauty but a certain delicacy of physique, and that her languor which appealed to him ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... judgment-day of Glaucus, and when her release would have saved him! Yet knowing, almost impossible as seemed her escape, that the sole chance for the life of Glaucus rested on her, this young girl, frail, passionate, and acutely susceptible as she was—resolved not to give way to a despair that would disable her from seizing whatever opportunity might occur. She kept her senses whenever, beneath the whirl of intolerable thought, they reeled ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... each side of the saloon, through two oblong openings. The liquid mass appeared vividly lit up by the electric gleam. Two crystal plates separated us from the sea. At first I trembled at the thought that this frail partition might break, but strong bands of copper bound them, giving an ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... like yours best" I cried, disconsolately; yet as I spoke a long tidal wave came up and washed the frail building away. But though mine filled with foamy water, the rough walls remained entire, and then I looked at it again the receding wave had strewn its floors with ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of a woman of half her years, caught at the thought of her old friend and pupil. She leaned forward in her chair over the girl who sat on the floor at her feet, and her voice was strong and clear with the strength of the spirit which dominated her frail body. ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... aint denying it, Hayles; you can see as he aint a-denying of it. What was it as she came here for but you? Mr Wentworth, I've always had a great respect for you," said Elsworthy. "I've respected you as my clergyman, sir, as well as for other things; but you're a young man, and human nature is frail. I say again as you needn't have no fear of me. I aint one as likes to make a talk, and no more is Hayles. Give up the girl, and give me your promise, and there aint a man living as will be the ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... desired, more wooded and inviting than what he had traversed. Confidently he pushed upon the woven obstacle; but to his amazement it did not give way before him. He eyed it resentfully. How absurd that so frail a thing should venture to forbid him passage! He thrust upon it again, more brusquely, to be just as brusquely denied. The hot blood blazed to his head, and he dashed himself upon it with all his ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... wanted. Very particularly troublesome she thought him, more especially as she could not make him out, otherwise than that he wanted her to do something with the newspaper and the fire. She made a boat for him with an old newspaper, a very hasty and frail performance, and told him to sail it on the carpet, and be Mr. Ernescliffe going away; and she thought him thus safely disposed of. Returning to her book and her search, with her face to the cupboard, and her book held up to catch the light, she was soon lost in her story, and thought ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... lot of them were emitting nerve-crimping yells and spurring their horses into a thunder of hoofbeats, as they bore down upon the tent. Between howls they laughed, picturing to themselves four terrified sheepherders cowering within those frail, canvas walls. ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... this particular, infectious?" the young man rather whispered than uttered aloud—"Does her friend feel the same indulgence for the infirmities of a frail nature to which she really seems herself ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... his head was covered, the executioner gave the signal. One would have thought a very few blows would have finished so frail a being, but he seemed as hard to kill as the venomous reptiles which must be crushed and cut to pieces before life is extinct, and the 'coup de grace' was found necessary. The executioner uncovered his head and showed the confessor that the eyes were closed and that the heart ...
— Quotes and Images From "Celebrated Crimes" • Alexander Dumas, Pere
... myself." At last she treated me to what she called an indulgence, and I thought rather more of a banter. She was certainly a strong, almost a violent, friend to all she liked, chief among whom was a certain frail old gentlewoman, very blind and very witty, who dwelt in the top of a tall land on a strait close, with a nest of linnets in a cage, and thronged all day with visitors. Miss Grant was very fond to carry me there and put me to entertain her friend with the narrative of my misfortunes; and Miss Tibbie ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he watched each night for the frail-looking little girl who liked the picture of the pines. She would always come hurrying across the street in the same eager way, an eagerness close to the feverish. But the tenseness would always relax as she saw the picture. "She never looks quite so wilted down when she goes away as ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... now entered in a steel-gray silk and new cap and ribbons, her delicate, frail shoulders covered by a light scarf, little Jim following behind her with her ball of yarn and needles, and a low stool for her feet. The only change in Jim was a straggly groove down the middle of his wool, where he had ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... rose, opened the drawer of a writing-table, and took out a photograph, a very modern affair, of most artistic mounting. He handed it jealously to Desmond and was silent while the other man looked. The girl's face, wondrously young and untroubled, frail, angelic, rose from a slender neck and shoulders swathed in a light gauze cloud. Her gay eyes gazed straight out. Rokeby looked longer than he knew, very thoughtfully, and Osborn put his hand upon the portrait, pulled it away as jealously as he had ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... the frail voice of a foolish woman, who loves and respects you, and yet," said Susan, her color mantling with enthusiasm, "with it I can speak you words more beautiful than Lebanon's cedars or Galilee's ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... coarse-looking youth of seventeen. His name was Bartlett Cloud, shortened by his acquaintances to "Bart" for the sake of that brevity beloved of the schoolboy. His companion, Wallace Clausen, was a handsome though rather frail-looking boy, a year his junior. The two were roommates ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... himself prostrate along the earth. Woodley well knew the grave thus venerated. For he had himself assisted in digging and smoothing down the turf that covered it. He had also been instrumental in erecting the frail tablet that stood over. Who was this man, in the chill, silent hour of midnight, flinging himself upon ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... the door without further words, and threw it open. The old man motioned to him to pass out, and after the detective had done so, closed and locked the door carefully and followed him into the cab. Duvall observed that he was frail, and uncertain in his steps, and so bent from constant labor over his bench, that he gave one almost the impression of being hunchbacked. He took his seat beside the detective without a word, and in a moment the whole party was being driven rapidly toward the ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... gave a little cry, and pointed out a frail white butterfly on a mullein leaf. "See there, David! how cold he looks! I'd like to take him along. He'll freeze to-night." David forgot his question, and she was glad. Some inner voice was at her heart, warning her to leave the day unspoiled. Her joy lay in remembering; it seemed a ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... in his breast. Like Asa, however, he acquiesced in the decision of the squatter; and the appearance, at least, of harmony was restored again among a set of beings, who were restrained by no obligations more powerful than the frail web of authority with which Ishmael had been able to envelope ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sophist has an influence upon Shaw and his school which it would require a separate book adequately to study. By descent Nietzsche was a Pole, and probably a Polish noble; and to say that he was a Polish noble is to say that he was a frail, fastidious, and entirely useless anarchist. He had a wonderful poetic wit; and is one of the best rhetoricians of the modern world. He had a remarkable power of saying things that master the reason for a moment by their gigantic unreasonableness; as, for instance, ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... an' sit fair in the middle of the shkiff," said Mr. McGrath as I got into his frail craft at five o'clock in the morning on the bank of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal near Point of Rocks. "It's onconvanient to be outside of the boat whin we're going through them locks. There were a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... birth. "I was mad from the time I was told of my birth," he wrote, and until madness supervened he suffered from a "wounded imagination." He was morbid, shy, and irritable, and his energy—the explosive energy of this frail youth was amazing; because he had been refused the use of a ship boat he wasted three months digging out a canoe from a log of wood. Like Paul Gauguin, he saw many countries, and his eyes were trained ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... few days with a fair wind down the Frith, and soon left the Bass and the May behind us. I must confess, I was a little afraid, when, for the first time, I was out of sight of land. It is a dismal thought to have nothing but sea and sky around, and only a frail plank between us and the fathomless depths of ocean. This was my first voyage; but many a day and month and year have I spent on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... clad in a colour of rich earth, her head bare and gilded by the sunlight, both hands on the frail basket, and the white eyelids giving the strange air of experience ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... windmill, bought on that fatal day when Michael had taken him into Kendal to have his doom of perpetual idiocy pronounced. He thrust it into Susan's face, her hands, her lap, regardless of the injury his frail plaything thereby received. He leapt before her to think how he had cured all heart-sorrow, buzzing louder than ever. Susan looked up at him, and that glance of her sad eyes sobered him. He began to whimper, he knew not why: and she now, comforter ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... they had listened there to an old song, Sung thinly in a wastrel monotone By some unhappy night-bird, who had flown Too many times and with a wing too strong To save himself, and so done heavy wrong To more frail ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... exceedingly frail and another more substantial nearer the famous Cliff Drive. I go to the frail one every year with anxiety lest I shall find it has been carried away. How I wish I could show my readers the delicate sculpture and carving further back, nearer yet to the drive. But note the various ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... o'clock and a crisp, clear morning. A stewardess was offering tea and toast to Mrs. Patterson, the frail little lady whom Anne had observed in a wheel-chair the afternoon before. Seen closely, her face had a pathetic prettiness. With the delicate color in her soft cheeks, she looked like a fading tea rose. Yet ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... Lord Marnell, looking down from his altitude upon the slight frail figure at his side. "Is he not a noble man ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... a course that would intercept their own, and in a short time, at the speed they were making, the destroyer would be within range of her heavy guns, one shell from which could break the frail craft in two. ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... womanlike, into praise of my lover. However, I will not attempt to complete my argument; for if you do not understand me from what I have already said, the further you follow the wider you will wander. The truth, in short, is this: I practically believe in the doctrine of heredity; and as my body is frail and my brain morbidly active, I think my impulse towards a man strong in body and untroubled in mind a trustworthy one. You can understand that; it is a plain proposition in eugenics. But if I tell you that I have chosen this common pugilist because, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... patient he addressed was a frail, middle-aged man who, accompanied by his daughter, had just arrived from Paris to consult him. The man was a bad case of nervous trouble. He walked with difficulty, and his head, arms and legs were afflicted with a continual tremor. He explained that if he encountered a stranger ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... thunder-bearing frigate, into fragments, as you would crack an eggshell?—No, not anger; deaf, blind, unheeding indifference,—that is all. Out of me all things arose; sooner or later, into me all things subside. All changes around me; I change not. I look not at you, vain man, and your frail transitory concerns, save in momentary glimpses: I look on the white face of my dead mistress, whom I follow as the bridegroom follows the bier of her who has changed her ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... waggons and teams of oxen, all full of despair, impatience, anxiety and terror:—Behind, were the smoke of their burning villages, and the thunder of the hostile artillery;—before, the broad stream of the Loire, divided by a long low island, also covered with the fugitives,—twenty frail barks plying in the stream—and, on the far banks, the disorderly movements of those who had effected the passage, and were waiting there to be rejoined by their companions. Such, Mad. de L. assures ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... stream, which, rising in a feeble source, receives in its seaward flow many tributaries, large and small, until it becomes a lordly river. The works of English literature may be considered as the ships and boats which it bears upon its bosom: near its source the craft are small and frail; as it becomes more navigable, statelier vessels are launched upon it, until, in its majestic and lakelike extensions, rich navies ride, freighted with wealth and power—the heavy ordnance of defence and attack, the products of Eastern looms, the precious metals and jewels from ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... The question to be determined is, whether it be best or not, to obey the first impulse of benevolence, and to throw a mantle over these dark and appalling occurrences, and, since the sufferer has left this stage of existence, to mourn in secret, and consign to oblivion the aberrations of a frail mortal? This was my first design, but other thoughts arose. If the individual were alone concerned, the question would be decided; but it might almost be said, that the world is interested in the disclosures connected with this part of Mr. Coleridge's life. His example ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... to run, around the tent. He was like a wild animal seeking an outlet. Was he to throw up the work which he had undertaken? Was he, the frail obstacle self-set against the torrent, to be vanquished in his turn? Oh, how gladly he would have given his own life! He became aware of this, deep down in his inner consciousness. And he understood, as it were physically, ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... felt that I would pray. Yet I liked not to pray to a jealous God there where the frail affectionate gods whom the heathen love were being humbly invoked; so I bethought me, instead, of Sheol Nugganoth, whom the men of the jungle have long since deserted, who is now unworshipped and alone; and to him ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... was gone I don't know. I think, not over three or four minutes. She came from her hiding place, crouching this time, and joined us. She was, probably, of normal Earth size—a small, frail-looking girl something over five feet tall. We saw now that she was quite young, still in her teens. We lay staring at her, amazed at her beauty. Her small oval face was pale, with the flush of pink upon her cheeks—a face queerly, transcendingly beautiful. It was wholly ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... himself of his overalls—his single divergence from the routine of his fellow-workmen—and after that he used soap and water copiously. This was his transformation scene: he passed into the office a rather frail young working-man noticeably begrimed, and passed out of it to the pavement a cheerfully pre-occupied sample of gentry, fastidious to the point ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... fleet of frail barks boldly ventured, crossed it safely, and landed on the shore of what is now New York State. Here the Indians hid their canoes. Now they were on the enemy's soil and must move cautiously. For {136} four days they ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... some time, darkened his eyes and sealed his lips. He could not see her, and her voice sounded far away. She called again and again upon him, but there was no answer. The deep roar of the storm on the other side of the frail wooden walls thundered continuously, and the groan of the straining planks grated upon her ear as she listened intently for one or more word from him. Was she then alone with him, dying? Was there no help, nothing that could ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... equatorial islands—the Kingsmill, Gilbert, Ellice, and Tokelau or Union Groups—are all expert shark fishermen; but the wild people of Paanopa (Ocean Island) stand facile princeps. I have frequently seen four men in a small canoe kill eight or ten sharks (each of which was as long as their frail little craft) within ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... of Nations To hold your peace intact. It does not hang on the close guarding Of a frail and wordy pact. When ours screams, shattered and driven, Dust down the storming years, Yours will stand stark, like a grey fortress, Blind to the ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... her lips; I could not help it. She was such a frail little thing, so white and so ethereal, and her poor five hundred had been earned by ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... not finish; her tears choked her. O God! I saw her there on her knees, her hands clasped on the rock; she swayed in the breeze as did the bushes about us. Frail and sublime creature; she prayed for her love. I raised ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... wandered down to the end of the long pier, which stretched out its long arm, bent like an elbow, looking, like all French piers, as if made of frail wickerwork, I thought of a day, some years ago, when that eminent inventor, Bessemer, conceived the captivating idea of constructing a steamboat that should abolish sea-sickness for ever! The principle was that ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... noble Abdelmelech, move My reason to accept them, not my love. Ah, why did heaven leave man so weak defence, To trust frail reason with the rule of sense! 'Tis over-poised and kicked up in the air, While sense weighs down the scale, and keeps it there; Or, like a captive king, 'tis borne away, And forced to countenance ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... expressed a readiness to give the Recollet Daillon a passage; they knew the 'grey-robes'; but they did not know the Jesuits, the 'black-robes,' and they hesitated to take Brebeuf and Noue, urging as an excuse that so portly a man as Brebeuf would be in danger of upsetting their frail canoes. By a liberal distribution of presents, however, the Hurons were persuaded to accept Brebeuf ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... order of knights (Frail Godenti) on two of whom the Ghibelline party at one time conferred the chief power of Florence. One was Catalano de' Malavolti, the other Loderingo di Liandolo. ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... under a new commander, Rashid Pasha of Yannina, and laid final siege on April 27 to Mesolonghi, just a year after Byron had died of fever within its walls. The Greeks were magnificent in their defence of these frail mud-bastions, and they more than held their own in the amphibious warfare of the lagoons. The struggle was chequered by the continual coming and going of the Greek and Ottoman fleets. They were indeed the decisive factor; for without the supporting squadron Rashid would have ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... exonerate myself. I will open my heart to you and my friend will read aright and interpret the broken words. You know that I cared for Claude Drew; you guessed perhaps how strong was the hold upon me of the frail, ambiguous, yet so intelligent modern spirit. It was to feel the Spring blossom once more on my frosty branches when this young life fell at my knees and seemed to find in me its source and goal. Mine was a sacred love and pain mingled with my maternal tenderness when he revealed himself ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... how he prides himself on his ability to turn people inside out, as he expresses it. The poor little man answered, slowly, smiling blandly all the time and looking quite unfit, physically, to face the perils of such a hard life. I became persuaded that under that frail exterior there must be a heart full of strength to endure, of determination to carry out that which he ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... but adversity? or when is grace witnessed, but in offences? There were no divinity, but by reason of compassion for revenges are brutish and mortal. All those times past, the loves, the sights, the sorrows, the desires, can they not weigh down one frail misfortune? Cannot one drop of salt be hidden in so great heaps of sweetness? I may then conclude, Spes et fortuna, valete! She is gone in whom I trusted, and of me hath not one thought of mercy, nor any respect of that that was. Do ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... familiar sights and faces, and perhaps, down deep, curiosity had been the mainspring of his return. Even bitter ties have a pull that cannot always be denied. At Fairview the presence of Monet had held him almost a willing captive. There was something about the flame burning in that almost frail body that had lighted even the ugliness of Fairview with a strange beauty. He could not think of him as dead. That last moment had been too tinged with the haunting poetry of life. How often he had reconstructed that scene—the gray, sullen rain pattering ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... went backward and forward night and morning with her little burden in her arms. The child was a frail, tiny creature, never strong, and often suffering, and its very frailty drew Joan nearer to it. It was sadly like Liz, pretty and infantine. Many a rough but experienced mother, seeing it, prophesied that its battle with life would be ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... gaze. The fields became more verdant, the flowers more beautiful, the scenery more gorgeous, and the people more like nymphs and fairies. The color of the clouds and the atmosphere was of a richer, softer hue; while the breezes which wafted his frail bark were milder and gentler than any he ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... quietly, and Rawling shivered at this cool fury. The rattles made his spine itch, and suddenly his valley seemed like a place of demons. The lanterns circling on the lawn seemed like frail glow-worms, incredibly useless, and he leaned on the window-pane listening ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... relief; but after buffeting with the wind and tide, they had the mortification to see her give up the attempt, and return to the vessel. Then it was that black despair took possession of them, and they gave themselves up for lost; but clinging to their frail support for an hour or two longer, they heard a gun fire. This gave them fresh courage, for they took it to be a signal, as in fact it was, that their case was known, and an attempt would be made to save them. The vessel ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... extenuate; reduce in strength, 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; faint, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... glance told the captain that the mud-bespattered figure that lay before him as if dead was none other than his own son! The great wave had caught the frail craft on its crest, and, sweeping it along with lightning speed for a short distance, had hurled it on the deck of the Sunshine with such violence as to completely stun the whole crew. Even Spinkie lay in a melancholy little heap in ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... every frivolous feeling from the heart of Elsie,—at least, so long as she remained under its influence. It was something to trust another as Jacqueline intended now to trust her friend. It was a touching sight to see her seeking her old confidence, and appearing to rely on it, while she knew how frail the reed was. But this girl, frivolous as was her spirit, this girl had come with her from the distant native village; their childhood's recollections were the same. And Jacqueline determined now to trust her. For in times of blasting heat the shadow even of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... shooting this chap got into a fight with a tall man twice his size and fairly mopped up the floor with him. They say it wasn't a nice thing to watch. He is a frail man, but when the fight started he turned ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... breathing that it seemed as if she were already dead. Martin removed the covering, and one glance at that gentle, care-worn countenance sufficed to convince him that his old aunt lay before him! His first impulse was to seize her in his strong arms, but another look at the frail and attenuated form caused him to shrink ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... talking earnestly to some one, who, as I remember it, did not enter into my consciousness at all. I saw only that crown of white hair, that familiar profile, and heard the slow modulations of his measured speech. I was surprised to see how frail and old he looked. From his pictures I had conceived him different. I did not realize that it was a temporary condition due to a period of poor health and a succession of social demands. I have no idea how long I stood there watching him. He had been ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... in judgment, Lord!" The pious mother prays; Impute not guilt to thy frail child! She knows not ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... keeled over, and when Judy came to the top of the water, she knew that between her and death in the green depths beneath, there was nothing but the strength of her frail limbs. ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... happeneth to all alike. There is no new thing under the sun, not even that yearned-for bauble of feeble souls—immortality. But he knows, HE knows, standing upright on his two legs unswaying. He is compounded of meat and wine and sparkle, of sun-mote and world-dust, a frail mechanism made to run for a span, to be tinkered at by doctors of divinity and doctors of physic, and to be flung into the scrap-heap at ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... minutes of her fight to overtake the man she loved Nada heard but one voice—a voice crying out from her heart and brain and soul, a voice rising above the tumult of thunder and wind, urging her on, whipping the strength from her frail body in pitiless exhortation. Jolly Roger was less than half an hour ahead of her. And she must overtake him—quickly—before the forests swallowed him, before he was ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... her lace and I turned my head away as the tall man bent and laid the frail little hand against his decoration which he wore almost entirely hidden under the pocket of his tweed Norfolk of English manufacture. Only French eyes like wee Pierre's could have seen it pinned there hidden over his heart. I think he wore it ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... know, on the 21st of August, 1567. His mother was then very young, not quite fifteen, and frail and delicate in health. It happened that at that very time the Holy Winding Sheet, then in the Chapel of Chambery, was, by command of His Highness of Savoy, and at the request of the Princess Anne d'Este, wife, by her second marriage, ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... We went together to see George Meredith. I suppose many people have seen him in his little Surrey Cottage; Flint Cottage, Boxhill. He has a wonderful face and a frail old body. He talks without stopping except to drink ginger-beer. He told us many stories, mostly about society scandals of some time back. I remember he asked Gilbert, "Do you like babies?" and when Gilbert said, "Yes," he said "So do I, especially ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... that followed. He sent his brothers and relatives to administer the regions along the upper Yangtze; those fertile regions were the basis of his power. In 371 he deposed the reigning emperor and appointed in his place a frail old prince who died a year later, as required, and was replaced by a child. The time had now come when Huan Wen might have ascended the throne himself, but he died. None of his family could assemble as much power as Huan Wen had done. The equality of strength of the Huan ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... said the big ruffian with feeling. The other frail creature seemed dumb and only hopped about with the edge of its ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... nightmare, which we sometimes suffer during our sleep, are present during every waking hour. An oppressive fear weighs forever on the mind. Drink offers a temporary relief and satisfies the craving of the system, besides the environment invites dissipation and human nature at best is frail. I marvel that there is not more drunkenness exhibited in the poverty spots ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... the river. All night long he has marched against the stream. Like a rock his huge-limbed body stands above the water. On his shoulders is the Child, frail and heavy. Saint Christophe leans on a pine-tree that he has plucked up, and it bends. His back also bends. Those who saw him set out vowed that he would never win through, and for a long time their mockery and their ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... disclosed, it will be seen that I am but a frail man; but for many years I have striven honestly and hard to discipline sexuality within myself, and to regulate it according to right reason, pure hygiene, and the moral law; and I can but hope and believe that the Divine ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... feel that the circumstances of his life became critical. "I feel," he says, "that I am on the point of securing or losing the fruit of my labors for life." Rome and Niebuhr seemed the only haven in sight, and thither Bunsen now began to steer his frail bark. He arrived in Rome on the 14th of November, 1816. Niebuhr, who was Prussian Minister, received him with great kindness, and entered heartily into the literary plans of his young friend. Brandis, Niebuhr's secretary, renewed in common with his ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... A frail, white-bearded old man, scuffed uncertainly into the room in straw sandals, his faded blue eyes peering ...
— The Helpful Hand of God • Tom Godwin
... from his own hard gate, 250 For another heir in his earldom sate; An old, bent man, worn out and frail, He came back from seeking the Holy Grail; Little he recked of his earldom's loss, No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross, 255 But deep in his soul the sign he wore, The badge of the suffering ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell |
