"Flimsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... return'd to me, with a full discharge on the back of it, to be shown on occasion, but to secure to him the benefit of my service, I was to sign new indentures for the remainder of the term, which were to be kept private. A very flimsy scheme it was; however, it was immediately executed, and the paper went on accordingly, under my name ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... the Wabbly had spewed out deadly gases. Also it had simply forged ahead. And the two living men in their gas-masks paid as little attention as possible to the bodies in the streets, most of them in flimsy night-clothing, struck down in frenzied flight, but they could ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... watched we soon afterwards saw lowered from the towering height what appeared at first to be a thin black cord, but which, when the end fell at our feet, we found to be a ladder of curiously-knotted ropes about as thick as packing twine, so flimsy in construction that it seemed as though the weight of a single ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... in his estimate of Clarendon's character now seems certain; Clarendon did not get a penny of the Dunkirk money. The case made against him by the House of Commons in their articles of impeachment was felt even at the time to be flimsy and incapable of proof, and in the many records that have come to light since Clarendon's day nothing has been discovered to give them support. And yet Marvell was a singularly well-informed member of Parliament, a shrewd, level-headed man of affairs, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... have been your playfellow and companion so long that, methinks, I know you much better than you know yourselves; I, who have had my word in all your councils? How foolish then to think to put me off with such flimsy stories. Of course I shall find out all about it, sooner or later, I always do. Yes, I shall, even if I must needs hide in corners sirs, and hearken at keyholes, and peep and pry—so I warn you." And with this, she nodded and ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... imagination, not to use imagination to feed life. In these sad weeks I have been like a sleeper awakened. The world of imagination, in which I have lived and moved, has crumbled into pieces over my head; the wind and rain beat through the flimsy dwelling, and I must arise and go. I have sported with life as though it were a pretty plaything; and I find it turn upon me like a wild beast, gaunt, hungry, angry. I am terrified by its evil motions, I sicken at its odour. That is the deep mystery and horror of life, that one yields unerringly ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... pounding along at the heels of his Gurkha, threading acres of flimsy huts huddled together in meaningless confusion—frail boxes of bamboo, mud, and wattles thrown roughly together upon corrupt, naked earth that reeked of the drainage of uncounted generations. Whence they passed ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... schismatics had already disturbed the peace of his country. The funeral of the late emperor was accelerated with singular and even suspicious haste: the claim of Demetrius to the vacant throne was justified by a trite and flimsy sophism, that he was born in the purple, the eldest son of his father's reign. But the empress-mother, the senate and soldiers, the clergy and people, were unanimous in the cause of the lawful successor: and the despot Thomas, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... load of bandboxes go along the street, and I hate to see a parcel of big words without anything in them. A person who does not deliberately dispose of all his thoughts alike in cumbrous draperies and flimsy disguises may strike out twenty varieties of familiar everyday language, each coming somewhat nearer to the feeling he wants to convey, and at last not hit upon that particular and only one which may be said to be identical with the exact impression in his mind. This would seem ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... such a fool as to believe that this war is on account of the Servian assassination? That is a mere flimsy pretext—one of the flimsiest ever known. I have read all about it to-day. Austria had practically agreed to live at peace with Servia, to allow Servia to retain her independence. The trouble was, to all intents and purposes, patched up, and then Germany insisted on an impossible ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... body falling upon the floor, which shook beneath me as I lay. I sprang to a sitting posture and groped at my side for my gun; my notion was that some wild beast had leaped in through the open window. While the flimsy structure was still shaking from the impact I heard the sound of blows, the scuffling of feet upon the floor, and then—it seemed to come from almost within reach of my hand, the sharp shrieking of a woman in mortal agony. So horrible a cry I had never heard nor ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... exactly where they were. There was a time to eat, a time to sleep, a time for fatigues, and a time for sentry-go. There was little rain, and no bitter nights. The shelters, which held two or three men a-piece, though mere flimsy shell-traps, were comfortable, and either boarded or lined with straw, which was frequently renewed. When the Warwicks took over from us they exclaimed in admiring surprise, 'Why, they're all officers' dugouts.' Each section ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... "Mekor Hayim" is against him. It is devoid of all merit whether of literary beauty or of logical conciseness and brevity. It is diffuse to a degree and frequently very wearisome and tedious. One has to wade through pages upon pages of bare syllogisms, one more flimsy than another. ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... distinguished above the general run, or obliged to live more expensively; but, in a manufacturing country, to live without working, implies a degree of gentility that is extremely ruinous to those who enjoy that fatal and flimsy pre-eminence. ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... possess'd but an atom of sense, He ne'er would have woman from Paradise driven, But instead of his Houris a flimsy pretence, With woman alone, he ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... excepting the piano, had a transitory look; two light wicker arm-chairs by the fire, the two frail stands of dark, polished wood, the couple of flimsy chairs, and the case of books in the recess—all seemed uneasy, as if they might be tossed out to leave the room clear, with its green floor and walls, and its white rim ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... her flimsy, incongruous dress, her fatigue, her need of sleep. Her soul was overwhelmed with the Christian desire to save, and in her sudden energy the girl over-awed the ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... detestable in its meanness as the using of loaded dice. Neither can I see that the conduct of a majority of the British people, in fomenting Abolition for many years, and then giving her aid and countenance to our Southern rebels, on the flimsy, and, at best, brazenly selfish plea of the Morrill Tariff, is less detestable or less mean. We may regret to see a vice in individuals tolerated in high places; but when the blackest inconsistency, and the most contemptible ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... doing my hair this morning, informed me of this fact. We conferred about my toilet for the afternoon fete in the Elysees Gardens. We heard that twelve thousand people were invited. Certainly I should be lost in a crowd like that and need not be dressed in my best. My maid thought a rather flimsy gown of about year before last would be good enough. Johan thought that he would be so entirely out of sight that he was on the point of not going at all. Well, we had a queer awakening. I was very much astonished ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... two met, Cerissa was immediately reduced to a state of flimsy apology which she made up for by being particularly hot and self-assertive in speaking ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... scheme for what was to follow. Sieyes might apportion the act of deliberation among debating societies and dumb juries to the full extent of his own ingenuity; but the moment that he applied his disintegrating method to the Executive, Bonaparte swept away the flimsy reasoner, and set in the midst of his edifice of shadows the reality of an absolute personal rule. The phantom Elector, and the Consuls who were to be the Elector's tenants-at-will, corresponded very little to the power which France desired to see at its head. "Was there ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... They were all united upon the result to be attained, but divided as to the means of attaining it. In this great party there were a thousand factions. They quarreled at a word; they slandered one another; they patched up flimsy reconciliations. French society had taken with it into exile all its faults, vanities, frivolities and ignorance. Philip de Chamondrin did not forsake this circle, though he inwardly chafed at the weakness of purpose that was exhibited on every side; ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... of a wall cupboard—what they call a 'press' in Scotland—and it was locked. I shook it, and it seemed rather flimsy. For want of something better to do I put out my strength on that door, getting some purchase on the handle by looping my braces round it. Presently the thing gave with a crash which I thought would bring in my warders to inquire. I waited for a bit, and then ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... with only two flimsy bulkheads between us, I wrote my first letter to Seraphina, while Sebright went on deck to make arrangements to send me ashore. He was some time away; long enough for me to pour out on paper the exultation of my thought, the confidence of my hope, my desire to have her safe at last with ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... but, as I have said before, you can't raid a man's private castle on any such flimsy proof as that. You've got to have ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... like a tunnel cut through rock, while the deep prisons below are hewn out of the rock itself. Up to what we should call the third story, every room is vaulted. Above that the floors are laid on beams, and the walls are not more than eight feet thick—comparatively flimsy for such a place! Nine-tenths of it was built for strength—the small remainder for comfort; there is not a single large hall in all the great fortress, and the courtyard within the main gate is a gloomy, ill-shaped little ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... so odd a name, Madame, that everyone remembers, because it means nightingale," said Leontine, gingerly tearing off an end of the flimsy ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... having yet arrived,—nor is it difficult to foresee, even from once passing through the streets, that only the more solid-built English carriages will stand the wear and tear of a Mexican life, and that the comparatively flimsy coaches which roll over the well-paved streets of New York, will not endure for any ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... the backs of the striding beasts, and they were afraid; and in their hearts was only gallop, gallop, gallop; there was no thought, nothing but frenzy; no thought of breaking through the wing sides, flimsy as a deep shadow, for behind twig-laced walls were strange demons possessed of the Man-Call, the Kill-Cry. On, on, on! only in front was any opening; there the prairie lay still and smiling. Wedge-like behind ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... Testament writings which came from the hands of the apostles and their amanuenses we do not possess. These were probably written, not on skins, but upon the papyrus paper commonly used at that day, which was a frail and flimsy fabric, and under ordinary circumstances would soon perish. Fragments of this papyrus have come down to us, but only those which were preserved with exceptional care. Jerome tells us of a library in Cassarea that was partly destroyed, owing to the crumbling ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... himself so well; he cut, capered, and set to his partner with unusual agility; we naturally participated in the admiration he excited, and in the fullness of our triumph, while brushing past the flimsy nankeens worn by Tibbins, I could not refrain from bestowing a smart kick upon his shins, that brought the tears to his eyes with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... 181.).—Cordially do I agree with every word of your correspondent LAUDATOR TEMPORIS ACTI, and especially as to the prayer-books for churches and chapels, printed by the Universities. Experto crede, no solicitude can preserve their "flimsy, brittle, and cottony" leaves, as he justly entitles them, from rapid destruction. Might not the delegates of the University presses be persuaded to give us an edition with the morning and evening services printed on vellum, instead of the miserable ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... aching breast a wailing sigh, Sad as the gust that sweeps the clouded sky. Ask him his griefs; what midnight demons plough The lines of torture on his lofty brow; Unlock those marble lips, and bid them speak The mystery freezing in his bloodless cheek. His secret? Hid beneath a flimsy word; One foolish whisper that ambition heard; And thus it spake: "Behold yon gilded chair, The world's one vacant throne,—thy plate ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... patrons and prices, that reasonable profit attends upon the practice of the convenient science of getting without giving, which, notwithstanding its prosperity and antiquity, is yet an infant in the perfection it has attained. Awkward, flimsy, transparent as they ever were, are yet the tricks and devices of the knaves who never want for a dollar, never earn an honest one, but never render themselves amenable to any statute 'in such case made and provided.' To say that the master-workmen in roguery who do this sort of thing ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... frock!" cried his daughter, lifting out the top garment and holding it up before them both. "Oh, what a dress to send a poor country cousin! Fluff and flimsy, trimmed with sparklers; cut frightfully low, no sleeves, and a draggly train. Doesn't it look suitable for me?" She flung it aside with a gesture of scorn. "Ah, here's something a shade better! A little dancing ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... renounce them also. They were signed By sottish braves—the Long-Knife's tavern-chiefs— Who sell their honor like a pack of fur, Make favour with the pale-face for his fee, And caper with the hatchet for his sport. I am a chief by right of blood, and fling Your false and flimsy treaties in your face. I am my nation's head, and own but one As greater than myself, and he ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... those flimsy French things that do not give you any wear. And presently we may not be able to buy either French or English. She is not going to be so rich either. It's nonsense to think of that marshy land ever being valuable. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... on the fireplace, and reached upwards to drop her whistle inside the ornament. In her excitement she slipped, tried to save herself, lost her footing, and fell sideways over the curb on to the hearth. Her thin, flimsy dress was within half an inch of the fire, but at that instant Rona, who was standing by, clutched her and pulled her forwards. It all happened in three seconds. She was safe before her father had time to run across the room. The ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... in hot chase after the enemy, who were scampering away over the hills as fast as their legs could carry them, leaving their baggage ingloriously scattered over the road, as many a cheap lacquered hat and flimsy paper cartridge-box, preserved by our Blue Jackets as trophies, will testify. So good was the stampede, that the enemy's loss amounted only to one aged coolie, who, being too decrepit to run, was taken prisoner, after having had seventeen revolver shots fired at him ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... stealthily to stalk me! For about two hours he horrified me by slowly creeping round and round my crazy structure, gradually edging his way nearer and nearer. Every moment I expected him to rush it; and the staging had not been constructed with an eye to such a possibility. If one of the rather flimsy poles should break, or if the lion could spring the twelve feet which separated me from the ground ... the thought was scarcely a pleasant one. I began to feel distinctly "creepy," and heartily repented my folly in having placed myself in such a dangerous position. I kept perfectly still, ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... be at his work," said Constans to himself. "Wait until his teeth show through that flimsy wooden screen." ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... purity by the side of whose white splendour and inward preciousness, the innocence thou hadst lost was but a bauble, being but a thing that turned to dross in the first furnace of its temptation? Innocence is indeed priceless—that innocence which God counteth innocence, but thine was a flimsy show, a bit of polished and cherished glass—instead of which, if thou repentest, thou shalt in thy jewel-box find a diamond. Is thy purity, O fair Psyche of the social world, upon whose wings no ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... make good his claim that there were charges which might lead to the death of an ambassador. But the envoys replied as follows: "The facts are not, O Ruler of the Goths, as thou hast stated them, nor canst thou, under cover of flimsy pretexts, wantonly perpetrate unholy deeds upon men who are envoys. For it is not possible for an ambassador, even if he wishes it, to become an adulterer, since it is not easy for him even to partake of water ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... reciprocity of ignorance. All this makes for better social and intellectual relations, good understanding and friendship, and so for political relations much more substantial in the case of many of the republics than the rather flimsy Pan-Americanism celebrated in eloquent speeches and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... only three months are marked "P.," for Plague. The present church, built in 1830-3, was designed by John Shaw, who died on the twelfth day after the completion of the outer shell, leaving his son to finish his work. The church is of a flimsy Gothic, the true revival having hardly then commenced. The eight bells are from the old church. The two heads over the chief entrance are portraits of Tyndale and Dr. Donne; and the painted window is the gift of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... grudging boundaries all about it, but with everything worse excluded, being of course the most insolently-pleasant thing in the world. In addition to which, when the garden is in the Italian manner, with flowers rather remarkably omitted, as too flimsy and easy and cheap, and without lawns that are too smart, paths that are too often swept and shrubs that are too closely trimmed, though with a fanciful formalism giving style to its shabbiness, and here and there a dusky ilex-walk, and here and there a dried-up fountain, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... arrogant demeanor of superiority, proves highly offensive. Again, we find the Tojin baka often fail to discriminate between different classes of females. Discovering that the Japanese were lewd beyond all other people, with institutions fostering vice, without even the flimsy pretext of hygienic considerations, they take liberties which rouse ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... jambs and sill. American or Spanish influence occasionally shows itself in the employment of sawed boards for lintels, sills, and jambs. The wooden features of the windows exhibit a curiously light and flimsy construction. ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... sleep refused her offices: twelve: one: two.... and her eyes still were staring into the darkness.... Not a sound; all was quiet. She rose from her couch, her hair streaming, her body all aglow. She donned a flimsy, rose-colored dressing gown, opened her door, crept silently down the hall and went bodily into young Holbrook's room. In a dressing gown and slippers he sat, reading a magazine; he must have been restless, too. "Why Mrs. Reed—Eileen—what is ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... the choicest masterpieces of his skill? 'Intellectual ability wasted' among a people whose scholars smile inwardly at the ignorance of the average Western! Brothers, if God is calling you, be not deterred by flimsy subterfuges such as these. You will need the power of God the Holy Ghost to make you an efficient missionary. You will find your reputation for scholarship put to the severest test in India. Here is ample scope alike for men of ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... Zeke's experience, yet he felt no slightest chill of apprehension. His mood was too firmly joyous to be easily shaken. He merely wondered, and felt no fear whatever, as he pulled out the sheet of flimsy paper, and unfolded it, while his employer sat looking on curiously, himself already suspicious of trouble. Zeke read the typewritten words through stupidly, under the first shock uncomprehending. Then, he repeated the message aloud, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... sergeant was ordered to be taken to the village square, where a dozen old men of the village were being held by the Germans under sentence of death on the flimsy charge of having resisted the Prussians. One by one these unhappy Frenchmen were being lined up before a firing squad and shot down. The sergeant, who, of course, was to share a like fate, was reserved for the last that he might have more time for fear to sink into ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... with a simple but rather promising club. A dozen intrepid tars from a British man-of-war—to be seen in the offing—are in the act of casting a net over him. It's an exciting picture, I assure you, Miss Lansdale. The net looks flimsy, and the wild person is not only ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... specked and half-decayed fruit; and then after I had propped some branches and sticks about the opening, and placed myself with my face towards it and my hand upon my revolver, the exhaustion of the last thirty hours claimed its own, and I fell into a light slumber, hoping that the flimsy barricade I had erected would cause sufficient noise in its removal ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... who willI like it not For, say he was a slave to rank and pomp, And all the nothings he is now divorced from By the hard doom of stern necessity: Yet it is sad to mark his altered brow, Where Vanity adjusts her flimsy veil O'er the deep wrinkles of repentant ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... his sword and began forthwith on the iron bar; but the mortar was hard, he could scarcely make a mark upon it. Still, it must be done. In order to free his arms better for the work he took off all his clothes save his flimsy, sleeveless waistcoat and the loin-cloth that was girt about him, and buckled down steadily. But when more than an hour had passed the bar seemed as firm as ever. As he crouched down on the window sill he could see through it to ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... waited with the receiver held to his ear. While he waited he scrutinised keenly a sheet of paper which lay on the desk in front of him. It was a flimsy, faintly-ruled sheet from a cheap writing-pad, blotted and soiled, and covered with sprawling letters which had been roughly printed at irregular intervals as though to hide the identity of the writer. But the letters formed words, ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... their agony. The son read, shrinking into himself, composing his face as if under the author's eye, with a vivid consciousness of the portrait on his right hand, a little above his head; a wonderful presence in its heavy frame on the flimsy wall of mats, looking exiled and at home, out of place and masterful, in the painted ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... can thoroughly investigate the subject, in the light of the actual provisions of the Constitution, the avowed purpose of its framers, their own practice and the practice of their successors, without being absolutely convinced that this whole fabric of opposition on constitutional grounds is as flimsy as a cobweb. This country of our love and pride is no malformed, congenital cripple of a nation, incapable of undertaking duties that have been found within the powers of every other nation that ever existed since governments among civilized ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... her eyes had ever rested on. A little light came down the hatchway, and a smoky lamp or two swung above her head, but half the steerage deck was wrapped in shadow, and out of it there rose a many-voiced complaining. Flimsy, unplaned fittings had wrenched away, and men lay inert amidst the wreckage, with the remains of their last meal scattered about them. There were unwashed tin plates and pannikins, knives, and spoons, sliding up and down everywhere, and the deck ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... bomb there to prevent anyone going in at the first alarm and saving anything," Tom said. "They didn't count on the roof burning through first, giving me a chance to use the sand. I made the roof of the red shed flimsy just on that account, so the force of the explosion if one ever came, would be mostly upward. You know the expanding gases, caused by an explosion or by rapid combustion, always do just as electricity does, seek the shortest and easiest route. In this case I made the ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... it is unnecessary. It is rather a moment when the commentator should step forward. Ought the Wilcoxes to have offered their home to Margaret? I think not. The appeal was too flimsy. It was not legal; it had been written in illness, and under the spell of a sudden friendship; it was contrary to the dead woman's intentions in the past, contrary to her very nature, so far as that nature was understood ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... supplying the first imperative demands of the people for whom they build,—namely, to be walled in and roofed weather-tight, and with a decent neatness, but without much care that the house should be solid and enduring,—for it cannot well be so flimsy as not to outlast the owner's needs. He does not look to it as the habitation of his children,—hardly as his own for his lifetime,—but as a present shelter, easily and quickly got ready, and as easily plucked up and carried off again. The common-law of England looks upon a house as real ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... hope, it is clear that the flimsy argument of this prattler fails utterly, and, together with everything he constructs upon it, is found to be without any basis whatever. But that he may the better understand his own mummery, even in case I should grant that a process of reasoning might be entirely valid ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... came in, in a flimsy dressing gown of yellow, with blue ribbons in it, her hair wet and still done up in a towel. Superbly she trusted to her big eyes of limpid brown, and to the marble-like pallour of her complexion, the twin laughing dimples in her cheeks ... she added her ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Miss Dorothy. "Well, dear, I hope your grandmother will not be very hard on you. The only point I can see that needs blame, is your wearing that flimsy delicate frock, but as you had never been blackberrying before, you couldn't know the unkindness ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... proportion of what meets the eye above the water-line of this ironclad, and looks solid enough, is of this comparatively flimsy build; not meant to resist shot or shell; willing, as it were, to be blown away, if the enemy can manage it, though proof against rifle-bullets. There is a huge central erection, styled the 'flying' or 'hurricane' deck, from which enormous davits project with several boats pendent therefrom. ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... During the period of waiting for the tree to fall, I had made a needle of bone and taking an empty flour sack proceeded to manufacture a pair of legs which, with infinite pains, I stitched to the waistband of my long lost trousers and added wooden pegs to insure stability and strength to the flimsy ravelings. In order to form a fair idea of my appearance, one must imagine a youth with a six weeks' growth of hair and beard, a shirt that had to be taken off once a week to wash, a black band around ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... come to the noble poets of the Stuart and the early Georgian period, we find that the national indebtedness is not less marked. Who would be prepared to surrender the spirited effusions of Montrose? And is there not much to be said for the outcome, flimsy and over-free as it often was, of that mob of noblemen who wrote with ease—including the Earls of Roscommon, Dorset, and Rochester, and the Duke of Buckinghamshire? Had these writers not at least the virtues of lightness and of brightness? ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... out of her pocket. Nora clutched it very hard, but her trembling fingers could scarcely take the little flimsy pink sheet out of its envelope. At last she had managed it. She spread it before her; then she found that her dazed eyes could not see the words. What was the misery of the morning to the agony ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... experience, and one that I shall never forget—the white-faced, distracted woman, tramping in her flimsy house-shoes over the rough ground, bursting through the bushes, regardless of the thorny branches that dragged at skin and hair and dainty clothing, and sending forth from time to time a tremulous cry, so dreadfully pathetic in its mingling of terror ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... absurd that I should array myself in these gorgeous gowns to compete with that Indian in her few flimsy calicoes and silks? The contrast is out of all proportion. It's the sublime and the ridiculous. And yet she looks well in anything! Dress her in rags and she is picturesque; robe her in silks ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... feet four in his highest-heeled boots—as sterling and warm-hearted a little man as ever breathed. He was writing at a little desk close to a large window, which, owing to the station being a temporary one and its roof low, was flimsy, and came nearer to the ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... not a man that kept secrets well. When elate on a subject, he could not avoid talking about it. The next morning, having occasion to employ his son's tutor as his secretary, he must needs announce to him, in mouthing accents, and with much flimsy pomp of manner, that he had better hold himself prepared for a return to the south at an early day, as the important business which had detained him (Mr. Sympson) so long in Yorkshire was now on the eve of fortunate completion. His anxious and laborious efforts were ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... do get engaged they let their world know of it. A betrothal there is not the informal flimsy contract it often is with us. They begin by publishing the event in their newspapers, and sending round printed forms announcing it to their friends. In the newspaper the announcement is rather bare compared with the advertisement of other family ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... shoe, or the tall gentleman of the attic. Nevertheless I did, as I went out, throw a glance up to the window of the court—alas! there were more panes broken, the placard was gone, the veil was gone—there was nothing but a flimsy web which a bold spider had stretched across one of the comers. I felt sure that the last six months had brought its changes to other houses, as well as the house ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... sausages] which reached me on Sunday, and the note which you were so kind as to send with it, I can only repay you in this the old paper of unproductive thanks, but the sincerity of them will be held in some estimation by the mind actuated by the kindness that has excited them, and, therefore, flimsy as they are, I venture to beg your acceptance of them. I have nothing new, Madam, to send you for your entertainment from this great city. That the Regent is going to divorce the Princess of Wales, and excite the hope of the husbands and the fear of the wives—that under such an example, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... says Solomon Don Dunce, "Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet. Through all the flimsy things we see at once As easily as through a Naples bonnet— Trash of all trash!—how can a lady don it? Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff— Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff Twirls into trunk-paper ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... Some of the Klemantans also build houses little if at all inferior to those of the Kayans, and very similar to them in general plan. But in this as in all other respects the Klemantans exhibit great diversities, some of their houses being built in a comparatively flimsy manner, light timber and even bamboos being used, and the roof being made of leaves. The houses of the Muruts are small and low, and ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... They seem like such rather flimsy, harmless things, though, that the disintegrator rays will take care of without difficulty. Shall I order the ray operators to ...
— Vampires of Space • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... near he stood to the edge of the precipice. The strain of the interview had told on him. This was the first actual buffet of the beast's paw. He led the way to his son's room and watched Barrant go through his intimate belongings with the feeling that intelligence was a flimsy shield against the brutal force of authority. The law in search of prey cared nothing for such civilized refinements as intellect or self-respect. As well try to stop ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... masterly arguments I ever heard. At one point she said: 'The great majority of you declare that woman suffrage is right, (a roar of 'yes,' 'yes,' went up), and yet you oppose this plank. Are you afraid to do right?' Her reply to the flimsy objections of the chairman, P. P. Elder, was simply unanswerable. She cut the ground from under his feet, and his confusion and rout were so complete that he stood utterly confounded. That small woman with her truth and eloquence had slain the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... flimsy, round-about, unmeaning commencement as this, would expect the delightful, unexaggerated, home-felt descriptions of natural scenery, which are scattered in such unconscious profusion through this and the following ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... Captain Capel arrived," wrote his old admiral, Hood, to Nelson, "that you would certainly be a Viscount, which I made known to Lady Nelson. But it was objected to in a certain quarter, because your Lordship was not a commander-in-chief. In my humble opinion a more flimsy reason never was given." Official circles regained, or rather perhaps again lost, their senses, and the victory, unquestionably the most nearly complete and the most decisive ever gained by a British fleet, was rewarded, in the person of the commanding officer, with honors less than ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... permit me to turn my face towards this stone wall, for I cannot bear to look at the flimsy piece of wire, which is the only battlement of defence that interposes betwixt me and the precipice." He spoke of the bronze balustrade, six feet high, and massive in proportion. Thus saying, and holding fast by the physician's arm, Ursel, though ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... George wanted to do for at least another fifty years or so; and it seemed to him as he stood there in the starlight, gingerly fingering this flimsy linen thing, that if he were to suspend his hundred and eighty pounds of bone and sinew at the end of it over the black gulf outside the balcony he would look alive for about five seconds, and after that goodness only knew how he would look. He knew all about knotted sheets. He had read ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... with many proposed alterations. In the second box came Gaily [Footnote: H. Gaily Knight. Best known for his works on the Normans in Sicily, and Ecclesiastical Architecture in Italy.] Knight's letter to Aberdeen; which is a poor, flimsy production. A peacock's feather in the hilt of a ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... edition, except the first, which was from the author's manuscript, has been altered to 'paper-windows.' Bunyan's allusion is to the winkers, called by many 'blinkers,' put by the side of a horse's eyes, to keep him under the complete control of his driver—and by 'paper-winkers' the flimsy attempt of Antichrist to hoodwink mankind by printed legends, miracles, and absurd assumptions—it is one of the almost innumerable sparks of wit, which render all the writings of Bunyan so ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... ship. Lacy had time for a single upward glance—his last look at anything! The black railing towering above his head was swarming with men. Flashes of light punctured the darkness. Bullets pattered like rain on the iron. One or two tore through the flimsy shell. A jet of water ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... which have steadily prepared the nation for an aggressive war; and they have raised no voice against the appalling decision that, in order to attain Germany's purposes, every rule of morals and humanity should be set aside. They have servilely accepted every flimsy pretext for outrage, and have followed, instead of leading, their passion-blinded people. It was the same in Austria-Hungary. Austrian and Hungarian prelates have passed in silence the fearful travesties of justice by which, in recent years, their statesmen ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... that the Soul does not decay: you know more of such flimsy things than I do. But you, on your side, must grant me that there is Something which does not enter into your systems. That has perished, and I mean to mourn it all the days of my life. Pray do not interfere with ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... lines for. Somewhat of a pensive cast what you admire. The lines may come before the Law question, as that cannot be determined before Hilary Term, and I wish your deliberate judgment on that. The other may be flimsy and superficial. And if you have not burnt your returned letter pray re-send it me as a monumental token of my stupidity. 'Twas a little unthinking of you to touch upon a sore subject. Why, by dabbling ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... such a difference? For instead of the big sloppy young female who used to slouch, gigglin' around the basement who should breeze in but a zippy young lady, a bit heavy about the shoulders maybe for that flimsy style of costume, but more or less stunning, for all that. Rowena had bloomed out. In fact, she had the lilies of the field ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... style of binding for a select or a public library? is a question often discussed, with wide discrepancies of opinion. The so universally prevalent cloth binding is too flimsy for books subjected to much use—as most volumes in public collections and many in private libraries are likely to be. The choice of the more substantial bindings lies between calf and morocco, and ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... it is, however, a liberty which, although not sanctioned by custom, is so far from being reprobated by reason, that the dearest interests of mankind imperiously demand that a certain etiquette of fashion should no longer keep 'man at a distance from man', or impose its flimsy fancies between the ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... more difficult to follow now; there was only a flimsy little ladder, and the men ascended cautiously. When they stepped out upon ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... years convent-wrapped. His first moment of disillusion came on the day that his aunt informed him, with considerable asperity, that his pretty cousin was not a person to be mentioned in their circle—the reason given—that "she was not yet out,"—sounding rather flimsy even to his trusting ears. Still, he was given to understand that, in all probability, Nathalie would be presented next winter, at one of the court balls; on which day, Caroline admitted, wearily, to herself, her special reign must end. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... around him, has exclaimed, "Give me my Horace." But Horace with all his bonhommie, his common sense, and his acuteness, is but the representative of a narrow Roman coterie of the Augustan age. How thin, flimsy, and unspiritual does he appear in comparison with the marvellous depth, the spiritual insight, the tenderness and power of expression which ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... city. My general impressions are of crooked, narrow lanes, white-washed houses, mortar-plastered streets, in the clean quarter;—of seeing alcoves on each side, with deep recesses, with a fore-ground of red-turbaned Banyans, and a back-ground of flimsy cottons, prints, calicoes, domestics and what not; or of floors crowded with ivory tusks; or of dark corners with a pile of unginned and loose cotton; or of stores of crockery, nails, cheap Brummagem ware, tools, &c., in what I ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... that we have ever seen reduce Zanga to a mere slavish croucher in all points; and destroy the very basis of the character by an overacted humiliation, highly improper because too glaring not to excite Alonzo's suspicions. He must be a dull Alonzo indeed, if he could not look through such flimsy dissimulation. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... particular description of Dagaghiano and Rustichi, both of Florence, the one as a man of experience and the other as a student of cosmography, was equally superfluous in speaking of them to his father. These portions of the letter look like flimsy artifices to give the main story the appearance of truth. They may or may not have been true, and it is not inconsistent with an intention to deceive in regard to the voyage that they should have been either the one or the other. A single allusion, however, is made to the critical ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... disguised) into the college to which no man was admitted, he sings; and the princess, suspecting the fraud, says to him, "Not for thee, O bulbul, any rose of Gulistan shall burst her veil," i.e., "O singer, do not suppose that any woman will be taken in by such a flimsy deceit." The bulbul loved the rose, and Gulistan means the "garden of roses." The prince was the bulbul, the college was Gulistan, and the princess the rose ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... was purchased. The furniture looked poor, and the carpets almost threadbare; but there was such a dainty spirit of cleanliness abroad, such exquisite neatness of repair, and altogether so bright and cheerful a look about the rooms—everything so above-board—no shifts to conceal poverty under flimsy ornament—that many a splendid drawing-room would give less pleasure to those who could see evidences of character in inanimate things. But whatever poverty there might be in the house, there was full luxuriance in the little square wall-encircled garden, on two sides of which ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... The garden-fence, that was so gigantic, is now only a simple paling; its gate that was such a cumbrous affair—reminding you of Gaza—you might easily lift from its hinges. The lofty dove-cote, which seemed to rise like a monument of art before your boyish vision, is now only a flimsy box upon a tall spar ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... caste with his people. When reproached for his falsehoods, he cunningly told them that his predictions had failed of fulfilment, because, during his incantations, his wife touched the sacred vessels and broke the charm. His followers, superstitious as they were, would not accept such a flimsy excuse and deserted him, flying to secure hiding-places where the white man could not find them. After his town was burned, the prophet took shelter ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... a little frightened by such an apparition, if she had led a life of less reality than frontier settlers are apt to lead; but dealing with hard fact does not engender a flimsy habit of mind, and this woman was too sincere and earnest in her character, and too happy in her situation, to be thrown by antagonism merely upon superstitious fancies and chimeras of the second-sight. She did not even believe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... find yourself forgotten and neglected. It is still less pleasant to walk home alone along a country road, at one o'clock in the morning, wearing a pale green voile. Lucinda was not prepared for such a walk. She had nothing on her feet save thin-soled shoes, and her only wraps were a flimsy fascinator and a ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... are borrowed books or no That show their varied stature row on row Along your walls, there will I truly find The image of your character and mind. Light, flimsy novels suit the flying train Or Western Isle excursions of Macbrayne, Where, dazed by gleaming firths of visible heat, The torpid soul disdains substantial meat; But oft-read volumes, to which men recur The whole ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... same plan. There is one guest-room, a bare carpetless apartment, with a rough wooden bench, a table, and two straight-backed wooden chairs, and the room is heated to suffocation by a huge stove, which occupies a corner of the room. The flimsy plank partition is unpapered, but generally plastered with the cheap, crudely coloured prints sold by pedlars. Some of these depicted events connected with our recent war in South Africa, and it is needless to add that the English troops were invariably depicted in the act ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... everything on the face of the earth to establish the claims set forth. Some of his patents were shown, and I not only had to examine his patents, but I had to go through a great many depositions of the evidence given, and I am bound to confess that a more flimsy case I never saw brought before a court of law. I do not know whether I shall be libelous in expressing my opinion (I will refer to our solicitor before the notes are printed), but I should not hesitate to say ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... The maiden retreated half a step more. Behind her sounded a faint patter of crinoline coming down the hall stairs. And then there came into view from the porch, bending forward with caressing arms, a slim, lithe negress of about nineteen years. Her flimsy dress was torn by thorns, and her hands were pitifully scratched. Her skirt was gone, the petticoat bemired, and ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... he objects to could operate), or in presuming a fall of exports from a regulation which took place only in November, 1766; whose effects could not appear until the following year; and which, when they do appear, utterly overthrow all his flimsy reasons and affected suspicions upon the effect of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... inquired Quarrier, showing the edges of his well-kept teeth. "Is this intimidation, Mr. Siward? Do I understand that you are proposing to bespatter others with scandal unless I am frightened into going to the governors with the flimsy excuse you attempt to offer me? In other words, Mr. Siward, are you bent on making me pay for what you believe you know of my private life? Is ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... Charles Martel and the Franks checked the advance of the Saracens at Tours. Offensive wars, even, may have been necessary to wipe out evils, such as slavery or the oppression of neighboring peoples. But in modern times the moral justification of war on such grounds has usually been a flimsy pretext; and certainly the occasion for legitimate warfare is becoming steadily rarer. Nearly always the good aimed at could have been attained without the evils of war. If the American colonies had had a little more patience, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... scale in an election. Tell them, I say, each or all of these, or a hundred more like them, and to any one you so speak, the answer is—"Pooh, pooh, my dear fellow, never fear—don't fuss yourself —take it easy—to-morrow will do just as well." If, on the other hand, however, you reject such flimsy excuses, and simply say, "I'm booked in the mail," the opposition at once falls to the ground, and your quondam antagonist, who was ready to quarrel with you, is at once prepared to assist in packing ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... of winter there were five thousand people in the valley to be fed with miraculous loaves and fishes. Half of these were without decent shelter, dwelling under wagon-covers or in flimsy tents, and forced much of the time to be without fuel; for wood had to be hauled through the snow from the distant canons, and so was precious stuff. For three months the cutting winds came down from the north, and the pitiless winter snows raged about them. An inventory ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... Cary. She's tried hard enough. It's a pity somebody don't tell her how it looks to be seen going about with him as she does. She hardly lets him get out of her sight when he's in town. I invited them to tea the last time they were here and she wouldn't let him come; kept him at her house, made some flimsy excuse, and had the evening with him to herself. She's tried her best to ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... these became easily apparent. With difficulty Ranald restrained his indignation. He let him talk for some time and then opened out upon him. He read him no long lecture, but his words came forth with such fiery heat that they burned their way clear through all the faults and flimsy selfishness of the younger man till they reached the true heart of him. His ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... we were astonished to see a man seated in a sulky in the middle of the river and playing for his life on a fiddle. The horse was up to his middle in water, and it seemed as if the flimsy vehicle was ready to be swept away by the current. Still the fiddler fiddled on composedly as if his life had been insured. We thought he was mad, and shouted to him. He heard us ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... Mr. Gorby, thoughtfully, taking down a flimsy yellow book rather tattered. "I've heard of him; if his novels are as bad as his reputation I ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... going on simultaneously in France. As it was evident that the Spanish children could not be disposed of in both markets at the same time, it was plain to the dullest comprehension that either the brokerage of Toledo or of Girono was a sham, and that a policy erected upon such flimsy foundations ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race! That blasphemed the bright Lyrist to his face, And did not know it,—no, they went about, Holding a poor, decrepid standard out Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large The ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... I now found myself upon consisted of about thirty primitive shelters, built of boughs in the most flimsy manner, and only intended to break the force of the wind. These shelters, or "break-winds," were crescent-shaped, had ho roof, and were not in any way closed in in front. There were, however, two or three grass huts of beehive shape, about seven feet high and ten feet ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... way is so narrow that you can lay a hand on either wall; so steep that, in greasy winter weather, the pavement is almost as treacherous as ice. Washing dangles above washing from the windows; the houses bulge outwards upon flimsy brackets; you see a bit of sculpture in a dark corner; at the top of all, a gable and a few crowsteps are printed on the sky. Here, you come into a court where the children are at play and the grown people sit upon their doorsteps, and perhaps a church ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... main street being suddenly checked by another huge barricade, we wound round to the right, and at last reached a house where less than a score of Mobiles were gathered, protected from sudden assault by a flimsy barrier of planks, casks, stools, and broken chairs. This was the most advanced French outpost in the direction we were following. We passed it, crossing some open fields where a solitary man was calmly digging potatoes, risking his life at every turn of his spade, ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... The flimsy logic and cool-blooded cruelty of this charge are too obvious to require mention. According to the chief justice, no Papist could complain that he was hanged for treason because some members of his church had massacred the Protestants on Bartholomew's ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... lightly and set out for the bend. The nearer he drew, the sterner his face became; he was thinking of what he should say, and one has to be careful in what he says in speaking with a man who is dead. Soon he came in sight of the flimsy little cross which they had raised, and saw the stones which they had piled above the body, shining white and grey in the moonlight; then with a twist of the paddle his canoe shot in toward the bank and the prow grated on the ice. Granger stepped out and beached his craft above the water's edge. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... story of Sherlock Holmes among the animals—a flimsy tale of circumstantial evidence. But while I was making my notes, what should come flying through the woods but the Owl himself, back to make another meal, no doubt. He alighted on a branch just above my head, barely ten feet up, and there gave me the best of proof, next to eye witness of the ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... Whewell closes his chapter on the 'Mysticism of the Middle Ages' have their application to the mysticism of the nineteenth century:—'Experience collects her stores in vain, or ceases to collect them, when she can only pour them into the flimsy folds of the lap of Mysticism, who is, in truth, so much absorbed in looking for the treasures which are to fall from the skies, that she heeds little how scantily she obtains, or how loosely she holds, such riches as she might find ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... nature was the place occupied by the memory of the Professor. Her pride in his scientific achievements, and her mortification at finding them but little known out of his own country, were genuine feelings. Never had Captain Wragge burned his adulterated incense on the flimsy altar of human vanity to better purpose than he was ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... and a berg two hundred feet high will therefore reach approximately fourteen hundred feet below the surface of the sea. Winds and currents have far more influence upon them than they have upon the pack, through which these bergs plough their way with a total disregard for such flimsy obstacles, and cause much chaos as they go. For the rest woe betide the ship which is so fixed into the pack that she cannot move if one of these monsters ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... before her mother's return, when in his drunken helplessness he fell against the table, overturning the kerosene lamp, and the curtains were all aflame in an instant. It was just after taps—or ten o'clock—when Kate's shrieks aroused the inmates of Sudsville and started the cry of "Fire." The flimsy structure of pine boards burned like so much tinder, and the child and her stupefied father had been dragged forth only in time to save their lives. The little one, after giving the alarm, had rushed ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... before the corpse of the victim. Applause for ingenious argument was hushed in a moment, when the dead body of the gambler appeared in view! What a tribute to the power of truth—what a tremendous triumph of nature, and her sacred laws, over the flimsy artifices of passion, fiction, and a diseased ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... night, the greatest, the most intellectual, the richest people of the county would have come to an untimely end, and then the realm of England, like the people themselves, would have gone to pieces. The Beorminster Chronicle reporter—also present with a flimsy book and a restless little pencil—worked up this idea on the spot into ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... of the sympathizers with the cause I was furnished with the address of certain Carlists in confidential positions in France, and letters were sent on in advance, so as to secure me a favourable reception. Armed with a sheet of flimsy stamped in blue with the escutcheon of Charles VII., and the legend "Secretaria Militar de Londres," and with, what was more potent, a big credit on a banking-house, I started afresh ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... Republican; and excellent papers they are. Both in appearance and in matter, O Mundo and A Lucta ("The Struggle") would do credit to the journalism of any country. In size, in excellence of production, and in the well-considered weight of their articles, they contrast strangely with the flimsy, ill-printed sheets ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... not disturb the family. In America fathers often repress their daughters' self-sufficiency and intellect by bonds of self-indulgence, and when the daughters realize that a stockade of dollars is a most flimsy fortress in the world against the experiences which come to every man and woman the American girls are the mental complement of their physically tortured ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... mountebank. Neglecting the pursuit of an honest calling, for his trade seems to have been that of a stone-cutter, he wasted his time in discoursing with such youths as his lecherous countenance and satyr-like person could gather around him, leading them astray from the gods of his country, the flimsy veil of his hypocrisy being too transparent to conceal his infidelity. Nevertheless, he was a very brave soldier, as those who served with him testify. It does not appear that he was observant of those cares which by most men are probably ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... the town lay along Montgomery Street, from Sacramento to Jackson, and about the plaza. Gambling was the chief occupation of the people. While they were waiting for the cessation of the rainy season, and for the beginning of spring, all sorts of houses were being put up, but of the most flimsy kind, and all were stores, restaurants, or gambling -saloons. Any room twenty by sixty feet would rent for a thousand dollars a month. I had, as my pay, seventy dollars a month, and no one would even ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... are indifferent at the time of their union, is that any reason why upon either of them acquiring serious convictions, the other should be expected, out of mere complaisance, to make a false and hypocritical pretence of sharing them? To see how flimsy is this plea of fearing to give pain to the religious sensitiveness of women, we have only to imagine one or two cases which go beyond the common experience, yet which ought not to strain the plea, if ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... burning, and by midnight he was sleeping heavily in the adjoining room. And the wind got up in the night: it played with the muslin curtains, flinging them out like streamers into the room; played with the flimsy parasol lamp-shade until it tilted, and the little lamp was thrown ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... was a boy of about twelve years, and now twelve years later the young man came back in a soldier's uniform, arrayed in a thousand colours, and all over glass trinkets and fine steel chains. To-day he would appear in one gay dress, to-morrow in another; but all flimsy and gaudy, of little substance and less worth. The peasant folk, who are naturally malicious, and when they have nothing to do can be malice itself, remarked all this, and took note of his finery and jewellery, piece by piece, and discovered that he had three suits of different ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the durability of the invention. "Now, you see this whistle, gentlemen. It is rubber, all rubber; and rubber, you know, enters into the composition of a great many valuable articles. This whistle, then, is entirely of rubber,—no worthless or flimsy material that drops to pieces the moment you put it to your lips,"—as if it were not utterly desirable that it should. "Now, I'll give you the mocking-bird, gentlemen, and then I'll give you the guinea-pig, upon this pure India-rubber ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... frequently emulate the propriety and emphasis of the farmer's call to his team, and confess that if that were written it would surpass his labored sentences. Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month's labor in the farmer's almanac, to restore our tone and spirits. A sentence should read as if its author, had ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... whose imagination was of a more flimsy texture, formed a thousand chimerical conjectures, which he communicated to Pickle, in imperfect insinuations, hoping, by his answers and behaviour, to discover the truth: but the youth, in order to tantalise him, eluded ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Jefferies and others. Spiritual enemies—sin, death, and hell—were the only terrors under which Mr. Fearing suffered; temporal persecutions—'difficulties, lions, or Vanity Fair—he feared not at all.' The battle probably refers to the flimsy sophistry used in defence of persecution, as opposed to the Word of God, the sword of the Spirit, by which our Puritan heroes destroyed these anti-Christian arguments—(ED). Now that the lions are removed, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... among scant pastures and the green charity which a spindling second-growth spread over the nakedness of rotting forest bones—here amid the wasted uplands and into this flimsy wooden building came the rank and file of the metropolis in search of air, of green, of sky, for ten days' surcease from toil and heat and the sad perplexities ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... on them mighty everlastin' waves, forever flowin' back and forth, forth and back, the world of the flimsy and the false seemed to pass away and the Real more nigh to me than it did in the painted land of shams and onreality I had been passin' through. And as I meditated on the disgraceful sight I had seen—that gaudy, guilty creeter with a man concealed in her breast. For if it wuzn't a guilty secret, ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... Margot especially swarms with errors. The Duke of Nevers was not absent. He gave his opinion at the council before the feast of St. Bartholomew, and Henry of Navarre did not follow the procession four days after. Henry III. did not come back from Poland so quickly. Besides, how many flimsy devices! The miracle of the hawthorn, the balcony of Charles IX., the poisoned glass of Jeanne d'Albret—Pecuchet no longer had any ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... much money, more money than she could possibly have used for herself in any legitimate way. First, she got her father to give her all she could get out of him. Her second step would be to write to me for all I could spare, making flimsy excuses ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... Sometimes a ghost would hit a bag and the flimsy paper would burst and a quantity of peanuts or popcorn would scatter on the grass, to be scrabbled for by the ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... very exciting while it lasted, Jack thought. He saw the numerous planes, forming the raiding squadron break formation in great haste, each pilot being eager to dodge the bursting shells and seek an elevation where they could not reach his flimsy craft. ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach |
