"Dwindle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who clung so tenaciously to that square mile of crags and cliffs. The great spirit of cheery optimism, the light-hearted, careless good fellowship, and the muscle and grit of the invaders looked lightly at all this. Regiments might dwindle sadly from dysentery and shrapnel, the water-supply might be short and brackish, the flies might be getting more persistent; but reinforcements would come some day soon, the British at Cape Helles would get Achi Baba, and soon all would ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... to deaden the shock, to cause the nation to pass insensibly from the monarchy to democracy by the practice of constitutional fictions,—what detestable reasons all those are! No! no! let us never enlighten the people with false daylight. Principles dwindle and pale in your constitutional cellar. No illegitimacy, no compromise, no grant from the king to the people. In all such grants there is an Article 14. By the side of the hand which gives there is the claw which snatches back. I refuse your charter point-blank. A charter is a mask; the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... fortunate successors would find a most improved world to start upon! For Cant does lie piled on us, high as the zenith; an Augean Stable with the poisonous confusion piled so high: which, simply if there once could be nothing said, would mostly dwindle like summer snow gradually about its business, and leave us free to use our eyes again! When I see painful Professors of Greek, poring in their sumptuous Oxfords over dead Greek for a thousand years or more, and ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the successes of those with whom we have much in common—of whose life we are, or fancy that we might have been, a part. The figures that we see in history elevated above the ordinary attributes of man, are magnified as we see them through the mist of our own vague perceptions, and dwindle if we approach too near them. If they are brought down from the lofty pedestal of rank or fame on which they stood, that they may be within reach of the warmest sympathies of men who live upon a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... was the cause of it, the Territorial divisions after they took the field seemed to be treated as veritable Cinderellas for a long time. They generally set out short of establishment, and they were apt to dwindle away painfully for want of reserves after they had spent a few weeks on the war-path. The Returns show this to have been the case. More than one of the divisional Generals concerned spoke to me, or wrote to me, on the subject in the later months ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... echoes a lady, Miss Grace Toplis, writing on Jefferies. "In brief, he was an essayist and not a novelist at all," says Mr. Henry Salt. "It is therefore certain that his importance for posterity will dwindle, if it has not already dwindled, to that given by a bundle of descriptive selections. But these will occupy a foremost place on their particular shelf, the shelf at the head of which stands Gilbert White and Gray," ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity. In its preventive police it ought to be sparing of its efforts, and to employ means, rather few, unfrequent, and strong, than many and frequent, and, of course, as they multiply their puny politic race, and dwindle, small and feeble. Statesmen who know themselves will, with the dignity which belongs to wisdom, proceed only in this the superior orb and first mover of their duty steadily, vigilantly, severely, courageously: whatever remains will, in a manner, provide for itself. But as ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... even now on the way—a surprise so stupendous and unexpected that, beside it, the lobster-surprise would dwindle away into insignificance and be quite forgotten for the rest of the day. And oddly enough, it was to be Blossom who should ...
— Judith Lynn - A Story of the Sea • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... face of the earth, in the midst of comfort and plenty; and, in spite of all the efforts of missionaries, even their children and grand-children, after giving up the horrid crime, and becoming Christians, seem to have no power of living and increasing, but dwindle away, and perish off the earth. Yes, God's laws work in strange and subtle ways; so darkly, so slowly, that the ungodly and sinners often believe that there are no laws of God, and say—"Tush, how should God perceive it? Is there knowledge in the Most High?" But the laws work, nevertheless, whether ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... blood; and such also are employed in the castration of animals and the ablation of tumours. In the latter instances, all afflux of nutriment and heat being prevented by the ligature, we see the testes and large fleshy tumours dwindle, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... loads, were accelerating slowest, with the ex-gridiron twins riding the rigging. But their rings would dwindle to star specks ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... DESIRES.—And it may actively repress other desires or cause them to dwindle and disappear. A man possessed by a devouring ambition may resolutely scorn delights to which he would otherwise be keenly susceptible, or he may simply ignore them without effort. The attention, fixed upon some chosen end, and busied with ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... man had been here, he might have made his fortune by this time. 'Stirring thus about his feet the waters of the ponds where they abide' may be fine employment, but the law's good enough for me, seeing they're bound to dwindle long by slow decay. You don't happen to have a scrap on a botanist, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... denomination, will have much the advantage of all supplies from the Bay of Fundy and westward. What the consequence will be time only will reveal.' Many persons at Halifax, wrote Pynchon, prophesied that the new settlement would dwindle, and recommended the shore of the Bay of Fundy or the banks of the river St John in preference to Port Roseway; but Pynchon attributed their fears to jealousy. A few years' experience must have convinced him that his ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... island. The superior attractions of other newly discovered countries and the fear of piratical invasions had by 1591 decreased the total population of the colony to 15,000. This number remained almost stationary until about 1663 when it began to dwindle further until the low water mark was reached, about 1737, and the entire population of the Spanish portion of the island was estimated at but 6,000. Timely tariff concessions revived trade and encouraged immigration and new importations of slaves the number of inhabitants increased ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... rider sat upon his shoulders, but with his head proudly lifted, as if conscious of his fate, and taking a last look at the world. Was it not All-Father Odin, on his horse Sleipner, forsaking the new race which had ceased to worship him? The colossi of the Orient—Rameses and Brahma and Boodh—dwindle into insignificance before this sublime natural monument to the lost ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... THE PTOLEMIES. But doubtless they defended this policy by the experience gathered in those great campaigns which had made the Greeks the foremost nation of the world. They had seen the mythological conceptions of their ancestral country dwindle into fables; the wonders with which the old poets adorned the Mediterranean had been discovered to be baseless illusions. From Olympus its divinities had disappeared; indeed, Olympus itself had proved to be a phantom of the imagination. ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... hemicycle of hills. The heights of Mount Tifata began to fall away on the left, the rough, precipitous line of crags, sweeping around toward the east, seemed to dwindle into the distance, even as they drew nearer, while the low jumble of Neapolitan hills, beyond which towered Vesuvius with its fluttering pennon of vapour, rose higher and higher upon the southern horizon. A turn of the road, a temporary makeshift, led them around Casilinum, whose little garrison ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... will have it, is that this matter should be shrewdly pressed, and an end made of it as soon as may be. Our people dwindle daily; they who were well a se'nnight since are ill to-day, and may be dead to-morrow. Our provision waxeth short and poor, and be it once spent our good friend Jones will give us none of his we may be sure. We are no babes to be cast down by these things, nor frighted at facing ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... more pressure. Some organs (like the heart, which is always at work) would become inconveniently or unnecessarily large. Other absolutely indispensable organs, which are comparatively passive or are very seldom used, would dwindle until their weakness caused the ruin of the individual or the extinction of the species. In eliminating various evil results of use-inheritance, natural selection would be eliminating use-inheritance itself. The displacement of Lamarck's theory by Darwin's shows that the effects of ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... may be said to have ended with the surrender of the army under Lord Cornwallis, at Yorktown, on October 19, 1781, and little attempt at recruiting was made subsequently; consequently the regiments continued to dwindle until, at the evacuation of New-York, two years later, they were not more than one-third of their original strength. The New Jersey Volunteers, a year after their arrival in New-Brunswick, were mustered by Thomas Knox, under the supervision of Col. Edward Winslow. The return is dated at Fort Howe, ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... rest, I saw the commerce dwindle, High-bosomed, sturdy vessels take the main And leave us, with the morning in their faces, Never to come to any port again. Slowly an ominous and pregnant silence Grew deep upon the wharves where ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... produce it, the cheapest product ever offered to man. Most newspapers cost more than they sell for; they could not live by subscriptions; for any profits, they certainly depend upon advertisements. The advertisements depend upon the circulation; the circulation is likely to dwindle if too much space is occupied by advertisements, or if it is evident that the paper belongs to its favored advertisers. The counting-room desires to conciliate the advertisers; the editor looks to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and now they dwindle, Whirling with the whirling spindle. Twist ye, twine ye! even so Mingle human ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... impossible to say. Hours and minutes, in seasons of pain or excitement, are, in the mind's duration, arbitrary and conventional. To measure time by the state of our feelings would be as futile as an attempt to measure space by the slowness or impetuosity of our movements. Hours dwindle into minutes, and minutes are exaggerated into hours, according to the circumstances under which the mind moves on. We are conscious of existence only by the succession of our feelings. We are conscious of time only ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... worried me. I think it is just as probably a change in dietary. I have noticed that most of your vegetarians are shock-headed, ample-bearded men, and I have heard the Ancestor was vegetarian. Or it may be, I sometimes fancy, a kind of inherent disposition on the part of your human animal to dwindle. That came back in my memory vividly as I looked at the long rows of Sceptics, typical Advanced people, and marked their glistening crania. I recalled other losses. Here is Humanity, thought I, growing hairless, growing bald, growing toothless, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... Revolution. These books he grouped according to the amount of information they gave about Pitt and Burke and English sympathy with us in our quarrel with George III. These groups are five in number, and dwindle down from group one, "Textbooks which deal fully with the grievances of the colonists, give an account of general political conditions in England prior to the American Revolution, and give credit to prominent Englishmen for the services they ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... hesitation; reserve and a desire to liberate his soul, the one fighting against the other. And at moments the whole man seemed to be wrapped in weakness like a garment, the soul and the body of him. Then, as a light may dwindle till it seems certain to go out, all that was Marcus Harding seemed to Malling to dwindle. The large body, the powerful head and face, meant little, almost nothing, because the spirit was surely fading. But these moments passed. Then it was as if the light flared suddenly ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... squeek, squeak, squeal, squall, brawl, wraul, yaul, spaul, screek, shriek, shrill, sharp, shrivel, wrinkle, crack, crash, clash, gnash, plash, crush, hush, hisse, fisse, whist, soft, jar, hurl, curl, whirl, buz, bustle, spindle, dwindle, twine, twist, and in many more, we may observe the agreement of such sort of sounds with the things signified; and this so frequently happens, that scarce any language which I know can be compared with ours. So that one monosyllable word, of which kind are ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... 13 Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... after the capture of Malolos, General Otis issued a proclamation to the Filipinos, in the hope that by drawing off public sympathy from the insurgent cause it would dwindle away. The terms of this document were as ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... where citizens were handling steel with unfamiliar fingers, and where a rover like himself could not hope to let his sword lie idle. It was as he thought these thoughts that a turn of the road brought him face to face with Harby Hall, and all the episodes of a busy, bloody life seemed to dwindle into insignificance as he crossed the moat and passed with John Thoroughgood through the guarded portals and found himself once again in the shelter ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... countless systems of the sidereal heavens. In like manner, the majestic orbs of the political firmament undergo a cruel lessening of diameter as they approach the Federal City. The greatest of men ceases to be great in the presence of hundreds of his peers, and the multitude of the illustrious dwindle into individual littleness by reason of their superabundance. And when it comes to occupations, it will hardly be denied that the stranger who beholds a Senator "coppering on the ace," or a Congressman standing in a bar-room with a lump of mouldy cheese in one hand ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... your garden ground, no smallest plant that grows in it; make no foolish pretence nor fond mistake in the fancy that you are ready to forget it, and so subject it to the frightful consequences of half-measures. The plant that is watered to-day and forgotten to-morrow must dwindle or decay. The plant that looks for no help but from Nature itself measures its strength at once, and either dies and is re-created or grows into a great tree whose boughs fill the sky. But make no mistake like the religionists ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... shepherds on the pastures of Bethlehem, and enwrapped Him and the three disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration. It came not to lift Him on its soft folds to the heavens, but in order that, first, He might be plainly seen till the moment that He ceased to be seen, and might not dwindle into a speck by reason of distance; and secondly, that it might teach the truth, that, as His body was received into the cloud, so He entered into the glory which He 'had with the Father before the world was.' Such was the second of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... superior valour, may reign on by virtue of his predecessor's merits, and reap the fruits of his labours; but if he live to a great age, or if he be followed by another who is wanting in the qualities of the first, that then the kingdom must necessarily dwindle. Conversely, when two consecutive princes are of rare excellence, we commonly find them achieving results which win for them enduring renown. David, for example, not only surpassed in learning and judgment, but ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... a financial disadvantage. On the other hand, the citizens of the exporting states were disposed to rejoice doubly at being saved from loss by the depreciation of property on their hands [43] and at seeing the negro element in their population begin to dwindle;[44] but even these considerations were in some degree offset, in Virginia at least, by thoughts that the shrinkage of the blacks was not enough to lessen materially the problem of racial adjustments, that it was prime young workmen and women rather than culls who were being sold South, that white ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... with fond little attentions than wound appreciative ones by neglect. Women domesticate themselves to death already. What they want is cultivation. They need to be stimulated to develop a large, comprehensive, catholic life, in which their domestic duties shall have an appropriate niche, and not dwindle down to a narrow and servile one, over which those duties shall spread and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... sections it attained its highest development. It was soon found that a commission after the Massachusetts model, when composed of men less competent or less disposed to do their duty, was liable to dwindle into a statistical board or even become a pliant tool in the hands of the railroads. Furthermore, the conditions in Massachusetts, where railroad owners and railroad patrons lived side by side and were in many instances even identical, ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... Ibrahim maintained his guard; and beside Trench there lay in the House of Stone, in the town beyond the world, a man who one night had sailed out of Dublin Bay, past the riding lanterns of the yachts, and had seen Bray, that fairyland of lights, dwindle to a golden blot. To think of the sea and the salt wind, the sparkle of light as the water split at the ship's bows, the illuminated deck, perhaps the sound of a bell telling the hour, and the cool dim night about and above, so wrought upon Trench that, practical unimaginative ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... your strong imagination turn The great wheel backward, until Troy unburn, And then unbuild, and seven Troys below Rise out of death, and dwindle, and outflow, Till all have passed, and none has yet been there: Back, ever back. Our birds still crossed the air; Beyond our myriad changing generations Still built, unchanged, their known inhabitations. A million years ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... contemptuous, to reward him for his labour. The possibilities that have existed, and that do still in a dwindling degree exist, for resolute statesmen to make English the common language of communication for all Asia south and east of the Himalayas, will have to develop of their own force or dwindle and pass away. They may quite probably pass away. There is no sign that either the English or the Americans have a sufficient sense of the importance of linguistic predominance in the future of their race to interfere with natural processes ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... climb up a mountain towards nightfall, the trees and the houses, the steeple, the fields and the orchards, the road, and even the river, will gradually dwindle and fade, and at last disappear in the gloom that steals over the valley. But the threads of light that shine from the houses of men and pierce through the blackest of nights, these shine on undimmed. ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... had played many a game of chess. Best, said the architect, take off one good-sized shop, rather than halve the premises. James would be left a little cramped, a little tight, with only one-third of his present space. But as we age we dwindle. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... life, expiating the treason that had betrayed him. Day after day, through the thick ports, I saw the same changeless scene. And every two years, when I drew near the Earth, I watched the beautiful green ball of it, with what bitter longings! As I watched it dwindle away again into the blackness of space, I thought of the fortunate, selfish, stupid and cruel beings who lived on it, and hated them. They had banished me, an innocent man, to whirl forever and ever around the sun, in my ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... after this when he observed incuriously a parade of mind pictures, part memory, part pure hallucination and containing nothing of reason; other times when he thought not at all. The sun appeared to dwindle, retreating and fading far away into a remote place where there were no stars at all. It became a feeble candle, guttered unsteadily a moment and suddenly winked out. ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... but they lay by the wayside, rotting, because there was no money to pay men to bring it to the army. Washington wore himself out in fruitless efforts to awaken Congress to a sense of its duty. And at length, utterly despairing of any support, weary of seeing his men suffer and dwindle day by day under the miseries of Valley Forge, he wrote out his resignation as Commander-in-Chief of the army. And it needed all the persuasions of his officers to make him tear ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... German, Italian, or Polish, these colonies gradually become Americanised, their vernaculars, even when jealously cherished, become a mere medium for American conceptions of life; while in the third generation the child is ashamed both of its parents and their lingo, the newspapers dwindle in circulation, the theatres languish. The reality of this process has been denied by no less distinguished an American than Dr. Charles Eliot, ex-President of Harvard University, whose prophecy of Jewish solidarity in America and ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... constitutes its great merit. Under its influence all the secretions are aroused to carry the blood-poisons out of the system, the nutrition is promoted, and the patient finds himself gradually improving in flesh; his strength is built up, his lingering ailments dwindle away, and by and by he finds his whole person has been entirely renovated and repaired he feels like ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... branches over the surface of the soil, spreading life and fertility on all sides. As the land rises towards the south, this web contracts and is less confused, while black mould and cultivation alike dwindle, and the fawn-coloured line of the desert comes into sight. The Libyan and Arabian hills appear above the plain, draw nearer to each other, and gradually shut in the horizon until it seems as though they would unite. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... faith. For, after all, these trees are guinea pigs—pioneering. They break some traditional rules. The land they stand on is grazed. They are not set the traditional 80 feet apart. Their nut crops may dwindle away. One never sees walnut trees growing in pure stands—always with other species which scatter their seeds and push in. They are ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... deserts us; then Princess Elizabeth is done for; then princess royal begins coughing; then Princess Augusta gets the snuffles; and all the poor attendants, my poor sister at their head, drop off, one after another, like so many snuffs of candles: till at last, dwindle, 431 ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Condy's enthusiasm in the matter began to dwindle. The fine fire which had sustained him during the story's composition had died out. He was satisfied with his work. He had written a good story, and that was the end of it. No doubt he would send it East—to ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... body of a squaw, and the jaguars are out to kill... with a blue-black night coming on and a painted cloud stalking the first star— I shall go alone into the Silence... the coiled Silence... where a cry can run only a little way and waver and dwindle and be lost. ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... red flare were to die, it would be frightening in more ways than one. But I see what you mean. There might be a sense of peace, but the minds and bodies which had been vibrating with the stir of power would feel that the soul had gone out of things, and they would dwindle too." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... immediately at hand; the beautiful St. Lawrence sparkling and flashing in the sunlight; and the tiny ships below the rock from which you gaze, whose distant rigging looks like spiders' webs against the light, while casks and barrels on their decks dwindle into toys, and busy mariners become so many puppets; all this, framed by a sunken window in the fortress and looked at from the shadowed room within, forms one of the brightest and most enchanting pictures that the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... would sink into decrepitude. It is the monastic idea carried into the wide field of active life, and is like the error of those who, in their zeal to cultivate their higher nature, suffer the neglected body to dwindle and pine, till body and mind alike lapse ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... the arguments of Adrian, uttered with enthusiasm and unanswerable rapidity. Something more was in his heart, to which he dared not give words. He felt that the end of time was come; he knew that one by one we should dwindle into nothingness. It was not adviseable to wait this sad consummation in our native country; but travelling would give us our object for each day, that would distract our thoughts from the swift-approaching end of things. If we went ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... boldness, the extemporaneous logic, all that 'led but to the grave,' exist, like the images of departed actors, only in the recollection of those who witnessed them, till memory shall fade into tradition, and tradition dwindle down to a name." (Supplement to Vacation Rambles, p. 115.) The eagerness with which the talents of Sir William Follett were sought, forcibly illustrates the truth of a remark, made to me in the course of some friendly advice, by one who may be ranked ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... of being too successful. Their situation had become desperate: if any event in the chapter of human accidents should fall out to give them a reprieve, the only consequences would be, that as they had dwindled, dwindled before, they would dwindle, dwindle again. There was no stock of good luck which such conduct would not run out. It was clear what was coming: the Tories must return to power. How long they would stay there was another question; but their return was a phasis, a phenomenon which ministers had rendered ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... management when a man does not make a large part of his self-sacrifices subservient to the welfare of his fellow-men. In active life nothing avails more than self-denial; and there its trials are varying and multifarious: but ascetics, by placing their favourite virtue in retirement, made it dwindle down into ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... glint that shall tell him of the yet unrisen sun. The wayfarer marks his progress by the bearing of that great cross, the hunter looks to it for an unfailing landmark, the weatherwise farmer prognosticates from its appearances. The old watch it dwindle from sight at evening with long thoughts of the well-beloved vanished, who sighed to its vanishing through vanished years; the dying turn to its beckoning radiance; happy is the maiden for whose bridal it wears brightness; blessed is the child thought to be that holds out tiny hands for ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... a woman's gladness at any rate. From the day when your image began to dwindle in my mind, I have lived my life as though under an eclipse. During all these years it has grown harder and harder for me—and at last utterly impossible—to love any living creature. Human beings, animals, plants: I shrank from all—from all ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen
... that which first presents itself, being the first outgrowth from the great inferior ganglion or summit of the spinal system. As human brains degenerate to a lower type they approximate this form. The frontal and occipital lobes dwindle and the principal mass remaining is that in the basis of the skull between the ears. We see this form distinctly in congenital idiots. The embryo cerebrum here represented measures but three lines vertically, four lines in length, and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... talk like this!— It is as if we dissolved grey walls between us, Stepped through the solid portals, become but shadows, To hear a hidden music . . . Our own vast shadows Lean to a giant size on the windy walls, Or dwindle away; we hear our soft footfalls Echo forever behind us, ghostly clear, Music sings far off, flows suddenly near, And dies away like rain . . . We walk through subterranean caves again,— Vaguely above us ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... just tinged with rose. Here and there a flake of gold seemed to have lit upon the clump of sombre green furze-bushes, by which neighbours in a small knot stood watching the three generations of Patmans dwindle away down the road with its narrow dewy grass-border, threading the vast sweep of sky-rimmed brown. Father and son walked, while little Katty bobbed along, balanced in a swaying donkey-pannier. The widow M'Gurk, who felt a good deal of concern about the destiny ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... no less an antagonist than Dr. Johnson. That eminent man had just published his pamphlet on the American question, entitled "Taxation no Tyranny;"—a work whose pompous sarcasms on the Congress of Philadelphia, when compared with what has happened since, dwindle into puerilities, and show what straws upon the great tide of events are even the mightiest intellects of this world. Some notes and fragments, found among the papers of Mr. Sheridan, prove that he had it in contemplation to answer this ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... lofty, bold, beautiful, and we may add emphatically scriptural delineation of the objects, qualifications, and duties of a Christian missionary,—a delineation that made every other object and character than that of the Christian dwindle into utter insignificance in the comparison,—we felt as did Peter on the mount of glorious vision: 'It is good to be here.' And the thought more than once occurred to us, How would the late venerable ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... lad quenched the rush, And cried, "Bring a gorse-bush, And under the caldron now kindle!"— But the Miller cried, "Nay! Give over, I pray!"— For his courage began fast to dwindle. ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... saw the remaining number dwindle, who should be paired with himself. Strict rules of precedence he knew would govern it. At length, to his astonishment, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... who helped Mrs. Bal out of the blue car (also big, in proportion to the size of the owner and his fortune) was Morgan P. Bennett of New York, the Tin Trust millionaire. Somerled's puny horde of millions dwindle into humble insignificance beside Morgan Bennett's pile. If Somerled has made two millions out of his mines and successful speculations, and a few extra thousands out of his pictures, M. P. Bennett has made twenty millions out of tin—and unlimited cheek. He is ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... "father" of this DEBUTANTE, whose interest I should have considered better if I had arranged her first appearance in some piece by Verdi or Donizetti, or indeed anything but LOHENGRIN. But enough of such stuff, although I am grieved to see Herr A., the tenor of the future (if well prepared), dwindle into thin air also. May heaven grant that Caspari will keep on, or that a decent tenor may come to ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... powerless to stem the torrent of cadet enthusiasm at this public mention of their beloved leader of the year gone by. Up sprang the entire corps, and the rafters rang with the thunder of their cheers—a thunder that seemed to redouble rather than dwindle at sight of the silver-haired commandant, smiling in ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... every flexure, like the branches of a chandelier, running more than a foot in length, and not thicker than the finger, are among the varied frost-work of these grottoes; common stalactites of carbonate of lime, although beautiful objects, lose by contrast with these ornaments, and dwindle into mere clumsy, awkward icicles. Besides these, there are tufts of 'hair salt,' native sulphate of magnesia, depending like adhering snowballs from the roof, and periodically detaching themselves by their own increasing weight. Indeed, the more solid alabaster ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... easily triumphed. Why not be practical, and become master of a situation which one had not made, and could not alter, instead of being overwhelmed by it? Needless to say, I did not mention the conversation to Mr. Watling, nor did he dwindle in my estimation. These necessary transactions did not interfere in any way with his personal relationships, and his days were filled with kindnesses. And was not Mr. Ripon, the junior partner, one of the evangelical lights of the community, conducting advanced Bible classes every week in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... you are not without a certain exultation: you cheat yourself from day to day with the thought that there are better things to come. Quite the contrary turns out to be the case. Your prospects, like the proverbial sacrifice of Mandrobulus, dwindle and contract from day to day. Gradually you get some faint glimmerings of the truth. It begins to dawn upon you at last, that those golden hopes were neither more nor less than gilded bubbles: the vexations, on ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... poor Miss Martha; also I was secretly satisfied that my father had found the merchant's conversation attractive. It seemed to give me some excuse for my breach of Miss Peckham's golden rule. Moreover, little troubles and offences which seemed mountains at Bellevue Cottage were apt to dwindle into very surmountable molehills with my larger-minded parents. I was comparatively at ease again. My father had evidently seen nothing unusual in my conduct, so I hoped that it had not been conspicuous. Possibly I might never meet Mr. ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... glowering abroad from a shop door festooned in boots, his leather apron in front, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, as befitted an important man, saw young Gourlay pass the Cross with his bag in his hand, and dwindle up the road to ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... acquaintance I think that I scarcely knew one who would have refused to do what I was doing. And all the time I was in a state of fierce revolt. I had moments when my life's ambitions, when New York itself, the Mecca of my dreams, and that marvellous theatre, with its marble and silk, seemed suddenly to dwindle to a miserable, contemptible little doll's house. And then again I played, and I felt my soul as I played, and the old dreams swept over me, and I said that it wasn't anything to do with personal vanity that made me crave for the big gifts of success; that it was my art, and ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... auditory passage, and, raising them in fish to the greatest possible dimensions, forms from them these broad opercula...." (p. 85). Or you may take it the other way about, and start from the organisation of fishes; opercular bones are of no use to air-breathing animals, so they dwindle away, and are pressed into the service of the ear, although they are of little use in ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... imprison new Galileos; the knowledge already acquired would be strangled in the cords which were intended to keep it safe from harm, and deprived of the free air on which its life depends it would dwindle and die. ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... the parcels, and the crowd, having jumped to the conclusion that he was the young woman's husband began to dwindle away, one of the jokers remarking 'It's all over!' in a loud voice as ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... of the tempest, as the flashing drift was blown, Crimsoned with the conflagration, and the roofs went thundering down! Oh, the prayers, the prayers and curses, that together winged their flight From the maddened hearts of many, through that long and woful night!— Till the fires began to dwindle, and the shots grew faint and few, And we heard the foeman's challenge only in a far halloo: Till the silence once more settled o'er the gorges of the glen, Broken only by the Cona plunging through its naked den. Slowly from the mountain summit was the drifting veil ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... I tell you that thrift of time will repay you in after life with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual and moral stature ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... even the first step in the resurrection of the nation and in the establishment of its power within as well as without. That the object of emigration is not yet fully attained may be inferred from the fact that it still continues on so large a scale; that it must ultimately dwindle to much smaller proportions, if not cease utterly, is pretty certain. This is our wish and hope: for the home population of the island must be large enough to invest it with deserved importance in the eyes of foreigners. Our title-page sets forth the words of Dr. Newman, expressive of the firm ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... unfolding! Two hands have come floating From no one sees where; 410 Place a bucket of vodka, A large pile of bread On the magic white napkin, And dwindle away. ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... Doc Swartz's answer. "There's a chance that clot will dwindle, erode, and harden up. But obviously we want to keep him as quiet as possible to make ...
— The Right Time • Walter Bupp
... serenity of spirit. "The longer I live, the longer I desire to live," he wrote Samuel J. May, "and the more I see the desirableness of living; yet certainly not in this frail body, but just as it shall please the dear Father of us all." One by one he saw the little band of which he was leader dwindle as now one and now another dropped by the way. And it was he or Mr. Phillips, or both, who spoke the last loving words over their coffins. As the little band passed on to the unseen country, a new joy awoke in the soul of the leader left behind, the joy of anticipation, of glad reunion beyond ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... still looking moodily out of the window, when there came a sharp clang at the bell. Often it had rung, and with every ring his hopes had sprung up, only to dwindle away again, and change to leaden disappointment, as he faced some beggar or touting tradesman. But the doctor's spirit was young and elastic, and again, in spite of all experience, it responded to that exhilarating summons. He sprang to his feet, cast his eyes over the ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "love is a source of loquacity only with yourselves: when it is started by men, young ladies dwindle into mere listeners. Simpering listeners, I confess; but it is only with one another that you will ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... of old Merlin's enchantments still lingered there, for as Nan stood silently absorbing the mysterious glamour of the place, the petty annoyances of the day, the fret of Lady Gertrude's unwelcoming reception of her, seemed to dwindle into insignificance. They were only external things, after all. They could not mar the loveliness of this mystic, ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... birds sing thankfully towards Heaven, while he With a sad heart walks through this jubilee, Beholding how beyond this happy land, Stretches a thirsty desert of gray sand, Where all the air is one thick, leaden blight, Where all things dwarf and dwindle,—so walk I, Through my rich, present life, to what beyond ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... blond god handed her over to a twin charioteer who would drive her up the mountain road to the Inn that nestled in a valley nine thousand feet up the mountain. It was a drive Fanny never forgot. Fenger, Ted, Haynes-Cooper, her work, her plans, her ambitions, seemed to dwindle to puny insignificance beside the vast grandeur that unfolded before her at every fresh turn in the road. Up they went, and up, and up, and the air was cold, but without a sting in it. It was dark when the lights of the Inn twinkled out at them. The door was thrown open ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... coming up, bent to whisper a word in his ear, and the communication caused a sudden change in Mr. Lavington's expression. His face was naturally so colourless that it seemed not so much to pale as to fade, to dwindle and recede into something blurred and blotted-out. He half rose, sat down again and sent a rigid smile ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... ground in sober recognition of my error. "Forgive me the heat of my zeal," I protested. "I diminish, I dwindle, I wither. Unless your pity forgives me, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the lady knew, she took her spindle 145 And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle The clouds and waves and mountains with; and she As many star-beams, ere their lamps could dwindle In the belated moon, wound skilfully; 150 And with these threads a subtle veil she wove— A shadow for ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... contrary, I have never been so happy; but when one has a new experience, however charming it may be, it seems to dwindle down one's past to nothing. I have had two lifetimes, as it seems to me—one elsewhere, and one here; and yet it is but six weeks since I met you first, Harry, out yonder, gleaming like a sunbeam through ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... the hymns cease and the crowd dwindle away. The air grew colder, and he began to feel pain again, the water cutting against his legs like a blade. Little groups were now hurrying off in the darkness, and the last Saint he had baptised was standing for the moment, chill ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... informed of everything that was being said or done in the enemy's camp. She had an intense respect for Lord Bacon's maxim: Knowledge is power. It was a kind of power secondary to the power of wealth, perhaps; but wealth unprotected by wisdom would soon dwindle into poverty. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... stolen kiss isn't what I want. Look: I'm not even trying to touch the sleeve of your jacket. Don't suppose that I don't understand your reasons for not wanting to let this feeling between us dwindle into an ordinary hole-and-corner love-affair. I couldn't have spoken like this yesterday, because when we've been apart, and I'm looking forward to seeing you, every thought is burnt up in a great flame. But ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... dwindle into a store for selling rice, and while his velvets, silks, hats and muslins moulder he will get very sick of a hundred million women who don't spend forty cents in ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... and the best endeavours of a dwindling remnant may be wholly nugatory. There is needed a sense of community and solidarity, without which the assurance necessary to the work is bound to falter and dwindle out; and there is also needed a degree of popular countenance, not to be had by isolated individuals engaged in an unconventional pursuit of things that are neither to be classed as spendthrift decorum nor as merchantable goods. In this connection ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... therefore it were not amiss to bore and search the ground where you intend to plant or sow, before you fall to work; since earth too shallow, or rocky is not so proper for this timber; the roots fix not kindly, and though for a time they may seem to flourish, yet they will dwindle: In the mean time, 'tis wonderful to consider how strangely the oak will penetrate to come to a marly bottom; so as where we find this tree to prosper, the indication of a fruitful and excellent soil is certain even by the ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... solitude becomes less marked. The mountains are half-wooded at first, and then wholly so; they dwindle down; the widening valleys are covered with harvest; the fresh and green verdure of the herbage which supplies forage begins to clothe the hollows and the slopes. We enter Inverness, and we are surprised to find at almost the extreme north of Scotland, on the border ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... indifferent which chance happens and which possible contingency of fortune or misfortune and persuades daily and hourly his delicious pay. What baulks or breaks others is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy. Other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing to his proportions. All expected from heaven or from the highest he is rapport with in the sight of the daybreak or a scene of the winter woods or the presence of children playing or with his arm round the neck of a man or woman. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... dogged persistence in getting ready for the fulfilment of his hopes, he ordered tanks and printer for the final work of getting his stuff ready for the market. He had at best a crudely primitive outfit, though he saw his bank balance dwindle and dwindle to a most despairingly small sum. And still it did not snow nor show any ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... owl, And now and then a nightingale) is dim, And the loud shriek of sage Minerva's fowl Rattles around me her discordant hymn: Old portraits from old walls upon me scowl— I wish to heaven they would not look so grim; The dying embers dwindle in the grate— I think too that I have ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... then appear as big as the sun now does, just as the sun would dwindle away to the size of a star, were it to be removed ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... esplanade that Neshevna and Lenyard stood. The young man, weary with vigils, his face furrowed by curiosity, regarded the city below them as it lay swimming in the waves of a sinking sun. He saw the crosses of La Trinite as molten copper, then dusk and dwindle in the shadows. The twilight seemed to prefigure the fading of the human race. Neshevna walked with this dreamer to the rear of the theatre—the theatre of the Tarnhelm, that was to darken all ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... contemptible as the persons or so foolish as the understandings of these hobgoblins. Ariel's speech is one continued impertinence. After he has talked to them of black omens and dire disasters that threaten his heroine, those bugbears dwindle to the breaking a piece of china, to staining a petticoat, the losing a fan, or a bottle of sal volatile—and what makes Ariel's speech more ridiculous is the place where it is spoken, on the sails and cordage ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... all that," Freddy said. "He inherited a magnificent kingdom; he let it dwindle almost to ruin. If you could read some of the letters of Horemheb, the commander-in-chief of his army, begging him to send reinforcements to Syria, imploring him to realize the danger that menaced Asia, you would feel as impatient as I do with ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... powerful and permanently established government. Nor does it seem possible, even in the event of Bombay taking the ascendance as the capital of British India, that the proud City of Palaces shall upon that account dwindle and sink into decay. Stranger things, and even more melancholy destinies, have befallen the mighty Babylons of the earth; but with all its faults of situation and of climate, I should at least, for one, regret the fate that would render the glories of a city so distinct in its character, ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... apparently moving with the torrent, but in reality remaining stationary. Now he would raise himself half out of the water, and ascend like a mist half as high as the near mountain, and then he would dwindle down to the size of a man. His laugh accorded with his savage visage, and his long hair stood on end, and a mist always ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... hundred and fifty disputes successfully arbitrated in the past century challenge with trumpet-tongued eloquence the support of all men for reason's peaceful rule. To-day no discussion is needed to show that if war is to be abolished, if navies are to dwindle and armies diminish, if there is to be a federation of the world, it must come through treaties of arbitration. In this way alone lies peace; yet in this way lies the present great barrier to further progress—the conception which many nations, especially the United States, ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... for fast trotters, and drive so much and ride so little, it ain't easy to get the right saddle beast in our State. The Cape Breton pony is of the same breed, though poor feed, exposure to the weather, and rough usage has caused him to dwindle in size; but they are the toughest, hardiest, strongest, and most serviceable of ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... struck from midnights, there are fire-flames noon-days kindle, Whereby piled-up honors perish, whereby swollen ambitions dwindle, While just this or that poor impulse, which for once had play unstifled, Seems the sole work of a life-time that away ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... scenes on the disc began to wax and dwindle rapidly; like the momentary clinging, and as rapid vanishing, of breath across a ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... and a just contempt of learning,—but for these events, I say, and some others too long to recite (especially a prudent neglect of taking brimstone inwardly), I doubt the number of authors and of writings would dwindle away to a degree most woeful to behold. To confirm this opinion, hear the words of the famous troglodyte philosopher. "It is certain," said he, "some grains of folly are of course annexed as part in the composition of human nature; only the choice is left ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... the act, and he was cocksure that no higher power existed to see, it; but for all that it worried him. Memories are not dead things but alive; they dwindle in disuse, but they harden and develop in all sorts of queer ways if they are being continually fretted. Curiously enough, though at the time he perceived clearly that the shifting was accidental, as the days wore on, his memory became confused about it, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... across the grave that was yawning for their doomed bodies! Tremble, ye cruel, God hates ye! Men speak of a murder—and sometimes, by way of distinction, they say 'a cruel murder.' See, now, what a crime cruelty must be, since it can aggravate murder, the crime before which all other sins dwindle ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... ran he realized that the landscape around him was changing in shape though not in colour. The houses seemed to dwindle and disappear in hills of snow as if buried; the snow seemed to rise in tattered outlines of crag and cliff and crest, but he thought nothing of all these impossibilities until the boy turned to bay. When he did he saw the child was queerly beautiful, with gold ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... novelty, I determined on visiting America; within whose wide extent all the elements of society, civilized and uncivilized, were to be found—where the great city could be traced to the infant town—where villages dwindle into scattered farms—and these to the log-house of the solitary backwoodsman, and the temporary wig-wam of ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... choice, had placed honor and power in his hands, when his name could convene Congress, approve laws, cause ships to sail and armies to move, there suddenly came upon the government and the nation a fatal paralysis. Honor seemed to dwindle and power to vanish. Was he then after all not to be President? Was patriotism dead? Was the Constitution only a bit of waste ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... handkerchief for a minute or two, felt the respective pulses, wrote out prescriptions for unguents and syrups; ordered baths, blisters, clysters, and cold douches—and all to no purpose, as both patients seemed to dwindle away more and more day by day. The only really doubtful point seemed to be, which of the two ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... Christian gentleman like you or me, who had opened a mine and worked it for awhile with better and worse fortune. So, through a defective window-pane, you may see the passer-by shoot up into a hunch-backed giant, or dwindle into ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... English prose, he is utterly at a loss alike for thought and expression. He neither knows what to communicate, nor is he master of the language in which it is to be conveyed. Hence his recorded travels dwindle away into a mere scrap-book of classical quotations—a transcript of immaterial Latin inscriptions, destitute of either energy, information, or eloquence. Does he come from Cambridge? He could solve cubic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... was not justified by events! Mrs Connor crawled about the house for another week, looking every day smaller and more fragile; and then a morning came when she could not rise from bed, and all other anxieties seemed to dwindle in significance when the illness took a serious turn, and her precious life ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... trial of skill he ever performed, was with one Cacus, a deer-stealer; the next was with Typhonus, a giant of forty feet four inches. Indeed it was unhappily recorded, that meeting at last with a sailor's wife, she made his staff of prowess serve her own use, and dwindle away to a distaff: she clapped him on an old tar jacket of her husband's; so that this great hero drooped like a scabbed sheep. Him his contemporary Theseus succeeded in the Bear Garden, which honour ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... which are the only repositories of learning; but the time must inevitably come when this order is transformed into the deadliest enemy of the civilization which it has brought into being. The power of the spiritual oligarchy rests upon superstitious terrors which dwindle before advancing enlightenment; hence the clergy have become reactionary, have sought to stifle the spirit of free inquiry, and have used the schools which they have builded as instruments to keep alive unreasoning prejudice, or to serve their selfish ends. This, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... this remark dretful kinder loud and hysterical, and then would dwindle down kinder low at the end on't, and bustin' out into tears somewhere through it from first ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... that has made so many musicians recede from us and dwindle, has brought Berlioz the closer to us and shown him great. The age in which he lived, the decades that followed his death, found him unsubstantial enough. They recognized in him only the projector of gigantic edifices, not the builder. His music seemed scaffolding only. Though a ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... women in the boxes,—of that neutral, subdued caste that showed they belonged to the grade above fashion. People of rank tastes did not often go there. The little Kentuckian, with her emphatic, sham-hating face, and Grey, whose simple, calm outlook on the world made her last year's bonnet and cloak dwindle into such irrelevant trifles, did not misbecome the place. Others might go there to fever out ennui, or with fouler fancies. Grey did not know. The play was a simple little thing; its meaning was pure as a child's song; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... combs in the hive become one putrid mass, with an exception, perhaps, of one in ten, twenty or a hundred, that may perfect a bee. Thus the increase of bees is not enough to replace the old ones that are continually dying off. It is plain, therefore, that this stock must soon dwindle down to a very small family. Now let a scarcity of honey occur in the fields, this poor stock cannot be properly guarded, and is easily plundered of its contents by the others. Honey is taken that is in close proximity ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... these three proofs looked at first sight! Well, but when we squeezed the witnesses ever so little, what did those three dwindle down to? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... the tents of Shem; all the nations of the earth are to become partakers in the blessing resting on Abraham. In the view of such a task, a prophet of ordinary dimensions, as well as the collective body of such, would dwindle down to the appearance of a dwarf. They would have been less than Moses. In Deut. xxxiv. 10, it is said, "There arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face;"—a passage which ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... everything believe! But why repine we that these puny elves Shoot into giants?—we may thank ourselves: Fools that we are, like Israel's fools of yore, The calf ourselves have fashion'd we adore. But let true Reason once resume her reign, This god shall dwindle to a calf again. Founded on arts which shun the face of day, By the same arts they still maintain their sway. Wrapp'd in mysterious secrecy they rise, 110 And, as they are unknown, are safe and wise. At whomsoever aim'd, howe'er severe, The ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... in mining. They had work before them, and had better be about it without any more delay, since there could be no telling at what time the absent men might show up. Once they returned to the camp, of course, the chances of the scouts accomplishing much began to dwindle enormously. ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... now the Haggerstone Moors of Poole, vast beds of grit? What was the climate on its banks when it washed down the delicate leaves of broad-leaved trees, akin to our modern English ones, which are found in the fine mud-sand strata of Bournemouth? When, finally, did it dwindle down to the brook which now runs through Wareham town? Was its bed, sea or dry land, or under an ice sheet, during the long ages of the glacial epoch? And if you say—Who is sufficient for these things?—Who can answer these questions? ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... wave, Rolling in strength and beauty, leaps on high, As if rejoicing on thy beach to die! My loved—my father-land! thy faults to me Are as the specks which men at noontide see Upon the blinding sun, and dwindle pale Beneath thy virtue's and thy glory's veil. Land of my birth! where'er thy sons may roam, Their pride—their boast—their ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... opportunity to see some of their comrades dropping with moans and shrieks. A few lay under foot, still or wailing. And now for an instant the men stood, their rifles slack in their hands, and watched the regiment dwindle. They appeared dazed and stupid. This spectacle seemed to paralyze them, overcome them with a fatal fascination. They stared woodenly at the sights, and, lowering their eyes, looked from face to face. It was a strange pause, and a ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... not fallen away vilely since this last action? do I not bate? do I not dwindle? Why, my skin hangs about me like an old lady's loose gown; I am withered like an old apple-John. Well, I'll repent, and that suddenly, while I am in some liking; I shall be out of heart shortly, and then I shall have no strength to repent. An I have not forgotten ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... particular Prince on whom the authority may happen to devolve. This, if it takes a regular hereditary course: but,—if the succession be interrupted, and the supreme power frequently usurped or given by election,—worse evils follow. Science and Art must dwindle, whether the power be hereditary or not: and the virtues of a Trajan or an Antonine are a hollow support for the feeling of contentment and happiness in the hearts of their subjects: such virtues are even a painful mockery;—something that is, and may vanish in a moment, and leave ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... these immigrants frequently took a Bulldog with them to the land of their adoption. The converse method was also adopted. Prior to 1902 French Bulldogs were imported into this country with the object of resuscitating the strain of bantam Bulldogs, which in course of years had been allowed to dwindle in numbers, and were in danger ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... flea do drink my blood, even as one drinks of wine, Poured by the hand of damask-lipped and slender-waisted may. The body of me, amongst the lice, is as an orphan's good, That in an unjust Cadi's hands doth dwindle and decay. My dwelling-place is in a tomb, three scanty cubits wide, Wherein in shackles and in bonds I languish night and day. My tears my wine are and my chains my music: my dessert Woeworthy thought and cares the bed whereon myself ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... no question on that subject," said Tom, "for how would the high ideas he entertained of the ingenuity of the age in which he had lived, dwindle into nothing! Nay, should he appear in the country first, what would he think of the various implements of husbandry, for ploughing, and preparing the land; the different machines for sowing the corn, for threshing, grinding, and dressing it; and in numerous ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Her eyes are far too bright for tears Of sorrow; by her silent dead she kneels, too proud for pride; Their blood, their love, have bought her right to claim the new imperial years In England's name for Freedom, in whose love her children died; In whose love, though hope may dwindle, Love and brotherhood shall kindle Between the striving nations as a choral song takes fire, Till new hope, new faith, new wonder Cleave the clouds of doubt asunder, And speed the union of mankind ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes |
