"Dwindle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... habitability of Venus while asserting his knowledge of the existence of hydrogen in the atmosphere of Sirius. To cite one example out of a hundred, every philologist knows that s may become r, and that the broad a-sound may dwindle into the closer o-sound; but when you adduce some plausible etymology based on the assumption that r has changed into s, or o into a, apart from the demonstrable influence of some adjacent letter, the ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... and most within the reach of observation, but all attempts to calculate the distance of that luminary have proved futile. Of its inconceivable remoteness some notion may be formed by the fact, that the diameter of the earth's annual orbit, if viewed from it, would dwindle into an invisible point. This is what is meant by the stars not having, like the planets, a parallax; that is, the earths' orbit, as seen from them, does not subtend a measurable angle. With two other stars, however, astronomers ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... though in Italy, too, sits the Inquisition. But who knows what it is that turns a man, unless we call it his Genius, unless we call it God? I let the muleteers pass me on the road to Cordova, let them dwindle in the distance. And still I walked and did not turn back and find the Malaga road. It was as though I were on the sea, and my bark was hanging in a calm, waiting for a wind to blow. A man mounted on a horse was coming toward me from ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... wait. This was a taking argument with the legislators, many of whom had grown gray in the party service, and Lyons's managers felt confident that the support accorded to this tribune of the people would dwindle to very small proportions when the time came ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... unhappily, is not unknown in England. A country which had the ingenuity to call a penny reading "university extension," and to send its missionaries into every town, cannot be held guiltless. But our poor attempts at culture dwindle to a paltry insignificance in the light of American enterprise; and we would no more compare the achievement of England in the diffusion of learning with the achievement of the United States, than we would set a modest London ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... has been a second mother to me, for here I have been born again. My love for it shall never dwindle. ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... the agencies through which people buy we find the same thing. The increase of multiple shops, combines, and rings makes the use of the limited power a man had to affect a dealer by transferring his custom to another merchant to dwindle yearly. Everywhere we turn we find this adamantine front presented by the legislature, the State departments, by the agencies of production, distribution, or credit, and it is the undemocratic organization of society which is responsible for nine-tenths of our social troubles. All the vested ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... moved forward.... Dazedly Every watched the two pass at a walk into the gloomy corridor and dwindle slowly to a mere blur of blue and grey under the shadow of the towering walls. At last distance and dusk swallowed them, and he could see them ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... universal feeling, and he, too, peered over. From where I had been standing, I had been able to see the body take the water, and now, for a brief couple of seconds, I saw the white of the canvas, blurred by the blue of the water, dwindle and dwindle in the extreme depth. Abruptly, as I stared, it disappeared—too abruptly, ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... was scarcely credible that a man should be so regardless of his own family, but the echo of the mystic, sublime discourses of the Greek porches, the faint but sacred trace of the march of vast armies, and the fall of nations, caused Leslie to dwindle into a mere speck in the creation. Of course she would be provided for somehow: marry, or make her own livelihood. Socrates did not plague himself much about the fate of Xantippe: Seneca wrote from his exile to console his mother, but ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... 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, unemotional, irreligious, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... acknowledge the stern and heavy responsibility of their opportunities how many refuse to dream their lives away in a Sybarite luxury; how many are smitten with the lofty ambition of achieving an enduring name by works of a permanent value; how many do not dwindle into dainty dilettanti, and dilute their manhood with factitious sentimentality instead of a hearty, human sympathy; how many are not satisfied with having the fastest horses and the "crackest" carriages, and an unlimited wardrobe, and a weak affectation and puerile imitation ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... that moment, flashing and fleeting, it was given him to see his brother tower above him like a mountain, and to feel himself dwindle and dwarf to microscopic insignificance. But it is not well for one to see himself truly, nor can one so see himself for long and live; and only for that flashing moment did Percival Ford see himself and his brother in true perspective. ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... resolved to carry out his dishonest purpose, and not likely to shrink from violence, to which he was probably only too well accustomed. From the old man he was not likely to obtain assistance, for already Paul's courage had begun to dwindle, and he regarded his ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... 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 of 1915. ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... 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
... mistress in her own gentleness and grace received the homage of all parties, pleased every one by her loveliness, her charms, the fine, exquisite tact with which she managed at all times the sentiments of the company, and with which she knew how to guide the conversation so that it would never dwindle into political debates ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... week had passed without developments, interest in Donna and her affairs began to dwindle, for not infrequently matters move in kaleidoscopic fashion in San Pasqual, and the population, generally speaking, soon finds itself absorbed in other and more important matters. Mrs. Pennycook was quick to note that Donna (to quote Mr. Hennage) was "next to her game," and with the gambler's ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... the flow of 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, die, and ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... it? How small and insignificant he felt, and how utterly worthless! How he seemed to dwindle into nothing beside the great work that he was called to do! And yet how anxious he was to do it well! How he longed to be like his father David, a true shepherd to his people! How his heart yearned over his subjects; and how greatly he desired to govern them aright, and to be the ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... deep sea creatures, on the contrary, the eyes gradually become more and more developed, so that while in some species the eyes gradually dwindle, in others they ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... state to another, when it is persuaded that adequate grounds exist for such a transference. Friends of peace will make a mistake if they unduly glorify the status quo. Some nations grow, while others dwindle; the population of an area may change its character by emigration and immigration. There is no good reason why states should resent changes in their boundaries under such conditions, and if no international authority has power to make changes ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... and South, in which 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, differed materially from those found in the West and South, where ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... 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 occupy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... other hand, fatty substances, such as beef suet, lard and butter, do not undergo any appreciable change. Moreover, the worms soon dwindle away, incapable of growing. This sort of food does not suit them. Why? Apparently because it cannot be liquefied by the reagent disgorged by the worms. In the same way, ordinary pepsin does not attack fatty substances; it takes pancreatin ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... pursuit it is evident that the chances of escape would be in favour of the smallest males, while the larger ones would fall early victims; thus gradually a diminutive race of males would be selected, until at last they would dwindle to the smallest possible size compatible with the exercise of their generative functions,— in fact, probably to the size we now see them, i.e., so small as to be a sort of parasite upon the female, and either beneath ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... quotations which do not agree with our Gospels cannot in any case necessarily indicate their existence ... It is unnecessary to add that, in proportion as we remove from Apostolic times without positive evidence of the existence and authenticity of our Gospels, so does the value of their testimony dwindle away. Indeed, requiring, as we do, clear, direct and irrefragable evidence of the integrity, authenticity, and historical character of these Gospels, doubt or obscurity on these points must inevitably be fatal to them as sufficient testimony—if ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... 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 ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... indeed any motive much more important than a love of 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
... 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," says Mr. ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... number. How, then, are they to be accounted for? of course the theory of descent with adaptive modification has a simple answer to supply—namely, that when, from changed conditions of life, an organ which was previously useful becomes useless, it will be suffered to dwindle away in successive generations, under the influence of certain natural causes which we shall have to consider in future chapters. On the other hand, the theory of special creation can only maintain that these rudiments are formed for ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... the preliminary twists and turns of indecision, turned due north. For nearly a week Sam thought this must be a ruse, or a cast by which to gain some route known to Jingoss. But the forests began to dwindle; the muskegs to open. The Land of Little Sticks could not be far distant, and beyond them was the Barren Grounds. The old woodsman knew the defaulter for a reckless and determined man. Gradually the belief, and at last the conviction, forced itself on ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... Maria, Duke of Brittany, and son of Louis XVI. The unhappy Prince, when a prisoner with his unfortunate parents in the Temple, was enabled to escape from that place of confinement, hidden (for the treatment of the ruffians who guarded him had caused the young Prince to dwindle down astonishingly) in the cocked-hat of the Representative, Roederer. It is well known that, in the troublous revolutionary times, cocked-hats were worn of a ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for the space he filled in human affairs. The modest assurance, the happy 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 ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... voices came back to us. "God bless YOU and good-bye!" They were carried into the enveloping night. We stared after them down the road; watching the lantern on the tail-board of the cart diminish; watching it dim and dwindle to a point of gray;—listening until the hoof-beats of the heavy Norman grew fainter than the rustle of the branch that rose above the wall beside us. But it is bad luck to strain eyes and ears to the very last when friends are parting, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... moral effects, which they waste toil and expense in bringing about. The splendid procession, for instance, which takes place on the day of Corpus Christi at Rome, with all its assemblage of monks, horse and foot guards, cardinals, choristers, and banners, would dwindle before the eye of reason into "shreds and patches, were it not for the figure of the truly venerable man who now fills the papal chair, kneeling with the same humility and abstraction from the busy scene around him, which ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... which I believe you are too candid to counterfeit. Your easy solution of that great human riddle given the world, to find happiness. The Athenian and Alexandrian schools dwindle into nothingness. Commend me to your 'categories,' O Queen of Philosophy." She withdrew her searching eyes, and fixed them moodily on the fire, twirling the tassel of her robe ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... and now they dwindle, Whirling with the whirling spindle. Twist ye, twine ye! even so ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... to the total defeat of the few that are left, 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 ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... Rebellion and Restoration up to the very confines of the eighteenth century. Why, we have to ask, even granting that William Hogarth's "monster Caricatura" is thus omnivorous and omnipresent, does he tower aloft in some countries and under some conditions to the majesty of a new art, and in others dwindle ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... has to be carried from a water-hole cut far out on the ice, up a steep grade, and then quite a little distance back to the dwelling—for we do not build directly upon these eroding banks. The water-hole is continually freezing up and has to be continually hewed free of ice, and as the streams dwindle with the progress of winter, new holes must be cut farther and farther out. On the trail, where snow must usually be melted for water, it is obvious that bathing is out of the question; even the water for hands and face is sparingly doled by the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... but no one can master its contents and become possessed of it as a whole without perceiving that the mirror is held up to nature, that it reflects spots and blemishes which, on a survey of the vast and various orb, dwindle into natural and so comparative insignificance. Byron was under no delusion as to the grossness of Don Juan. His plea or pretence, that he was sheltered by the superior grossness of Ariosto and La Fontaine, of Prior and of Fielding, is nihil ad rem, if it is not insincere. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... others they are superior. Some animals are possessed of all but reason, and even in that, the highest of them come very little short of the lowest of the human species. If they have not reason, they possess an instinct which nearly approaches it. These qualities dwindle down gradually thro the various orders and varieties of animated nature, to the lowest grade of animalculae, a multitude of which may inhabit a single drop of water; or to the zoophytes and lythophytes, which form the connecting link between the animal and vegetable kingdom; ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... once broad shield contracted now in span Raised as a screen or fluttered as a fan; The gleaming helm a hollow thimble proves, And weighty gauntlets dwindle into gloves. The plumes that winged the arrow through the sky, Waft to and fro the shuttlecock on high; Two trusty swords are into scissors cross'd, And dinted breastplates are in corsets lost; While dungeon ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... by the charwoman, laundress, and undertaker's man and realized the end to which he must come unless he led an altered life. Holding up his hands he prayed to have his fate reversed and saw the Ghost shrink and dwindle down into ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... knows; Orangeism began to go down; the Government scowled at it, and at last passed a law preventing the Protestant boys dressing up the figure on the first of July, and walking round it. That was the death-blow of the Orange party, your hanner; they never recovered it, but began to despond and dwindle, and I with them; for there was scarcely any demand for Orange tunes. Then Dan O'Connell arose with his emancipation and repale cries, and then instead of Orange processions and walkings, there were Papist ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... of the same numeric proportions in all times, that, while a Class is represented by few types, those types are wonderfully rich and varied, but in proportion as other expressions of the same structure are introduced, the first dwindle, and, if they do not entirely disappear, become at least ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a dismal crowd of sufferers, refusing all shorter and happier ways, wait to be drawn through this torturing passage of remedial mercy! May the number entering by the other gates ever increase, and those entering this dwindle! And yet, may it forever stand open for the unhappy culprits who must be lost unless ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... English rivers dwindle into little muddy rills when compared with the sublimity of the Canadian waters. No language can adequately express the solemn grandeur of her lake and river scenery; the glorious islands that float, like visions from fairy land, upon the bosom of these azure mirrors of her cloudless skies. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... 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 ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... foot was growing no better. Aunt Louise said you could almost see the poor dog 'dwindle, ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May
... one pound ten," said Grannie. "I looked at the purse this morning. One pound ten, and sevenpence ha'penny in coppers; that's all. That wouldn't be a bad sum if there was anythink more coming in; but seeing as ther' aint, it is uncommon likely to dwindle, look at it from what ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... 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, legend-haunted ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... question of physical courage is very complicated in the present case. It cannot be said, for instance, that you ran away from physical fear, after giving proof of such astonishing physical superiority. Your deeds this evening make the labours of Hercules dwindle to the proportions of mere ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... interest and consideration to which, in its full usefulness and vigour, it had not presumed to aspire. Therefore Dominic Iglesias held calmly on his way, seeing the circle of his occupations, pleasures, and activities dwindle and decrease, yet maintaining not only his serenity of mind, but his accustomed self-respecting outward refinement of bearing and habit. To meet death with a gracious stoicism, well-dressed and standing upright, is, rightly considered, a very fine art, reflecting ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... painters, sculptors, architects; of astronomers, mathematicians, geologists, physicians; of philosophers, theologians, divines; of statesmen, politicians, inventors, actors; of philanthropists, reformers, economists, the great of our own history need not, indeed, shrink in form, but must dwindle in number till our past seems as thinly peopled as our continent. It is in these rooms that the grandeur of England, historically, resides. You may, if you are so envious, consider it in that point and this, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... till, like brass money, it will go at last for nothing at all. So have I seen shares in joint-stocks, patents, engines, and undertakings, blown up by the air of great words, and the name of some man of credit concerned, to 100 pounds for a five-hundredth part or share (some more), and at last dwindle away till it has been stock-jobbed down to 10 pounds, 12 pounds, 9 pounds, 8 pounds a share, and at last no buyer (that is, in short, the fine new word for nothing-worth), and many families ruined by the purchase. If I should name linen manufactures, saltpetre-works, ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... that it came quickly to his hand; because the five hundred pounds must be preserved intact for eventual use. That was the great point. With the entire five hundred one felt a substance at one's back; but it seemed to him that should he let it dwindle to four-fifty or even four-eighty, all the efficiency would be gone out of the money, as though there were some magic power in the round figure. But ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... clutching at her heart. Her life, she reflected, had held, until recently, but little of happiness. The long, weary days of poverty, when her husband, incapacitated by a paralytic stroke, had seen his savings slowly dwindle away; the death of her son, and then that of Mr. Morton himself passed before her mental vision. Only Ruth had been left to her, and in the girl's happiness and success lay Mrs. Morton's whole life and being. Now, that things had at last taken a turn, and the future seemed clear and assured ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... were still 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
... some time before he is unable to get what he wants, at a price. However splendid and vital the new movement may be, it will not, I fancy, unaided, kill the business of picture-making. The trade will dwindle; but I suspect it will survive until there is no one who can afford ostentatious upholstery, until the only purchasers are those who willingly make sacrifices for the joy of possessing a ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... "Babylonia," by George Smith, p. 36. Here again, as with the Manus and 10 Prajapatis and the 10 Sephiroths in the Book of Numbers— they dwindle ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... between them, and, in a measure, as it grew so did Darnley's kingship, hardly established as yet—for the Queen had still to redeem her pre-nuptial promise to confer upon him the crown matrimonial—begin to dwindle. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... of the State the railroads do not come; the vacant spaces grow between the country roads, and the cities dwindle down to half-deserted crossroads hamlets. Here the surface of the map is covered up with the tortuous wrinkles of the hills. It is a beautiful but useless place. As far as you can see, low, unformed lumps of mountains lie jumbled aimlessly together between the ragged sky lines, or little ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... multitude continually thrown off in the waste-weir of our great commercial and manufacturing cities and towns, whose population, without the infusion—and that continually—of the strong, substantial, and vigorous life blood of the country, would soon dwindle into insignificance and decrepitude. Why then should not this first, primitive, health-enjoying and life-sustaining class of our people be equally accommodated in all that gives to social and substantial life, its due development? It is absurd to deny them by others, or that they deny ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... others. And thus they live in continual fear and quarrelling, feeding like wild animals on game or roots, often, when they have bad luck in their hunting, on offal which our dogs would refuse, and dwindle away and become fewer and wretcheder year by year; in this way do the savages in New South Wales live to this day, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... days 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 ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... presently meet, has expressed the verdict on his poetry which still holds good: "Solomon Gabirol pleases to call himself the small—yet before him all the great must dwindle and fall.—Who can like him with mighty speech appall?—Compared with him the poets of his time are without power—he, the small, alone is a tower.—The highest round of poetry's ladder has he won.—Wisdom fondled him, eloquence ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... 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
... joy. Ambition is the luxury of the happy. It is sometimes, but more rarely, the consolation and distraction of the wretched; but most of those who have trodden its paths, if they deal honestly with themselves, will acknowledge that the gravest disappointments of public life dwindle into insignificance compared with the poignancy of suffering endured at the deathbed of a wife or of a child, and that within the small circle of a family life they have found more real happiness than the applause of nations ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... sole empress of my tea-table, which you must never presume to approach without first asking leave. And lastly, wherever I am, you shall always knock at the door before you come in. These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife. ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... Temple-children question which touches a wider issue than the personal or missionary. Those who have read Queen Victoria's Letters must have become conscious of a certain enlargement. Questions become great or dwindle into nothingness according as they affect the honour and the good of the Empire. We find ourselves instinctively "thinking Imperially," regarding things from the Throne side—from ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... now brimful, evidently filled by the recent rain, which had not been heavy enough to fill the lagoon. Here we camped for two days, which we could ill afford, as already we had to cut down our rations, and before long our meals would dwindle to one instead of two a day. Godfrey's sickness necessitated a delay—he suffered from such fearful pains in his head, poor fellow! Often after a day's march he would collapse, and lie prone with his head nearly bursting from pain. A drink of strong tea would relieve him, but when water was scarce ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... highest and noblest profession. Science, art, and careers dwindle into insignificance when we attempt to compare them with motherhood. And to attain this high profession, to reach this manifest "goal of destiny," women are seeking everywhere to obtain the best information, and the highest instruction regarding ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... to the 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, I ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of the task of implanting Western ideals in the Eastern mind rose before me when I thought of Armour's doing it—how they would dwindle in the process, and how he must go on handling them and looking at them withered and shrunken for twenty-odd years. I understood—there was enough left in me to understand—Armour's terrified escape. I was happy in the thought of him, ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the feelings of one of the last of the Greek religious philosophers, one of the family of Orpheus and Musaeus, having survived his fellows, living on into a time when the habits of Greek thought and feeling had begun fast to change, character to dwindle, the influence of the Sophists to prevail. Into the feelings of a man so situated there entered much that we are accustomed to consider as exclusively modern; how much, the fragments of Empedocles himself ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Street the effect was all that Mr. Bayard foretold. Prices began to melt and dwindle like ice in August. Panic prevailed; three brokerage firms fell, a dozen more were rocking ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... thrice over the old woman. In doing this her figure seemed to dilate, and her countenance underwent a marked and fearful change. All her beauty vanished, her eyes blazed, and terror sat on her wrinkled brow. The hag, on the contrary, crouched lower down, and seemed to dwindle less than her ordinary size. Writhing as from heavy blows, and with a mixture of malice and fear in her countenance, she cried, "Were I to speak, you would not thank me. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 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 ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... deaths. The devastating growth of medical, and especially surgical, science—that, if you like, for us all, is "the question of the hour!" And what a question! of what surpassing importance, in the presence of which all other "questions" whatever dwindle into mere academic triviality. For just as the ancient State was wounded to the heart through the death of her healthy sons in the field, just so slowly, just so silently, is the modern receiving deadly hurt by the ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... more, Oh Mamatee, once more! I had a dream, and heard the gusty breeze Hurtle from out a sea of hissing pines, Then dwindle into voices, faint and sweet, Which cried—we come! It was my love and yours! They spoke to me—I know that they are near, And waft their love to us upon ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... unhumanly tall above the cringing wretch he confronted. His eyes narrowed into red points that bored into the other's eyes, and plunged like daggers into his heart and mind. Before that glance, like a vivisectionist's knife, Jake wilted; he seemed to shrink, dwindle, collapse. And with a growing, cold, awful horror, a suspicion so hideous that his mind revolted from it, Peter Champneys stood staring from one ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... calf; by holding the breath we produce the same result as by tying up the windpipe—that is to say, we keep the lungs in a state of expansion; and by releasing the breath we are, as it were, untying the windpipe, leaving the lungs to dwindle down gradually to ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... 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 envenom'd slander flies, no names appear: Prudence forbids ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... followed, eight years during which the minority, which had been feeble ever since Lord Granville had been overthrown, continued to dwindle till it became almost invisible. Peace was made with France and Spain in 1748. Prince Frederick died in 1751; and with him died the very semblance of opposition. All the most distinguished survivors of the party which had supported ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... long time before he would dare smoke a cigar again, and his supply of cigarettes was destined to dwindle down to nothing before that day. But he did not seem ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... on the part of the seeker. Mrs. Sikes, whose work had chiefly been dressmaking and plain sewing, found the new field of labor quite irksome. The money realized from the sale of her property she must not let dwindle away too swiftly; her husband was helpless, and she must work, and the children must work. She found the North a place where a day's work meant a day's work in full; there was no let up; the pound of flesh was exacted. So she often ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... all these stirring events were taking place and just before Magruder, with McLaw's and Walker's divisions, was either quietly lying in front of Richmond watching the army of McClellan dwindle away, leaving by transports down the James and up the Potomac, or was marching at a killing gait to overtake their comrades under Lee to share with them their trials, their battles and their victories in Maryland. Lee could not leave ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... 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 ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... the ferret must run down his prey, the great oaks fall, the Raphaels be scattered, the house let to some stockbroker suddenly made rich, and the name which now filled the mouths of five or six parishes dwindle to a memory. Strange that such great matters, so old a mansion, a family so ancient and so dull, should come to depend for perpetuity upon the intelligence, the discretion, and the cunning of a Latin-Quarter student! What Bellairs had done, I must do likewise. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... from battlefield to battlefield, from one scene of carnage to another. They see their regiments dwindle to nothing, their officers decimated, three-fourths of their comrades dead or wounded, and yet each night they gather about their bivouacs apparently undisturbed by it all. One sees them on the road ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... nurse of Life: Death rocks the cot. Why meet we there no wolf Save those huge-limbed? Because weak wolf-cubs die. 'Tis thus with man; 'tis thus with all things strong:— Rise higher on thy northern hills, my Pine! That Southern Palm shall dwindle. House stone-walled— Ye shall not have it! Temples cedar-roofed— Ye shall not build them! Where the Temple stands The City gathers. Cities ye shall spurn: Live in the woods; live singly, winning each, Hunter or fisher by blue ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... all dwindle away at the word of command, Olga, true to her word, making such a clatter as she passes Miss Fitzgerald's door as might readily be classed with those noises popularly supposed to be able to wake the silent dead. Whether it wakes ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... amuse yourself with reading the lives I wrote in the last number of the Biography,[10] they are Archbishop Hamilton, Sir William Hamilton, Dr Robert Henry, Edward Henryson, J. Bonaventura Hepburn, Roger Hog, John Holybush, and Henry Home of Kames.... The gooseberries appear to dwindle as they ripen. I am afraid few will remain for you, but you will find a sufficient number where you are. I intend to walk to Dunkeld, and to take two days. Al. Smith may come a bit with us.... All my little stock of news is exhausted. Pray ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... Which when 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 splendour of ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Colonial high veldt near the Drakensberg range is intersected by high continuations or spurs, but north and westwards those plateaux assume more the real aspect of continuous high plains. There is a gradual descent to the west; from occasional hilly ranges those dwindle to kopjes, and to still less elevated "randjes" occurring in clusters more and more apart, until yet further westwards one gets to the merely undulating sterile approaches of the Karoo and the plains around and beyond Kimberley, which ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... nature of the Red Indian which makes him very slow of being able to endure civilization, renders wandering almost a necessity to his constitution, and generally makes him, when under restraint, even under the most favourable conditions, dwindle away, lose all his fine natural endowments, and become an abject and often a vicious being. The misfortune has been that, with a few honourable exceptions, it has not been within the power of the better and more thoughtful portion of man to change the Red Indian's ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... a mood, that unexpected tenderness for a woman whom he had hated for betraying him. It was Doris he wanted. The thought of her passing out of his life rested upon him like an intolerable burden. To be in doubt of her afflicted him with anguish. That the fires of her affection might dwindle and die before daily sight of him loomed before Hollister as the consummation of disaster,—and he seemed to feel ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... everywhere, may there not be a great space beyond the region of the stars? And this immense space, surrounding all this region, ... may be replete with happiness and glory. ... What now becomes of the consideration of our Earth and of its denizens? Does it not dwindle to something incomparably less than a physical point, since our Earth is but a point compared with the distance of the fixed stars. Thus the part of the Universe which we know, being almost lost in nothingness compared with that which is unknown to us, but which we are yet ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... 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
... 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
... needn't squeeze yourself back into your corner like that. A 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 then you come; and you're so much more than ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... 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 ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... miles up river from the fur trading-post, and then had landed in order to lighten the canoe for the ascent against the current. At that point the forest has already begun to dwindle towards the Land of Little Sticks, so that often miles and miles of open muskegs will intervene between groups of the stunted trees. Jim and I found ourselves a little over waist deep in luxuriant and ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... times 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. Abruptly ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... factious head, a hot sun, costive diet, want of books, 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 us whether ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... oak, ash, or crab-tree. The first 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 he ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... adorable Delilah; and fear not, even though incited by the foe, by clipping my locks, to dwindle my strength. Give me your sword, man," turning to an officer:—"Ah! I'm fettered. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... complexity of things, is the concern of the writer, who spends all his skill on the endeavour to cloth the delicacies of perception and thought with a neatly fitting garment. So words grow and bifurcate, diverge and dwindle, until one root has many branches. Grammarians tell how "royal" and "regal" grew up by the side of "kingly," how "hospital," "hospice," "hostel" and "hotel" have come by their several offices. The inventor ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... stock of spices, salt, seasoning, herbs, etc., dwindle down so low that some day, in the midst of preparing a large dinner, you find yourself minus a very important ingredient, thereby causing much confusion ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... steady and continuous progress. It is because these events can be particularized and described that they assume proportions beyond their real importance, but when compared with the colossal advances made by the state during the period covering them, they dwindle into mere points of educational experience, to be guarded against in the future, while the many blessings showered upon the state, consisting of the health and wealth imparting sunshine, the refreshing and fructifying rains and dews of heaven, which, like the smiles ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... the soil, water, and gases; whereas a plant that lives by piracy - a parasite - or a saprophyte, that sucks up the already assimilated products of another's decay, loses its useless chlorophyll as surely as if it had been kept in a cellar. In time its equally useless leaves dwindle to bracts, or disappear. Nature wastes no energy. Fungi, for example, are both parasites and saprophytes; and so when plants far higher up in the evolutionary scale than they lose leaves and green color too, we may know they are degenerates belonging to that ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... deposited on what are 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? I answer—Who but you, ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley |
