"Lean" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... died there—natives) come here, now and then, and inquire about our world, and when they find out it is so little that a streak of lightning can flash clear around it in the eighth of a second, they have to lean up against something to laugh. Then they screw a glass into their eye and go to examining us, as if we were a curious kind of foreign bug, or something of that sort. One of them asked me how long our day was; and when I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... crazy looking vehicle and found the seats ample and comfortable despite the appearance of dilapidation everywhere prevalent. The driver mounted the box, cracked his whip, and the lean nags ambled ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... Mrs. Starbottle was excitedly gathering her valuables, and packing her trunk, even as she had done once before in the course of this remarkable history. Perhaps some recollection of this was in her mind; for she stopped to lean her burning cheeks upon her hand, as if she saw again the figure of the child standing in the doorway, and heard once more a childish voice asking, "Is it mamma?" But the epithet now stung her to the quick and with a quick, passionate gesture she dashed it away with a tear that had gathered in her ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... who may presume on this refusal." One cannot help smiling over this last clause, with its suggestion of personal violence, as the two men rise before the fancy,—the big, swarthy black-haired son of the northern hills, with his robust common sense, and the sallow, lean, sickly Virginia planter, not many degrees removed mentally from ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... unduly sensitive and nervous organization. But she was her mother's only girl, this was our only home, and, coming out of the furnace fires of such a life, we could not think it strange that she should feel the need of a Heavenly Father in whom she could trust, of $ Savior's arm on which she could lean, and of a home in the church where she could find ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... hides itself. The more the machines of the man loom in human life the more they reach down into silence, and into darkness. Their foundations are infinity. The infinity which is the man's infinity is their infinity. The machines grasp all space for him. They lean out on ether. They are the man's machines. The man has made them and the man worships with them. From the first breath of flame, burning out the secret of the Dust to the last shadow of the dust—the breathless, soundless shadow ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... as to be heard, during the rest of his speech, only by those who made every effort to catch his words. Not a syllable could be heard in the orchestra outside, or even by the waiters ranged against the wall; and the chairman and others at the extremities of the table were obliged to lean forwards to catch the meaning of the speaker, ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... straight on for Beneventum; where the bustling landlord almost burned himself, in roasting some lean thrushes: for, the fire falling through the old kitchen [floor], the spreading flame made a great progress toward the highest part of the roof. Then you might have seen the hungry guests and frightened slaves snatching their supper out [of the flames], and everybody endeavoring ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... its natural fashion when it first comes out of the egg. Children betray their tendencies in their way of dealing with the breasts that nourish them; nay, lean venture to affirm, that long before they are born they teach their mothers something of their turbulent or ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... uninclosed passage between the two rooms, his legs dangling over the sparse sprouts of chickweed and clumps of mullein that grew just beneath, for there were no steps, and Towse bounded up and sat upright close beside him. And as he sought to lean on Towse, the dog sought ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... excrescence of flesh growing about the mouth of the matrix, by the mouth of the matrix being turned up to the back or side by the fatness of the body, whereby the mouth of the matrix is closed up, being pressed with the omentum or caul, and the matter of the seed is turned to fat; if she be a lean and dry body, and though she do conceive, yet the fruit of her body will wither before it come to perfection, for want of nourishment. One main cause of barrenness is attributed to want of a convenient ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... that you're an utterly immoral person?" He nodded. "You're my protector, Bernie; you're all I have. I'm a poor motherless girl and I lean upon you. But you must appreciate now that you're quite unfit ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... small frame building near the center of the village, John and Jane Clemens established their household. It was a humble one-story affair, with two main rooms and a lean-to kitchen, though comfortable enough for its size, and comparatively new. It is still standing and occupied when these lines are written, and it should be preserved and guarded as a shrine for the American people; for it ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the repast as one might who fancied that she dreamed. Cautiously she touched the food with her lean fingers, then she clutched it and ate ravenously, desperately fearing that it ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... say: "But a woman's nervous system is more sensitive than a man's; she needs help and consolation. She needs to have some one on whom she can lean." Now the answer to that will probably be surprising, but an intelligent understanding and comprehension of it would make a very radical difference in the lives of many men and women who have agreed to live together for life—for ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... that knocked 'em silly. That's what you kin read in the book school-teacher has, and that's true. And see how they treat their brothers that git toppled over,—by a windslash, maybe, or lightnin' or a landslide, or some such cussed thing, givin' 'em a shoulder to lean on same as you would help a cripple. When they're clean down and done for it ain't more'n a year or two 'fore they got 'em kivered all over with leaves, and then they git tergether and hev a quiltin' party and purty soon they're ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... ago: the charm of the position being enhanced by the possible danger of falling into the well and being drowned. The rusty unused chain was wound round the windlass; the bucket was falling to pieces from dryness. A lean cat came from some outhouse, and mewed pitifully with hunger; accompanying Sylvia to the garden, as if glad of some human companionship, yet refusing to allow itself to be touched. Primroses grew in the sheltered places, just ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... as life. But your lips is pale still, and you all in a tremble. So lean on me, mother dear, and come out into God's open air, till I see your spirit come back—and here's your bonnet, and we'll meet Mabel and Gilbert, and we'll all go up to the castle to ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... gathered in the light and I saw the Albertus Magnus for a moment. Then it changed to Ombos, himself.... A lean and grim form with dim mocking features, and yellow eyes ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... They were the Inseparables of the Mess, knit together in that curious blend of antagonistic and sympathetic traits of character which binds young men in an austere affection passing the love of woman. One was short and stout, the other tall and lean; an illustration in the First Lieutenant's edition of "Alice in Wonderland" supplied them with their nicknames, which they accepted from the ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... Its frame was largely of oak. It was twenty-one by forty-two feet, two stories, with a steep pitch roof. In front, the second story projected about two feet, the ends of the cross-beams being supported by ornamental oak brackets, two of which are preserved in Memorial Hall. A lean-to thirteen and a-half feet wide ran the whole length of the north side, its roof being a continuation of that ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... behind this specimen of "Louis XIV.'s light infantry"—a nickname given by the Bonapartists to these venerable survivors of the Monarchy. To do it justice it ought to be made the principal object in the picture, and it is but an accessory. Imagine a lean, dry man, dressed like the former, but seeming to be only his reflection, or his shadow, if you will. The coat, new on the first, on the second was old; the powder in his hair looked less white, the gold of the ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... those shadows of things in the heavens are already committed by God to sacred story; and since that sacred story is said to be able to make the man of God perfect in all things—2 Timothy 3:15-17—it is duty to us to leave off to lean to common understandings, and to inquire and search out by that very holy writ, and nought else, by what and how we should worship God. David was for inquiring ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... branches for shields against weather, and finer cuttings for flooring above the snow or damp. A common plan is to support a cross-bar by two uprights, as shown in the figure; against this cross-bar a number of poles are made to lean; on the back of the poles abundance of fir branches are laid horizontally; and lastly, on the back of these are another set of leaning poles, in order to secure ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... we an' they just rushed into each other's arrums, an' there was no firing for a long time. Nothin' but knife an' bay'nit when we cud get our hands free: an' that was not often. We was breast-on to thim, an' the Tyrone was yelpin' behind av us in a way I didn't see the lean av at first. But I knew later, an' so did ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... The true Jack-o'-lent was, as we learn from Taylor, the water poet, a ragged, lean-like figure which went as a token of Lent, in olden ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... of the man himself, with his numbed, helpless life, set down here in the midst of us, with a great, blank chasm between him and his past. What is there left to drive the wheels? The events of one day are simple and monotonous enough to us, because they lean up against the events of yesterday, and the yesterdays before! How do they seem, I wonder, to a man whose yesterday was more than a decade ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... our hero, at the age of nineteen, stood at the dividing ridge of his life. If the oscillating spirit, trembling between right and wrong, had decided to lean to the right, what might have been his fate no one can tell. He paused on the balance a short time, then he leaned over to the left, and what his fate was it is the purpose of this volume to disclose. At the outset, we may remark that it was not unmixed ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... play my poor little part no longer, and though I continued to lean on the yellow velvet of the barrier in front of me I dropped my eyes as often as that woman was on the stage, and hoped and prayed for the end ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... that he had hitherto failed to realise this fact as he ought to do. Could he maintain his own independence and support his daughter on a hundred and fifty pounds a year without being a burden on anyone? His son-in-law was rich, but nothing could induce him to lean on his son-in-law after acting, as he intended to do, in direct opposition to his son-in-law's counsel. The bishop was rich, but he was about to throw away the bishop's best gift, and that in a manner to injure materially the patronage of the giver: he ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... did not seem to pay attention. The man who sat before him was big and straight and gave forth warmth and light. He needed warmth and light; he needed a big tree to lean against. He vaguely hoped that Glenfernie was home to stay. He rubbed his hands and ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... young have heard the story of it and have learned from they were little children to hate and resist such rule. These tyrants have laid waste our land and sucked its marrow, until nothing remains for us but empty houses and lean fields. Our very lives are not safe." He called upon them to rise and drive the invaders out. If they wanted a leader, ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... the scenical strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant gapers. He knows it is his only art so to carry it, as none but artificers perceive it. In the meantime, perhaps, he is called barren, dull, lean, a poor writer, or by what contumelious word can come in their cheeks, by these men who, without labour, judgment, knowledge, or almost sense, are received or preferred before him. He gratulates them and their fortune. ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... drummers attended, a mob soon collected, the news of the animal's size and fatness spread, and all ran to buy. Near at hand were small wood fires stuck round with wooden skewers, on which small bits of fat and lean meat, the size of a penny-piece, were roasting, superintended by a woman with a mat dish placed on her knees, from which she served her guests, who were squatted round her. Indeed, the market was as busy a one as can be seen in any country. Jugglers also, like those of India, were ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... hands so placed as dead bodies are usually fitted, to be shrouded and put into their coffin or grave. Upon this urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so much of the sheet turned aside as might show his lean, pale, and death- like face, which was purposely turned towards the east, from which he expected the second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus. In this posture he was drawn at his just height, and, when the picture was ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... laughter went up from those around, whereat the poor boy looked as he would die of shame; but Robin Hood turned sharply to Will Stutely. "Why, how now," quoth he, "is this the guest that thou hast brought us to fill our purse? Methinks thou hast brought but a lean ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... caught her last sight of Cliffe, standing bareheaded on the steps of the embassy, his lean distinction, his ugly good looks marking him out from the men around him. Then, as they drove away she was glad that the darkness hid her from Lady Tranmore. For suddenly she could not smile. She was filled with the perception ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cow for five shillings, but there was no one in the town who would give ten pounds for a lean tough old hen, so she went back to the ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... forefathers making rain, and we follow in their footsteps. You, who send to Kuruman for corn, and irrigate your garden, may do without rain; WE can not manage in that way. If we had no rain, the cattle would have no pasture, the cows give no milk, our children become lean and die, our wives run away to other tribes who do make rain and have corn, and the whole tribe become dispersed and lost; ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... notice that the bones are covered by a soft substance, the flesh. When the skin of an animal has been taken off, we can see that some of the flesh is white or yellow and some of it is red. The white or yellow flesh is fat. The red flesh is lean meat, and it ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg
... first of many such times that Chris was to lean out so, king of this new world spread out below him as far as the eye could reach. A vast and absorbing panorama lay beneath and beyond him. Immediately below turned Water Street, narrow and muddy, while the broad wharves and wooden ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... your commission, and have it perfectly regular. Being that same officer and gentleman, you never were mugged—treated as a prospective criminal; no four thousand posters bearing your picture will now be sent broadcast over the country; no fifty dollars is offered lean detectives for your capture; you're in no chance of being thrown into prison and have your government do all in its power to wring the manhood out of you! Oh no—an officer and a gentleman—you resign your commission and go ahead with your life. But you're ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... quiet and silent. It is true that our place of meeting was a rather unpropitious one, but this did not satisfy me. He was not quite the Mr. Dalton that I remembered, that, as a child I had loved, and still I felt proudly happy to lean on his powerful arm and exchange occasional glances and remarks ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... general," retorted old Adam, who was in a querulous mood as the result of too abrupt an awakening from his nap. "What you ain't known it doesn't follow other folks ain't, does it? Human natur is generally made with a streak of foolishness an' a streak of sense, just as fat an' lean runs in a piece of bacon. That's what I say, an' I reckon I ought to know, bein' ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... pray, sir, what will you have? Love. Why, see and provide something to cloy their stomachs: let there be two good dishes of soup-maigre; a large suet pudding; some dainty, fat pork-pie, very fat; a fine, small lean breast of mutton, and a large dish with two artichokes. There; that's plenty and variety. James. O, dear— Love. Plenty and variety. James. But, sir, you must have some poultry. Love. No; I'll have none. James. Indeed, sir, you should. Love. Well, then,—kill the old hen, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... piece of sea flesh as an island's king could wish to welcome. His brother, Nathaniel, had been a city merchant, piling up moneys in the Levant trade, and now lived in a fine house out in the swelling country beyond Sendennis, with a fine sea-view. Him I had seen once or twice; a lean monkey creature with a wrinkled walnut of a face and bright, unkind eyes. He was all for leaving the boy of three and the girl of two to the small mercies of some charity school, but the mariner brother gathered the two forlornlings ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the season the new wonder carried no cotton, but her lower deck showed "right smart o' freight," and wherever passengers were wont to stand stood a crowd looking so content that on the shore one lean and hungry native with his hands in his trousers to the elbows drawled sourly as his eye ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... privacy of your own apartment. Use a handkerchief whenever necessary, but without glancing at it afterwards, and be quiet and unobtrusive in the action as possible. Do not slam the door, do not tilt your chair back to the loosening of its joints, do not lean your head against the wall, as it will soil the papering; in short, do unto others as you would ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... lay back upon the water-proofed pillow, and her murderous tumour lay revealed. In itself it was a pretty thing—ivory white, with a mesh of blue veins, and curving gently from jaw to chest. But the lean, yellow face and the stringy throat were in horrible contrast with the plumpness and sleekness of this monstrous growth. The surgeon placed a hand on each side of it and pressed it slowly backwards ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rede which is benefiting and of deeds fair-seeming and worthy celebrating, that when the Prince came upon that sea he was perplext and wist not what to do, so he leapt from the back of the Father of the Pigeon and set his steed standing beside him that he might lean against his quarter[FN532] when, of the excess of his night watching, he fell asleep and was drowned in slumber. Then, by doom of Destiny the beast shook his head and snorted and set off at full speed making for the wild and the wold ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... different, too. Gray, lean, hard-bitten faces, their eyebrows so light and sparse that it seemed their eyes were hard stones which never seemed to shift their straight-ahead gaze. Yet each man in the tonneau and the orderly beside the driver on ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... while you yourself will be old, and lean quite heavily on your cane, and take short steps, and hold the book off to the other side of the light. And men will take off their hats in your presence. Your body, unharmed by early indulgences, will get weaker, only as the sleepy child ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... carried, within a few days, into a prairie country strewn with the carcasses of innumerable buffalo, for this was a favorite hunting-ground of the Indians. But not one of the animals was in sight. The men were nearly starving and, at the best, discontented and sullen. Two lean deer and a few geese, all the game that the hunters had been able to secure within several days, were short commons for thirty-three men with appetites sharpened by traveling in the keen {238} December air. It was a God-send when they found a buffalo-bull mired ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... for London was extraordinary. In a letter, written in 1834, and addressed to a reverend gentleman, she ominously says, "When I have the good luck or ill luck (I rather lean to the latter opinion) of being married, I shall certainly insist on the wedding excursion not extending much beyond Hyde ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... Chavez brothers who were ten-mile-off neighbors of Applehead, and who owned many cattle and much land by right of an old Spanish grant. He was standing in the shadow of the ledge, leaning against it as they of sun-saturated New Mexico always lean against anything perpendicular and solid near which they happen to stand. He was watching the white-lighted arroyo while he smoked, waiting for her, unconscious of her ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... be left to conjecture. What they were saying about the state of things in general we learn from the Presbyterian Richard Baxter. Being at Coventry at the time of the battle of Naseby, Baxter, then a pious preacher of twenty-nine years of age, with a lean cadaverous body, and the gauntest hook-nosed face ever seen in a portrait, paid a visit of curiosity to the field immediately after the battle, and went thence to the quarters of the victorious army at Leicester, to seek ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... my pleasure in my garden. There is a gate, but it is rarely opened. I lean on my staff as I wander about or sit down to rest. I raise my head and contemplate the lovely scene. Clouds rise, unwilling, from the bottom of the hills: the weary bird seeks its nest again. Shadows vanish, but still I ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... Mr. Bartlett's store, attentive to the yarns of Uncle Parker—uncle to the whole village by right of seniority, but of Southern blood, with no kindred in New England. His figure is before me now enthroned upon a mackerel-barrel—a lean old man of great height, but bent with years and twisted into an uncouth shape by seven broken limbs; furrowed, also, and weatherworn, as if every gale for the better part of a century had caught him somewhere on the sea. He looked like a harbinger of tempest—a shipmate ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... side to skip and dance about in her excitement, but now she came softly back to lean against him, as he sat ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... you now, lean or fat, I know what games you were always at, And told you before what harm you would hatch: Now the old Gentleman's found you out, He'll clap us all in the round-about; Let us be off, ere they ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... trap-door with its stout, iron bolt, he descended the rickety ladder to the cellar; thence, passing by a short tunnel, which Bonnemain had constructed with his own hands, he ascended a few rough wooden steps, and found himself in a lean-to outhouse close to a door in a high wall which led into ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... Pharaoh dreamed; and, behold, he stood by the river. And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well-favored kine and fat-fleshed; and they fed in a meadow. And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill-favored and lean-fleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the brink of the river. And the ill-favored and lean-fleshed kine did eat up the seven well-favored and fat kine. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... with ice. Ice! ICE!" the man repeated loudly. Still failing of a response, he shouted, "Don't you know what 'ice' is?" He wrapped his long, lean arms about himself and shivered. "Cold! Icie! ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... sigh, which had obviously no connection with what he had been saying. With the sigh, came an emanation from him of dispirited fatigue. Marise wished she dared draw his hand upon her arm and ask him to lean on her ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... exerting very little muscular motion, reminds us of what has been observed in the fattening of geese and oxen. It is well known how greatly darkness and repose favour this process. The nocturnal birds of Europe are lean, because, instead of feeding on fruits, like the guacharo, they live on the scanty produce of their prey. At the period commonly called, at Caripe, the oil harvest,* (* La cosecha de la manteca.) the Indians build huts with palm-leaves, near the entrance, and even in the porch ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... extended a long, lean accusatory finger out from the rostrum at the gangster. "Rubano," he concluded, "your crime is particularly heinous—debauching the very foundations of the state—the elections. I sentence you to not less than three nor more than ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... toward the bath? Oh yes! we are right; I smell the lemon-blossoms. Beware of the old wilding that bears them; it may catch your veil; it may scratch your fingers! Pray, take care: it has many thorns about it. And now, Leonora! you shall hear my last verses! Lean your ear a little toward me; for I must repeat them softly under this low archway, else others may hear them too. Ah! you press my hand once more. Drop it, drop it! or the verses will sink into my breast again, and lie ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... book. Then there was a wild rush for the beach. Miss Lane headed it at first, carrying one of the smallest children in her arms and dragging another by the hand. She was soon overtaken and passed by Kitty and six lean, long-legged girls, who charged whooping, straight for the sea. Claire and I followed slowly at the tail of the procession. I was sorry for her because one of her shoes was beginning to hurt her. She confided this to me and later on in the day I ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... Ben folded his coat, and ascending again, spread it over the spikes, so that he could lean on them with his chest without being pierced. Having re-ascended, Bill followed; the rope was then hauled up, and lowered on the other side. In another moment they slipped down, and stood ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... Ah, that she were there when I open my eyes again, that I might speak to her! For the bitterest thought that ever came to me is one which troubles my rest from time to time even now: Did I love her as she deserved; was I a staff for her to lean upon in her trouble; was I not, rather, a careless, unseeing boy, who recked nothing of the impending storm until it burst about him? I trust the tears which have wet my pillow since have ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... said, but nobody knows; though as that was nine years ago he's dead enough in principle, if not in corporation. His widow lives quite humble, for between her husband and her brother she's left in very lean pasturage.' ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... femineity;—no self-assertion, such as free suffrage introduces into every word and movement; large, vigorous nature, running back to those huge-limbed Germans of Tacitus, but subdued by the reverential training and tuned by the kindly culture of fifty generations. Sharp business habits, a lean soil, independence, enterprise, and east winds, are not the best things for the larynx. Still, you hear noble voices among us,—I have known families famous for them,—but ask the first person you meet a question, and ten to one there is a hard, sharp, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... of the Adriatic, and were received with great demonstrations of welcome by the Sultan in Constantinople. When they were leaving, the Sultan gave the Emperor a gigantic carpet, and the Emperor gave the Sultan a gold walking-stick, an exact imitation of the stick Frederick the Great used to lean on, and sometimes, very likely, apply to the backs of his trusty ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... whole course of modern thought different; Kant by his critical method did for philosophy what Copernicus did for astronomy; he centralised the intelligence in the reason or soul, as the latter did the planetary system in the sun; Kant was a lean, little man, of simple habits, and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to the water-pail, dipped out some water, and sprinkled his mother's face. Then he rubbed her little lean hands with his hard, boyish palm. He had seen his mother faint before. In fact, he had been all prepared ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... us," says she, "to walk into the forest till we were at some distance from the high road, my poor mistress grew so tired that she begged the man who walked beside her to allow her to lean on his shoulder. He looking round and seeing that they had reached a lonely spot, replied, 'We need hardly go any farther,' and made us sit dawn on a plot of grass which was to be the scene of our martyrdom. My poor mistress ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... their faith failed not, for—if I may so say—they dared not let it fail. If they ceased to trust God, what had they to trust in? Not in their own skill in seamanship, though it was great: they knew how weak it was, on which to lean. Not in the so-called laws of nature; the treacherous sea, the wild wind, the uncertain shoals of fish, the chances and changes of a long foreign voyage. Without trust in God, their lives must have been lives of doubt and of terror, for ever anxious about the morrow: or ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... them incredible. As a good ship arrives in harbour battered and torn by a long and stormy voyage, so both these gallant travellers arrived in Gondokoro. Speke appeared to me the more worn of the two. He was excessively lean; he had walked the whole way from Zanzibar, never having ridden once during that wearying march. Grant was in rags, his bare knees projecting through the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... present state of affairs between the employers and the employed, or (as he chose to term them) the idle and the industrious classes. The room was not large, but its bareness of furniture made it appear so. Unshaded gas flared down upon the lean and unwashed artisans as they entered, their eyes blinking at the excess ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... captain who had proposed it. Dampier's turn would have come next. "Thus it came to pass," says he very humourously, "that after having cast anchor at Guaham, Swan embraced him and said: 'Ah Dampier, you would have made them but a sorry meal.' He was right," he adds, "for I was as thin and lean, as he was fat and plump." Mindanao, Manilla, certain parts of the Chinese coasts, the Moluccas, New Holland, and the Nicobar Islands, were the places visited and plundered by Dampier in this campaign. In the last-named archipelago he became separated from his companions, and was discovered ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... native boy!" said Deschard, contemptuously. He was a tall, lean-looking, black-bearded man, with even a more terrifying and savage appearance than any of his ruffianly partners in crime, tattooed as he was from the back of his neck to his heels in broad, perpendicular lines. As he fixed his keen ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... Take the lean part of a buttock of beef raw, rub it well with brown sugar all over, and let it lie in a pan or tray two or three hours, turning it three or four times, then salt it with common salt, and two ounces of saltpetre; let it lie a fortnight, turning it every ...
— English Housewifery Exemplified - In above Four Hundred and Fifty Receipts Giving Directions - for most Parts of Cookery • Elizabeth Moxon
... should like to fall in love with a man who was so much better than I, that I could lean on him and learn from him in everything; and I should like to feel that whatever goodness or cleverness there was in me was all owing to him, and that I was nothing by ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... the lonely farm That three were lying where two had lain; And the old man's tremulous, palsied arm Could never lean on a son's again. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... now, true Thomas, And lean your head upon my knee, Abide and rest a little space, And I will show ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... as she rose from the cow's side, and taking her pails of foaming milk staggered toward the gate, would have been made weak with sympathetic pain. The two pails hung from her lean arms, her bare feet slipped on the filthy ground, her greasy and faded calico dress showed her tired, swollen ankles, and the mosquitoes swarmed mercilessly on her neck and bedded themselves in her ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... pair of men's lasts was taken down from the shelf, and these were tied to one end of the waxed-end and were let right down to the pavement. People collected in the street outside, and stood there staring. Pelle had to lean right out of the window, and bend over as far as he could, while Emil, as the oldest apprentice, laid the waxed-end over his neck. They were all on their feet now, with the exception of the young master; he took no ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the other, would leave no space for the exercise of feeling and faith. His work stands in the same relation to criticism which Schleiermacher's Discourses occupies to dogmas, and as the latter appears sometimes to lean toward Rationalism, so do we find in the former traces of concession to the destructive method of criticism. Neander's work, despite everything which he grants to his enemies, was the transition-agent toward a purer comprehension of the life of Christ. While we ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Though but in distant prospect, and not feel His soul refreshed with foretaste of the joy? Rivers of gladness water all the earth, And clothe all climes with beauty; the reproach Of barrenness is gone. The fruitful field Laughs with abundance; and the land, once lean, Or fertile only in its own disgrace, Exults to see its thistly curse repeal'd; The various seasons woven into one, And that one season an eternal spring. The garden fears no blight, and needs no fence, For there is none to covet, all ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... a Wolf, looking so gaunt and lean that he was almost afraid to pass by where the animal stood. But the Wolf stopped him and said: "Will you give me something to eat? I am so hungry that I can scarce follow ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... depends not on a mass of the same particles, but on something else. For in them the variation of great parcels of matter alters not the identity: an oak growing from a plant to a great tree, and then lopped, is still the same oak; and a colt grown up to a horse, sometimes fat, sometimes lean, is all the while the same horse: though, in both these cases, there may be a manifest change of the parts; so that truly they are not either of them the same masses of matter, though they be truly one of them the same oak, and the ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... resolved in patience still to wait, Till God should find for him a true "help-mate." This resolution formed, was kept intact, Nor was the strength his own, for that he lacked. He, though so young, had very clearly seen That Man, in every age, is prone to lean Upon an arm of flesh—most frail support! Which often fails us, oft makes us its sport. And yet, O strange perversity! we cling To that which never can us comfort bring. He knew 'twas better to feel flesh so weak As to be forced his strength from God to seek; To feel, like ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... "They hate you for two reasons," said the countess: "in the first place, because you have made a conquest which all the world envies you; secondly because you are not one of us. There is not one family who can lean on you in virtue of the rights of blood, or alliances which stand instead of it. You have superseded a woman who more than any other could have a claim to your good fortune: she is sister to the prime minister, who has in her train, like ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... to its own and Blount faced to the right, walking rapidly until he turned in at the foot of the worn double flight of stairs leading to the editorial rooms of The Plainsman. Blenkinsop, the editor, a lean, haggard man with a sallow face, coarse black hair worn always a little longer than the prevailing cut, and deep-set, gloomy ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... stop the rush with their hands, and so they were swinging their clubs. I stumbled over the fallen coon who had pivoted me, ducked a swat from a club, dived between a bull's legs, and was free. And then how I ran! There was a lean mulatto just in front of me, and I took his pace. He knew the town better than I did, and I knew that in the way he ran lay safety. But he, on the other hand, took me for a pursuing bull. He never looked around. He just ran. My wind was good, and I hung on to his pace and nearly ...
— The Road • Jack London
... of Don, near the "auld toun" of Aberdeen, with its one arch, and its black deep salmon stream below, is in my memory as yesterday. I still remember, though perhaps I may misquote, the awful proverb which made me pause to cross it, and yet lean over it with a childish delight, being an only son, at least by the mother's side. The saying as recollected by me was this, but I have never heard or seen it since I was ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Pucelle's sword, the crest on Warwick's helmet and the colour of Bardolph's nose. Portia has golden hair, Phoebe is black-haired, Orlando has chestnut curls, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek's hair hangs like flax on a distaff, and won't curl at all. Some of the characters are stout, some lean, some straight, some hunchbacked, some fair, some dark, and some are to blacken their faces. Lear has a white beard, Hamlet's father a grizzled, and Benedick is to shave his in the course of the play. Indeed, on the subject of stage beards Shakespeare is quite elaborate; tells ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... orchard, where a man or two were gathering in apples. Still, she wished she knew why Oscar did not come to dinner, and where he was, for her heart was beginning to yearn already over the wilful, noble, undisciplined boy. It had always been her dream to have a brother—a big strong brother to lean upon, and here was one whom she would ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... of industry is, a quick step, and a somewhat heavy tread, showing that the foot comes down with a hearty good will. If the body lean a little forward, and the eyes keep steadily in the same direction, while the feet are going, so much the better, for these discover earnestness to arrive at the intended point. I do not like, and I never liked, your sauntering, soft-stepping ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... Apocalyptic book was opened. I wished that I had beside me some authoritative interpreter who could read for me "this mystic handwriting on the wall." It has been suggested that the silent scene before me represented the passage of a soul to the world of the dead. The lean and starved-looking horse symbolised death; and its red and yellow spots indicated corruption. It may have been the ghost of the horse that was burned with the body of his dead master; for we know that the tribes, from which the Etruscans were supposed to be descended, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... earth, a heaven for hogs, where they were requited for all this suffering? Each one of these hogs was a separate creature. Some were white hogs, some were black; some were brown, some were spotted; some were old, some young; some were long and lean, some were monstrous. And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... head and nestled the closer. How had she lived all the years of her life, she thought to herself, without this shoulder to lean on and this hand to guide her? She made no answer. She had never thought about these things in that way before, but she would now. It was so restful and so blissful just to have him lead her, he who was so strong and self-reliant, and whose ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... now saw, in flame-colored satin, which shimmered with each movement like a high flame. He had the appearance of a tall, lean youngster, with crisp, curling, very dark red hair. He now regarded Maudelain. He displayed peculiarly wide-set brown eyes; and their gaze was tender, and the tears somehow had come to Maudelain's ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... had told herself that she would utter to him. She could not bring herself to hint to him that his views of life were so unlike her own, that there could be no chance of happiness between them, unless each could strive to lean somewhat towards the other. No man could be more gracious in word and manner than John Grey; no man more chivalrous in his carriage towards a woman; but he always spoke and acted as though there could be no question that his ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... subject of the girls' love affairs, and fall into deep talks with Richie—perhaps the happiest talks in her life, for Richie, whose mind and body had undergone for long years the exquisite discipline of pain, was delightfully unexpected in his views, and his whole lean, ungainly frame vibrated with the eager ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... &c. wherein they seem to have reason; and I am pretty confident, that a great majority of the clergy were heartily inclined to disown any relation they had to the managers in lawn. However, it was a confounding argument against Presbytery, that those who are most suspected to lean that way, treating their inferior brethren with haughtiness, rigour, and contempt: Although, to say the truth, nothing better could be hoped for; because, I believe, it may pass for a universal rule, that in every diocese governed by bishops of the Whig species, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... advantage. His feat of jumping overboard, to rescue Tim Kelly, had been another step in advance; and, although Charlie would have denied it himself, there was no doubt that he generally took the lead, and that his friend was accustomed to lean upon him, and to look to him always for the initiative. It was, therefore, a severe blow to Peters, to find that Charlie was about to be sent on ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... "You don't mean to say that you caught the ducking I meant for Howl!" she exclaimed. "Well, if that isn't a joke! It's the funniest thing I ever heard of!" Putting the pitcher on the floor and clasping her hands to her sides, she laughed until she had to lean against the wall. ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... families, a sort of outcast tribe of long-haired, lean, and wild-eyed people, strove for their living in this lonely wilderness of islets, lying like an abandoned outwork of the land at the gates of the bay. Within the knots and loops of the rocks the water rested more transparent than crystal under ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... know it was a mean and shameful taunt of His revilers when they said, 'If Thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross.' But why did He not do it? I remember how once He said concerning His life, 'no one taketh it away from Me.' But have not Pilate and the Jews taken it away? I shall never lean upon His bosom again. But this I know—He loved me, and I loved Him, and love Him still. The mysteries are great, but the memories of Him will be ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... the greatest bliss that could happen to a woman; if I feel that I could die to serve him, that I could live to worship him, that his touch would be sweet to me, his voice music, his strength the only support in the world on which I would care to lean,—what then?" ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... to the plan he had formed. Winchester in hand, he moved away from the fire until, by interposing the large trunk of a tree between himself and the light, he was invisible from that direction. He stood erect, taking care not to lean against the trunk for partial support, and concentrated his faculties into those of ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... That lean head of his, hollow above the eyes, and with a pendent upper lip, was so ugly as to be almost laughable; and his lazy and luminous eye looked out on the world with a drolling, almost satirical, air, ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... the great Atlantic, see God take The mist from woe's white mountain, spring and stream, The breath of man in frost, the spiral lean From roof-cracked caves where, though the heart may break, The soul will not lie torpid, like the snake,— And battle smoke. On them He breathes with dream And, Lo! an Angel with a sword agleam 'Twix the Old World and ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... fall. Brotteaux who feared its effects on his marionettes, quickened his pace. As he crossed the Pont-Neuf and was turning the corner of the Place de Thionville, he saw by the light of a street-lamp, sitting on a stone post, a lean old man who seemed utterly exhausted with fatigue and hunger, but still preserved his venerable appearance. He was dressed in a tattered surtout, had no hat and appeared over sixty. Approaching the poor wretch, Brotteaux recognised the Pere Longuemare, the same he had saved from ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... persons have bought large estates and built splendid mansions with such little books as I mean to write; so that perhaps it is not unreasonable to hope that mine may enable me to build a little cottage, or, at least, to buy or hire one. But I am becoming more and more convinced that we must not lean upon this community. Whatever is to be done must be done by my own undivided strength. I shall not remain here through the winter, unless with an absolute certainty that there will be a house ready for us in the spring. Otherwise, I shall return to Boston;—still, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... That might be intolerable, even if he consented, which it was certain he would not, if he had made up his mind to the contrary. The humiliation of standing an obvious prisoner, with her husband barring the door, was not to be borne any longer, and she turned away to lean against a cabinet, while Grandcourt ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... times and father is rocking—not in a rocking-chair—just rocking and expressing his inmost thoughts. And Mr. Briggs pretends to scowl and mutters: 'Hook him over the ropes, George. 'E ain't got no friends!' Take a peep, Iole. You can just see them if you lean over and hang on to ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers |
