"Narrowing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hard, narrowing conceptions! Can it be imagined that God would consign infants to everlasting torment, simply because they are children of unbelieving parents? A thousand times No! Let us remember that they are His own children, whatever earthly parentage they may have. His love and power are not going ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... cooperative marketing, and we might well inquire into the benefits of cooperative buying. Admittedly, the consumer is much to blame himself, because of his prodigal expenditure and his exaction of service, but Government might well serve to point the way of narrowing the spread of price, especially between the production of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... dwell. The stream was so small, and the girding of the forest so close, that there was little range for the sight; but the anxious wife and mother could perceive that the hills drew together, at this point, the valley narrowing essentially, that rocks began to appear in the bed of the river, and that the growth of the timber indicated fertility and a ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... world must of necessity outgrow these things. With the self-deception of his kind, he thought he was broad and liberal in his views, when in reality he had lost all distinction between truth and error, and was narrowing his mind down to things only. Jew or Gentile, Christian or Pagan, it was becoming all one to him. Men changed their creeds and religions with other fashions, but all looked after what they believed to be the main chance, and he ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... locomotives, aeroplanes, of all submarines fit for sea, and of the better part of the German Navy. The Germans had no choice: their armies were in flight along roads choked with transport towards an ever narrowing exit, and they could only escape if given time, which they could only obtain by surrender. They yielded to avoid a Sedan which would have destroyed their armies as a fighting force. But they gained one at least of the objects for which they ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... year, Silas Marner lived in this solitude, his guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening itself more and more as it became reduced to the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... examination has shown that this important sense plays a considerable part in art-effects. And even if this were not so, Hegel's exclusion of touch from the rank of aesthetic senses would be a striking illustration of the narrowing effect on scientific theory of the identification of aesthetic objects with productions of art. To say that the experience of exploring with the fingers a velvety petal or the smooth surface of a sea-rounded ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... seized with a great passion for examining this curious chain, and, after some preliminary questions, was rash enough to lean towards her and put out his hand toward the neck that lay in the golden coil. She threw her head back, her eyes narrowing and her forehead drawing down so that Dick thought her head actually flattened itself. He started involuntarily; for she looked so like the little girl who had struck him with those sharp flashing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... well known, on the cramp of the muscles of the veins, which contract and so cause a narrowing of their bore which hinders the flow of blood. But such cramps happen only in cases of considerable anger, fear, pain, trepidation, rage; in short, in cases of excitement that nobody ever has reason to simulate. Paling has no value in differentiation inasmuch as a man ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... nebula, traversing space in one direction while the star swept onwards in another. A planet could not very well come into final conflict with its sun at one fell swoop. It would gradually draw nearer and nearer, not by the narrowing of its path, but by the change of the path's shape. The path would, in fact, become more and more eccentric; until, at length, at its point of nearest approach, the planet would graze its primary, exciting an intense heat where ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... must enter all alone, Between the dreary walls of stone. Thereon to that fair company He bade farewell, who wistfully Looked backward oft as home they rode, But in the entry he abode Of that rough unknown narrowing pass, Where twilight at the high noon was. Then onward he began to ride: Smooth rose the rocks on every side, And seemed as they were cut by man; Adown them ever water ran, But they of living things were ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... Whitney, narrowing his eyes down into a squint at Kennedy's face, a proceeding that served by contrast to emphasize the abnormal condition of the pupils which I had already noticed both in ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... them. One of their temples, a morai, merits description. It is formed by walls of great thickness, like that at Tahiti. It is an irregular parallelogram, two hundred and twenty-four feet long, and a hundred wide. The walls on three sides are twenty feet high and twelve feet thick, but narrowing towards the top. The wall nearest the sea is only eight feet high. The only entrance is by a narrow passage between two high walls leading up to an inner court, where stands the grim god of war, with numerous other idols on either side of him. In front rises a lofty obelisk ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... they belonged. Their squaws had jerked their elk. You may not know what jerked means, so I will explain: it means dried, cured. They had all they were allowed, but for some reason they didn't want to go. Sorenson suspects them of being in with the tooth-hunters and he is narrowing the circle. ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... spent by them all together, at first on the rocky ledges below the house where the caldrons of foam and fountains of spray made the finest show, and then roaming through the fragrant woods. At each new vista Miss Martha noted the narrowing of her niece's eyes and the absorption of ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... population below the poverty line. Other ongoing challenges include increasing government revenues, negotiating further assistance from international donors, upgrading both government and private financial operations, curtailing drug trafficking and rampant crime, and narrowing the trade deficit. Given Guatemala's large expatriate community in the United States, it is the top remittance recipient in Central America, with inflows serving as a primary source of foreign income equivalent to nearly two-thirds ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... band close upon one. It was the Bank Guard—Coldstreams—marching proudly. The officer in charge seemed very proud; with drawn sword, his broad red back bulging above his sash, and the enormous bearskin narrowing to his shoulders ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... comes with limitation, with the narrowing of the universal qualities into the specific qualities of the limited Self; both are the same in essence, though seeming different in manifestation. We have the power to know, the power to will, and the power to act. These are the three great powers of the Self that show themselves in ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... myself in field and wood, With mine own eyes directing all their toil, Even as my banner led them in the fight, Now I am only fit to play the steward; And, if the genial sun come not to me, I can no longer seek it on the mountains. Thus slowly, in an ever-narrowing sphere, I move on to the narrowest and the last, Where all life's pulses cease. I now am but The shadow of my former self, and that Is fading fast—'twill soon be ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... us boiled up and foamed like the surface of a cauldron, and then, with scarcely a moment of slack water, the whole went whirling by in the opposite direction. In a few moments the low rollers had passed the islands and united again in a single bank of water, which swept up the narrowing channel with the thunder ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... off, three dangerous miles, is home; Must borrow his winds who there would come. Up and away for life! be fleet! The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, Sings in my ears, my hands are stones, Curdles the blood to the marble bones, Tugs at the heartstrings, numbs the sense, Hems in the life with narrowing fence. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... can think of them as arrangements by which the red herring is turned from a pest into a benefit. I grant that in the rigid political conditions prevailing to-day a new issue is an embarrassment, perhaps a hindrance to the procedure of political life. But instead of narrowing the scope of politics, to avoid it, the only sensible thing to do is to invent methods which will allow needs and problems and group interests avenues ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... were wheeling about the trees. The boy watched them, as though nothing had passed. They were making narrowing circles, and at last each alighted on the ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... suspicion which a glance at the stars corrected,—or else it was the tide itself which had turned, and which was sweeping me down the river with all its force, and was also sucking away at every moment the narrowing water from that treacherous expanse of mud out of whose horrible miry embrace I had lately helped to ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... seeing it. Any river can fall when it comes to a dam. In fact, there is nothing for it to do but fall; but it is not every river that can carve out in its rage such wonderful stairways as this,—seething and foaming and roaring and leaping through its narrow and narrowing channel, with all the turbulence of its fiery soul unquelled, though the grasp of Time is on its throat, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... insurance companies, for example, having built up a vast business abroad and invested a large share of their gains in foreign countries in compliance with the local laws and regulations then existing, now find themselves within a narrowing circle of onerous and unforeseen conditions, and are confronted by the necessity of retirement from a field thus made unprofitable, if, indeed, they are not summarily expelled, as some of them have lately been ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... looking at the servant at all. Rather was she looking at Mr. Ashley, and something that she read in his narrowing eyes, in the smile that curved but one corner of his lips, caused her cheeks to blossom once again into damask roses—nay, not in damask roses; rather were they peonies and poppies that dyed her cheeks. She spoke no word at all, and only with a gesture of her hand did she dismiss ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... himself that his words and deeds have been harmless to others, he believes that he has done all that can be required of him, quite oblivious of the fact that he may for years have been exercising a narrowing and debasing influence on the minds of those about him, and filling surrounding space with the unlovely creations of a sordid mind. A still more serious aspect of this question will come before us when we discuss the artificial elemental; but in ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... continued, looking round, "the thing's narrowing. Let Mr. Wing there help by getting some news of Chuh Fen, if possible; as for me, I'm going to follow up the Netherfield line. I think we shall track these fellows yet—you never know how unexpectedly a clue ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... which this old house stood looked far out upon the ocean; no other house was in sight, and it was completely sheltered not only by a forest of trees but by the banks that, high and broken, curved in at the mouth of the cove, narrowing the inlet, and forming altogether a sea and land view scarcely to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... there is little comparison between them: the Dart has no precipitous cliffs or vine-clad hills, and no castle excepting at its mouth. From Totnes to Dartmouth is about twelve miles, through exquisitely beautiful scenery, especially where the river passes the woods of Sharpham, the current narrowing to about one hundred and fifty feet, and flowing through an amphitheatre of overarching trees rising in masses of foliage to the height of several hundred feet. The stream makes various sharp bends—a paradise ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... houses are very comfortable—often very beautiful," Mr. Dorrance persevered, keeping to the scent of his game, as a trained pointer scours a stubble-field, narrowing his beat at every circuit; "and the hearts of those who live in them are warm and constant. It ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... No one desires to deny the evil, but only to estimate its extent. Yet it cannot be gainsaid that its fatal empire is narrowing instead of enlarging. Especially is it the progress accomplished in the higher regions of intellect and of the feelings which here exerts its beneficent influence. On our moral greatness depends our material power. The ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... two o'clock. The tide is rising fast; the sea dashes, in higher and higher waves, on the narrowing beach. Rain and mist are both gone. Overhead, the clouds are falling asunder in every direction, assuming strange momentary shapes, quaint airy resemblances of the forms of the great rocks among ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... II passed over two small islands. Half a mile beyond them arose a third larger one. It was quite prominent, for the reason, that it presented a range of great cliffs. Dave navigated the air in narrowing circles. Then, timing and calculating a volplane glide, he let the machine ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... bitterly cold, even inside the dwelling, but Agatha was busy baking, and she failed to notice that the frost had once more become almost Arctic, until she stood beside a window as evening was closing in. A low, dingy sky hung over the narrowing sweep of prairie which stretched back, gleaming lividly, into the creeping dusk, but a few minutes later a haze of snow whirled across it and cut the dreary scene in half. Then the light died out suddenly, and she and the little girls drew ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... brings but nigher His circle (yearly narrowing) to the fire Where old friends meet. Let him; now heaven is overcast, And spring and summer both are past, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... at the machine next mine had an ear like a sea-shell, a skin of satin. Her youth was bound, strong shoulders already stooped, chest fast narrowing. At 7 A.M. she came: albeit fresh, pale still and wan; rest of the night too short a preparation for the day's work. By three in the afternoon she was flushed, by five crimson. She threw her hands up over her head and exclaimed: "My back's broke, ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... asked Nancy in her brief, quiet tones, narrowing the double line of black eyelashes as she spoke so as to hide ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... its cobbles embedded in the earth look like milky bubbles and drawing clear-cut shadows of the well-top and the gables and chimneys of the house. The man slowly circled the court beginning close to the walls and narrowing till he made a loop about the well, and then, reversing, worked in widening orbits as far as the walls again. His wife, looking out at him through one of the windows, thought that, in the moonlight, followed by his own squat, active shadow, he looked like a huge spider weaving a web. This ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... mistaken if the Federal Government of the United States be not constantly losing strength, retiring gradually from public affairs, and narrowing its circle of action more and more. It is naturally feeble, but it now abandons even its pretensions to strength. On the other hand, I thought that I remarked a more lively sense of independence, and a more decided attachment to provincial ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... which barely hold a couple of occupants and have no back rest, are rather like large perambulators, in front of which sits the driver, whose headgear was then of beaver, like a squashed top hat, very broad at the top, narrowing sharply to a wide curly brim, which curious head-covering, well forced down over his ears, is generally ornamented with a black velvet band, and a buckle, sometimes of silver, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... a man of daring and adventure, brave and audacious, preferring an irregular life to the narrowing restraints ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... was locked into a deep canyon, where there was scarcely room for it and the river, there was a beauty of another kind in solemn gloom. There the stream curved and twisted marvellously, widening into shallows, narrowing into deep boiling eddies, with pyramidal firs and the beautiful silver spruce fringing its banks, and often falling across it in artistic grace, the gloom chill and deep, with only now and then a ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... blast—and still her internal and external temperatures were slowly and inexorably rising. Her atomic engines had been long since silenced—beaten by the inexhaustible, fiery strength of the invincible opponent waiting patiently a narrowing twenty million miles "below." ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara
... menstruation. The most frequent forms are due to uterine congestion; to mechanical causes, as a narrowing of the cervical canal, particularly at its internal opening, or to a constriction caused by the bending over of the uterus at the junction of the body and the neck; ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... replied, her eyes narrowing critically, "that cow's horn isn't on straight—the red cow's left horn. And it's the same size, all the ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... belonged to the other sex. Valmont had a hypospadic urethra and penis; a scrotum without testicles; ovaries with the Fallopian tubes; a uterus opened into a vagina of two inches in length, which, gradually narrowing, ended in the male urethra, to which was attached a prostate gland. Valmont contracted marriage as a man and was not discovered to have been a female until the autopsy revealed her to be a woman. The relation does not state anything in regard to menstruation; so that ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... newspapers on new and controversial subjects, feeling this was the best contribution she could make to the cause. Susan also found it increasingly difficult to hold her old friend to the straight path of woman suffrage, Mrs. Stanton insisting that too much concentration on this one subject was narrowing and left women unprepared for the intelligent use of the ballot. Women, Mrs. Stanton argued, needed to be stirred up to think, and this they would not do as long as their minds were dominated by the church, which, she believed, had for generations ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... changed, and with that change the laird of Stanesland's curious movements became very explicable, for her face was singularly charming when she smiled. It was a rather pale but fresh and clear-skinned face, wide at the forehead and narrowing to a firm little chin, with long-lashed expressive eyes, and a serious expression in repose. Her smile was candid, a little coy and irresistibly engaging, and her voice was very pleasant, rather low, and most engaging too. ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... dedicate this book to you as the representative of a class which ought to be more numerous,—the class of large-minded persons who take a lively interest in arts which are not specially their own. No one who had not carefully observed the narrowing of men's minds by specialities could believe to what a degree it goes. Instead of being open, as yours has always been, to the influences of literature, in the largest sense, as well as to the influences of the graphic arts and ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... and they were advancing rapidly toward the pass. They saw by the flashes of lightning that the cliffs were rising and the river narrowing. ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... all other facts, some chance of a spring being discovered in the lowest part of the outcrop. A favourable condition for the existence of a large and permanent fountain, is where a porous stratum spreads over a broad area at a high level, and is prolonged, by a gradually narrowing course, to an outlet at a lower one. The broad upper part of the stratum catches plenty of water during the wet season, which sinks into the depths as into a reservoir, and oozes out in a regular stream at its lower outlet. A fissured rock makes a still ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... back to the time when Dudley Venner was born,—she being then a middle-aged woman. The heir and hope of a family which had been narrowing down as if doomed to extinction, he had been surrounded with every care and trained by the best education he could have in New England. He had left college, and was studying the profession which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... Baronet. It was a family with a proud lineage, wealth, and culture to its credit. Rachel had an inherited sense of superiority. Too much staying between the White Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean is narrowing to the mental scope. The West to her was but a wilderness whereto the best things of life never found their way. She took everything in Massachusetts as hers by due right, much more did it seem that Kansas should give its best to her; and withal she was ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... reached their old positions about the middle of the floating timbers. It was a wild picture that confronted them as they now took the time to look around them. The river was narrowing somewhat again and of course the current became considerably swifter on this account, so that the bridge raft rocked violently back and forth, sometimes even threatening them with a fresh disaster in the shape of a jam, and ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... was so. From all points there rode in on the outfit from Diamond X an ever narrowing circle of horsemen, many of whom carried lances ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... woman's eyelashes. In England women of the leisure class showed during the years of the sports craze a tendency to an unfeminine length of limb, often attaining or surpassing the male average. But Nature avenged herself by narrowing the pelvis and weakening the reproductive organs. Free trade drove the old sturdy yeoman into the towns and diminished the stature and muscular power of their descendants, but ten months of trench life and Nature laughed at the weak spot in civilization. ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... at her, slim and graceful in her white muslin gown, her fair hair brushed back from her forehead with a slight wave, but drooping low over her ears, a delicate setting for her piquant face. The dark brown eyes, narrowing a little towards the lids, met his with frank kindliness, her mouth quivered a little as though with the desire to break away into a laugh. The slight duskiness of her cheeks—she had lived for three years in ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... out, fast. If you don't get away and polish up you'll never do a thing worth while. You'll be another what's-his-name—Ase Tidditt; that's what you'll be. I can see it coming on. You're ossifying; you're narrowing; you're—" ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... intention, but with funds scarcely adequate to a permanent settlement in the colony; it will still further discourage the existing agriculturist and grazier, by lessening the demand of the government for their produce; and it will increase the general embarrassment, both by narrowing this channel of employment, which was supplied by the liberality of the government, and by curtailing the means of the colonists at large to provide labour for that part of the population, which will be thus turned loose on them twelvemonths ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... characteristic trait is everywhere aspiration—a sense of joy in elevation above the earthly, or a sense of depression because the earthly weighs him down. Then come eager glances of inquiry in every direction for the satisfaction of his aspirations, little by little narrowing down to the Catholic Church, wherein the dove of Mr. Curtis's image was finally to rest his foot for ever. And in all this he scarcely at all mentions a dread of the Divine wrath as a motive for his flight. It is not out of the city of destruction, but ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... shall wonder if Hallgerd cares about it: Yet she may kindle to it ere my heart quickens. I tell you, women, we have no duty here: Let us get gone to-night while there is time, And find new harbouring ere the laggard dawn, For death is making narrowing passages About this hushed ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... his favorite verses. But, in spite of all this, he was running down-hill; he knew it himself, and once he told Dr. Lavendar that this business of dying made a man narrow. "I th-think about it all the time," he complained. "Can't put my mind on anything else. It's damned narrowing." ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... long time he gazed on, then let the parted bushes spring back, and, crossing over to the other side of the fort, surveyed the vaster emptiness of the great gulf. The Isabels stood out heavily upon the narrowing long band of red in the west, which gleamed low between their black shapes, and the Capataz thought of Decoud alone there with the treasure. That man was the only one who cared whether he fell into the hands of the Monterists or not, the Capataz reflected bitterly. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... narrowing the column, allowed the squire and Janice to ride on and cross the bridge. On the other side of the stream a by-road joined the turnpike, and as Janice glanced along it, she gave a cry of surprise. "Look, dadda," she ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... king has a palace in the same street, in which he resides when he visits this pagoda. There is a pomegranate tree [429] above this first gate, the gate has a very lofty tower all covered with rows of men and women and hunting scenes and many other representations, and as the tower goes narrowing towards the top so the images diminish in size. Passing this first gate, you come at once into a large courtyard with another gate of the same sort as the first, except that it is rather smaller throughout; and passing this second gate, there is ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... unprepared. She was nerveless. It made Sally sick to watch her mother and to realise from the vacancy which so soon appeared upon her face that memory and a kind of futile pondering had robbed her brains of activity. With a bitter sense of grudge against life, a tightening of lips already thin, and a narrowing of eyes already discomfitingly merciless, Sally savagely told herself that she had to do everything alone. It was she who must save the situation. The arrogant grasp of this fact made a great impression upon her mind and her character. Henceforward she no longer dreamed about ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... realizing the nearness of death and struggling to hold it back, the other praying for time—two men went through the amazing process of trading their identities. From the beginning it was Conniston's fight. And Keith, looking at him, knew that in this last mighty effort to die game the Englishman was narrowing the slight margin of hours ahead of him. Keith had loved but one man, his father. In this fight he learned to love another, Conniston. And once he cried out bitterly that it was unfair, that Conniston should live and he ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... Grace's stories, and she also tried to do this, but she was not clever at it because Grace would suddenly stop and say, "Where was I, Maggie?" and then when Maggie was confused regard her suspiciously, narrowing her eyes into little thin points. The shopping was difficult because Grace would stand at Maggie's elbow and say: "Now, Maggie, this is your affair, isn't it? You decide what you want," and then when Maggie had decided, Grace simply, to show her power, would say: ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... studied me in the failing light, studied me with a sharp look of interrogation on his face. I had the feeling, as he did so, of something epochal in the air, as though the drama of life were narrowing up to its climactic last moment. Yet I felt helpless to direct the course of that drama. I nursed the impression that we stood at the parting of the ways, that we stood hesitating at the fork of two ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... short distance on the next day, Aug. 13, a loud roar was heard in the distance, and a course was laid for the river at the nearest point. The river at this point, about one mile above the falls, was 500 yards wide, narrowing to fifty yards a short distance below, where great clouds of spray floating in the air warned the weary travelers that their object had been attained. Quickly they proceeded to the scene, and a magnificent ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... been in vogue in the year 1851, Robert would have found a parallel before his eyes, in these birch-bark flounces arranged over a sustaining framework, in four successive falls, narrowing in circumference as they neared the top, where a knot of bast tied the arching timbers together. He was interested in the examination of these forest tent cloths, and found each roll composed of six or seven quadrangular bits of bark, about ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... everything was narrowing down so nicely, anyhow, he thought. There were only two real possibilities. Malone numbered ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the moral one, which his own father had not scrupled to repress in him. And he never perceived that his whole life was a steady retrogression of all his faculties, of his hopes, his joys—a species of gradual renunciation—and that the circle was slowly but inexorably narrowing ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... year 1776, when the American colonies formed themselves into an independent confederacy. The teaching assumed that the creation of the universe occurred about that date. What could be more absurd, more narrow and narrowing, more mischievously misleading as to the whole purport and significance of history? As if the laws, the representative institutions, the religious uses, the scientific methods, the moral ideas, which give to an American citizen his character ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... scale, it kills all capacity for higher and tranquil pleasures, strengthens incalculably the temptations to unscrupulous gain, disturbs the whole balance of character, and often even shortens life. With others the love of accumulation has a strange power of materialising, narrowing and hardening. Habits of meanness—sometimes taking curious and inconsistent forms, and applying only to particular things or departments of life—steal insensibly over them, and the love of money assumes something of the character of mania. ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... wound like a silvery serpent through the stretch of green, succulent grass, narrowing gorge and obtruding rock and boulder. Now and then the path led across the water, which was so shallow that it only plashed about the fetlocks of the horses. Captain Dawson, in his impetuosity, kept a few paces in front ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... fool. Or at least he may find there a centre of interest, otherwise lacking, round which other interests can group, and to which knowledge obtained in various class-subjects can attach itself, and so get for him a meaning and a use. And further, if we do not make the mistake of narrowing the range of choice, and allow, at any rate at first, a succession of interests, the very range and variety of these pursuits is an antidote against the tendency to early specialisation, encouraged by scholarship and entrance examinations, ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... and the king began to descend, deputed probably to spy out the land. Down he came in ever-narrowing turns, till he reached the appointed spot for the plunge, and, according to the immemorial custom of these birds, hung a while before he pounced with his head to the south and his great, spreading tail ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... little world of mousmes and grasshoppers: Chrysantheme in love with Yves; Yves with Chrysantheme; Oyouki with me; I with no one. We might even find here, ready to hand, the elements of a fratricidal drama, were we in any other country than Japan; but we are in Japan, and under the narrowing and dwarfing influence of the surroundings, which turn everything into ridicule, nothing will come of ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... the great masses of mountains into several chains merits particular consideration in reference to the height more or less considerable of the bottom of the enclosed basins, or longitudinal valleys. Geologists have hitherto directed more attention to the successive narrowing of these basins, their depth compared with the walls of rock that surround them, and the correspondence between the re-entering and the salient angles, than to the level of the bottom of the valleys. No precise measure has yet fixed the absolute ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... of one thing," said Speed, staring out over the sun-lit water with narrowing eyes. "I know that Mornac ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... joined, as you note, by Two frondent brother Avenues from this hand and from that, spreads out into Place Royale and Palace Forecourt; yonder is the Salle des Menus. Yonder an august Assembly sits regenerating France. Forecourt, Grand Court, Court of Marble, Court narrowing into Court you may discern next, or fancy: on the extreme verge of which that glass-dome, visibly glittering like a star of hope, is the—Oeil-de-Boeuf! Yonder, or nowhere in the world, is bread baked for us. But, O Mesdames, were not one thing good: That our cannons, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... drawing her towards him; "that is it! Now my fate is all narrowing down to a point. To come so near, to be almost in sight, and then lose all. I should never ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that no stone exists, but the urethra is obstructed or closed by pure coagulated blood. Perhaps there may have been a wound of the bladder, although no external haemorrhage has appeared, but the blood coagulating gradually in the bladder has occasioned an obstruction or narrowing of the urinary passage. Or possibly the blood from a renal haemorrhage has descended into the bladder and obstructs the urethra. Hence I say that the sound is useful in these cases where the urethra is obstructed by blood or gross ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... "But we have had narrowing majorities. What will the House do as to the Lords' amendments on the Bankruptcy Bill?" There was a Bill that had gone down from the House of Commons, but had not originated with the Government. It had, however, been fostered by ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... awake—here in the hiding-place of Diana! He often held consistories or received ambassadors under huge old chestnut-trees, or beneath the olives on the greensward by some gurgling spring. A view like that of a narrowing gorge, with a bridge arched boldly over it, awakens at once his artistic sense. Even the smallest details give him delight through something beautiful, or perfect, or characteristic in them—the blue fields of waving flax, the yellow gorge ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... bay, he saw, by pinching a small chunk out of the huge cone of the volcano. The bay was a watery wedge cutting into the mountain to a depth of about twelve hundred yards, a half-mile wide at the entrance, and narrowing down to a bare half hundred yards of narrow beach at ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... nodded Red Bill Summers, "and," he added, his keen eyes narrowing to slits he gazed straight ahead, "and thar, I reckon, is Jim Bell ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... the chain which bounds Mississippi Sound. The distance between these points is nearly three miles, but from Dauphin Island a bank of hard sand makes out under water both east and south, defining one side of the main ship channel, which closely skirts Mobile Point, and narrowing it to a little less than two thousand yards. Near the southeast point of this bank there rise two small islands, called Sand Islands, distant three miles from Mobile Point. The channel on the other side is bounded by a similar sand bank running seaward ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... to run in, gradually narrowing and decreasing in depth for eight miles, and to terminate in two salt-water creeks. The banks on both sides were impenetrably lined with mangroves, which effectually defied our attempts to land. Several creeks, communicating with the low inundated land behind the mangroves, joined the main ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... left the ground sloped downward through a narrowing perspective of house-fronts and roof cornices to faint white mist, in which one could see some cattle moving vaguely, and beyond which, if one knew that it was there, one might just discern a wide space of common land stretching ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... Beryl turned up the wick of the lantern, and with a small brush attached to a silver wire, finally succeeded in cauterizing and removing a portion of the poisonous growth that was rapidly narrowing the avenue of breath. The spasm of coughing that ensued was Nature's auxiliary effort, and temporarily relieved the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... shape for that note unconsciously, you will find that, as you sing up the scale, you change the shape of your mouth, lips, and tongue at every note, thrusting the lips and mouth further forward as if to whistle, narrowing the opening and closing up the back of your throat for ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... friend through narrowing eyes—he had small eyes, very blue and very bright, in which there usually abode a ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... sufficiently absurd one that dwellers in the chilly spiritual clime of Unitarianism can be cured of their faith in that icy creed by being subjected to the horrors of a polar winter. Far more clearly does the novel show the falling-off in his artistic conceptions and the narrowing process his opinions were undergoing. At the rate this latter was taking place it seems probable that had he lived to write another novel on a theme similar to this, his hero would have been compelled to abandon his belief in Presbyterianism, ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... because they fill with ink, which afterwards dries and produces a thicker layer of black sediment than those elsewhere. The variations of pressure upon the pen can be easily noticed by the alternate widening and narrowing of the band between these two furrows. The tracing appears knotty and uneven when made by an untrained hand, while it appears uniformly thin, and generally tremulous or in zigzags when made by ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... water, a long straight reach lay before him, and as he looked down it, it seemed as if the river came presently to an end; but in sooth there was a sharp turn to the east by which the water ran, but narrowing much; and this narrowing was made by the thrusting forth of the western bank into a sharp ness, which, from where Osberne now stood, showed a wide flank facing, as it seemed, the whole hurrying stream of the Flood. But the stream turned ere it smote the cliff, and striving for the narrow outgate ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... my soft-voiced handmaid bears out a large tin pan, and then the wholesome countryman, heaping the peck-measure, spreads his broad hands around its lower arc to confine the wild and frisky berries, and so they run nimbly along the narrowing channel until they tumble rustling down in a black cascade and tinkle on the resounding metal beneath.—I won't say that this rushing huckleberry hail-storm has not more music for me than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... half hour that remained was the hardest. Up over loose, broken stones that rolled beneath our feet, up over great slopes of rough rock, up across little fields of snow where we paused to celebrate the Fourth of July with a brief snowball fight, up along a narrowing ridge with a precipice on either hand, and so at last to the summit, 8600 feet ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... flowering island in the centre, looked not unlike a mirror on a dining table luxuriantly wreathed by garlands. The Belgian stared greedily. He did not see quite what Driscoll had seen, yet he saw enough to draw his brow to a narrowing fold of keenest interest. Jacqueline was seated on the raised edge of the basin, pensively dipping a hand into the water. Her plump wrist showed rosy, like coral, and glancing sideways now and again at a poor agitated prince striding up and ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... functions which, however he might believe in them, he felt were duties for other men and not for him. Even the care of his garden, "with its stoopings and fingerings in a few yards of space," he found "narrowing and poisoning," and took to long free walks and saunterings instead, without apology. "Causes" innumerable sought to enlist him as their "worker"—all got his smile and word of sympathy, but none entrapped him into service. The struggle against ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... formally courteous to her affianced husband, and should never slight him because he is pledged to her, nor unduly exalt him for the same reason. She should now remember that the broad world of her social interests is narrowing as they intensify, and she should not attempt in any way to break the bounds set for the engaged girl. She should not go alone with other young men to places of amusement or entertainment. She should maintain her dignity so carefully as ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... cracks in the icy mass, and the immense boulders that lay over its surface, obliged one or other, of them to make considerable detours. As they advanced, however, the distance between each two grew less, in consequence of the narrowing of the valley, until at length a space of only fifty yards separated one from the other. The game could not now pass them without affording a fine opportunity for all to have a shot; and with the expectation of soon obtaining one, they kept on ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... took time for reply, narrowing her eyes, as if in deep thought. She was quick to see the loophole of escape which the lawyer had shown her. Still ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... in the clinging billow's clasp, From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather, The British oak with rooted grasp Her slender handful holds together; With cliffs of white and bowers of green, And Ocean narrowing to caress her, And hills and threaded streams between;— Our little ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... it was too late to retreat, for our narrowing passage turned and we found ourselves in a wondrous place. I call it wondrous because of it we could see neither the beginning nor the end, nor the roof, nor aught else save the rock on which we walked, and the side or wall that our hands ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... Ground. This is a somewhat extensive ground lying about 4 1/2 miles WSW from Monhegan Island. The depths range from 22 to 45 fathoms. Its length is 4 or 5 miles, and its greatest breadth is 2 miles on the eastern portion, gradually narrowing westward to about 1 mile. The ground runs SE and NW. Pollock are found here in September and October. It is fished by hand lines, trawls and gill nets. Marks: Bring houses on New Harbor over the white cliff on Pemaquid 6 miles ...
— Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine • Walter H. Rich
... his voice. "There have been some strange reports circulating about the Myers case, and we are anxious to get at the truth of the business. It may strike you as a rather unsuitable introduction, but come nevertheless. The movement is always in need of new blood and fresh energies to keep it from narrowing its sphere of activity, and it is well that you should know us ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... well between the brush walls of the ever-narrowing stockade. A Calf, speed-strangled, slipped from the dust cloud and wandered aimlessly toward the galloping horsemen; Grasshead's pony swerved as the Calf sprawled in ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... feared or hated, had been seized by his orders in the capital and the provinces; and the old palace of Constantine was assigned as the place of their confinement. Some alterations in raising the walls, and narrowing the cells, had been ingeniously contrived to prevent their escape, and aggravate their misery; and the work was incessantly pressed by the daily visits of the tyrant. His guards watched at the gate, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... narrowing of the area over which a definite public opinion may be said to exist that at once creates the possibility and defines the limits of arbitrary control, so far as it is created or determined by ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... when I looked up, on either hand, A pale high chalk-cliff, reared aloft in white; A narrowing rent soon closed toward the land,— Toward the ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... the long peninsula between the York and the James, is only eight miles wide. In this broad and bold river, a ship of the line may ride in safety. Its southern banks are high, and, on the opposite shore, is Gloucester Point, a piece of land projecting deep into the river, and narrowing it, at that place, to the space of one mile. Both these posts were occupied by Lord Cornwallis. The communication between them was commanded by his batteries, and by some ships of war ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... blunt nose out into the plain considerably further than any Buck had yet passed. He turned the horse out, intending to ride around it, but a couple of minutes later jerked him to a standstill and sat motionless in the saddle, eyes narrowing with ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... panels have the look of frames, and are surrounded by oval garlands of the palest amethyst, topaz, sapphire, and turquoise which I could find, each garland being of only one kind of stone, a mere oval ring two feet wide at the sides and narrowing to an inch at the top and bottom, without designs. The galleries are five separate recesses in the outer walls under the roofs, two in the east facade, and one in the north, south, and west, hung with pavilions of purple, blue, rose ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... to be the island of Juan de Nova, in the narrowing between Madagascar and the coast ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... attentively, her eyes narrowing occasionally, her breath coming quick and sharp. There was a dead silence when Blue Bonnet finished, and then Annabel jumped up from her seat and took a few turns about the room. She was thinking something over, ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... and not separated from the Tunicha except by a drawing in or narrowing of the mountain mass, with no depression of the summit, is another part of the same range, which bears a separate name. It is known as the Lukachukai mountains. Here something of the range character is lost, and the uplift becomes a confused mass, a single great pile, with a maximum ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... does not know that country well, what is unusual to the country strikes the traveller at once. And so it is with the Cerdagne. For all the valleys of the Pyrenees except this one are built upon the same plan. They are deep gorges, narrowing in two places to gates or profound corridors, one of these places being near the crest and one near the plain; and down these valleys fall violent torrents, and in them there is only room for tiny villages or very little towns, squeezed in between the sheer surfaces of the ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc |
