"Shrinking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Laura, though blushing and shrinking the moment before was braced by his words and tone to attempt all he wished. She looked up in what she meant to be an indifferent manner, and made some observation in a careless tone—anything rather than let Philip think her silly. After what he had said, was she not bound more than ever ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... them are given the best pieces of the meat. The little girl is made to feel that she has come into a world that has no welcome for her and her whole life seems to be an apology. You read it in the face of every Indian girl or woman you meet, from the shrinking pathetic little figure in the camp to the bent old crone, whose upturned face with its sadly acceptive look gives you the flicker ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... her was chastened by sound sense and blended with a quick sagacity; but her shrinking sensitiveness, too keen to be quite healthy, and an extreme of self-forgetfulness, amounting possibly to a defect in one sojourning amid this world's diverse dispositions and experiences, rendered her, on the whole, less balanced ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Along the shrinking river, Where the salmon-nets hang brown, Piles the driftwood of the freshets, And the naked logs move down To the clanking chains and shrieking saws of ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... from pyorrhea, and the row of upper teeth which he now displayed in a genial grin looked like a garden-rake, due to his shrinking gums. ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... upon them in all the light of youth; of beauty, and of conscious rectitude in the cause for which she came, the three remained fixed as statues, Jacob and Rebecca in shrinking attitudes, their eyes set fearfully upon her, their faces gathering paleness as they gazed; whilst Salmon flushed to the brow, his eyes distended and his mouth ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... his arms shrinking. Dick's first thought was connected with Maisie, and it hurt him as white-hot ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... an indecent song, Barney's drab clothes were immediately missing from the group. His taste was for the society of gentlemen, of whom, with the reader's permission, there was no lack in our five steerages and second cabin; and he avoided the rough and positive with a girlish shrinking. Mackay, partly from his superior powers of mind, which rendered him incomprehensible, partly from his extreme opinions, was especially distasteful to the Irishman. I have seen him slink off, with backward ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fellows in livery to announce my visitors, I should not feel the hundredth part of the sense of superiority, the contemptuous triumph, the cool consciousness of the tyranny of gold, which I feel when I see my shrinking supplicants sitting down among my dusty boxes and everlasting cobwebs. I shall not suffer a grain of dust to be cleared away. It is my pride—it is my power—it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... lips were, he thought, all very well, but a man grew tired of them in time, unless there was something to keep up the charm. But poor little Dora had no resources beyond her smiles and tears. She sat shrinking and timid, half frightened at the bright lady who knew so much and told it so well; feeling her heart cold with its first dread that Ronald was not pleased with her. Her eyes wandered to the far-off hills. Ah! Could it be that ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... the people. Men were ashamed to doubt where women trusted, or to murmur where they submitted, or to do little where they did so much. If during the war, home life had gone on as usual; women engrossed in their domestic or social cares; shrinking from public questions; deferring to what their husbands or brothers told them, or seeking to amuse themselves with social pleasures and striving to forget the painful strife in frivolous caprices, it would have had a fearful effect ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... their frantic incoherence with one another. But there is a great multitude who know me through my writings and who do not know me otherwise, and I cannot bear that one of them should be left in doubt or hazard of doubt through my poorly shrinking from taking the unusual means to which I now resort of circulating the truth. I most solemnly declare then—and this I do both in my own name and my wife's name—that all lately whispered rumors ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... carved a huge red piece from the ribs, she could not help shrinking back from it, so that he said with some affront, "You need not be queasy, madam, it was cut from a home-fed bullock, only killed three days since, and as prime a beast as ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... went out and took stations near each other. Dick had more of a business turn than Henry, and less shrinking from publicity, so that his earnings were greater. But he had undertaken to pay the entire expenses of the room, and needed to earn more. Sometimes, when two customers presented themselves at the same time, he was able to direct one to his friend. So at the end of the week both boys found ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... day, Desmond's last day at home, for he was due in London by the evening, was gloomy and embarrassed for all concerned. Elizabeth, pre-occupied and shrinking from her own thoughts, could not imagine what had happened. She had put off all her engagements for the day, that she might help in any last arrangements that might have ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him was more like 'thought-reading,' for neither he himself nor any one else could have explained the steps of reasoning by which he reached his conclusion. It was probably a mere guess, which happened to be right, and was founded on a little anxious shrinking of the Mother Superior's head and shoulders when she crossed the room and went to the window, as if she had something to hide. Giovanni saw it, and then his eyes met Pieri's for a moment, and each was ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... as he was, on catching a glimpse of his own image reflected in the huge mirror glittering under the numerous lights, in the heart of this strange salon and surrounded by half-clad dancing girls. Then, too, everybody was looking at him, quizzing him, shrinking from him through timidity or running after him through interest. The new Minister of State! The chief of all the personnel of prefects, under-prefects, and secretaries-general represented there, lolling on these velvet divans in this ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... more gentlemanly appearance, so did they become more useless, and it may therefore be easily imagined that his bile was raised by this parade and display in a lad, who was very shortly to be, and ought three weeks before to have been, shrinking from his frown. Nevertheless, Sawbridge was a good-hearted man, although a little envious of luxury, which he could not pretend ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... plain, awkward, shrinking girl who was to be his bride the handsome school-boy exclaimed in disgust, "You are surely not going to marry me to that dowdy!" But there was no escape; the demands of "honour" must be satisfied. The ceremony was quickly performed; and within an hour of first setting eyes on each other, ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... maintenance, of which the scholars could pay him but scant fees, seeing that it was always a chance whether their parents were dead of the Ague, or Drowned. Yet there was a tavern in the village, where these poor, shrinking, feverish creatures met and drank and smoked, and sang their songs, contriving now and again to smuggle a few kegs of spirits from Holland, and baffle the riding-officers in a scamper through the fens. They were a simple folk, fond ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Miss Philly said; "you pick some more seeds for me, and I'll—just look at it." She touched the stained old book with shrinking fingertips; the moldering leather cover and the odor of soiled and thumb-marked leaves offended her. The first page was folded over, and when she spread it out, the yellowing paper cracked along its ancient creases; it was a map, with the signs of the ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... lost—for the morsel, now it was within his grasp, was one to linger over and dwell on—Sir George, his own eyes shining with eagerness, walked his horse forward, his gaze greedily seeking the flutter of her kerchief or the welcome of her hand. Would she be at the meeting of the roads—shrinking aside behind the bend, her eyes laughing to greet him? No, he saw as he drew nearer that she was not there. Then he knew where she would be; she would be waiting for him on the foot-bridge in the lane, fifty yards from the high-road, yet within sight ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... Shrinking further behind the cedars he proposed to reconnoitre a little before making himself known. He observed that she was attired in a dark, close-fitting costume suitable for rambling among the hills. At first he thought that she was pretty, and then that she was ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... swollen and blackened tongue. I presume that no member of the party then present had been unaccustomed to death-bed horrors; but so hideous beyond conception was the appearance of M. Valdemar at this moment, that there was a general shrinking back from the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was ready, the sheriff, carrying his white wand of office, and attended by some of the commissioners, went for Mary. She was at her devotions, and she asked a little delay that she might conclude them: perhaps the shrinking spirit clung at the last moment to life, and wished to linger a few minutes longer before taking the final farewell. The request was granted. In a short time Mary signified that she was ready, and they began to move ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... time went on he was more and more aware that there was in him a peculiar shrinking from going back, an almost apprehension. He knew more of the mind than he had before, and he knew that not physical hardship, but mental stress, caused such lapses as his. But what mental stress had been great enough for such ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... space. Once or twice he flung a furtive glance about him. His stripped and naked soul was enduring a foretaste of the Judgment Day. The whip of scorn with which the lawyer lashed him cut into his shrinking sensibilities, and left him a welter of raw and livid wales. Good God! why had he not known it would be like this? He was paying for his treachery and usury, and it was being burnt into him that as the years passed he must continue to pay in self-contempt and the distrust ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... and Randolph felt him shrinking. He fell silent; he understood. Pain sometimes took its own time to travel, and reached its goal by a slow, circuitous route. He thought suddenly of his bullfight in Seville, twenty-five years before. He had sat out his six bulls with entire composure; yet, back in ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... blood-stains on his face, and she felt the touch of the clammy hands which she had folded upon his breast. She could not go to school again, for in her morbid state of mind to study was impossible, and so she staid at home, brooding over the past and shrinking from the future, with no companionship except that of Rover, who seemed so fully to understand and sympathize with her. Oftentimes when her work for the day was done, and she sat down listlessly upon a little seat beneath the apple tree which grew in the yard, ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... contrast of the past and the present, a feeling of abhorrence for the act to which she was committed possessed her mind. She had all along shrunk from it, as any sensitive woman might from a marriage without love, but there had been nothing in that shrinking to compare in intensity with this uncontrollable aversion which now seized upon her to the idea of holding a wife's relation to the man by her side. It had all at once come oyer her that she could not do it. Nevertheless she was a sensible and rational woman as ...
— At Pinney's Ranch - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... his chair, wrapped in his blanket, forlorn, haggard from disease, sullen, selfish in expression, and shrinking from her notice as she passed him. To her morning salutation, he would return only a cold recognition. He seemed to be bristling with defenses against encroachment. And thus it remained till one day a small gift penetrated to the ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... me," Ivan cried, shrinking away from her; "but there is with you. Don't! don't make such faces—they frighten me," and turning round, he ran to the place where he had made his descent and tried ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... through her brain, when suddenly a door opened behind her. It was an attendant with some implements for tightening or relaxing bolts. The bare-armed ruffian at this moment raised his arm to seize hers. Shrinking from the pollution of his accursed touch, Paulina turned hastily round, darted through the open door, and fled, like a dove pursued by vultures, along the passages which stretched before her. Already she felt their ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... find the way thither. They were as heartless toward beasts as toward men. They begrudged the birds what they ate, and therefore extirpated them.[155] They behaved impiously toward one another, too, not shrinking back from murder to gain possession of more gold. If they observed that a man owned great riches, two of them would conspire against him. They would beguile him to the vicinity of ruins, and while the one kept him on the spot by pleasant converse, the ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... all their misery, happy souls! Happy in faith and love and fortitude:— For you, one thought of England dear controls All shrinking of the flesh at death so rude! Though long at rest in that far Arctic grave, True sailor hero hearts, van of our ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... however, in the facial expression and in a certain muscular posture which can best be described as a "defiant" attitude. Another good example is the submissive attitude which often accompanies the emotion of fear. It is manifest in shrinking, avoiding movements, sometimes of the whole body, but more often of the eyes or ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... to be held a thing impossible that the Christian Religion, instead of shrinking into itself, (!) may again embrace the thoughts of men upon the earth?" (that is to say, "embrace the thoughts" of—Mr. Jowett!)—"Or is it true that since the Reformation 'all intellect has gone the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... heat, and then it was very quiet; the leaves were hanging from the trees as if asleep. Nothing moved except the lady-birds and the nettles and a few withered leaves that lay on the grass and rolled themselves up with sudden little jerks as if they were shrinking from the sunbeams. ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... with all the deftness in the world the broadest and subtlest themes, and the doodle standing for a patriotism of the noblest. Those who came into close connection with him say that he grew morbidly fastidious, shrinking from coarse contacts and was happy at last only in a delicate environment. When in health, nevertheless, he was a Yankee of the truest, though sublimated by his genius and superb accomplishments. I know a little inn far away among the hills on whose porch half concealed ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... suppose I was wrong in shrinking from his confidence. I am always wrong. It seems to me that the more I try to do right, the more mischief ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... people binds us to suffer a foreign Power to set one of its Princes on the throne of Charles V. * * * This event will not come to pass, of that we are quite certain. * * * Should it prove otherwise we shall know how to fulfil our duty without shrinking and without weakness"—this utterance was itself an official international threat, with the hand on the sword hilt. The phrase, La Prusse cane (Prussia climbs down), served in the press to illustrate the range of the parliamentary proceedings of July 6 and 7; which, in my feeling, rendered all ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... days since, as I was driving in the Bois de Boulogne with a friend, a slender, sweet young girl was pointed out to me. She was walking beside her mother, and there was a loving, tender look in her blue eyes, a shrinking modesty in her deportment, which interested me at the first glance. She was apparently about fifteen. I observed to the friend who pointed her out to me that she was fair, modest, and pretty. "Yes," he replied, "and she is the heroine ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... is no wedding-day near for us. The obstacles are rising in front of him and in front of me. The next misfortune is very near us. You will see! you will see!" She shivered as she said those words; and, shrinking away from me, huddled herself up in ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... temperature are not always the cause of failure. Sir W. Fairbairn adds: "The danger arising from broken tires does not, according to my opinion, arise so much from changes of temperature as from the practice of heating them to a dull red heat, and shrinking them on to the rim of the wheels. This, I believe, is the general practice, and the unequal, and in some cases, the severe strains to which they are subject, has a direct tendency to ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... and swift, as it could not help being with such a mass of combustibles,—loose straw from the mattress, dry old furniture, and old warped floors which had been parching and shrinking for a score or two of years. The whole house was, in the common language of the newspaper reports, "a perfect tinder-box," and would probably be a heap of ashes in half an hour. And there was this unfortunate deserted sick man lying between life and death, beyond ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... since it unites, her to the Saint of Saints, adding, that the reason why it does not produce this result, is, that the soul after having given herself to our Lord, in return for His having given Himself to her, too soon revokes the offering in practice, nature shrinking from the total renunciation of self which the divine Sanctifier requires as a preliminary to His action. It was not so, her son remarks, with the holy Mother. Bringing to the heavenly Banquet a disengaged heart, an almost annihilated will, and an entire abandonment to the Spirit ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... before the departure of Mr. Norton and Mr. Lansdowne, the family met, as on many previous occasions, in the Madonna room. In itself, the apartment was as cheerful and attractive as ever, but each one present felt a sense of vacancy, a shrinking of the heart. The sunny changeful glow of one bright face was no longer there, and the shadows of approaching separation cast a gloom over ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... be covered over during the day in order to prevent the wood shrinking; if this had not been done, very little transport could have been brought out of the valley at the end of the Brigade's tour ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... six weeks ago, she had charged me to burn all that she had written to me, and as yet I had not done so, shrinking from the sharp unreasonable pain with which we bury the beloved dead. But the time of my mourning was accomplished. I tore the paper into fragments and dropped them into ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... Kate," said her mother, shrinking back from her daughter's eyes, as if she had received a blow. "I want you to have the pleasure ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... to the hand-grip of her seat, her mind filled with a tangle of impressions, with a shrinking from the sepulchral depths below them, and an effort to recall in detail that vision of ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... rests upon a base and ignoble fraud, and principally that our pity is appealed to by the coarse sympathy with physical pain: the rags that covered the sores, the tainted corruption of the ulcers, are brought to bear, not so much on the mind as on the nerves; and when the hero is represented as shrinking with corporeal agony—the blood oozing from his foot, the livid sweat rolling down the brow—we sicken and turn away from the spectacle; we have no longer that pleasure in our own pain which ought to be the characteristic of true tragedy. It is idle to vindicate this error by any dissimilarity ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... trembling very much. And Val, in his honourable, his refined, shrinking nature, would have given his life's other half not to have had the tale ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the divine spirit with less than human frailty; but fiends have since defaced the noble work with more than human trials. That fatal night, when the fierce Huguenots fired his castle, and buried both his wife and infant in the blazing ruin; that night of horrors has to his shocked and shrinking fancy still been ever present; there still it broods—settled, perpetual and alone! Ah! Rosabelle! the petulancies of misfortune claim our pity, not resentment. My dear uncle is a recluse, but not a misanthrope; he rejects the society of mankind, yet is he ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... downcast eyes and shrinking silence. I gave him both. There could be no better answer for a speech so personal ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... she would have been perfectly clear about it, but she knew it need not have done so. Would her vanity have been gratified? Decidedly not—admiration of her face was so distasteful to her proud shrinking bashfulness, that she felt it like an insult when reported to her, and could almost have wished not to be so handsome, if it had not been more agreeable to an artist-like eye to see a tolerable physiognomy in the glass, when obliged to look there, ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... had been supplemented full five minutes by the voice of Lieutenant George Calvert's servant, before that young officer struggled from his bed. His head was splitting, his tongue and lips were dry and feverish, his bloodshot eyes were shrinking from the insufferable light of the day, his mind a confused medley of the past night and the present morning, of cards and wild revelry, and the vision of a reproachfully trim orderly standing at his door with reports ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... were green now. All the snow had melted off them, drip, drip, the falling drops of water making tiny wells in the snow under the trees. And the snow under the trees was melting too. Much had gone, and now there were only patches of snow in the forest—like scraps of a big white blanket, shrinking every day. ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... with a cowardly shrinking from confession, not so much on her own account as for old Mrs. Bray. There was the majolica pickle-dish, the gilt, beflowered lemonade-glass, Abbie Carter's cracker-jar, certain of the fragile souvenir pin-trays stacked in a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... convincing the parents as to the advantages of the operation was merely a demand for the "right to knowledge," which is never overlooked with impunity. Reluctance to permit operation on a young child, and the natural shrinking of a parent at seeing a child under the surgeon's knife, require the teacher or school physician or nurse to answer fully the usual questions of the hesitant mother ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... midst of this gathering she thrust her way. And, in a moment, her worst suspicions were realized. Her boy, Snake Foot, was bound to the tree-trunk. Bared to the waist, cowering but silent, he was shrinking under the cruel blows of the quirt. Nicol, his dark eyes blazing with a merciless fury, was flinging every ounce of his strength into each blow of the terrible weapon in his hand. Keeko's horrified eyes missed nothing. She saw that Little ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... toward them. It was very beautiful, and in its hand it carried a great bunch of shining bubbles, fastened to a stick by parti-colored ribbons, just as Teddy had seen Italians carrying balloons, only these bubble-balloons were growing and shrinking and changing every moment, just as ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... figured on herself as an instrument in furthering the hope to the point of actual realisation. What could be more incongruous, more theatric,—yes, more bizarre, than her attitude at this moment? It seemed impossible that this shrinking, inert heap at her side was a living thing; a woman who had slain a fellow creature, and that creature the man who had been her husband for six years. It seemed utterly beyond sense or reason that she should ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... quietly, but evidently shrinking from a threat nearly as fearful, and far more daring than his own. "You know I have nothin' to do except my duty. Yez are goin' aginst the cause, an' I must report yez; afther whatever happens, won't come from me, nor from any one here. It is from thim that's in higher quarters you'll ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... before she came with the next course. Then she put the tray on the table, and looking at me, then looking away, shrinking, she said: ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... splendid face was shadowed by deep and bitter grief, borne, it is true, with pride and fortitude; but it was easy to see its throbbing pulsations through all the forced calmness of the surface. Her aunt, of a weaker nature, sobbed loudly in the fullness of her grief; and the children, shrinking instinctively in the chilling atmosphere of a great calamity, clung, trembling and half-terrified, the eldest especially, to their mother. I did not insult them with phrases of condolence, but turned the conversation, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... seest thou thy wide wounds bleed? What of shrinking didst thou heed In the one-foot sling of gold? What scratch here dost thou behold? And in e'en such wise as this Many an axe-breaker there is Strong of tongue and weak of hand: Tried thou wert, ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... handful of men gathered round the helpless girl in her prison, bringing the stake in all its horror before the eyes of the judges as before her own. No other thing could have been suggested by that piteous prayer. The stake, the scaffold, the fire—and the shrinking figure all maidenly, helpless, exposed to every evil gaze, must have showed themselves at least for a moment against that dark background of prison wall. It was enough that it should be long—to hide her as much as was possible from ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... noticed that the female creature to whom they had grown so accustomed appeared little now, a shrinking vision that every day shortened its wanderings; that it walked differently, that it seemed more bent. But the sea elephants knew nothing of Loneliness or its works, nor did they notice, one morning, that though the sun was shining the figure did ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... ran to her father, and kissed him, and then shook hands with Marcus. He observed a shrinking in her touch. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Tennessee Coal and Iron properties, the percentage was a little under 58 per cent. In spite of the acquisition of these properties, the following year, 1907, the total percentage shrank slightly, and this shrinking has continued until in 1910 the total percentage of the Steel Corporation is but a little over 54 per cent, and the percentage by all other steel manufacturers but a fraction less than 46 per cent. Of the 54 310 per cent ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... to me that Nasmyth made that journey," she went on. "I wanted to learn everything that could be known—instead of shrinking from it. You see, I had a great faith in ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... unlucky words, he felt a slight shiver, followed by a curious shrinking sensation all over him. It was odd, too, but the arm-chair in which he sat seemed to have grown so much bigger all at once. He felt a passing surprise, but concluded it must be fancy, and went on as comfortably ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... would suggest itself with appalling force that that time might be now. The reflection suggested by one of our company that it would be a glorious death, for one thus perishing would be sure of an imperishable name, however pleasing in romantic speculation, had no great power to dispel the shrinking fear produced by the vivid thought of the possibility when on the top of the tower.... The campanile is not the only leaning tower in Pisa. We observed that several varied from the perpendicular, and the sides of many of the buildings, even parts of the cathedral and the baptistery, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... guest, The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest; Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies, 45 And tires their echoes with unvaried cries. Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all, And the long grass o'ertops the mould'ring wall; And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand, Far, far away, thy children leave ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... Italian, Jeromio, rolled at his feet. There it lay, in all the hideous deformity of sudden and violent death! the severed throat, thickened with gouts of blood! the dimmed spectral eyes starting from their sockets! the lips shrinking from the teeth of glaring whiteness—there it lay, looking up, as it were, into the face of the base but horrified associate. His utterance was impeded, and a thick mist came over him, as he sank into the old ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... stared. At last he understood the girl, and as he thought of her shrinking aloofness standing guard over her eager longing for friends—for affection, something hot and wet blurred his eyes. He was scarcely conscious that the man, who had taken to himself the name with which he had become hatefully familiar ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... these things, she could not be alone in the sleep-time. She had not thought of this in the days when she looked forward to a home with her Gonzales. To be near him was everything; but that was all dead and done for; and now—it was at this point that, shrinking, she suddenly threw off all restraining thoughts. With abandon of the mind came a recklessness of body, which gave her, all at once, a voluptuousness more in keeping with the typical maid of Andalusia. It got into the eyes and senses of Jean Jacques, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was as sweet and suave as ever, but I found myself creeping away from her and even shrinking from ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Seruice, nor your Loues, Who finde in my Exile, the want of Breeding; The certainty of this heard life, aye hopelesse To haue the courtesie your Cradle promis'd, But to be still hot Summers Tanlings, and The shrinking Slaues of Winter ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the buckle loosen, And no eye look down to see, When he rode to blast with the lightning The shrinking eyes of Lee? Did it fall, unfelt and unheeded, When that fight of despair was won, And Clinton, worn and discouraged, Crept away at the set ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... round in terror, as Lomaque spoke his last words—looked round, and saw her husband recoil before the signature on the arrest order, as if the guillotine itself had suddenly arisen before him. Her brother felt her shrinking back in his arms, and trembled for the preservation of her self-control if the terror and suspense of the ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... for me to go to the lockup?" asked Herbert, shrinking, with natural repugnance, from entering the temporary house of tramps and ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... at the end of the line, shrinking farther and farther, fled in their terror, climbing trees and high places, with loud chatter. Wandering far, sleeping ever in tree tops, in the far-away Summerland, they are sometimes seen of far-walkers, long of tail and long handed, like ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... moods, and conflicting purposes, having almost as many public poses as he has costumes, and a strong desire to play as many varied roles as possible on the stage of the world. Like Bottom in the Midsummer Night's Dream, he would play all parts from the "roaring lion" to the shrinking Thisbe. ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... point of shrinking into himself, as was his wont if any personal topic of conversation came up, when it flashed into his mind that here was an opportunity. If he did not take it, so easy a one might not occur again. He braced himself ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... are Alpine plants so anxious to be seen of men and angels? Why do they flaunt their golden glories so openly before the world, instead of shrinking in modest reserve beneath their own green leaves, like the Puritan primrose and the retiring violet? The answer is, Because of the extreme rarity of the mountain air. It's the barometer that does it. At first sight, I will readily admit, this explanation seems as fanciful as ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... child received a savage blow from the woman's hard hand full in the face without shrinking. It was Madge who winced. Tears rose to her eyes. She put her arms about the child and tried ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... forget Our wonted courage? Hither, O my friend! And, fighting at my side, ward off the shame That must be ours, should Hector seize the fleet. To whom the valiant Diomede replied. 385 I will be firm; trust me thou shalt not find Me shrinking; yet small fruit of our attempts Shall follow, for the Thunderer, not to us, But to the Trojan, gives the glorious day. The Hero spake, and from his chariot cast 390 Thymbraeus to the ground pierced through the pap, While by Ulysses' hand ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... knowledge of the extremity of revolt created by the second. There is nothing, I suppose, more acutely painful than the sense of being compelled to accept demonstrations of affection to which one cannot in the same way respond. I believe that this shrinking from expressions which seem unnatural, is rightly intensified a hundredfold when the sense of wrongness or "unnaturalness" is due not to the individual ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... that the mountain people have been passed by, until shrinking farther and farther into the seclusion of their hills and ravines, and living unto themselves, they have lost the sturdy qualities ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... of previous service, a prison term means ruin. If at the end of his term he is reformed, his reformation is of no value in obtaining employment. Prison sentences did not have this effect a hundred years ago, but times have changed. Every released convict is a shrinking coward, fearful that each person he meets knows his record. The new, plain suit of clothes he is given upon leaving prison is worn only until he can find a secondhand clothing store where it may be exchanged for something less good, but clothed in which he will have a trifle less ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... the rider noted his nervous glance, and his shrinking, dreading manner. Harlan's eyes gleamed with suspicion, and in a flash he was off the black and standing ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... bank upon which we were, a volley burst upon them before which they wavered and swerved backward a few paces, as here and there a man reeled and staggered or sank to the earth. There was no panic—not a back turned—only that instinctive shrinking which Life sometimes feels when Death unexpectedly thrusts out his ghastly face through the smoke of battle. A color-bearer sprang forward with the battle-flag. He halted beside me and rested the ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... old men, women, and children. All were taken prisoners, and the cabins were fired: but how great was their amazement, upon coming to the larger, handsomer wigwam of Towandahoc, which they concluded from its appearance to belong to a sachem, to see there, shrinking back with terror, a fair young girl of their own blood! Few words could she speak in English, and but little could she understand of that tongue which for ten years she had not heard spoken, except by herself in prayer; she had even forgotten her own former name. Great was the excitement when ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... Heaven's sake be careful!" cried Zaidie, shrinking up beside him as the huge, hideous head, with its saucer eyes and enormous beak-like jaws wide open, came towards them. "And look! there are more coming. Can't we go up and get ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... shut; but Hunt-Goring's were looking over her head, and a sudden gleam of malicious humour shone in them. He turned them upon the white, shrinking face of the girl who stood rigid but unresisting within the circle of his arm. And then very suddenly he bent and kissed ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... at the table, he might have already forgotten Drew. But the Kentuckian, pausing outside the door to examine the hat cord once more, knew that he would never forget. No, there were no medals worn in the ragged, thin lines of the shrinking Confederate Army. But his birthday gift—Drew's fist closed about the cord jealously—that was something ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... the house will suspect your bonfire, until the heap of charcoal and ashes is found. Dampness and decay, unsavory odors and impure air, chilly bedrooms and cold floors, will be unknown. The ears in the walls will be stopped, there will be no settlement from shrinking timbers, no jelly-like trembling of the whole fabric when the master puts his foot down. Finally, the dear old house will be just as sound and just as lovely when the future John brings home his bride as when his grandsire built it. ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... with their passing faded away all memory of the young minister. Later there came to me, as I suppose there comes to every young girl, the impulse to write, and when some early efforts of mine were judged worthy to be published, I was confronted for the first time with the question of a signature. Shrinking from seeing my own name in print, by some witchery of memory the words 'Jenny June' suddenly occurred to me, and that, as you know, has been my name ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... hero! One whose example I might well follow. He has had the courage at last to take the step from which I am still shrinking. Why should I fear that my welcome home would be less full of love and ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... is no way of keeping apples quite so good and practicable as packing in light barrels and storing in cool cellars; the barrel forms a room within a room, and prevents circulation of air and consequent drying and shrinking of the fruit, and also lessens the changes of temperature, and besides more fruit can be packed and stored in a given space than in any other way. The poorest of all ways is the large open bin, and the objections are: too much fruit in contact; too much weight upon the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... now, for other Gods are shrinking; Pomona pineth, Fruitlesse her tree; Fair Phoebus shineth Onely on mee. Conceit doth make me smile whilst I am thinking,... All other Gods of power bereven, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... hour later he was rowed ashore, with a good Havana cigar between his teeth and three good English sovereigns in his pocket. As he made his way up to his hotel he could feel some inner part of him still struggling and shrinking back from the enticing avenue of activity which his new knowledge was opening ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... passionately, and shrinking off; "we can't live, if the little brown house goes. Oh, Mamsie! Mamsie!" and she sobbed as if her heart would break, and covered her ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... on Broadway, one will frequently see, in some shabbily dressed individual, who, with his hat drawn down close over his eyes, is evidently shrinking from the possibility of being recognized, the man who but a few weeks ago was one of the wealthiest in the city. Then he was surrounded with splendor. Now he hardly knows where to get bread for his family. Then he lived in an elegant mansion. Now one ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... it is not the expression of a sinless heart, timidly retiring within the shrine of its own purity; it is the shrinking of a conscience that has something to conceal. Little as we know about the evils of the world, we have heard enough of Alcibiades, to be aware that Hipparete has much need to seek the protection of ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... what you're cackling so for!" he exclaimed, his shrill accents full of contempt. "Actin' like a passel of hens! There's a man shot, ain't they? Somebody shot him, didn't they? He"—and Abijah pointed a knotted, skinny, hard old finger at the shrinking Solomon—"he shot him, didn't he? Ser'us business, I call it. Guess the grand jury's got suthin' to say to it, hain't they? Cat? Cat's foot, I say. Likely story, likely story. Don't believe ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... civilization of the Indians in the Spanish American colonies, they still continued after the Conquest to remain on the ground, and to mingle in the same communities, with the white men; in this forming an obvious contrast to the condition of our own aborigines, who, shrinking from the contact of civilization, have withdrawn, as the latter has advanced, deeper and deeper into the heart of the wilderness. But the South American Indian was qualified by his previous institutions for a more refined legislation than could be adapted to the wild hunters of the forest; and, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... rest? Wherefore, oh! wherefore do I shrink in miserable weakness from—what? Is it from reviving, from calling up again into fierce and insufferable light the images and features of a long-buried happiness? That would be a natural shrinking and a reasonable weakness. But how escape from reviving, whether I give it utterance or not, that which is for ever vividly before me? What need to call into artificial light that which, whether sleeping or waking, by night or by day, for eight-and-thirty years ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Lily heard these words she uttered a little cry, and, letting fall the hand of Umslopogaas, clasped mine, shrinking up against me. ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... started back from the iron in sudden rousing from his brooding silence, fear and hate convulsing his snarling face, shrinking back against the timber of the hitching rack as far as he could withdraw, where he stood with shoulders hunched about his neck, savage as a chained wolf. He began to writhe and kick as Morgan laid hold of his neck to hold him steady for the cruel ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... shot put out the lamp over the musicians' stand. The assembled guests shrieked, a frantic, shrinking quiver ran through the crowd like the huddling of frightened ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... windy sunset lay spread over the white valley, and the freshening gusts drove the powdery snow before them, and sent little stabs of pain through John's shrinking body. Yet how glad he was to find himself again between those familiar hedges, to see the church-tower in front of him, the long hill to his right! His heart swelled at once with longing and satisfaction. During his Frampton job, and in the infirmary, he had suffered much, ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... freakish reversion to the prankishness of a growing boy, Graham pointed his finger at Ruth, who instantly screamed. The girls looking on, laughed, and there was some excuse for their amusement. The spectacle of the sensible Ruth, shrinking and shrieking over nothing more alarming than an agitated forefinger, was ridiculous enough to be funny. Graham, encouraged by the laughter, took a step toward his sister who instantly burst into ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith |
