"Narrowing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... letter, with all his might, to shame and to argue the Corinthian Christians out of their wrangling. This great text is one of the considerations which he adduces with that purpose. In effect he says, 'To pin your faith to any one teacher is a wilful narrowing of the sources of your blessing and your wisdom. You say you are Paul's men. Has Apollos got nothing that he could teach you? and may you not get any good out of brave brother Cephas? Take them all; they were all meant for your good. Let no ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... be compared with the positive blessings of Christianity. How many, especially among the young, has this one mistaken phrase driven forever away from the kingdom of God? Instead of making Christ attractive, it makes Him out a taskmaster, narrowing life by petty restrictions, calling for self-denial where none is necessary, making misery a virtue under the plea that it is the yoke of Christ, and happiness criminal because it now and then evades it. According ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... however, the whole face of the country was thickly- wooded, cocoa-nuts and bananas being conspicuously abundant. The beach ran about three-fourths round the basin, being broadest immediately in front of the ravine, and gradually narrowing away to nothing at about a mile's distance on ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... horse advanced round the little bend in the ever-narrowing cliffs, and there in front of me, under the gigantic mass of overhanging rock, appeared the kraal of Zikali surrounded by its reed fence. The gate of the fence was open, and beyond it, on his stool in front of ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... and the narrowing of the river took it at last from view; and after it disappeared the spindling chimneys and their smoke, which were along the bank above the town and bridge, leaving us to progress through the solitude of marsh and wood and shore. The green levels of stiff salt ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... to cause a great river which once flowed into the sea, to stop short in a desart of sand." "We know from all recent, as well as from some of the older modern travellers, that the sands of the desarts west of Egypt, are encroaching on, and narrowing the valley of the Nile of Egypt. We see the pyramids gradually diminishing in height, particularly on their western sides, and we read of towns and villages which have been buried in the desart, but which once stood in fertile soils, some of whose minarets were still visible a few years ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... cornfield, and white houses gleaming, and a great wall of mountain, and far blue peaks in the north. And so at least I came to the place. The track went up a gentle slope, and widened out into an open space with a wall of thick undergrowth around it, and then, narrowing again, passed on into the distance and the faint blue mist of summer heat. And into this pleasant summer glade Rachel passed a girl, and left it, who shall say what? I ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... moreover, mean the only way through. Missing it will bring you to ever-narrowing ledges, until at last you end at a precipice, and there is no room to turn your horses around for the return. Some of the great box canons thousands of feet deep are practicable by but one passage,—and that steep and ingenious in its utilization ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... hundred and forty feet above tide-water. Cradled in its rocky bosom, near the base of the triangle, lies a crystal lake—one hundred and fifty acres of sparkling water. At this point the promenade is fully three-fourths of a mile wide, gradually narrowing to a width of less than one hundred feet at the extreme point. The long battlemented sides of this lofty triangle, like some mighty fortress, grim and frowning, are protected and supported by perpendicular cliffs of black rock, rising like some bastioned wall of terrifying ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... if I join you. It is narrowing down a little too much when a creed contains but two articles, like yours, and both ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... another step. Captain Carter appeared from his chart-room which stood in the center of the narrowing open deck space near the bow. I joined him ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... present were nice people, who exhibited becoming signs of pleasure and gaiety at being there; but as regards the vigour with which these emotions were expressed, it may be stated that a slight laugh from far down the throat and a slight narrowing of the eye were equivalent as indices of the degree of mirth felt to a Ha-ha-ha! and a shaking of the shoulders among the minor traders of the kingdom; and to a Ho-ho-ho! contorted features, purple face, and stamping foot among the gentlemen in ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... his hushed congregation all about him, all listening to him up to the last minute, each of them sitting all alone with his own soul, and with him, and with the ticking of the clock. And the sermon is always about the same. You see him narrowing the truth down wonderfully, ruthlessly, to You. You begin to see everything—to see all the arguments, all the circumstances, all the principles. You see them narrowing you down grimly, closing in upon ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... is broadening and becoming something of an idealist. B. is narrowing and through failure is losing his ideals. This is not an uncommon effect of success and failure. Where success leads to arrogance and conceit it narrows, but where the character withstands this result the increased experience and opportunity is of great value to character. Failure ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... the tropics, or as frigid as polar snows. The avaricious are out of the pale of peace already, and at all events. Poverty is most seriously an evil to sons and daughters, who see their parents stripped of comfort, at an age when comfort is almost one with life itself: and to parents who watch the narrowing of the capacities of their children by the pressure of poverty,—the impairing of their promise, the blotting out of their prospects. To such mourning children there is little comfort, but in contemplating the easier life which lies behind, and (it may be hoped) the happier one which stretches before ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... visible on one shameful occasion, but no more. But Warwick, who was the Governor of the town, appears frequently and various other lords with him. We see them in the mirror held up to us by the French historians, pressing round in an ever narrowing circle, closing up upon the tribunal in the midst, pricking the priests with perpetual sword points if they seem to loiter. They would have had everything pushed on, no delay, no possibility of escape. It is very possible ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... turned and was rapidly nearing the Rebel shore,—a 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 rescue ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... is, for the most part, pre-eminently credible; with a few exceptions we hear nothing about visions or miracles; here and there we have touches of romance, which show that the life of discipline within "narrowing nunnery walls" is not always able to quell human passion, especially when pressure had been brought to bear by friends and relations upon women scarcely more than children, to induce them to take the veil. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... possible; but once through the archipelago of D'Entrecasteaux Channel, or the less dangerous eastern passage of Storm Bay, the voyage up the river is delightful. From the sentinel solitude of the Iron Pot to the smiling banks of New Norfolk, the river winds in a succession of reaches, narrowing to a deep channel cleft between rugged and towering cliffs. A line drawn due north from the source of the Derwent would strike another river winding out from the northern part of the island, as the Derwent winds out from the south. The force of the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... spirit of the old blood strong and keen—but neurasthenia is not a myth, and God knows it was found out and made a torture to many men and women in the city of Paris, when the Great Fear came—closing in with a narrowing circle until it seemed to clutch at the throats ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... which the colossal achievements of mankind have been built up. Work, as has well been said, is an ascending stairway. On its broad base are ranged all the multitudes of the earth. Those who can climb mount the higher and ever-narrowing stair. ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... to tell me where I have seen you before—and where you have met me before," she said swiftly, and with a sudden and dangerous narrowing ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... could be up among the rafters before any one could be on the first landing; and no one should hear a motion." Linda, in her surprise, looked up through the darkness, as though she could see the passage of which he spoke in the narrowing stair amidst the roof. What a terrible man was this, who had come to her bedroom door, and could thus talk of escaping ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... and the greater thickness of hairs in the 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 ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... quiet laughter at his amazed expression, while the guides pulled him out hurriedly and silently. Then he saw that he had tumbled into an elephant pit—a long, deep trench, narrowing at the bottom. ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... and for a moment remained tensely, watchfully still. She felt his eyes on her; she could not see them in the shadow of his hat, but had an unpleasant sensation of a pair of sinister eyes narrowing in their keen regard of her. She shivered as ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... seen full many a fathom deep. But far before these, I love the happy and tranquil beauty of some bright river, tracing its winding current through valley and through plain, now spreading into some calm and waveless lake, now narrowing to an eddying stream with mossy rocks and waving trees darkening over it. There's not a hut, however lowly, where the net of the fisherman is stretched upon the sward, around whose hearth I do not picture before me the faces of happy toil and humble contentment, while, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... sixty-eight years old, grey, with narrow little whiskers curling round his narrow ears, and a narrow bow-ribbon curling round his collar. He wears a long, narrow-tailed coat, and strapped trousers on his narrow legs. His nose and face are narrow, shrewd, and kindly. He has a way of narrowing his shrewd and kindly eyes. His nose is seen ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... not be so quiet here, and safe from interruption but that I have begged one privilege rather than commanded it. This was that the lower end, just this narrowing of the valley, where it is most hard to come at, might be looked upon as mine, except for purposes of guard. Therefore none beside the sentries ever trespass on me here, unless it be my grandfather, or ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... after 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 functions of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... ambition; he shared none of Cardinal Wolsey's belated penitence for that healthy stimulant, as he had shared none of the fruits; his poison was that of the will — the distortion of sight — the warping of mind — the degradation of tissue — the coarsening of taste — the narrowing of sympathy to the emotions of a caged rat. Hay needed no office in order to wield influence. For him, influence lay about the streets, waiting for him to stoop to it; he enjoyed more than enough power without office; no one of his position, wealth, and political experience, living ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Olga repeated, and by the sudden narrowing of her eyes, as though she were all at once "on guard," Diana knew that her shot in the dark had gone home. ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... another narrowing of the field. The effect of the Bible and its religious teaching, on the writer himself is a separate study, and is for the most part left out of consideration. It sounds correct when Milton says: "He who would not be frustrate of his Power ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... of the south wind in the course of her evening drive. She had ceased latterly, however, to note particularly that or any impression. Such things require range and atmosphere, and she seemed to have no more command over these; her outlook was blocked by crowding, narrowing facts. There was certainly no room for perceptions creditable to one's intellect or one's taste. Also it may be doubted whether Alicia would have tried the days of her hospitality to Captain Filbert by her general standard ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... waves and we desire too long the deep south-wester, Whence the waters quicken shoreward, clothed with life. Yet the field not made for ploughing save of keels nor harrowing Save of storm-winds lies unbrightened by thy breath: Banded broad with ruddy samphire glow the sea-banks narrowing Westward, while the sea gleams chill and still as death. Sharp and strange from inland sounds thy bitter note of battle, Blown between grim skies and waters sullen-souled, Till the baffled seas bear back, rocks ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the Deacon, his eyes narrowing as if amazement were giving place to a new emotion; "yes, but that ain't meant quite literally, I reckon. Still, it's fer you to judge. But ef you refuse ten thousand dollars a year, why, there are mighty few who would, and that's all I've got to say—mighty few," he added ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... feeling, this delicate sympathy, in giving unchecked range, so far as he can, to his mere personal action, in allowing no limits or government to this except such as a mechanical external law imposes, and in thus really narrowing, for the satisfaction of his ordinary self, his spiritual and intellectual ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... national judiciary had contributed to the expansion of the Constitution in notable ways; sometimes by affirming the constitutionality of powers exercised by the President or Congress, and at other times by narrowing the limits of state authority. In the case of the American Insurance Company v. Canter, twenty-five years after the acquisition of Louisiana, Marshall affirmed the constitutionality of the treaty which had so aroused Jefferson's misgivings. "The Constitution," ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... worn by the Padaung women, a kilt and putties of dark cloth, with round the hips and upper part of kilt, many rings of thin black lacquered cane; round the neck were so many brass curtain-rings of graduated circumference, narrowing from the chest to the ear, and so many of them that the neck had become so elongated that the head either actually was dwarfed or seemed to be so small as to be quite out of proportion to the body. Of course the proud wearer could not move her head in the very least, and wore an expression ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... sharp scoldings, and some threats of punishment. Every morning two of us woke with a start and a shudder, saying, as the days flew along, "Only ten days left;" "only nine days left;" "only eight;" "only seven." Always it was narrowing. Always Nikolaus was gay and happy, and always puzzled because we were not. He wore his invention to the bone trying to invent ways to cheer us up, but it was only a hollow success; he could see that our jollity had no heart ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the entire force of the Star Circle was needed. Divided into parties the men rode north, east, south, and west for a distance of about twenty miles. Then they trailed round and round, in a great, narrowing circle that took in that wide radius, and as the cattle were met, in bunches or small herds, they were gathered and driven into a common center until ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... way through the narrowing alleys, proceeded through a maze of blank walls, down a damp stone stairway, and rapped upon a black iron door. It opened instantly, and a long clawlike hand reached forth, accepted the yellow envelope from the operator's hand, and slowly, silently withdrew, the door ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... widened my soul. This new and mighty passion in whose grasp I was, this irresistible power that had seized and possessed my entire being, wrought my soul in quite a different sort, concentrating and narrowing my horizon till the human life outside the circle of our love seemed far, far away, as though I were gazing through the wrong end of a telescope. I had learned that he who truly loves is indeed born again, becomes a new and a different man. Was it only a few short hours ago, I asked ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... gentle, faded, dowdy in her plum-coloured cloth dress, with imitation lace carefully sewed at neck and sleeves; at Lydia's flat cheeks and rather prim mouth. She was like her mother, but life had perforce broadened Ma, and it was narrowing Lydia. Lydia was young no longer, and Pa ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... 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 ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... sister Mrs. Caroline Tappan. Unequal as the contributions are in merit, the periodical is of singular interest. It was conceived and carried on in a spirit of boundless hope and enthusiasm. Time and a narrowing subscription list proved too hard a trial, and its four volumes remain stranded, like some rare and curiously patterned shell which a storm of yesterday has left beyond the reach of the receding waves. Thoreau wrote for nearly every number. Margaret Fuller, less attractive in print than in conversation, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... "Why," said Jerry, narrowing his eyes, as if he recalled a picture he had found incredible, "she was playing croquet ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... a shadow the boat slid forward. Suddenly Roy detected what he was looking for. At the same moment a high bank loomed up directly before them. The craft ahead turned toward the right and slipped along the narrowing channel. A few yards further on, it came to rest, its nose lying softly against the muddy shore. Before it the steep bank led upward to an open, level space that both Roy and Henry felt instinctively was a public highway; for on either hand, though at many rods' distance, could be seen the ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... and bottom with zinc, the bottom a fixture, the top to lift off, dished inward towards an orifice with a tube soldered in it, which is kept corked until it is wanted to drop larvae down it. The tube coming well through into the cylinder, and narrowing inside to half its diameter at the top, prevents anything escaping, even if the cork should be left out, and also prevents the swarming out of the enclosed larvae, which would take place if the top ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... on the side sheltered from the wind, and here, with the luck which characterized the trip, was found the only opening in this barrier of coral. A long cleft, perhaps eight feet wide, at the outer edge of the reef, ran in, narrowing to a mere crack near the shore. Watching a favorable chance, the boats were guided through the surf into a cleft as far as shoal water, when the men jumped on to the reef and carried baggage and instruments ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... gravel between it and the limestone. Then the secondary drains are also cut down to the gravel, and are supplemented by "sheep" or surface drains about twenty inches deep and twenty inches wide at top, narrowing to six inches at the bottom. This process may be called "tapping the bog," which begins to shrink visibly. The puffy rounded surface gradually sinks as the water runs off, and the earth gains in solidity. When this process is sufficiently advanced the drains ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... so many Indians before the time of the Low and Eaton expedition of 1893-4 led to an increase of fur-bearing animals. But renewed, improved, increased and uncontrolled trapping has now reduced them below their former level. Hunting for the market seems to be going round in a vicious circle, always narrowing in on the quarry, which must ultimately be strangled to death. The white man comes in with better equipment, more systematic methods and often a "get-rich-and-get-out" idea that never entered a native head. The Indian ...
— Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... you are tall and are no longer a little boy." Narrowing her old eyes, she asked, "My grandchild, when are you going to bring here a handsome young woman?" I stared into the fire rather than meet her gaze. Waiting for my answer, she stooped forward and through the long stem drew a flame into the ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... 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 ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... last stage in his deepening and narrowing of the creative furrow. For these souls are in their turn concentrated so that the whole of their vitality burns into one passion. If a somewhat fanciful comparison from another art may throw any light on this feature of his work we might say that his characters are to those of Galdos, for instance, ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... fill of the beauty outspread before them. Perhaps it was by contrast with the monotony of the forest that the scene below them seemed to them all to be the most beautiful that had ever gladdened the eyes of men. Imagine a valley about five miles in length, narrowing at each end, and opening out about the centre to a width of two miles, the sides of grass sloping up to a buttress of rock, and rippling along the whole length into folds, with little valleys in between—narrow at the summit, where they joined ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... unearthed—the Countess had died suddenly— was the muffled cry of a soul tortured through different degrees of misunderstanding; from the vague pain of suffered indifference, of being left out of her husband's calculations, to the blank neglect narrowing her life down to a tiny stream of duty, which was finally lost in the sands. She had died abroad, and alone, save for her faithful maid, who, knowing the chasm that lay between her mistress and her lord, had brought her letters and papers back to the Cloistered House, and locked them away with all ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... painful 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; or ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... its way to join the deeper current of the Saco. Then here is "Silver Cascade," which is above the Flume, a series of leaping, dashing, turning waterfalls, descending now in a broad sheet of whitened foam, then separating into several streams, and again narrowing to a swift current through the rocky confined channel. The visitor will pause by its whitened torrent, loth to depart from ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... Dart, and where it enters into the sea at a very narrow but safe entrance. The opening into Dartmouth Harbour is not broad, but the channel deep enough for the biggest ship in the Royal Navy. The sides of the entrance are high-mounded with rocks, without which, just at the first narrowing of the passage, stands a good strong fort without a platform of guns, ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... front of her, 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 ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... class of wheels special attention should be given to the concentration and increase of the velocity of the current by wing dams or by the narrowing of shallow streams; always bearing in mind that any increase in the velocity of the current is economy in increased power, as well as in the size and cost of a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... uncomfortable, eating luncheons on private lawns, trooping to see some trained alligators in a muddy pool, resting by roadsides and dunes in the apathy of repletion, the sucked orange suspended to follow with narrowing eyes the progress of some imported hat ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 and white silk on rings and rods of gold, with gold ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... the bottom. It grew more hidden and sequestered as we approached the little village of Vaucluse. Here, the mountain towers far above, and precipices of grey rock, many hundred feet high, hang over the narrowing glen. On a crag over the village are the remains of a castle; the slope below this, now rugged and stony, was once graced by the cottage and garden of Petrarch. All traces of them have long since vanished, but a simple column, bearing ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... fifth day after his return he and Rena were standing together at the gate in front of the house. Deep shadows were advancing up the sides of the mountains, but their summits were still bright with the evening glow. Both of them watched the narrowing line of light without speaking. Their minds were full of the same thoughts, and there was a sympathetic communion between them which did not need to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... cap is of a pale red silk, with gold cord and embroidery down the seams, it being formed to fit the head, and therefore in compartments; broad where they are inserted into the rich fillet-band round the head, and narrowing to the closely-fitting top. It looked something like an Albanian cap. The gloves, which are said to have been those of the chief, were of a brownish fine leather, with embroidered gauntlet tops. The lady's are of a lighter hue, still softer leather, with gay fringe of varied-colored ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... city nor sea, but as the ensign of corsairs, and hailed only by fustian peers, now rent in the grip of our eagle, and without a fane or an abiding-place. Let us go on, not conquerors, but Republicans, battering down only to rebuild more gloriously,—not narrowing the path of any man, but opening to high and low a broader destiny ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... like poplars, or low round domes like those other trees. The domes gave an eastern aspect to the country. The spire of Antwerp cathedral especially had the poplar for its model. The pinnacles which rose from the base of each successive start of its narrowing height were just the clinging, upright branches of the poplar—a lovely instance of ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... where the principal traffic is over rough country roads, would not be very great, but it would enable the road authorities of the township to realize the advantage of first-rate roads and the degree to which the narrowing of the roadway cheapens construction. As a result, there would soon be an extension of the improvement over the more important highways into the country; where a well-metalled width of twelve feet would accommodate nearly the whole traffic, and ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... the landscape unroll itself wonderfully before me. We were on a shore of that ocean of olives which in southern Spain washes far up the mountain walls of the blue and bluer distances, and which we were to skirt more and more in bay and inlet and widening and narrowing expanses throughout Andalusia. Before we left it we wearied utterly of it, and in fact the olive of Spain is not the sympathetic olive of Italy, though I should think it a much more practical and profitable tree. It is not planted so much at haphazard ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... that all of the drilling machinery, the engine, and some lumber were to go in La Biche's boat, and that the provisions and the airship were to be carried in Moosetooth's batteau. In the end of each boat there was a little deck the width of the narrowing end of the boat and ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... not stand the rapid fire system of the New Hampshire rustics, and with a pained expression on his face he, pulled silently out of hearing. The narrowing river brought him closer to the banks, and as he was forging ahead an old gentleman hailed him. Paul stopped for a moment and was sorry for it, as the man tried to chill his blood with doleful stories of the dangers ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... antagonistic to hurry? The argument neglects the fact that this present complex life is such because it has added one by one these separate interests to those which it has received as an inheritance, each of which in its own narrowing niche having been preserved under the guardianship of ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... mother, "that the life you lead is narrowing. At your age, how I should have jumped at the chance to see California in spring! But I shan't ask you why you don't jump. I know very ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... going to govern our own Union in our own way." Chandler was soon to express it still more exactly, saying, "A rebel has sacrificed all his rights. He has no right to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness."(5) Here was that purpose to narrowing nationalism into Northernism, even to radicalism, and to make the war an outlet for a sectional ferocity, which Lincoln was so firmly determined to prevent. All things considered, the fact that on the day following Bull Run he did not summon the Republican hero ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... a man. You are nothing more than an instrument of sound, a wind instrument like a trumpet, or a clanging instrument like a cymbal." That is the apostolic warning to the successful professional man,—the warning against the narrowing, self-contented result which sometimes taints even great attainments and professional distinction. Covet the best. Be satisfied with nothing less than the highest professional work of doctor, politician, or teacher. But beware of the imprisoning effect which sometimes ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... "theories" and their danger; and our talk soon fell on a certain "John's Place," where he thought there was a great deal to be learned. In five minutes more we stood in the spot which interested him, an alley running between two mean streets, and narrowing at one end till we crept out of it as if through the neck of a bottle. It was by no means the choicest part of the parish: the drainage was imperfect, the houses miserable; but wretched as it was it was a favourite ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... who has traversed a long gallery of pictures, and, turning to look back upon all that he has passed, sees a straight track narrowing away into the dimming distance, and only the last few life scenes standing out lustrous and clear, so the school-master, gazing down this long vista, beheld at the far end of it a little girl, whom he did not know, playing on the silvery ancestral lawns of the James; at the near ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... speak with more freedom, to be less afraid of him. The gap between her small provincial experience and modes of thought, and his, was narrowing. Each was beginning to discover the inner personality of the other. And the more Farrell explored her the more charmed he was. She was curiously ignorant, whether of books or life. Even the busy commercial life amid which she had been brought up, as it ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a sound to be heard, except the soughing of the wind and the trickling of a burn down the hillside. Presently a loud screech rent the air, and a large eagle swooped swiftly above us, carrying in its talons a rabbit or other small animal. Flying in gradually narrowing circles, the bird at last alighted among some rocks on the opposite side ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... on our way to the Arrow head ranch house. Five miles up the narrowing valley we could see its outposts and its smoke. Far below us the spick-and-span buildings of deserted Broadmoor glittered newly, demanding that I be told more of them. Yet for the five-mile ride I added, as I thought, no item to my slender stock. Instead, when ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... happened to look down the road once more, and there they were, almost upon him! But Bud was no longer walking with the maiden. She had acquired a new escort, a man of broad shoulders and fine height. Where had he seen that fellow before? He watched them as they came up, his small, pale eyes narrowing under their yellow lashes with a glint of slyness, like some mean little animal that meant to take advantage of its prey. It was wonderful how many different things that man could look like for a person as ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... the dove was snared As with men's hands, but we shot after and sped Clear through the irremeable Symplegades; And chiefliest when hoar beach and herbless cliff Stood out ahead from Colchis, and we heard Clefts hoarse with wind, and saw through narrowing reefs The lightning of the intolerable wave Flash, and the white wet flame of breakers burn Far under a kindling south-wind, as a lamp Burns and bends all its blowing flame one way; Wild heights untravelled ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the whiter heights. All height is inward through narrow circles to the Central Fire of Silent Love from which the angels shrink in spiral messages of inspiring flame, and toward which humanity aspires in narrowing and advancing circles of expiring flesh. But depth is outward to the hearts of men. Sirius sings to my living stars tonight its light in the music of the ancient winds, telling me of the crucifixion in burning colors of a dying world. Why am I unworthy of an ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... reality no detail of the brewing storm had escaped him. He was studying the other faces around the table, and what he saw in them appeared to occupy him. Wilfred Horton's cheeks were burning with a dull flush, and his eyes were narrowing with an unveiled dislike. Suddenly, a silence fell on the party, and, as the men sat puffing their cigars, Horton turned toward the Kentuckian. For a moment, he glared in silence, then with an impetuous exclamation of ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... to proceed to the north-east. Certainly a more beautiful and interesting view is not often seen. The spacious valley, through which the river flowed, extends along the coast from Smoaky Cape to the Three Brothers, and its width north of me was above eight miles, gradually narrowing to the base of Sea View Mount where we first entered it, and which bore west by north. Wide and extensive valleys stretched to the west-south-west, and south-south-west, under its base on either side, the hills in which were of moderate height, and of open forest land. To the north by east, though ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... were decidedly disadvantageous to the allies. The massacre of the Light Brigade encouraged the Russian general to advance again; his columns once more crossed the Woronzoff road, and re-occupied the redoubts in force. The immediate result was the narrowing of the communications between the front and the base. The use of a great length of this Woronzoff road was forbidden, and the British were restricted to the insufficient tracks through Kadikoi. A principal cause this of the difficulties ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... two small cabins like rabbit hutches, once inhabited by the skipper and his mate. Here there were great findings in the way of rubbish. Old clothes, old boots, an old top-hat of that extraordinary pattern you may see in the streets of Pernambuco, immensely tall, and narrowing towards the brim. A telescope without a lens, a volume of Hoyt, a nautical almanac, a great bolt of striped flannel shirting, a box of fish hooks. And in one corner—glorious find!—a coil of what seemed to be ten yards or so of ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... queerly shaped weapon. It is made of hard wood and curved like a bow, the curve from point to point being about a quarter of a circle. The piece of wood that forms the boomerang is about half an inch thick, and in the middle it is two and one half inches wide, narrowing steadily towards the end. I took it in my hand and made a motion as if to throw it, whereupon the owner laughed, and indicated by signs that I had seized it by ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... obstructions in the beds of rivers dredging the bottom or blasting rocks, the washing out of deposits and locally increasing the depth of water by narrowing the channel by moans of spurs or other constructions projecting from the banks, and, finally, the cutting off of bends and thus shortening the course of the stream, diminishing the resistance of its shores and bottom and giving the bed a more ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... imposing tower; the water-edge of the town looking bedraggled, like the flounce of a vulgar rich woman's dress that trails on the sidewalk. The New Ironsides lies at one of the wharves, elephantine in bulk and color, her sides narrowing as they rise, like the ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... one bony hand on his hip, narrowing the long eyes as he looked down on us. The purposeful cruelty of the man was inherent; it was entirely untheatrical. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... from it, and always cheerful; we rarely go out, yet always are pleased to return. We have our books, our prate, and our boy—how, with all this, can we, or ought we to suffer ourselves to complain of our narrowed and narrowing income? If we are still able to continue at Passy, endeared to me now beyond any other residence away from you all, by a friendship I have formed here with one of the sweetest women I have ever known, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... Burns's instincts would naturally have been on the side of those who wished to resist patronage and "cowe the lairds" had not this, his natural tendency, been counteracted by a stronger bias drawing him in an opposite direction.' This is a narrowing—if not even a positive misconception—of the case with a vengeance. The question was not of patronage at all, but of moral and religious freedom; while the democracy of those ministers was a terribly one-sided ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... on Emma McChesney's face that little tightening of the muscles, that narrowing of the eyelids which betokens intense earnestness; the gathering of all the forces before taking a momentous step. Then, as quickly, her face cleared. She shook her head with a little air ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... its last and greatest gift to humanity. In so doing it freed itself from the trammels even of Science, which thus became its servant and not its master—at the same time finally liberating itself from the narrowing and blinding influences of passion and imagination and all the shackles of merely practical needs and disabilities. Here too it fixed the idea or the ideal. 'Life without reflection upon life, without ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... side while he was patrolling the other, made her timid way to the stern and stood there clinging to the flagstaff, and became absorbed in the rush of the foaming, boiling waters unrolling a gradually narrowing streak of dazzling white through the blue-green waste of billows, all sparkling in the slanting sunshine. Wheeling in flapping circles overhead, skimming the crested waves, settling down and lazily floating on the heaving flood, so many dots of snow upon ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... Berlin Academy, his own experience of German Universities, and the shortcomings of Oxford. On these last he became scornfully voluble. He was inclined to think he should soon cut it, and go in for public life. These university towns were really very narrowing! ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... macilency[obs3], marcor|. shaving, slip &c. (filament) 205; thread paper, skeleton, shadow, anatomy, spindleshanks[obs3], lantern jaws, mere skin and bone. middle constriction, stricture, neck, waist, isthmus, wasp, hourglass; ridge, ghaut[obs3], ghat[obs3], pass; ravine &c. 198. narrowing, coarctation[obs3], angustation[obs3], tapering; contraction &c. 195. V. be narrow &c. adj.; narrow, taper, contract &c. 195; render narrow &c. adj; waste away. Adj. narrow, close; slender, thin, fine; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... week we went one of the turns was Professor Some One's Terpsichorean Cats. I recollect them distinctly. Now, are we narrowing it down, or aren't we? Reggie, I'm going round to the Coliseum this minute, and I'm going to dig the date of those Terpsichorean Cats out of them, if I have to use ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... nearer, his fingers within reach of the knob, his lids narrowing as he studied her ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... resorted, when their white officers were absent, they obtained from him the exact position of Sivajee's band, and learned the side from which the ascent must be made. That the Dacoit and his band were still upon the slopes of the Ghauts they knew, and were gradually narrowing their circle, but there were so many rocks and hiding-places that the process of searching was a slow one, and the intelligence was so important that the news was off at once to the colonel, who gave orders for the police ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... 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 down easily to ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... preserve the same horizontal direction, and so on down to the minutest twigs; and even the arrangement of the clustered leaves has the same general tendency. Climb into one, and you are delighted with a succession of verdant floors spread around the trunk and gradually narrowing as you ascend. The beautiful cones seem to stand upon or rise out of this green flooring.' The same writer says that by examining the different growths of wood inside the trunk of one of the trees these ancient cedars of Lebanon ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... he said, narrowing his eyes in speculative fashion. "No less than three times I have had the idea that something, or some one, has just dropped out of sight, behind us, ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... never feel that they have found it merely in union with one other person. For what love gains in intension it is apt to lose in extension; so that in practice it may even come to frustrate the very end it seeks, limiting instead of expanding, narrowing just in proportion as it deepens, and, by causing the disruption of all other ties, impoverishing the natures it should have enriched. Or don't you think that this happens sometimes, for ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... 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
... of beauty which limits its manifestation to one kind of experience is so far false and leads to mischievous acceptances and narrowing rejections. We mistake the pretty for the beautiful and so fail of the true value of beauty; we are blind to the significance which all nature and all life, in the lowest and commonest as in the highest ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... lost the disposition to travel on common ground, impregnably occupied by specialists, where he had nothing of his own to tell; and he preferred to work where he could be a pathfinder. Problems of Church government had come to the front, and he proposed to retraverse his subject, narrowing it into a history of the papacy. He began by securing his foundations and eliminating legend. He found so much that was legendary that his critical preliminaries took the shape of a history of fables relating to the papacy. Many of these were harmless: others ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... narrowing down so nicely, anyhow, he thought. There were only two real possibilities. Malone numbered them in ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... daylight, or 21 leagues: except one that was lost by delay caused by closing with the Pinta to communicate. The air was colder, and it seemed to get colder as they went further north, and also that the nights grew longer owing to the narrowing of the sphere. Many boatswain-birds and terns[231-2] were seen, as well as other birds but not so many fish, perhaps owing to the water being ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... In narrowing the dimension of suffering, and lending a strong hand to those overwhelmed by calamity, our soldiers raised up the defeated from the sore battle ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... engineer, I think," he answered. "You see, I'm a crank on fresh air and building things—and he seems to be like me. This cooped-up city life is pretty narrowing, ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... into the narrowing cleft of the valley, where natural galleries in the rock of Mercury led to the places where the copper cables were anchored, and farther, into the unexplored mystery of ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... our food products designed for exportation. Our great 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 ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... because it is alienated from the Churches, or whether the Churches are depraved because they have excluded so many of the most powerful moral forces of the time. Certain it is that they have offended by their exclusiveness; by the narrowing down of interest; by the cliquishness of those who are specialists in piety or ritual. We may observe their habit of mind in that narrow Victorian sect which converted Mr. Gosse's strong-willed and in many ways lovable ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... suddenly, caught the chain of mosaics and settled it hastily in its place, flung down her castanets, drew herself back, and stood looking at him, with her head a little on one side, and her eyes narrowing in the way he had known so ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various |
