"Puny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shop, street, church, theatre, bar-room, official chair, are pervading flippancy and vulgarity, low cunning, infidelity—everywhere the youth puny, impudent, foppish, prematurely ripe—everywhere an abnormal libidinousness, unhealthy forms, male, female, painted, padded, dyed, chignon'd, muddy complexions, bad blood, the capacity for good motherhood deceasing ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Vain efforts: "for now the voracious beast has bitten deep into the spot, and can with impunity ransack the entrails." What a slow and horrible agony for the paralysed victim, should some glimmer of consciousness still linger in its puny brain! What a terrible nightmare for the little field-cricket, suddenly plunged into the den of the Sphex, so far from the sunlit tuft of ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... came the great voice again. "Ivan Vergoff, the greatest of the Cossacks, attacked by this puny pygmy." ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... emerged from the depths of the primeval forests of Manyuema! The reflection of the dazzling light of civilisation was cast on him while Livingstone was thus listening in wonder to one of the most exciting pages of history ever repeated. How the puny deeds of barbarism paled before these! Who could tell under what new phases of uneasy life Europe was labouring even then, while we, two of her lonely children, rehearsed the tale of her late woes and glories? More worthily, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... rainy day may be A blessed interval! A little halt for introspect, A little moment to reflect On life's discrepancy— Our puny stint so poorly done, The larger duties scarce begun— And so may conscience ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... naught more precious in the world than I: I carry God in me, to give to men. And when has the sea been friendly unto man? Let it but guess my errand, it will call The dangers of the air to wreak upon me, Winds to juggle the puny boat and pinch The water into unbelievable creases. And shall my soul, and God in my soul, drown? Or venture drowning?—But no, no; I am safe. Smooth as believing souls over their deaths And over agonies shall ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... respect for the stranger. I admired his intimate knowledge of balls, dresses, faux pas, marriages, and gossip of all sorts—and still more I admired his bulk. I have an instinctive feeling of reverence towards "Stout Gentlemen;" and, while contrasting my own puny form with his, I laboured under a deep consciousness of personal insignificance. From being five feet eight, I seemed to shrink to five feet one; from weighing ten stones, I suddenly fell to seven and a half; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... the Langrois dialect, signifying a puny, sickly, effeminate being. In the mouth of Madame Sejournant, this picturesque expression acquired a significant ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... acquit themselves of an sentiment of lurking toleration for regicide, with which their enemies never failed to load them, that no mode of abjuring it seemed sufficiently emphatic to them hence it was that Addison, with a view to the interest of his party, thought fit when in Switzerland, to offer a puny insult to the memory of General Ludlow; hence it is that even in our own days, no writers have insulted Milton with so much bitterness and shameless irreverence as the Whigs; though it is true that some few Whigs, more however ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... old soul, seemed sorry to have her go, but she had her own peculiar way of expressing it, namely, by getting crosser every day. She did not approve of so much "larnin'" for girls, especially when Beth was "goin' to be married to that puny Mayfair." Aunt Prudence always said her "say," as she expressed it, but she ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... VIGOR.—Women love sexual vigor in men. This is human nature. Weakly and delicate fathers have weak and puny children, though the mother may be strong and robust. A weak mother often bears strong children, if the father is physically and sexually vigorous. Consumption is often inherited from fathers, because they furnish the ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... deceptive end. They of our community are a simple race and doubtless in the past their ways were thus and thus. But, as it is truly said, 'Tian went bare, his eyes could pierce the earth and his body float in space, but they of his seed do but dream the dream.' We, being but the puny descendants—" ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... his heart was in the work of exploration, he was destined to spend his remaining years chiefly in nursing the feeble little colony at Quebec. He had not only to hold the balance even between monks and traders, but to guard the puny little colony against ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... myself of your permission to write to you, a permission given with too much complaisance by you, and used by me with too much indiscretion. Madame de Tott did me the same honor. But she, being only the descendant of some of those puny heroes who boiled their own kettles before the walls of Troy, I shall write to her from a Grecian, rather than a Roman canton; when I shall find myself, for example, among her ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... in other places the smouldering remains of a camp-fire alone bespoke primitive living. Yet every where along that upper terrace, where in places the seductive gold streak lay half uncovered to the sun, were those same yawning holes leading far down beneath the surface; about them grouped the puny figures of men performing the labors of Hercules under the ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... Troyes, and Montaigne's questions to them in 1563 will be remembered. They replied that what astonished them most was (Essais I. xxx.) to see so many strong men armed and bearded (meaning the Swiss guard probably) obeying a puny little person like the King. They were also fairly puzzled at seeing men gorged with plenty and living in ostentation on one side of the road, and starveling ruffians begging their bread in the gutter on the other without attempting to take the rich men by the throat, or even ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... athletics. They need something concrete to tie to. They need to be taught, if you please, what is the "gang" spirit among boys. They need to learn that their young bodies are to be used, instead of decorated. Until they learn that, we shall have sickly mothers and puny babies. No single movement for the improvement of American people as a race, no advance of science or sanitation, can compare in importance with the necessity for building up morally, spiritually ...
— Why I Believe in Scouting for Girls • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... meet his look, for she felt suddenly quite puny and small and powerless. She realised in that flash of thought that there was a whole side of life of which she had never suspected the existence. After all, she was learning the lesson that millions of women have to learn before they quite realise ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... France, Duke of Alencon and Anjou, was at that time just twenty-eight years of age; yet not even his flatterers, or his "minions," of whom he had as regular a train as his royal brother, could claim for him the external graces of youth or of princely dignity. He was below the middle height, puny and ill-shaped. His hair and eyes were brown, his face was seamed with the small-pox, his skin covered with blotches, his nose so swollen and distorted that it seemed to be double. This prominent feature did not escape the sarcasms ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... been in that region. There are mountains, mountains everywhere, and then more mountains, not the puny mountains they have east of the Missip, a mile, or at best, a mile and a half high, but crests shooting up so far that they hit right against the stars, and dozens and dozens of 'em, with snow fields and glaciers, and ice cold lakes here and there in the valleys. ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... say diabolical, report prevailed to alienate the child's affections even from his mother, in making him believe that, owing to his deformity and growing ugliness, she had transferred all her tenderness to his younger brother, who certainly was very superior in health and beauty to the puny Dauphin. Making a pretext of this calumny, the governor of the heir-apparent was malicious enough to prohibit him from eating or drinking anything but what first passed through the hands of his physicians; and so strong was the impression made by ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... born on de plantation, an' some on 'em livin' on it fur forty, fifty, sixty, an' seventy yar. Out ob dese, we hab only forty-two full hands, 'case some ob de wimmin dat come in de ages fur full wuck am sickly, puny tings, only fit fur house wuck or nussin'. From de whole I gits equal to fifty-four full hands. 'Cordin' to master Robert's direction, I gib 'em easy ten-hour tasks; but suffin' or anoder turn up 'most ebery day, so ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... mountain tower. Which charmed my fancy's wakening hour, Though no broad river swept along To claim perchance heroic song; Though sighed no groves in summer gale To prompt of love a softer tale; Though scarce a puny streamlet's speed Claimed homage from a shepherd's reed; Yet was poetic impulse given, By the green hill and clear blue heaven. It was a barren scene, and wild, Where naked cliffs were rudely piled; But ever and anon between Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green; And ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... year. Why, this is what he wants; this is why he brought the prisoner here! Would you have me walk into his trap? Would you have me sacrifice my men, this garrison, why, this country even, to save the life of one puny Englishman, who is probably himself a spy?" He stopped a moment. "Why, man, you sicken me!" he cried, and he slashed at me with his sword as if I were ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... managed to escape after all, you say?" asked Phil, who had some difficulty in keeping a grin of satisfaction from showing on his face; for the idea of these seven stalwart men chasing one puny little chap was pretty close to ridiculous in ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... I verily believe that my heart for some seconds ceased to beat, and I am sure that Joe shared my dismay, for he tightened the grip of his great strong hand upon my puny one until I could have sworn it was crushed to a pulp. At the bridge head were two gentlemen, who had to all appearance been engaged in chatting, for one still sat on the parapet, while the other stood within a foot or two of him. They were not talking now, but gazing at the barrel rolling down towards ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... take the trouble to watch the action of the sageer or water-wheel, it must strike him as a most puny effort to obtain a great result, that would at once suggest an extension of the principle. The sageer is merely a wheel of about twenty feet diameter, which is furnished with numerous earthenware jars upon its exterior circumference, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... prison; but the prisoners! There were forty-eight—grey-haired men and puny boys—all ragged, and stalking with slippered feet from end to end with listless eyes. Some, all eagerness; some, crushed and motionless; some, scared and stupid; now singing, now swearing, now rushing about playing at some mad game; ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... State, take a look at the Prussian soldier as he marches past in his ill-fitting uniform and his leather helmet. First of all, we observe that he smokes a great deal. According to some of us, the "tobacco demon" ought by this time to have left him a thin, puny, hollow-eyed fellow, with trembling knees and palpitating heart and listless gait, with shaking hands and an intense craving for ardent spirits. You perceive, however, that a burlier, broader-shouldered, ruddier, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... said, I am disappointed at our temporary check, but I am convinced it is only temporary. God does things in a big way. He staggers our poor little puny minds by His acts. The world is being re-made; old systems, hoary with age, are being destroyed. The birth of new movements is on foot, new thoughts are in the air, new dreams are being dreamed, and the new age is surely coming. But ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... to support him. He provokes the people, he goads them with every kind of insult added to every kind of injury, and then rushes into the very jaws of danger, provoking a formidable foe by the display of a puny, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... appeared so large for a mere puny girl that the chief assented at once; and the Fox was content to take a gun, which proved part of the spoil, for his interest ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... training-schools, "why was one mother of a family a better economist than another? Why could one live in abundance where another starved? Why, in similar dwellings, were the children of one parent healthy, of another puny and ailing? Why could this labourer do with ease a task that would kill his fellow? It was not luck nor chance that decided those differences; it was the patient observation of nature that suggested to some gifted minds rules for ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... labour of ruining the outward structure had been confided were less successful than their neighbours who had pillaged its contents. The ponderous stones of the pillars, the massive surfaces of the walls, resisted the most vigorous of their puny efforts, and forced them to remain contented with mutilating that which they could not destroy—with tearing off roofs, defacing marbles, and demolishing capitals. The rest of the buildings remained uninjured, and grander even now in the wildness of ruin than ever it had ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... the friend of Pope and Swift, and the author of "Letters" bearing upon politics and literature. "Bolingbroke," says Prof. Saintsbury, "is a rhetorician pure and simple, but the subjects of his rhetoric were not the great and perennial subjects, but puny ephemeral forms of them—the partisan and personal politics of his day, the singularly shallow form of infidelity called Deism and the like; and his time deprived him of many, if not most, of the rhetorician's most telling weapons. The 'Letter to Windham,' ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... softly, and busied herself with walking baby up and down the room, hushing it on her shoulder. If in the dim light tears fell on its puny face, God help ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... some great imaginative work! What a mocking interference of the wrath of nature in the puny contests of men! One stroke of "the red right arm" above us, crushing the triumph of ages, and laughing to scorn the power of the beleaguers and the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... single shot had struck the hull of the vessel. In the last day's fighting, however, the Active became entangled among several of the Spanish galleons, and being almost becalmed by their lofty hulls, one of them ran full at her, and rolling heavily in the sea, seemed as if she would overwhelm her puny antagonist. ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... thick rows and crowded beds, stretching right away, broken now and then by taller plants, right to where the river glistened in a hieroglyph across the country. The steep scarp cliffs across the river looked puny. Great stretches of country darkened with trees and faintly brightened with corn-land, spread towards the haze, where the ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... since daylight by an armed police force, who had no connection with McDermot, it was found, when an entrance had been effected, that the only inhabitants of the mansion were a sick woman, an old negress, and a child, apparently, from its puny size, about a twelvemonth old. The woman could not be aroused from the coma in which she seemed to have fallen, either as a crisis of her disease or a precursor of death (medical opinion was divided), until suddenly, about noon, she waked, perfectly ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... perhaps, only surpassed by Manchester's, and it looked its blackest on a day at the end of March in the following year, as the afternoon express from London roared into the Lime Street Station. The rain was coming down; it was small rain, and it descended with a sort of puny determination; it was sad rain without any dash, any boldness; it had affinities with the mists which sweep over stretches of moorland, but its power of saturation was remarkable. It soaked Liverpool. It issued out of blackness and seemed ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... to the wheel, say the sociological fatalists. All our efforts are of no avail; the Wheel revolves as it was destined. Not so. Our strivings for purity in investments, puny as may be their results in the individual instance, may compose a sum that is imposing in its effectiveness. How their influence may be exerted will best appear from ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... few days," repeated themselves over and over again. His vindictive feeling against society died out in the consciousness of his weakness and insignificance. What is the use of one's smiting a mountain with his fist? Only the puny hand feels the blow. The world became, under Mrs. Arnot's words, too large and vague a generality even ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... mother, the blind grandfather, and ragged children. A dull fire was smouldering in the cooking stove, and beside it sat the grandfather, the baby on his knee, vainly trying to extract consolation from its own puny fist. As I looked at him closely I saw that Mr. Bowen had an unusually fine face—not old looking, but strangely subdued, and chastened. I fancied from his countenance, at once serene and noble, that he ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... said Denot, "that puny boy could really stop my way, if I chose to put out my right hand against him. Boy, I despise and disregard you! would before I die that it might be allowed me to measure arms with any man, who would dare to say that he ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... and trying day was not agreeable, and the sense of irritation was strong in him. "If ever I have anything to do with that boy——" he said involuntarily within himself. But what could he ever have to do with the boy, who probably by this time, little puny thing that he was, was Lord Markland, and the owner of all this great, bare, unhappy-looking place, eaten up by the locusts of waste ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... another moral, couched under every one of the principal parts and characters, which a judicious critic will observe, though I point not to it in this preface. And there may be also some secret beauties in the decorum of parts, and uniformity of design, which my puny judges will not easily find out: let them consider in the last scene of the fourth act, whether I have not preserved the rule of decency, in giving all the advantage to the royal character, and in making ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... foaming and tumbling about in a fearful way for the voyager. It was not a regular roll or swell, but short, quick, chopping waves, tumbling about in all directions, that whirled him round and round, rolled him over and over, rendered his puny sail utterly useless and blinded him with foam and spray. It was a strangely fascinating spectacle to watch him in his hand to hand struggle with the ocean. The waves seemed to become living things animated ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... in October, and I can hardly recognize him, for the bent and puny little fellow who had left me in May has become a tall upright boy, whose face beams with health. He has grown 12 centimeters and gained 19 lbs. in weight. Since then he has lived a perfectly normal life; he runs up and down stairs, rides a bicycle, and plays football ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... criticism manifested by Sonnino and Salandra, entitle these Ministers to the lasting gratitude of their country. For it should be borne in mind that they had against them not only the Senate, the Chamber, a section of the Press, the "cream" of the aristocracy, the puny sons and daughters of the leaders of the Risorgimento, but also, strange to say, the majority of Italian diplomatists in the capitals of the Great Powers, one of whom actually fell ill at the thought that Italy was about to fight shoulder ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... mixture of awe and admiration, or fail to recur to the page of sacred writ illustrative of Almighty wrath and the just man's recompense? Who can gaze upon the majesty of this mount, towering above the 'high places' and the hills, and turn without repining to the plains beneath, where puny man has pitched his tent and wars upon his fellow, mocking the sublimity of Nature with his paltry tyranny? I felt as if I lived in other times, and my eye eagerly but vainly sought for some traces of that 'ark' which furnished a refuge and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... puny wood be shown, Thy image shall preserve thy fame; Ages to come thy worth shall own, Point at thy limbs, and ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare. Of English poets it may be said generally they are either born in London or remote country places. The large provincial towns know them not. Indeed, nothing is more pathetic than the way in which these dim, destitute places hug the memory of any puny whipster of a poet who may have been born within their statutory boundaries. This has its advantages, for it keeps alive in certain localities fames that would otherwise have utterly perished. Parnassus has forgotten all about poor Henry ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... they forward our designs. It is from a want of attention to the feelings of others, from a neglect of the golden rule of putting ourselves in their place, and not from innate malice or a diabolical delight in giving pain, that the sorrows caused by domestic tyrants and puny oppressors chiefly proceed. Were self-love reduced within proper bounds, earth would resemble heaven. Let those, then, who deeply feel those "wrongs which patient merit of the unworthy takes," temper their aspirations after a state ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... began to stand in need of some such cordial after the losses they had sustained, and the ministry of Versailles did not fail to make the most of this advantage: they published a pompous narrative of the battle of St. Cas, and magnified into a mighty victory the puny check which they had given to the rear-guard of an inconsiderable detachment. The people received it with implicit belief, because it was agreeable to their passions, and congratulated themselves upon their success in hyperboles, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Saint Cuthbert aid me now! O Bax, see how to sweat thou'st made me now! Thy speed abate! O sweet Saint Dominic! Why pliest thou thy puny shanks so quick; O day! O Bax! O hot, sulphurous day, My flesh betwixt ye melteth fast away. Come, sit ye, Bax, in shade of yon sweet tree, And, sitting ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... accomplished. When the last Pope of Rome dies, so it was said, then time would be accomplished. The last Pope had died. Their basilica with its mighty dome was a desert where scorpions and snakes abounded. The fifth Buddha would appear, not the second Christos. Suddenly I saw before me in a puny boat a beautiful beardless youth. He was attired in some symbolical garments and upon his head a triple tiara. I could not believe my aged eyes. He sat upright. His attitude was hieratic. His eyes were lifted heavenwards. He clasped ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... believed that such a buxom woman, who looked as if her crupper were as warm as her looks, and who assuredly must have liked to be well attended to, could be satisfied with such a puny husband; with such an ugly, weak, red-headed fellow, who smelled of his own hair and of the mustiness of the carrion which he ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the subjection of time and space; he is no longer a "puny insect shivering at a breeze"; he is the glory of creation, formed to occupy all time and all extent; bounded, during his residence upon earth, only to the boundaries of the world, and destined to life and immortality in brighter regions, when the fabric of nature ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... on the sea-front, a lady and gentleman were advancing with hesitating steps, as though unfamiliar with the place. The brother was a puny little man, with a sallow complexion. He was wearing a motoring-cap. The sister too was short, but rather stout, and was wrapped in a large cloak. She struck them as a woman of a certain age, but still good-looking under the thin veil ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... presume my course to block? Off, off! or, puny Thing! I'll hurl thee headlong with the rock To which thy fibres cling." The Flood was tyrannous and strong; [A] 15 The patient Briar suffered long, Nor did he utter groan or sigh, Hoping the danger would be past; But, seeing no relief, at last, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... than the Devil! They're about as like what fightin' Christians ought to be as a spit wad's like a bullet! Well, we went in with a whoop; but God wasn't out for the sissies that night, Wayland: he was out with a gun for red blood men! He got us, Wayland! That's all! 'Twasn't the poor puny preachers, perhaps 'twas th' music: th' fat one cud sing, but when we came out the doctor was cryin'; poor fellow he killed himself in D. T.'s later; an' A was all plugged up wi' cold in m' head blowin' m' nose! 'Boys,' says I, 'here's where I get ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... the philosophical, and the cruel—these were the divided streams, as it were, of his character, which all, however, united to make up the dark and terrible current of his great ambition; great, however, only as a passion and a moral impulse of action, but puny, vile, and base in its true character and elements. Here, then, stood the victim of his own creed, the baffled antagonist of God's providence, who despised religion, and trampled upon its obligations; the man who strove to make himself his own deity, his own priest, and who ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... these shall puny sages shake Their heads, and haste to mock the failing one, Who in his strength could make ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... six years of age, puny and pale and sickly, having lived most of her time in a close back room, up three pairs of stairs, in a London house of business, where her mother had been housekeeper. Her only playfellow had been a cat, and the prospect from her window had been the walls ...
— The Christmas Child • Hesba Stretton
... scientist stumbled on through the mists, Luke's doubts increased and he began to lose his respect for the man's intellect and for the cunning which had enabled him to outwit the neutralizing energies used by the guards. After all, he was a weak and puny specimen. They all were, the smart guys who held the people of two worlds in their power by exercising the knowledge they had learned from books. And this one had failed even in that; whatever he might have been, he had run afoul of the law himself and was already a doomed man. Tricks! ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... but presently he returned with an axe in his hand. Giving the lantern to his father, he proceeded to smash the skiff with the axe, his object being to prevent my going on board the Splash. I regarded it as a puny effort on his part, and was relieved to find they did not intend to visit her themselves. As soon as I was satisfied in regard to his purpose, I crept carefully up to the horse, unfastened him, and jumped into the chaise. The animal was full of ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... up the word the more hotly because she knew it to be Jacqueline's own gage of battle, "an empire, August Sire, to be gained by fighting, as your forefathers, as mine, won theirs. And that is nobler, I suppose, than puny inheritance. I do not know what the Hapsburg may be fallen to, but a daughter of Orleans still has the right to expect a crown from her husband. If not, she is ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... she wore trowsers and petticoats that did not reach to her knees; they were, it is true, trimmed with the most costly Mechlin, formed by the most tasteful milliner; but as her shape was by no means graceful, and her mode of life, by harassing her into puny ill health, kept her wretchedly thin, she resembled at a distance a small windmill about to be set in motion; and when near her, it was impossible not to believe that her clothes had been stripped to the middle, for ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... was soon made, and as the boats left the shore, beneath the same cold and stormy sky that had led them forth, and feebly breasted the hissing waves which seemed to sneer at their puny efforts, the eighteen men who remained on shore drew ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... movement, in the tones of her voice, in the loftiness of her carriage and the steadfast look of her open, starlit eyes. Altogether, there was something so rarely lofty in herself and all that clad her that, face to face with it and with her, my feeble attempt at moral precaution seemed puny, ridiculous, and out of place. Without a word in the doing, I took from an old chiffonier chest an armful of blankets, several of which I threw over her as she lay, for in the meantime, having replaced the coverlet, she had lain down at length on the bed. I took a chair, and sat ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... stunned by the Impact and then every Son of Peoria leaned back and let out a Yowl. To think that a real up-to-date Fellow would pull any of that Old Stuff! A puny Mortal trying to get a Toe-Hold ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... made it a land of remote enchantment, even to the most unimaginative. And to Hanson the world outside became as unreal as a dream that is past. Here was beauty, and the wide, free spaces of nature, where every law of man seemed puny, ineffectual and void. In this unbounded, uncharted freedom the shackles of conventionality fell from him. Here was life and here was love. He was a primitive man, and here, before him in visible form, stood the world's ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... of resort, we stopped to view the stupendous work of Almighty God, and listen to the ceaseless thundering of the cataract. How tame appear the works of art, and how insignificant the bearing of proud, puny man, compared with the awful grandeur of that natural curiosity. Yet there, the rich from all parts of the world, do congregate! There you will find the idle, swaggering slaveholder, blustering about in lordly style; boasting of his wealth; betting and ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... particularly interested. In declining to become jealous of the bevy of titled lords, who pay fawning court to my wealth and social position, here in Washington, you do yourself justice; while at the same time, you pay me the compliment of a lifetime! When compared with you, how puny and feeble are the princes and titled lords, made by kings and courts, in lands where selfishness reigns supreme at the expense of millions of unfortunate subjects! An impecunious host of these fortune-hunting ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... be Easter,' the smith retorted gruffly, as a puny atomy of a man with a stick and lanthorn was pushed with difficulty to the front. 'But so being you are here, supposing you put Joe Hincks a foot or two back, and let the gentleman ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... Tennyson shall sing; Macaulay chant a more than Roman lay; And Bulwer Lytton, Lytton Bulwer erst, Unseen amidst a metaphysic fog, Howl melancholy homage to the moon; For you once more Montgomery shall rave In all his rapt rabidity of rhyme; Nankeened Cockaigne shall pipe his puny note, And our young ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... trembling from head to foot. Under Mrs. Batholommey's distorted glare and threatening noiseless mouthings his puny courage had gone to pieces. Big tears began to roll down his cheeks. And noting the child's terror, ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... the Merrimac, looking like a giant in comparison with this dwarfish antagonist. As she approached, the little craft glided swiftly in front of her grounded consort, like a new David offering battle to a modern Goliath. As if in disdain of this puny antagonist, the Merrimac began an attack on the Minnesota. But when the two eleven-inch guns of the Monitor opened fire, hurling solid balls of one hundred and sixty-eight pounds' weight against the iron sides of her great opponent, it became at once evident that a new move had opened in the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... to pass over the brink was her husband, a slight figure, almost puny, amongst these hard prairie folk. Just for one weak moment she was on the point of raising a protesting voice. Just for one moment a womanly softening held her yielding. He was her husband, and memories crowded. But almost as they were born ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... point but one. I am not of consequence enough to claim for myself so much as an undistinguished place among the select theologians who at this day have declared war on heresies: but this I know, that, puny as I am, I run no risk while, supported by the grace of Christ, I shall do battle, with the aid of heaven and earth, against such fabrications as these, so odious, so tasteless, ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... in a group, with twenty-four men in them, silently waiting for battle with one of the mightiest of God's creatures—one that was indeed a terrible foe to encounter were he but wise enough to make the best use of his opportunities. Against him we came with our puny weapons, of which I could not help reminding myself that "he laugheth at the shaking of a spear." But when the man's brain was thrown into the scale against the instinct of the brute, the contest looked less unequal than at first sight, for THERE is the secret of success. My musings ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... advertisement (see Dispatch), but retire yourself in the country (I should think I would—Monteagle), where you may abide in safety; for though there be no appearance of any punae; (what the deuce does this mean? Puny's little—Monteagle), yet they will receive a terrible blow-up (By punae he means members of Parliament, and he is another Guy!—Monteagle); yet they shall not see who hurts them, though the place shall be purified ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... puny, and his hair, which should have stood out till Joey appeared three times the size he was, his hair, what hair he had, lay straight and limp along his little back. Rose passed her hand over him the ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... her by the wrists. Thus I held her at arm's length, and my fingers tightened until I saw the flesh grow white beneath them. The intensity of my rage beat hers down and made it a puny thing. ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... harems ensues. Hagar leaves the tribe, is sent back by the angel, Ishmael is born, and this son of a slave (?) is regarded not only as free, but heir of the house of Abraham. Years pass, and the wild, reckless Ishmael is seen ridiculing Isaac, his puny brother and coheir. At the sight, all the mother and the aristocrat again rise up in Sarah, and she cries out to Abraham, "Cast out this bondwoman and her son, for he shall not be heir with my son, even Isaac;" and Abraham, so far from regarding them as chattels personal, and selling ...
— Is Slavery Sanctioned by the Bible? • Isaac Allen
... humans of a strange breed!" a snarling voice barked from the wall, in the Callistonian language. "Our deductions were accurate, as usual—it is to the humans of Planet Three, whose bodies are a trifle less puny than those of the humanity of the satellites, that we owe our recent reverses. However, those reverses were merely temporary—humanity, no matter what its breed, shall very shortly disappear from the satellites. Now, you scum of the Solar System, you shall ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... shall happen to take. The good-natured man is commonly the darling of the petty wits, with whom they exercise themselves in the rudiments of raillery; for he never takes advantage of failings, nor disconcerts a puny satirist with unexpected sarcasms; but while the glass continues to circulate, contentedly bears the expense of an uninterrupted laughter, and retires rejoicing ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the period of the Civil War, he was separated from his parents when but six weeks old, they having been sold to some distant slaveholders. The infant was puny and ailing, and his master regarded him as worthless. A family named Carver took the babe and his brother, a little older. It was with them the child had a home for nine years. About that time the little black boy developed a remarkable love for plants, and so much knowledge of their ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... downs of them things. Dear, dear! if I 'ad it now there needn't be no trouble about Master Percy. But"—feeling for the precious bag—"I think I couldn't rest heasy in my grave if I 'ad the statoo of the queen 'erself hover me if I'd let the child I brought up come to this disgrace an' 'im the puny, weakly baby he was, too, when I took 'im, the fine, sturdy lad he is now if he is maybe a bit too soon led hastray. But what can you hexpect of a lad when he's kept hunder the way hour boys is. An' he's not ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... the point; One prayer to God for His assisting grace, And, straining every muscle, I brought round The vessel's stern close to the rocky wall; Then snatching up my weapons, with a bound I swung myself upon the flattened shelf, And with my feet thrust off, with all my might, The puny bark into the watery hell. There left it drift about, as Heaven ordains! Thus am I here, deliver'd from the might Of the dread storm, and ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... picture of man as He knows him who knows him best. And in effect He says what we have been forgiven by God is as an unpayable amount. And what are not willing to forgive is like sixteen dollars and a fraction by contrast. What little puny folks some of us are ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... from the poet's puny arm swished the air. Pinchas was roused, the veins on his forehead swelled, his heart thumped rapidly in his bosom. Wolf shook his knobby fist laughingly at the poet, who made no further effort to use any other weapon of ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... put together; there is nothing Robin can't take: whooping-cough,—why, he nearly whooped himself to death; measles and scarlet fever,—why, he was as nearly gone as possible, the doctor said. He has always been puny and weakly from a baby. But there's Bell, now, makes more of a fuss over Rob than over the others; if there is anything that will keep him away from the Man and Plough, it is Rob asking him to ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... interesting here to note Mr. Churchill's soliloquy on his journey in an armoured train, published in the Morning Post at the very time the noble fellow was suffering for his bravery on an identical trip. "This armoured train," he said, "is a very puny specimen, having neither gun nor Maxims, with no roof to its trucks and no shutters to its loopholes, and being in every way inferior to the powerful machines I saw working along the southern frontier. Nevertheless it ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... 'my,' we rise to the wonderful thought that the creature can claim an individual relation to Him, and in some profound sense a possession there. The tiny mica flake claims kindred with the Alpine peak from which it fell. The poor, puny hand, that can grasp so little of the material and temporal, can grasp all of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... might be, that thinned in former days the families of nobles and gentleman, might as well, in the opinion of almost all, have rested beneath a quaint little image of his infant figure, in brass, in the vaults of the little Norman chapel; for he was a puny, ailing child, apt to scandalize his father and brother, and their warlike retainers, by being scared at the dazzling helm and nodding crest, and preferring the seat at this mother's feet, the fairy tale of the old nurse, the song of the minstrel, or the book of the ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... puny boy was returned to his parents a robust, healthy, manly man. Many a timid, helpless boy went home a brave, independent man. Many a wild, reckless boy went home sobered, serious, and trustworthy. And many whose career at home was wicked and blasphemous ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... said Black Panther, 'our tribes, if we just whistle them up, will far outnumber your puny forces; so resistance is useless. Return, therefore, to your own land, O brother, and smoke pipes of peace in your wampums with your squaws and your medicine-men, and dress yourselves in the gayest wigwams, and eat happily ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... laboratory of law. The first objects that attracted his attention, were, of course, the imposing semicircular line of judges, no fewer than fifteen (almost sufficient for a small standing army for puny Scotland in those days), who, wigged and robed, sat and nodded and grinned, and munched their chops in each other's faces, with a most extraordinary regularity of mummery, which yielded great amusement to the stalworth riever of the Borders. Their appearance in the long gowns, with sleeves down ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... experience of many observers that the first whelps born in a litter are the strongest, largest, and healthiest. If the litter is a large one, the last born may be noticeably puny, and this disparity in size may continue to maturity. The wise breeder will decide for himself how many whelps should be left to the care of their dam. The number should be relative to her health and constitution, and in any case it is well not to give her so many that they will ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... you? Come here. Let's look at you. Aint you as strong as ever you was? Here's your mother says you're getting puny." ...
— The Carpenter's Daughter • Anna Bartlett Warner
... went with Tellerchen to the Copper Bridge, where the puny-looking bull awaited them. They began the struggle, and fought and fought until toward the afternoon. Sometimes the ox gored the bull, at others the bull the ox, and the victory still remained undecided. But when the afternoon was nearly over the ox's strength ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... as possible for more than an hour. There was but one peculiarity or symptom upon which to base a prescription. It was this: It would lie a few moments apparently asleep, then it would give a start and begin to scream with all its puny power. This would last one or two minutes, when it would as suddenly fall asleep again. This, they assured me, was the way it had performed all through its illness, except when opiated. 'Pains come and go suddenly.' That was all I had to go on. I could not locate ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... rehearsal. If he can dispense with flattery, he is sure at least of sincerity, and even though the annotation be rude, he may rely upon the justness of the comment." This is calm and complacent enough, but he proceeds with some warmth: "As for the little puny critics who scatter their peevish strictures in private circles, and scribble at every author who has the eminence of being unconnected with them, as they are usually spleen-swoln from a vain idea of increasing their consequence, there will always be ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... hovel is safe from it, no Prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence can not bring it about, and puny efforts to make it universal end in quaint comedy, and coarse farce. —The ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... as she spoke, and Alora, realizing the hall door could not be forced by her puny strength, advanced into the living room. There were three other doorways opening from this apartment. She could hear Janet rattling dishes and pans, so the way she had gone led into the kitchen. The other two doors she found gave entrance to small bedrooms, neither having ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... one interest which must have behind it a well-organized, coherent national government, able to protect it and to enforce its rights in foreign lands, it is the shipping interest. But American ships, after the Treaty of Paris, hailed from thirteen independent but puny States. They had behind them the shadow of a confederacy, but no substance. The flags they carried were not only not respected in foreign countries—they were not known. Moreover, the States were ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... far as the individual is concerned, a most irrational thing; and so far as the world of beasts and emotional men and women is concerned, it is a most necessary thing. That life may live and continue to live, a driving force is needed that is greater than the puny will of life. And in the disorder produced by the passion for perpetuation, whether or not assisted by imagination, is found this driving force. As Ernest Haeckel, that brave old ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... natures then, had hung like vultures on his words in the Roost that night! What was this power that he was trifling with, that brought him now this cold, dead fear before which he quailed! What was this something that in his temerity he had dared invoke—that rose now engulfing him, a puny maggot—that snatched him up and flung him headlong, shackled, before this nebulous, terrifying tribunal, where out of nothingness, out of a void, the calm, majestic features of the Patriarch took form and changed, and changed, and kept changing, and grew implacable, set with the stamp of doom. What ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... and a she- Arabian camel. The people of Anatolia keep these male dromedaries as stallions for the purpose of covering the females of the smaller Arabian breed, which the Turkmans, yearly bring to their market. If left to breed among themselves the Caramanian camels produce a puny race of little value. The Arabs use exclusively their smaller breed of camels, because they endure heat, thirst, and fatigue, infinitely better than the others, which are well suited to hilly districts. The camels of the Turkmans feed upon a kind of low bramble ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... than these people's welcome. Outside we met a young man who spoke German, and as he wanted to show off, he stopped to converse. We were joined by an older man who claimed to be his father. The father was really a jolly old boy. He said his son was a puny weakling, but as for himself he never had had a doctor in his life. So Jan tried his mettle with a cigar. An officer, a filthy old peasant in the remains of a battered uniform, joined the group, but he was not charming; however, Jan offered him a cigarette. The old yokel rushed on ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... have gone before: I seem to hear the plash of coming oars; The mists are lifting and the boat is near. 'Tis well. To die as I am dying now— A soldier's death amid the gladsome shouts Of victory for which my puny hands Did their full share, albeit it was small, Was all my late ambition. Bring the Flag, And hold it over my head. Let me die thus Under the stars ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... birth to a child. It would be foolish to assume that this child comes into the world with a normal standard of resistance; but it is certain he is not tubercular and doomed at the moment of his birth. He may be what is ordinarily termed a weak, puny, sickly infant, but the germ of disease is not implanted in his constitution. If he is taken from his mother, taken away from the tubercular environment, and brought up under the best hygienic and sanitary surroundings, it is possible for ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... beneath the velvet of his favorite cat's-paw. Thus it was that Michael's momentary defeat had come about. Czar Nicholas crossed him openly; put upon him an affront unbearable; lowered him in the eyes of three hundred puny men and women over whom he had no power for revenge. It was, then, as a result of this, that treason had begun to surge through the mind of a brilliantly wicked man. And had he been able to read certain thoughts passing through his subject's head, it is ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... He was a puny child, very slender and weak; and the neighbors were fond of telling his mother that he could not live long. Perhaps this was one of the things that caused him to be favored ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... substantial Baptist farmer, and his wife Harmony, daughter of Cushman Downer, and grand-daughter of Joseph Downer, one of the five first settlers (1761) of Thetford, Vermont. Laura was a delicate infant, puny and rickety, and was subject to fits up to twenty months old, but otherwise seemed to have normal senses; at two years, however, she had a very bad attack of scarlet fever, which destroyed sight and hearing, blunted the sense ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... (optical instruments) 445.. V. be little &c. adj.; lie in a nutshell; become small &c. (decrease) 36, (contract) 195. Adj. little; small &c. (in quantity) 32; minute, diminutive, microscopic; microzoal; inconsiderable &c. (unimportant) 643; exiguous, puny, tiny, wee, petty, minikin[obs3], miniature, pygmy, pigmy[obs3], elfin; undersized; dwarf, dwarfed, dwarfish; spare, stunted, limited; cramp, cramped; pollard, Liliputian, dapper, pocket; portative[obs3], portable; duodecimo[obs3]; dumpy, squat; short &c. 201. impalpable, intangible, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... "Puny earth-dweller, lost here," Its menace breathed, "what keeps you from destruction? For you the circle has not been traced nor the pentagram fixed, for you no law has been thrust down. Trespass is death. ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... had a single purpose—to produce good soldiers and obedient citizens. A sound body formed the first essential. A father was required to submit his son, soon after birth, to an inspection by the elders of his tribe. If they found the child puny or ill-shaped, they ordered it to be left on the mountain side, to perish from exposure. At the age of seven a boy was taken from his parents' home and placed in a military school. Here he was trained in marching, sham fighting, and gymnastics. He learned ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... Thor grew very angry. "What! dress me like a girl!" he roared. "I should never hear the last of it! The Asir will mock me, and call me 'maiden'! The giants, and even the puny dwarfs, will have a lasting jest upon me! I will not go! I will fight! I will die, if need be! But dressed as a woman ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... tunnel, and emerged a few seconds later, screeching hoarsely, right in London. It hit me below the belt. I experienced what they call a 'sinking' feeling in the pit of my stomach. I thought what a fool I was, how puny and insignificant; and, again, what a fool I must be, to come blundering along here into the maw of this vast beast, this London—I and my miserable five-and-twenty pounds! For one wild moment the ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... same ignorance and obstinacy, the same punishment and suffering. The worst of it is that Mercury does not seem exempt from the general curse of nothingness which seems to brood over all physical existence. There is no stability even in solar systems. Even we puny creatures can divine something of their birth and death. Out of whirling nebulae suns and planets are born; souls slowly evolve on worlds which were once balls of fire. There are endless diversity and specialization, myriads of creatures rise out of the furnace of life. Some gain ascendancy and ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... father's money should go to the degradation of his mother. That she lusted and desired to have, was the worst of reasons why she should obtain! A compelled temperance was of course in itself worthless, but that alone could give opportunity for the waking of what soul was left her. Puny as it was, that might then begin to grow; it might become aware of the bondage to which it had been subjected, and begin to long ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... but through the shaft That held the polar pivot, eye to eye, Look now—blank nothingness! As though Change laughed At man's presumption and his puny craft, The star has slipped its ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... soundin' title,' sezee. Gawge gave a little moanful sawt of smile, same as to say, well, aftah all, it wasn't wuth what it cost him. An' it wasn't! No, it wasn't," repeated Uncle Billy, solemnly shaking the ashes from his pipe. "What's the good of a head full of book learnin' with a poah puny body that kaint ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and all round were several indefinite rags, knitted stockings, a red calico jacket, and a large sheet of coarse linen spread over the hedge. At the noise of the gate the nurse appeared with a baby she was suckling on one arm. With her other hand she was pulling along a poor puny little fellow, his face covered with scrofula, the son of a Rouen hosier, whom his parents, too taken up with their business, left in ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... regions waste and wan, Comes the encroaching race of man, A puny, feeble, little bubber, He has no fur, he has no blubber. The scornful bear sat down at ease To see the stranger starve and freeze; But, lo! the stranger slew the bear, And ate his fat and wore his hair; These deeds, O Man, ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... the party of successful pioneers created the greatest excitement in the little colony. No longer would the mountainous barrier stand defiantly in their western path. For over thirty years it had laughed at their puny efforts to cross its rugged crest, but its time had come at last; the way to the unknown west was now open, and rejoicingly the settlers prepared to follow on the explorers' trail. What the mysterious interior might hold, they could not imagine; but the gates thereto being thrown wide ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... Aristotle in the Schoolmen, as Lessing lived in Goethe, Goethe in Heine, and Heine in young Germany, so great literary fathers reappear in the progeny of the next generation; the reproduction is indeed oft puny enough, still the reproduction is there. But in Russia, while Pushkin lived in Gogol, and Gogol in Turgenef, the generation which was to inherit the kingdom left by Turgenef and Tolstoy is now buried in fortresses and dungeons. And as in America mammon has ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... water. Why will you be so slippery? No, I don't like you and I never will but for all that I'm going to make a decent, upstanding infant of you. You are going to get as fat as a self-respecting child should be, for one thing. I am not going to have people saying 'what a puny little thing that baby of Rilla Blythe's is' as old Mrs. Drew said at the senior Red Cross yesterday. If I can't love you I mean to be proud ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... like many of Lord Bacon's illustrations, has more wit than meaning. But it is a good trick of rhetoric. The vividness of the image, 'per se', makes men overlook the imperfection of the simile. "You see my hand, the hand of a poor, puny fellow-mortal; and will you pretend not to see the hand of Providence in this business? He who sees a mouse must be wilfully blind if he does not ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... come never there. Greatness, with Timon, dwells in such a draught As brings all Brobdingnag before your thought. To compass this, his building is a town, His pond an ocean, his parterre a down: Who but must laugh, the master when he sees, A puny insect, shivering at a breeze! Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around! The whole, a laboured quarry above ground; Two Cupids squirt before; a lake behind Improves the keenness of the northern wind. His gardens next your admiration call, On every side you look, behold ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... their turn at this work, at first together, but, as night followed night, and there was no sign of the blacks, Mick allowed them to take their watches alone. This experience did more than any other to impress them with Central Australia: its silence, its absolute loneliness, its vastness and the puny insignificance of man, who dared to pit his ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... elders of the tribe to which the child belonged; their business it was carefully to view the infant, and, if they found it stout and well made, they gave order for its rearing, and allotted to it one of the nine thousand shares of land above mentioned for its maintenance; but if they found it puny and ill-shaped, ordered it to be taken to what was called the Apothetae, a sort of chasm under Taygetus; as thinking it neither for the good of the child itself, nor for the public interest, that it should be brought up, if it did not, from the very outset, appear made to ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... wonderful enough to bear a demi-god, a wretch can divorce and disgrace me! Oh, these four terrible weeks—ecstasy, despair—ecstasy, despair—and to the world as unblinking as a marble in a museum! Do you wonder that I welcome the hurricane, in which no man dare think of any but his puny self? For the moment I am free, and as alive, as triumphant as that great wind outside—as eager to devastate, to fight, to conquer, to live—to live—to live. What do I care for civilization? If James Hamilton were out there among the flying trees and called to me, I would ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... comeliness of Melicent. It seemed an all-engulfing madness with this despot daily to aggravate his fierce desire of her, to nurture his obsession, so that he might glory in the consciousness of treading down no puny adversary. ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... keen arrows of Love's sunken sun, For that, with nearer vision it discerns What in the distance like ripe roses seemed Crimsoning with odorous beauty the gray rocks Are the red lights of wreckers! Just as well The obstinate traveler might in pride oppose His puny shoulder to the icy slip Of the blind avalanche, and hope for life; Or Beauty press her forehead in the grave, And think to rise as from the bridal bed. But let the soul resolve its course shall be Onward and upward, and the walls of pain May build themselves about ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... and strength of the lateral supporting columns, one of which was immediately above their heads, and then led them over to the vertical column which pierced the middle of the floor. Enormous as the lateral had seemed, it appeared puny in comparison with this monster of fabricated steel. Seaton explained that the two verticals were many times stronger than the four laterals, as the center of gravity of the ship had been made lower than its geometrical center, so that ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... cruel heart disdains what they do motion. Yet though persisting in eternal hate, To aggravate the cause of my complaining, Her fury ne'er confineth with a date, I will not cease to love, for her disdaining. Such puny thoughts of unresolved ground, Whose inaudacity dares but base conceit, In me and my love never shall be found. Those coward thoughts unworthy minds await. But those that love well have not yet begun; Persever ever and have ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... and stood over her. "To some self-centered cub—some puny egotist in his twenties, who'll make you a slave to his needs and whims, and discard you for another woman when you've worn out your youth and beauty," he cried. "But you won't marry him. I ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the power to listen, or reason, or think. All he knew was that some time, when he was away and while no one was there to befriend, Ike Bray his enemy had climbed up the butte and jumped the Old Juan claim. And all the time he was dallying in New York and playing his puny string at Navajoa the Old Juan claim and the mighty Tecolote had been left unguarded until they ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... puddles and the dust and impurities from the bed of a half dry stream. It was a new sensation and a novel era in my experience of humanity, and the desire to get behind that noble forehead, and see its inmost workings, was strong beyond the strength of puny doubts and preconceived prejudice. Therefore, when Isaacs appeared, looking like the sun-god for all his quiet dress of gray and his unobtrusive manner, I felt the "little thrill of pleasure" so aptly compared by Swinburne to the soft touch ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... sparkling, through the dry and dusty channels of the law; the chirping sparrows, bred in Temple chinks and crannies, might have held their peace to listen to imaginary skylarks as so fresh a little creature passed; the dingy boughs, unused to droop, otherwise than in their puny growth, might have bent down in a kindred gracefulness to shed their benedictions on her graceful head; old love-letters, shut up in iron boxes in the neighbouring offices, and made of no account among the heaps of family papers ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... appeared to me if any good and faithful servant was entitled to enter into the joys of his Lord, such as these might be. But I do not know that I ever met with a human being who seemed to me to have a stronger claim on the pitying consideration and kindness of his Maker than a wretched, puny, crippled, stunted child that I saw in Newgate, who was pointed out as one of the most notorious and inveterate little thieves in London. I have no doubt that some of those who were looking at this pitiable morbid secretion of the diseased social organism thought they were very virtuous ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... course, in much of this something of the malignance of party. In an age when one reverend theologian, Toplady, called another theologian, John Wesley, "a low and puny tadpole in Divinity" we must expect harsh epithets. But behind this bitterness lay a deep conviction of the righteousness of the American cause. At a great banquet at Holkham, Coke omitted the toast of the King; but every night ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... toward the growing radiance of a better morning. The force is commensurate with the field. The cry of every true Odd-Fellow ought to be the cry that leaped from the heart of Isaiah when his lips were touched with the coal from off the altar: "Here am I, Lord, send me." Our order is no longer a puny and helpless infant, but a lusty giant, panoplied in the armor of truth and clad in the strength of perpetual youth. We have riches untold. We have institutions for the care of the old, and the orphan, the equal of any of which the world can boast. We ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... and boundless consciousness, or into the hopeless unconsciousness? Shall we have the fate which our senses foretell, or that which our intelligence demands? Or are both senses and intelligence illusions, puny implements, vain weapons of a brief hour that were never intended to probe or contend with the universe? If there really be a contradiction, is it wise to accept it and to deem impossible that which we do not understand, seeing that we understand almost ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... equipage of some gaping blockhead should mangle me in the mire, I am tempted to exclaim, 'What merits has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some previous state of existence, that he is ushered into this state of being with the sceptre of rule, and the keys of riches in his puny fist, and I am kicked into the world, the sport of folly, or the victim of pride?... Often as I (p. 090) have glided with humble stealth through the pomp of Princes Street, it has suggested itself to me, as an improvement on the ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... I were punish-ed For every pun I've shed, I should not have a puny shed Wherein to ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... to be compelled to inform us that there were no red meats of any sort to be had, but only sea foods. So we started in with oysters. Personally I have never cared deeply for the European oyster. In size he is anaemic and puny as compared with his brethren of the eastern coast of North America; and, moreover, chronically he is suffering from an acute attack of brass poisoning. The only way by which a novice may distinguish a bad European oyster from ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... hours of the day is thronged. It is a place favored by the native gig drivers to whip heavily laden coolies out of the way. A big Chinaman with powerful limbs, carrying a great burden, hastens to give the road to a puny creature driving a puny pony, lashing it with a big whip, and scrambles furiously away from a two-wheeler whirling along a man able to pay a ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... for permission, as he indeed was bound to do by the simplest rules of courtesy. Mr. Smalley replied at once, willingly granting the favour, as I can prove by the note still in my possession; and presently, frightened by the puny yelping of a few critical curs at home, he has the effrontery ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... be more than seven; But years go fast in the slums, And hard on the pains of winter The pitiless summer comes. The wail of sickly children She knows; she understands The pangs of puny bodies, The clutch of small ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... of Jem, against whom she had always borne a grudge, because his inoffensive presence alone had the power of making Arthur look puny. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... yet worse and nameless atrocities, fill up the terrible picture, of impotent justice and triumphant guilt. But the guilt is not all Spanish and Portuguese. The English Government can enforce its demands on the puny cabinets of Madrid and Lisbon, scarce conscious of a substantive existence, in all that concerns our petty interests: wherever justice and mercy to mankind demand our interference, there our voice sinks within us, and no sound is uttered. That any treaty without an outfit ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... post of observation, and, by standing on tiptoe, he succeeded in distinguishing a puny little boy, some three or four years old, and clad in rags, who was playing with the remnants of a toy-horse. The sight of this child increased Chupin's indignation. "So there's a child?" he growled. "The rascal not only deserts his wife, but he leaves his child to starve! We may as well ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... country parson will not need to seek so far. He will see it (if he be an observant man) in the faces and figures of his school- children. He will see a rosier, fatter, bigger-boned race growing up, which bids fair to surpass in bulk the puny and ill-fed generation of 1815-45, and equal, perhaps, in thew and sinew, to the men who saved Europe in the ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... For all its follies and shows and lies, Its rainy weather, and cheeks likewise, And age, hard hearing, and rheumatiz; We're not a faultin' the Lord's own plan; All things jest At their best, It's a puny good ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... refused him anything? Nea kissed the drawn pallid face without a word, tied on her shabby bonnet, and took her baby in her arms—it was a puny, sickly creature, and wailed incessantly, and she could not leave it—then with tears blinding her poor eyes, she walked rapidly through the dark streets, hardly feeling the cutting wind, and quite unconscious of the driving sleet that pelted her ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... tales inveigh'st, As much too pleasant for thy taste; Egregious critic, cease to scoff, While for a time I play you off, And strive to soothe your puny rage. As Esop comes upon the stage, And dress'd entirely new in Rome, Thus enters with the tragic plume.— "O that the fair Thessalian pine Had never felt the wrath divine, And fearless of the axe's wound, Had still the Pelian mountain crown'd! That Argus by Palladian ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... prejudice has banished from our school-rooms the name of love, and presented to their youthful inmates fragments instead of books, cramped and puny publications instead of the works of master-spirits, lest the mind should be contaminated by any allusion to that passion contained in them. The wisdom of such a proceeding is much upon a par with that which ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... taken the year old infant from the basket. It was a pale, puny little creature, whose father had fallen in battle, and whose mother had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
