"Scantiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it looks ridiculous, mama?" referring anxiously to the scantiness of the skirt and the unblushing exposure of ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... the usual tendency is towards an improper scantiness. Here, too, asceticism peeps out. There is a current theory, vaguely entertained if not put into a definite formula, that the sensations are to be disregarded. They do not exist for our guidance, but to mislead us, seems to be the prevalent belief reduced to its naked form. It is a grave ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... slowly tinkled up and down were rows of people with baskets between their legs and papers before their faces; and all showed by some peculiarity of air or dress the excess of heat which they had already borne, and to which they seemed to look forward, and gave by the scantiness of their number a vivid impression of the uncounted thousands within doors prolonging, before the day's terror began, the oblivion ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the very low temperatures on the earth under the equator at a height where the barometer stands at about three times as high as on Mars, proves that from scantiness of atmosphere alone Mars cannot possibly have a temperature as high as the freezing-point of water. The combination of these two results must bring down the temperature of Mars to a degree wholly incompatible with ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... she, 'long beheld with compassion the wretched fate of those women, who from scantiness of fortune, and pride of family, are reduced to become dependent, and to bear all the insolence of wealth from such as will receive them into their families; these, though in some measure voluntary slaves, yet suffer all the evils of the severest servitude, and are, I believe, ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... to the scantiness of forks. "And when your justice of peace is knuckle-deep in goose, you may without disparagement to your blood, though you have a lady to your mother, fall very manfully to your woodcocks."— Decker's GULS HORN BOOK, 1609, ed. Nott, ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... Plata, and not very far from the mouth of the estuary. It is a most quiet, forlorn, little town; built, as is universally the case in these countries, with the streets running at right angles to each other, and having in the middle a large plaza or square, which, from its size, renders the scantiness of the population more evident. It possesses scarcely any trade; the exports being confined to a few hides and living cattle. The inhabitants are chiefly landowners, together with a few shopkeepers and ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... sea, mountain, and champaign but actually over the thoroughfares of a capital city, which we could see blackened by day with the moving crowd of the inhabitants, and at night shining with lamps. And lastly, although I was not insensible to the restraints of prison or the scantiness of our rations, I remembered I had sometimes eaten quite as ill in Spain, and had to mount guard and march perhaps a dozen leagues into the bargain. The first of my troubles, indeed, was the costume we were obliged to wear. There is a horrible practice in England to trick ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Lower Mackenzie, that have been published. The occupants of this region are the Loucheux Indians. Fine grown men of considerable stature, and well-knit frames, they have evidently followed the course of the Mackenzie River, from south to north. These are the Indians of whom from the scantiness of our previous data, information is most valuable. They are reasonably considered to belong to the same family as the Dog-rib, Beaver, Hare, Copper, Carrier, and other Indians, a family which some call Chepewyan, others Athabascan, but which the present work designates as Tinne. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... fabrication;—an inordinate love of riches, more devouring in his breast than his next strongest passion, love of knowledge, was sufficient to egg him on to it. Throughout life, his moral conduct was unfavourably influenced by the scantiness of his means. It was to beguile the anxiety occasioned by his narrow circumstances that he devoted himself to intense study, from knowing that superior attainments combined with splendid talents would secure for him great offices of trust ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... Padre Pastor, who had held a special mass that morning for Americans, "returned thanks," rolling his eyes, and saying something about the flowers not being plentiful or fragrant, but the stars, exceptional in brilliance, compensating for the floral scantiness. The doctor sang "O, Ca'line," and the captain did tricks with the napkins. Everybody voted this Thanksgiving ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... became quite sick during our imprisonment here, and continued so for most of the summer. Several others were in the same condition. This was rather an advantage, for when sick we did not so much mind the scantiness of our diet. ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... Secondly, there may be various religious orders according to the diversity of practices; thus in one religious order the body is chastised by abstinence in food, in another by the practice of manual labor, scantiness of clothes, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... at it. Coarse laughing faces with pipes and cigarettes and heads wearing caps thrust themselves in at the doorway. Further in could be seen figures in dressing gowns flung open, in costumes of unseemly scantiness, some of them with cards in their hands. They were particularly diverted, when Marmeladov, dragged about by his hair, shouted that it was a consolation to him. They even began to come into the room; at last a sinister ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... tragedy had absorbed my every faculty; I had had no time to think of my companions; I had forgotten them. Now in the painful surges of awakening realization, of full human understanding of that inhuman annihilation, I turned to them for strength. Faintly I wondered again at Ruth's scantiness of garb, her more than half nudity; dwelt curiously upon the red brand ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... been her proper sphere. She should have made it a point of duty, moreover, to sit endlessly to painters and sculptors, and preferably to the latter; because the cold decorum of the marble would consist with the utmost scantiness of drapery, so that the eye might chastely be gladdened with her material perfection in its entireness. I know not well how to express that the native glow of coloring in her cheeks, and even the flesh-warmth over her round ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that in many criticisms passed on the English law the manner in which it has been enunciated seems to have been lost sight of. The hesitation of our courts in declaring principles may be much more reasonably attributed to the comparative scantiness of our precedents, voluminous as they appear to him who is acquainted with no other system, than to the temper of our judges. It is true that in the wealth of legal principle we are considerably poorer than several modern European nations, ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... not unfrequently reduced a foot or more to save the expense of so much outward walling. The one is a refectory, the other the dormitory. The furniture of the former, if the owner ranks in the upper part of the scale of scantiness, will consist of a kitchen dresser, well provided and highly decorated with crockery—not less apparently the pride of the husband than the result of female vanity in the wife: which, with a table, a chest, a few stools, and an iron pot, complete the catalogue of conveniences generally found ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... hundred," said Richard, affecting the indifference of his companion, but feeling privately humbled by the scantiness of ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... causes have led mankind, or rather a portion of them, to abandon magic as a principle of faith and practice and to betake themselves to religion instead. When we reflect upon the multitude, the variety, and the complexity of the facts to be explained, and the scantiness of our information regarding them, we shall be ready to acknowledge that a full and satisfactory solution of so profound a problem is hardly to be hoped for, and that the most we can do in the present ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... dishonorable tranquillity at home. I have more reason to complain of you than you of me; for you have constantly refused me your approbation and assistance; and even when you have granted succors, you have rendered them fruitless by the scantiness and tardiness of your supplies, and compelled me to dissipate my own revenues, and ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... clearly, after the lapse of nearly five centuries, between Uccello and Castagno, and to determine the precise share each had in the formation of the Florentine school, is already a task fraught with difficulties. The scantiness of his remaining works makes it more than difficult, makes it almost impossible, to come to accurate conclusions regarding the character and influence of their somewhat younger contemporary, Domenico Veneziano. That he was an innovator in ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... The scantiness of the Bharia's dress is proverbial, and the saying is 'Bharia bhwaka, pwanda langwata', or 'The Bharia is verily a devil, who only covers his loins with a strip of cloth.' But lately he has assumed ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... on my sleeve," I have shown that I greatly love to be alone, especially in what I am known to call "holy silence;" in fact, as ill-nature may like to put it, I prefer my own quiet company to that disturbed by the talk of other people. So much, then, as to one cause for the scantiness in this self-memoir of expected spicy anecdotes and perilous revelations. Not but that I could make considerable mischief, and perhaps help my publisher in sales, if I chose to make the most of the many celebrities, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper |
