"Shrink from" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... do it! You despise me, perhaps, and think I'm feeble. But you're mistaken. You are ungrateful and impertinent and contemptible, but I will save you in order to save Irma and our name. There is going to be such a row in this town that you and he'll be sorry you came to it. I shall shrink from nothing, for my blood is up. It is unwise of you to laugh. I forbid you to marry Carella, and I shall ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... in his sudden panic, who came to disaster. He had always been afraid of Wonota. She was a dead shot, and he believed that she would not shrink from killing him. ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... "I should not shrink from any service to my dear Cora," said Rose Stillwater, and she was about to add—"nor to you, sir," but she thought it best not to ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... has never been the same woman since the Fire of London, and it would be vain to vex her with questions. She would be of one mind while I spoke to her, and another while her women were pouring their tales into her ear. Methinks I now understand why she has always seemed to shrink from this unfortunate child, and to ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thing in the universe to which He is opposed. Sin is essentially antagonism to God. People shrink from the thought of God's hatred of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... and foul, By the smoky town in its murky cowl; Foul and dank, foul and dank, By wharf and sewer and slimy bank; Darker and darker the farther I go, Baser and baser the richer I grow; Who dare sport with the sin-defiled? Shrink from me, turn ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... she cried. "But the cost! If you kill one of my kin I'll—I'll shrink from you! If you're killed—Oh, the thought is dreadful! You've done your share. Let Steele—some other Ranger finish it. I swear I don't plead for my uncle or my cousin, for their sakes. If they are vile, let them suffer. Russ, it's you I think of! Oh, my pitiful little dreams! I wanted so to ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... save only by the theory of devastation. It is only strong men and, I regret to say it, desperate men who can accept the gospel of dynamite. There are teeming millions of others ready enough to blow up society as it is at present constituted, but who shrink from the only means ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... were, in one way or another, helping the cause, that family of criminals which reigned in Montenegro did not shrink from malversation of the funds of the Red Cross. A young Croat, Mr. Mili[vc]evi['c], who before the War became a naturalized Montenegrin and in Neuilly served as Minister of Justice, has related how the Government continually borrowed ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... the poor woman did not shrink from covering herself, even in the presence of the man she loved, with the ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... to speak For the fallen and the weak; They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... not a religion that need shrink from investigation. Christians need not tremble at every onset. Our religion is vital, because true; and we may place trust in the providence of God in history, which overrules human errors and struggles for the permanent good of men; and, extricating ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... is too much indifference in the matter," I replied. "I suppose most men do not think their relations to their Maker important enough to give them any concern. And even the best among us shrink from urging their opinions on others, partly because they know they are not perfect examples themselves, and also from the feeling that their friends are intelligent beings and ought to know, as well as they do, what ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... the prophets exhaust everything pertaining to sacred gifts and liturgic performances, in which, for the sake of lengthening the catalogue, they do not shrink from repetitions even, there is not any mention of incense-offerings, neither in Amos (iv. 4 seq., v. 21 seq.) nor in Isaiah (i. 11 seq.) nor in Micah (vi. 6 seq.). Shall we suppose that they all of them forget this subject by mere accident, or that they conspired to ignore it? If it had really ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... oftentimes by sorrows. The straw is pulled out of the nest, and it is not so comfortable to lie in; or a bit of it develops a sharp point that runs into the half-feathered skin, and makes the fledgling glad to come forth into the air. We all shrink from change. What should we do if we had it not? We should stiffen into habits that would dwarf and weaken us. We all recoil from storms. What should we do if we had them not? Sea and air would stagnate, and become heavy and putrid and pestilential, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... leave her, for I have an hereditary malady, whose symptoms have lately been much aggravated. I have long since resigned myself to my doom, knowing that my Heavenly Father knows when it is best to call me home. But I cannot bear that my children should shrink from all I shall leave behind, my memory. Louis is a bold and noble boy. I fear not for him. His reason even now has the strength of manhood. Mittie has very little sensibility or imagination; too little of the first I fear to be very lovable. But perhaps it will be better for her in the end. Helen ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... path, and boldly grasp the very sharpest thorns, whatever reluctance his weak flesh may feel; such a man, if he would open out his path to fortune, should seize his dagger or his sword and strike out with his eyes shut; he should not shrink from bathing his hands in the blood of his kindred; he should follow the example offered him by every founder of empire from Romulus to Bajazet, both of whom climbed to the throne by the ladder of fratricide. Yes, Michelotto, as you say, such is my condition, ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... That she had a nature as free as air and the spirit of a gipsy he well believed, but that she would forego the security of the royal household for the discomforts and dangers of a vagrant life he could not reconcile to that other part of her character which he knew must shrink from the actualities of the straggler's lot. He had watched her at the inn; how she held herself; how she was a part of, and yet apart from, that migratory company; and what he had seen had but added ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... say we follow Christ, but most of us only follow him and his cross—part of the way. When we are told that our Lord bore our sins, and was wounded for our transgressions, I suppose that meant that He felt as if they were His own in His great love for us. But when you shrink from bearing your fellow-creature's transgressions, it shows that your love ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... resolution of his whole army. It is not from the enemy he has most to fear. A time comes in all protracted operations when the nervous energy of the best troops becomes exhausted, when the most daring shrink from further sacrifice, when the desire of self-preservation infects the stoutest veterans, and the will of the mass opposes a tacit resistance to all further effort. "Then," says Clausewitz, "the spark in the breast of the commander must rekindle hope in the hearts of his men, and so long as he is ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... time upon a character consumed by passion. His lot was cast among spent forces, and, while it is no hyperbole to say that he was himself the most enormous force of his time, he was only half conscious of this, if indeed he did not always inwardly shrink from crediting his own power and strength, as so many strong men habitually do, in spite of noisy and perpetual self-assertion. Conceit and presumption have not been any more fatal to the world, than the waste which comes of great men failing in ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... And none but they can do anything worth doing. And among the rank and file of Radicals the plain common-sense men should make themselves heard. Foreign policy debates in the House are usually the playground of cranks of all varieties, and the plain common-sense man seems to shrink from being vocal in such company. It is a pity. The plain common-sense man should believe in himself a little more. The result would perhaps startle his modesty. And he should begin instantly on the resumption of Parliament. He will of course be told that he is premature. But no matter. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... "We shrink from nothing," Michel Chrestien made reply. "If you were so unlucky as to kill your mistress, I would help you to hide your crime, and could still respect you; but if you were to turn spy, I should shun you with abhorrence, for a spy is systematically shameless and base. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... him, and put his arm around him. The preacher was a man whose embrace no man could shrink from, for the physical part of him was as nothing compared with the love and strength ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... limbs, body—and his mad eyes seemed to shrink from the woman's gaze. "Oh, God—God—oh, God—" he panted, and fell upon his face across the sofa. They heard a hurrying step running toward the Hendricks house, there came a frightened, choked cry of "Help!" repeated twice, another and another sound of pattering feet came, and five minutes after ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... scantily clothed women work by the side of nude men in coal pits, and, harnessed to trucks, perform the severe labor of dragging coal up inclined planes to the mouth of the pit, a work testing every muscle and straining every nerve, and so severe that the stoutest men shrink from it; while their degradation in brick-yards and iron mines has commanded the attention of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... thought of Jason, so noble, so self-denying, so persecuted, so beautiful, lying there in his little upper room, powerless from the fever, and doomed to die a dreadful death. She thought of him, weak and helpless, with no strength even to shrink from the flames that should lap over him and lick him to death with their fiery tongues. All this as she sped across the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... your mother the whole truth, just then," he began. "I've got to tell you something of it now. Until to-night I never knew what it was to—to shrink from news of action. ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... that he has been easily able to give me to-day, what I have sought in vain elsewhere in Ireland, an opportunity of conversing frankly and freely with several labouring men. For obvious reasons these men, as a rule, shrink from any expression of their real feelings. Their position is apparently one of absolute dependence either upon the farmers or the landlords, there being no other local market for their labour, which is their only ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... he started up, and in a second he was on his knees by her side and had gathered her to him as though she had been a little child in need of comfort. She did not shrink from him in her extremity. The blow had been too sudden, too overwhelming. It blotted out all lesser sensibilities. In those first terrible moments she did not think of Nick at all, was scarcely conscious of his presence, though she vaguely felt the ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... divinity. Therefore, be wary, lest too soon you fancy yourself a thing apart from the mass." And again, the same writer says: "Before you can attain knowledge you must have passed through all places, foul and clean alike. Therefore, remember that the soiled garment you shrink from touching may have been yours yesterday, may be yours tomorrow. And if you turn with horror from it when it is flung upon your shoulders, it will cling the more closely to you. The self-righteous man makes for himself ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... sea of life and death. The common class, enticed to come to learn, their talents first are tested, then they are taught; but as I understand your case, your mind is already fixed and your will firm; and now you have undertaken the purpose of learning, I am persuaded you will not in the end shrink from it." ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... and actual proof, what a gulf! To believe James Harwell capable of guilt, and to find evidence enough to accuse him of it, were two very different things. I felt myself instinctively shrink from the task, before I had fully made up my mind to attempt it; some relenting thought of his unhappy position, if innocent, forcing itself upon me, and making my very distrust of him seem personally ungenerous if not absolutely ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... Winifred's, certainly required no one's shield to be thrown over him. Would any of them show their courage by walking across the Razor on some dark foggy winter's night? and would they find in the school any other fellow of Evson's age who would not shrink from standing up in a regular fair fight with another of twice his own strength and size? Those charges he thought he might throw to the winds; he was sure that no one believed them; but there was, he admitted, one cowardice of which his two friends had often been guilty, and it was a cowardice for which ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... discipline, as did that lonely death on the misty hillside in the early morning. (p. 215) Even now, as I write this brief account of it, a dark nightmare seems to rise out of the past and almost makes me shrink from facing once again memories that were so painful. It is well, however, that people should know what our men had to endure. Before them were the German shells, the machine-guns and the floods of gas. Behind them, if their courage failed, was the court-martial, ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... hands but an ax; but fighting a wild-cat and a rebel sharp-shooter were two widely different things. He had never heard the whistle of a hostile bullet, nor had he ever seen a rebel; and it is not to be wondered at, if his feelings were not of the most enviable nature. But he was not one to shrink from his duty because it was dangerous; and he drew on his clothes as quickly as possible, and seizing a musket and cartridge-box that stood in a rack close by the cabin door, he hurried aft, where he found Woods concealed behind the port wheel-house, and the corporal behind a chicken-coop. They ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... forgot. As for the title, I think 'Nursery Verses' the best. Poetry is not the strong point of the text, and I shrink from any title that might seem to claim that quality; otherwise we might have 'Nursery Muses' or 'New Songs of Innocence' (but that were a blasphemy), or 'Rimes of Innocence': the last not bad, or - an idea - 'The Jews' Harp,' or - now I have ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... did not know what she was saying—for wicked young men. Above all things it seemed necessary to be in a passion; to be as irritated and bitter against him as possible. The copiousness of her vocabulary of abuse surprised herself, and she did not shrink from tautology. She only stopped at last for want of breath, and even then, as though she knew how dangerous was silence, she bemoaned herself ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... am of what to many wives would be a source of constant pride, not only for their husband's sake, but their own; whereas, proud as I am of so public a mark of his country's good opinion, and convinced as I am that he ought not to shrink from the post, still to myself it is all loss, all sacrifice—every favourite plan upset—London, London, London, and London in its worst shape—a constant struggle between husband and children, constant anxiety about his health and theirs, added to that about public affairs. But I will not begin ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... walked slowly in the moonlight, feet encumbered by this tragedy, he felt that the essence had been wrung out of life. His golden building was come to confusion, his silver hope would ring its sweet chime in his heart no more. From that hour she would abhor him, and shrink from ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... left him. The crisis of terror at his own fell deed had been terrible but brief. His was not a nature to shrink from unpleasant sights, nor at such times do men have cause to recoil from contact ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... indeed, to be able to maintain our present position in the world without a conflict, and we live in the belief that the power of our State will steadily increase without our needing to fight for it. We do not at the bottom of our hearts shrink from such a conflict, but we look towards it with a certain calm confidence, and are inwardly resolved never to let ourselves be degraded to an inferior position without striking a blow. Every appeal ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... him whenever the post came in, for a letter, if only to tell him not to come to Hollywell. None came, and he saw nothing for it but to go to Redclyffe; and if he dreaded seeing it in its altered state when his spirits were high and unbroken, how did he shrink from it now! He did, however, make up his mind, for he felt that his reluctance almost wronged his own beloved home. Harry Graham wanted to persuade him to come and spend Christmas at his home, with his lively family, but Guy felt as if gaiety was ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... much by the daughter as repelled by the mother, he could move no farther. The mother's masculine boldness heightened, by contrast, the charms of the daughter's soft sentimentality. The Lady Isabel seemed to shrink from the indelicacy of her mother's manners, and appeared peculiarly distressed by the strange efforts Lady Dashfort made, from time to time, to drag her forward, and to fix upon her the attention of gentlemen. Colonel Heathcock, who, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... and free these crippled limbs, bright maiden, and I would not shrink from an armed host. Do you entice away one of my guards, and I will manage to escape from the other; and I shall then impatiently await your coming ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... you will, my coming, in the church. If there is aught that may be revealed to my ear alone, I will not shrink from it, though the dead themselves should arise to proclaim the mystery. It may be—but—go—there are your tools." And he shut the door, with a jar that shook the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... be a great relief to my heart when I find you sufficiently calm upon this sad subject to claim the promise I made you when she lay dead in this house, never to shrink from speaking of her, as if her memory must be avoided, but rather to take a melancholy pleasure in recalling the times when we were all so happy—so happy that increase of fame and prosperity has only widened the gap ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... fears as to their safety to the merchant whose property the goods were, he at once said: "I know the Turks, and will abide the consequences of the step;" although, situated as we were, we could not shrink from the results, whatever they might be, without incurring a much heavier loss, if not the entire destruction of the vessel. Accordingly, the boats were got out, and part of the cargo at once transferred to them, and conveyed to the shore, I acting as ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... priest recalled the voice, the looks of Eleanor Burgoyne. Not a word for her—not a thought! His old heart began to shrink from his visitor, ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Major—not yet. And the Major was more content when he came to know in what good hands the boy was, and, down in his heart, he loved the lad the more for his sturdy independence, and for the pride that made him shrink from facing the world with the shame of his birth; knowing that Chad thought of him perhaps more than of himself. Such unwillingness to give others trouble seemed remarkable in so young a lad. Not once did the Major mention the ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... man. There, do as I say: go back and think over this meeting seriously, and believe me I shall be very glad to see you come to me to-morrow and say frankly, from man to man—I have been in the wrong. Don't shrink from doing so. It is an honour to anyone to avow that he was under ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... be taught greater respect for the individuality of women, so that no high-minded girl will shrink from marriage with the idea that it means a surrender of her personality and a state of domestic servitude. A more discriminating idea of sex-equality is desirable, and a recognition by men that women are not necessarily creatures of inferior mentality. ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... to shrink from this sin as the Jews did from the fiery serpents. Hate it. Loathe it as you would the leprosy. Make a solemn vow before the Saviour, who loves the slave and slave children as truly as he does you, that you will never hold slaves, never apologize for those who do. As little ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... a country entirely destitute of roads, and cut up by numberless sloughs and ponds. They had, moreover, a considerable river to cross, and, after that, several miles of their way lay through a dense and pathless forest. But they were not the men to shrink from difficulties, at any time; and now they were carried along even more resolutely, by the stern, unwavering spirit of their new leader. Having once learned the direction, Stone put himself at the head of the party, and strode forward, almost "as the ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... she put in an appearance at the factory the other girls marked her down as being a little different from themselves; a little less rough and capable of looking after her own interests, a little more refined, and ready to shrink from jest and laughter. ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... (though the greatest shrink from ridicule) who still retain public favour, they must be patient, proud, and fearless—patient of that obloquy which still will stain their honour from literary echoers; proud, while they are sensible that their ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... a thoroughly Egyptianized king. He had a council of learned scribes, a magnificent court, and a peaceful reign until towards its close. His residence was in the Delta, either at Tanis or Auaris. He was a prince of a strong will, firm and determined; one who did not shrink from initiating great changes, and who carried out his resolves in a somewhat arbitrary way. The arguments in favour of his identity with Joseph's master are, perhaps, not wholly conclusive; but they raise a presumption, which may well incline us, with most modern historians of Egypt, to assign ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... rebel should shrink from fratricide, His gifted brother-Georgians he suddenly defied, And in a manifesto extremely clear and terse Announced his firm intention of giving up ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... to what pattern should he look as his guide in permitting the young to learn some things and forbidding them to learn others. Do not shrink from answering. ...
— Laws • Plato
... began to feel stronger and better, and, rising to my feet, I glanced here and there into the crowd, hoping to catch a sight of Agnes, But I was not very much surprised at not seeing her, because she would naturally shrink from forcing herself into the midst of this motley company; but I felt that I must go and look for her without the loss of a minute, for if she should return to her father's house I might not be able to see ...
— My Terminal Moraine - 1892 • Frank E. Stockton
... always finds the man, and by it we mean: that when a responsibility is toward there will be found some shoulder to bend for the yoke which all others shrink from. It is not always nor often the great ones of the earth who undertake these burdens—it is usually the good folk, that gentle hierarchy who swear allegiance to mournfulness and the under dog, as others dedicate themselves to mutton ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... architecture, that is so far as concerns the forms of buildings and other objects which are on the face of the earth; these forms are infinite, and the better you know them the more admirable will your work be. And in cases where you lack experience do not shrink from drawing them from nature. But, to carry out my promise above [in the title]—I say that when you paint you should have a flat mirror and often look at your work as reflected in it, when you will see it reversed, and it will appear to you like some other painter's work, ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... shrink from the hold he had upon her. He saw that the vital point of her confession she would keep from him unless he commanded, and, if the future were to be saved from the grip of the miserable past, he and she must thoroughly understand ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... twenty-one years of age. You are brave and courageous, and will not shrink from any obstacle. You are rich, you have knowledge—now it must be seen whether you possess ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... of our apathy is probably also to be sought in the effort which is required to bring our sensuous and earth-bound natures into true union with the Spirit of God. True prayer is labor. Epaphras labored in his intercessions. Our feet shrink from the steep pathway that climbs those heights; our lungs do not readily accustom themselves to the rare air that breathes around the summit of the ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... the wistfulness was quite submerging the twinkle in Mrs. Jerry's eyes, and if she had seen, she would never have guessed what put it there; nor would she have understood why Mrs. Jerry might shrink from attending that magnificent festival, perhaps the only gringo woman in all the crowd, and a pitifully shabby gringo woman at that. To her mind, Mrs. Jerry was beautiful and perfect, even in her shapeless ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... Sankara to the teaching of Gotama himself. That teaching as presented in the Pali Pitakas is marked by its negative and deliberately circumscribed character. Its rule is silence when strict accuracy of expression is impossible, whereas later philosophy does not shrink from phrases which are suggestive, if not exact. Gotama refuses to admit that the human soul is a fixed entity or Atman, but he does not condemn (though he also does not discuss) the idea that the whole world of ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... masonry. Rivers were crossed by means of a curious kind of suspension bridges, and no obstruction was encountered which the builders did not overcome. The builders of our Pacific Railroad, with their superior engineering skill and mechanical appliances, might reasonably shrink from the cost and the difficulties of such a work as this. Extending from one degree north of Quito to Cuzco, and from Cuzco to Chili, it was quite as long as the two Pacific railroads, and its wild route among the mountains was ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... her head. "The person who cares, can't scheme and contrive. He didn't care. He never really cared for me—only for himself; at heart, he was cold and selfish. No, I paid for it all—I who hate and shrink from pain, who would do anything to avoid it. I want to go through life knowing only what is bright and happy; and time and again, I am crushed and flung down. But, in all my life, I haven't suffered like this. And now perhaps you understand, why I never want to hear his name again, and why I shall never—not ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... from most professions in this, that it requires as much vigor of body as it does vigor of mind. The sort of man to which it appeals, and which it seeks, is the man with high powers of observation, who does not shrink from responsibility, and whose mental vigor is balanced by physical strength and hardiness. The man who takes up forestry should be little interested in his own personal comfort, and should have and conserve endurance enough to stand severe ...
— The Training of a Forester • Gifford Pinchot
... consequences. White men seek responsibilities; shall we shun them? They brave dangers and risk consequences; shall we shrink from them? What are consequences, compared in the scale of value, with liberty and freedom; the rights and privileges of our wives and children? In defence of our liberty—the rights of my wife and children; had we the power, we would command the vault of a volcano, charged with the wrath of heaven, ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... which shall be, you wax listless; your chariot-wheels drive heavily; your end of the pole drags in the mud, and you speedily wallow in unmitigated disgust. If he broaches a subject on which you have a real and deep living interest, you shrink from unbosoming yourself to him. You feel that it would be sacrilege. He feels nothing of the sort. He treads over your heart-strings in his cow-hide brogans, and does not see that they are not whip-cords. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... felt that his doom was fixed; but his native courage did not forsake him. He braced himself to meet his fate like a man, and resolved to shut his eyes, when next they began to dance round him, so that he should not shrink from the blow or thrust which, he felt sure, would ere long end his ill-spent life. But the time seemed to him terribly long, and while he hung there his mind began to recall the gloomy past. Perhaps it was a refinement of cruelty on the part of the ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... not hurt you. No! to you I've made myself worse than the devil. Well, there is one who won't shrink from my company! By God! she's relentless. Oh, damn it! It's unutterably too much for flesh and blood to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... lapse of events. There was, however, one species of breach of privilege which he had never been disposed to pass unnoticed. Attacks one must undergo. To be exposed to attacks was the fate of all men who lived in public. No man ought to shrink from or be too sensitive to attacks; but, under pretence of stating what a lord had said in Parliament, to put words into his mouth which he had never uttered, for the purpose, the express purpose, of calumniating him,—words which the writer of the calumny must have well known that he ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... a longing in her heart to tell her father that she wanted no more burdens, that life was already so hard as to make her shrink from any more responsibility. But, looking at him as he lay there in his weakness, she could not say such ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... so excessively momentous to my dearest Edith without a feeling of faintness. Nevertheless, bad man, as you have boldly remarked upon it, and as it has occasioned me great anguish:' Mrs Skewton touched her left side with her fan: 'I will not shrink from my duty.' ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Mrs. Armine might guess at a bitter truth of his nature, and shrink from him, despite the powerful attraction he possessed for her, despite her own freedom from scruple, her own ironic and even cruel outlook upon ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... passion might justify such behaviour! He could recall cases in literature... Yes, he had got so far as to envisage the possibility of overwhelming passion... Then all these speculations disconcertingly vanished, and Hilda presented herself to his mind as a girl intensely religious, who would shrink from no unconventionality in the pursuit of truth. He did not much care for this theory of Hilda, nor did it ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... perfect justness of our cause is clear to me in every point of view, I should retire from a contest which would merely serve to rouse up all the 'old Adam' to no profit; but the cause of the artists seems, under Providence, to be, in some degree, confided to me, and I cannot shrink from the cares and troubles at present put upon me. I have gone forward thus far, asking direction from above, and, in looking around me, I feel that I am in the path of duty. May I be kept in it and be ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... a special form of love. It recognizes the humanity of the offender, and treats him as a brother, even when his deeds are most unbrotherly. But it cares so much for him that it will not shrink from inflicting whatever merciful pains may be necessary to deliver him from his own unbrotherliness. Forgiveness loves not the offense but the man. It hates the offense chiefly because it injures the man. Its punishment of the offense is the negative ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... one who had already promoted that cause, in its previous stages, to the extent of sedition and conspiracy? He who has already signalized to the nation his readiness to co-operate in so open a mischief as dismemberment of the empire, wherefore should he shrink from violating an obscure rule of the common law, or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... to submit to the laws of the ring; and that therefore, like a cowardly Italian, he had recourse to his fatal stiletto, to murder the man whom he dared not meet in manly encounter. I observed the prisoner shrink from this part of the accusation with the abhorrence natural to a brave man; and as I would wish to make my words impressive when I point his real crime, I must secure his opinion of my impartiality by rebutting everything that seems to me a false accusation. ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... bowed to all about him, and seemed greatly pleased with the attention he excited." His company followed the manager on foot. Yet for many years Mr. Pentland was the sole purveyor of theatrical entertainments to several English counties, and did not shrink from presenting to his audiences the most important ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... she must pass the night alone. If it is at night that the shadows fall upon the soul, then most of all does woman, weak and timorous animal, long for some safe and accustomed refuge place, for a home; and most of all does she shrink from unfamiliar surroundings. Yet she slept, wearied to exhaustion. The night was cool, the air fresh from the mountains coming in through the opened window, and bringing with ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... the most astute of her ministers to predict or to comprehend. If the barrier of religion were demolished, there was no possibility of telling what more formidable works might be unmasked. And so Henry, rather more sensible upon this point than even Catharine and Charles, who would have had him shrink from no concessions, made a virtue of necessity, definitely withdrew from competition for the hand of a woman for whose personal appearance it was impossible for him to entertain any admiration; whose ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... and it came to him that a beautiful day was a thing which nothing except death, sickness, or imprisonment could take from him—not even the ban of Canaan! Unforewarned, music sounded in his ears again; but he did not shrink from it now; this was not the circus band he had heard as he left the Square, but a melody like a far-away serenade at night, as of "the horns of elf-land faintly blowing"; and he closed his eyes with ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... recognize the mutual bond of universal womanhood. Let her ask herself whether she would like to hear herself or little sister spoken of as a shop-girl, or a factory-girl, or a servant-girl, if necessity had compelled her for a time to be employed in either of the ways indicated. If she would shrink from it a little, then she is a little inhuman when she puts her unknown human sisters who are so occupied into a class by themselves, feeling herself to be somewhat their superior. She is really the superior person who has accepted her work and is doing it faithfully, whatever it is. ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... only made him shrink from the subject; he acknowledged what she said in a few formal words, and attempted to turn the conversation, more abruptly than he had done for some time on such occasions. Mabel was of opinion, and with perfect justice, that even genius itself would scarcely be warranted in treating her approval ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Boone should recede into poetic distance before he seemed to her a hero. In his cabin as he smoked, in the hard winter day as he felled the forest tree, in the rough, unhandsome experience of every hour, he has been to her the forerunner of refinement and plenty and ease. If taste and imagination shrink from the squalor of the frontier, she remembers the greater squalor and the darker tragedy of the city slum. If the long-haired, shambling, shrill fanatic upon the platform be a contemptuous jest to my Lady Cavaliere, this fairer lady remembers John ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... Sister Art, and be convinced that the qualities which dazzle at first sight, and kindle the admiration of the multitude, are essentially different from those by which permanent influence is secured. Let us not shrink from following up these principles as far as they will carry us, and conclude with observing—that there never has been a period, and perhaps never will be, in which vicious poetry, of some kind or other, has not excited ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... fortunate, if he knew his happiness, ("sua si bona norit"), was exposed to the attacks, more or less open, of every unmarried woman. Alas! he was insensible to his privileges; a steady man of fifty-five, a dignitary of the church, devoted to study, and shy in his habits, he seemed to shrink from the kind attentions he received, and to wish for a less favoured, a less glorious state of existence. His desires seemed limited to reading the Fathers, writing sermons, and doing his duty as a divine; and he appeared of opinion that no helpmate was required ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... have escaped. It appears that this Yankee commander, for his alleged crimes, had been put hors de la loi by the Confederates in the same manner as General Butler. —— said to me, "We hope he may not be taken alive; but if he is, we will not shrink from the responsibility of putting ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... to shrink from his new associate. An instinctive feeling, like the warning of an invisible angel, seemed to whisper, "Beware!" But he was alone, with a heart full of bitter thoughts, and the sight of a fellow-face was some comfort. Then his companion was so dashing, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... you don't; so come along. Why, my dear fellow, one would think my friends were all as abandoned wretches as I am, by the manner in which you shrink from the notion of meeting ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... him great Pompey dwarfs and suffers pain, A mortal man before immortal Mars; The glories of great Julius lapse and wane, And shrink from suns ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... the test for you! That is what I shrink from exposing you to, what I know it is wrong to expose you to. I can not tell you. No one knows but I, and I shall never tell any one, not even you, if you become my other self and soul and thought. ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... Such as this type develop ideas of compensation and power and become cranks and fake prophets. Or else, and this we shall see again, they become imbued with a sense of inferiority, feel futile as against the red-blooded and shrink from ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... clerical, he is a good citizen,' I said; 'come, lend us your lantern. Shall I shrink from my duty wherever it leads me? Nay, my good friends, the Maire of a French commune fears neither man nor devil in the exercise of his duty. M. Paul, lead on.' When I said the word 'devil' a spasm of alarm passed over Riou's face. He crossed ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... question whether we should shrink from our troubles or face them," continued Little; "but in your case I should choose the shrinking, and write to the poor, pathetic little dimpler. Poor thing! Her days of dimpling are over. If you knew that you had led her astray, your duty, I believe, would be clear; but there is the 'if' that ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... actor-manager—to remain popular by being tame and pretty in every part. So is the caricaturist, if he is not the star, liable to be cast to play the villain whether he likes it or not, and if he is a genuine worker he will not shrink from the part, merely to remain popular and curry favour with those ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... cult, as I have since learned, was rising in Egypt at the time, from threatened danger, perhaps at the hands of some foreign man. It occurred to me even that this Princess, for evidently she was a descendant of kings, had been appointed to a most sacred office for that very purpose. Men who shrink from little will often fear to incur the direct curse of widely venerated gods in order to obtain their desires, even if they be not their own gods. Such were my conclusions about this curious and ancient writing which I regret I cannot ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... old and wise," she said, "and at the same time much younger, because I no longer shrink from a load on my mind I cannot understand. And you—it has all gone." She darted at the candle and held it to his face. "You look twenty years younger than when you sat there and thought. I believed you were ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... during which Ninitta, who had few of the resources with which an educated woman would have filled her time, mingled longings for her old life with blissful gloatings over Nino's beauty and cleverness. Her husband was always kind, but since his marriage delicacy of sentiment had made him shrink from having his wife pose even for himself, while naturally no thought of her doing so for another would have been entertained for ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... to bind me to life now that I can never visit the spot where repose the shattered fragments of my beloved Capitaine Guilbert? But to be burned, helpless, while rescue was cut off from me by a locked door! I shrink from so terrible a fate." Subtlety, she had discovered, was thrown away upon the obtuseness of Rust. She was compelled to be brutally plain, and so she drove into his thick head the tempting fact that nothing interposed during the hours of darkness between his eager hands ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... the mention of my name? In one word, for years have I not been a BUCCANEER? And yet you talk to me of quietness!—Sir, sir, the soul so steeped in sin has but two resources—madness, or the grave; the last even I shrink from; so give me ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... and, being swayed by Lady Gertrude, who is secretly rather bored by the dullness that has ensued on the strange absence of their host, decides to leave on the morrow, to the great distress of both Dora and Florence Delmaine, who shrink from deserting the castle while its master's fate is undecided. But they are also sensible that, to remain the only female guests, would be to outrage ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... this apparent paradox is a sober truth. Life is indeed more precious than property. But the power of arbitrarily taking away the lives of men is infinitely less likely to be abused than the power of arbitrarily taking away their property. Even the lawless classes of society generally shrink from blood. They commit thousands of offences against property to one murder; and most of the few murders which they do commit are committed for the purpose of facilitating or concealing some offence against property. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... keen relish of a man who had been hard at work the whole morning. All appeared unconscious of their critical condition; and to Raoul it seemed as if the entire responsibility rested on his own shoulders. Fortunately, he was not a man to shrink from his present duties; and he occupied the only leisure moment that would be likely to offer that day, in deliberating on his resources and in ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... my new punishment has already visited me. Repulsed from every door where I seek employment, waiting patiently for the replies to my applications for advertised situations, which never come, the brand of the convict has indeed become the very mark of Cain, and I feel as if my fellowmen shrink from me as they pass. Fortunately I found at the post-office a few pounds sent to me from my brother, which, with slight additions, have enabled me to procure a mechanical leg, and to live till I have completed this narrative. But ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... thou speak, Athena's wisest son! 'All that we know is, nothing can be known.' Why should we shrink from what we cannot shun? Each hath its pang, but feeble sufferers groan With brain-born dreams of evil all their own. Pursue what chance or fate proclaimeth best; Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron: There no forced ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... which destroys an illusion. I had entertained such romantic ideas of life in the cloister, it seemed so tempting to me in its rest, its spirituality; and now I realize that we have no right to such rest, that it is not ours to shrink from the duties, to shun the penalties, to crush the affections of humanity—and my visions of lonely happiness have passed away pour toujours. If ever I could be induced to forsake a world that now appears to me so rich ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... then he backs him. He believes that nothing succeeds like success, having tested the truth of the saying himself. When something disagreeable has to be done, he does it and damns the consequences but he does not shrink from them. ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... shrink from public gaze. Each looks alone to its innate sense, the gift of God, and to the sole approval of ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... fact that an increasingly large number of women have entered professions that prevent motherhood, and that the number of apartment-houses where children are not wanted are on the increase, all play their part. In this age of intense living, it is not to be wondered at that many shrink from the responsibility of rearing children, and the same conditions that contribute to this decadent ideal intensifies sex-hunger, and it is this dominating passion that tolerates and makes possible the most frightful crime of the age—infanticide. Greece and Rome paved the way for their ultimate annihilation ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... wrote a fairly pretty story on the sylphs of fire. But Undine's freakish playfulness and mischief as an elemental being, and her sweet patience when her soul is won, are quite original, and indeed we cannot help sharing, or at least understanding, Huldbrand's beginning to shrink from the unearthly creature to something of his own flesh and blood. He is altogether unworthy, and though in this tale there is far less of spiritual meaning than in Sintram, we cannot but see that Fouque's thought was that the grosser ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... either more or less. Sometimes my hours were more, sometimes they were less, but always my energy was apt to slacken with the slackening of the day. I never found inspiration in the midnight oil and oceans of coffee. I have always wanted my solid eight hours of sleep, and would not shrink from nine or ten if they fitted in with a worker's life. Youth often gave me the courage I have not now to take up work again—a promised article, necessary reading, making notes, copying—at night. But youth never induced me to rely upon ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... go with me? You would"—He started toward her, and she did not shrink from him, now; but he checked himself. "But you mustn't, you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... racial history. And driven, sir, to this superhuman task with an impatience that brooks no delay—a rigor that accepts no excuse—and a suspicion that discourages frankness and sincerity. We do not shrink from this trial. It is so interwoven with our industrial fabric that we cannot disentangle it if we would—so bound up in our honorable obligation to the world, that we would not if we could. Can we solve it? The God who gave it into our hands, He alone ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... allowance for exaggeration will effect the greatness of those exploits; and in stories of authentic actions under Henry VIII., where the accuracy of the account is undeniable, no disparity of force made Englishmen shrink from enemies wherever they could meet them. Again and again a few thousands of them carried dismay into the heart of France. Four hundred adventurers, vagabond apprentices, from London,[14] who formed a volunteer corps in the Calais garrison, were for years the terror of Normandy. In the very ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... man or not, he is her lover if he dare tell her he loves her, and is heard with attention. Aware that the sentences were poison, she summoned her constitutional antagonism to the mad step proposed, so far nullifying the virus as to make her shrink from the madness. Even then her soul cried out to her husband, Who drives me to read? or rather, to brood upon what she read. The brooding ensued, was the thirst of her malady. The best antidote she could hit on was the writer's face. Yet it expressed him, his fire and his courage—gifts ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I would not shrink from the trouble of transcribing the whole letter, if a complete copy were only to be found in the short-lived columns of a newspaper, as inserted in the Record of May 15, 1843, by Merle d'Aubigne; but the Dean has given a reference to the volume in which both the letters he cites ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... carried through the Legislature by the Democratic party, aiming to prevent the Abolitionists from obtaining a foothold in the State. Lincoln could not conscientiously support the resolutions, nor hold his peace concerning them. He did not shrink from the issue, but at the hazard of losing his political popularity and the gratifying prospects that were opening before him he drew up a protest against the pro-slavery enactment and had it entered upon the Journal of the House. The state of public opinion in Illinois ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... rear'd me in that holy fear, In stainless honour's love, And from the past she warned me, Whate'er my fate should prove, To shrink from bloodshed as a sin. All ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... I think, from what I read in the daily papers, you are in no danger of forgetting this), that you are not domestics, and, while in an emergency I would have you shrink from nothing that needs doing, I do not think you should do any washing. Cooking you will very often have to do, but the ordinary housework does not come at all into your province. If your patient is a chronic invalid, I would have you make yourself useful in the house. Do the shopping, ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... wooing. I should have been more patient. But I love you so much that I could hardly have waited. A secret hope that you loved me too emboldened me, compelled me. You DO love me. I know it. And, knowing it, I do but ask you to give yourself to me, to be my wife. Why should you cry? Why should you shrink from me? Dear, if there were anything... any secret... if you had ever loved and been deceived, do you think I should honour you the less deeply, should not cherish you the more tenderly? Enough for me, that you are mine. Do you think I should ever reproach you ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... Washington. Every one knew that he was a ruthless critic of American manners, but he had the art to combine ridicule with good-humour, and he was all the more popular accordingly. He was an outspoken admirer of American women in everything except their voices, and he did not even shrink from occasionally quizzing a little the national peculiarities of his own countrywomen; a sure piece of flattery to their American cousins. He would gladly have devoted himself to Mrs. Lee, but decent civility ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... She did not shrink from Cynthia any more then, but suffered her to lift her out of bed as if she were a baby and set her on a white fur rug, into which her feet sank, to her astonishment. Her mother had only drawn-in rugs, which Ellen had watched her make. She was a little ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... say to thee; and again I check my voice and rein it backward, and again I stay beside thee; for I shrink from the terrible separation from thee as from the bitter night of Acheron; for the light of thee is like the day. Yet that, I think, is voiceless, but thou bringest me also that murmuring talk of thine, sweeter than the Sirens', whereon all my ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... give us anything we ask for. Our nation can never expect to get its liberty from those who at all times regarded it only as a subject of ruthless exploitations; and who even in the last moment do not shrink from any means to humiliate, starve and wipe out our nation and by cruel oppression to hurt us in our most sacred feelings. Our nation has nothing in common with those who are responsible for the horrors of this war. Therefore there will not be a single person who would, contrary ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... told, however, that there are some among them who would gladly see a change; some, who with the wisdom of philosophers, and the fair candour of gentlemen, shrink from a profession of equality which they feel to be untrue, and ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope |
