"Shrinking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very painful shrinking at his heart. If the old man went away to live with his daughter in the country, his home would be lost to him, and he would have to go out into the great city again alone, with nobody to love. He could get his living now in a respectable manner, and there was no fear of his being driven ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... more impossible thing than that which lay between those words. If the world were to be saved, if God were to be glorified, it was not possible. Did He not know that who asked it with strong crying and tears? Was not the asking done to teach us two things—that He was very man, like ourselves, shrinking from pain and death as much as the very weakest of us can shrink, and also that we may ask anything and everything, if only we desire beyond it ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... issues: inadequate sanitation facilities; increasing levels of soil salinity; industrial pollution; excessive pesticides; part of the basin of the shrinking Aral Sea suffers from severe overutilization of available water for ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... thousands such, living in serene girlhood, wifehood, or widowhood, to be found in the villages and country towns of dear old England. With but very few exceptions, they are kindly-natured, unimaginative, imbued with a shrinking dislike of any exaggerated display of emotion; in some ways amazingly broad-minded, in others curiously limited in their outlook on life. Such women, as a rule, present few points of interest to students of human nature, for they are almost invariably ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... responsible is now used solely in order to shift the responsibility. People talk about the pride of tyrants; but we in this age are not suffering from the pride of tyrants. We are suffering from the shyness of tyrants; from the shrinking modesty of tyrants. Therefore we must not encourage leader-writers to be shy; we must not inflame their already exaggerated modesty. Rather we must attempt to lure them to be vain and ostentatious; so that through ostentation they may at last ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... Scheherazade. From the window frames, stifling the light, depend flame-coloured brocaded curtains embroidered in Egyptian enamelled beads. It is a triumph, this chamber, of style Ballet Russe. Diana is banished ... and shrinking Mildred, returning from school, finds her demure soul at variance with ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... down her aunt's sunbonnet from the nail by the side door and went out. Amusement had given place in the girl's mind to something like actual shrinking from these relatives and their ways. The porch boards gave under even her weight. Some of them were broken. The steps were decrepit, too. The pump handle was tied down, she found, when she put a ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... attach dishonor to her father's motives or speeches. For long, however, something about him had troubled her, perplexed her. Fearfully she believed she was coming to some revelation, and, despite her keen determination to know, she found herself shrinking. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... need, I've been wanting to say it." McCrae took a step forward, and for a moment it seemed as though he were at last about to break the bonds of his reserve. Perhaps he detected an instinctive shrinking on the rector's part. At any rate, there was another instant of silence, in which the two men faced each other across the desk, and McCrae held out his hand. "Good luck to ye," he said, as Hodder took it, "and don't ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... shrinking back amazed from her companion. "I will not go with you to insult that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... heart stood still, for she seemed to quiver through her body, as if involuntarily shrinking from the ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... rise in spirits as we approached the house, and I noticed no sign of shrinking, except an occasional lowering of the voice. Seeing this, I ventured to joke him a little on his previous reluctance, and he replied in the same strain. I seated myself at the corner, and began sketching ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Shrinking at this, Debendra said: "Let us go. Would it not be well that I should renew acquaintance ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... but further bade me come to him, if I wanted anything of him. [-43-] Do not, I beg of you, regard this addition as slight. It is really a good indication of his disposition. That he should have refused to visit me a person speaking in his defence might refer to shrinking and sickness and fear. But that he should send a summons to me admits of no excuse, and furthermore proves him to have acted from no other impulse than a readiness to yield me obedience in no point and a determination to impose corresponding demands in every ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... handed credentials to the young man, and each in turn arose trembling and stood before the decisive official at the great, paper-strewn desk. There was no attempt to soften the refusal, as he turned curtly from the pleaders; and Olympia, shrinking from the ordeal, was about to step out of the room, when a tall, care-worn man shambled in, glancing pityingly at her as she arose, half trembling, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Rights already referred to, was a perfect "God-send" to these men. For it not only enabled them to keep from public view and knowledge their ultimate aim and purpose, but constituted the whip which they thenceforth everlastingly flourished and cracked over the shrinking heads of other and more patriotic people—the whip with which, through the litter of their broken promises, they ruthlessly rode into, and, for so long a period of years held on to, supreme power and ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... the captain continued to face the stern; then turned with ferocious suddenness on the crew, and seemed to enjoy their shrinking. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... addresses him affably.) Those nuns they are fetching me are big high-colored wenches with cheeks like apples. It is not desirable that women should be so large. Such women do not inspire a poet. Women should be little creatures that fear you. They should have thin plaintive voices, and in shrinking from you should be as slight to the touch as a cobweb. It is not possible to draw inspiration from a woman's beauty unless you comprehend how easy it would ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... the audience greeted this outburst, and poor Di, shrinking down, tried to hide her pretty face on Welland's ready arm. Her remark was quickly forgotten in the proceedings that followed—but it ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... the widow, turning pale and shrinking. "Why, I really believe that you would like to see me packed away in one of ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... revelation of possibilities of which he had never dreamed. It was a continual surprise to him to find himself so impressed by the wit, the wisdom, and the sanity of this fine old lady. He not only felt himself an ignorant and inexperienced boy beside her, but found himself shrinking from comparing with her the men whom he had followed as leaders. The ease of her manner, the completeness of her self-poise, her frank simplicity, high-bred and winning, delighted him, while the extent of her mental resources filled him ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... That Death witnesses that it is a love which shrinks from no sacrifices. This Isaac was not 'spared.' God gave up His Son. Love has its very speech in surrender, and God's love speaks as ours does. It is a love which, turned away by no sin, and yet rigidly righteous and shrinking from no sacrifices, embraces all ages and lands. 'God commendeth'—not 'commended.' The majestic present tense suggests that time and space are nothing to the swift and all-filling rays of that great Light. That love is 'towards us,' you and me and all our fellows. The Death is an historical ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... say yes. The clever, plausible scoundrel dazzled me, and I thought your opposition only maidenly shrinking. Yes, dazzled me, with his wit and cheery manners, knowledge of the world, and such a game, too, as he played at piquet. It was ashore, you see, and he was too much for me. If I'd had him at sea it would have been different. I was to blame all through—but you forgive me all the ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... and welter in the heated air and yellow light. Tall starvelings, the cacti spread their arms; from a mimosa wood arose a cloud of vultures; it was the hour of the Angelus, but no bells rang in the churches of the town. The town sat in fear, shrinking into corners from its cup of trembling. "Ransom!" cried the English from their ships and from their quarters in the square. "Pay us ransom, or we burn and destroy!" "Mother of God!" wailed Nueva Cordoba. "Why ask but fifty thousand ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... the more prominent actors in these struggles were owing to her wise and affectionate counsels? And not only has she been the counsellor of man,—she has willingly shared his sufferings; and the same deep sensibility which renders her so shrinking on ordinary occasions, has at these times given her unconquerable strength, and raised her above the desolation of a prison,—above the shame and horror of a scaffold. Of such mould were the two illustrious ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... which I have been called for a limited period to preside over the destinies of the Republic fill me with a profound sense of responsibility, but with nothing like shrinking apprehension. I repair to the post assigned me not as to one sought, but in obedience to the unsolicited expression of your will, answerable only for a fearless, faithful, and diligent exercise of my best powers. I ought to be, and am, truly grateful for the rare manifestation of the nation's ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... But Uncle Joe was likely to be fluent when he got started. He cleared his throat and turned mild, suffused, half-shamed blue eyes on his shrinking niece. "Yes, your piece has come out in the paper, Melinda, and your folks are all-fired pleased with you. I told Lucy this morning I wisht your poor Pap could come back to earth for ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... collapsible bath made of India rubber, put eau de Cologne on her forehead, arranged her hair before a mirror pinned to the sloping canvas. But all the time that she did these things she was listening to the enormous silence, was feeling it like a weight, was shrinking, or trying to shrink away from its outstretched, determined arms. From without came sometimes sounds of voices that presented themselves to her ears as shadows, skeletons, spectres, present themselves to the eyes. Was that really Ibrahim? Was that Nigel speaking, laughing? ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... repeated, in a changed voice, with an effect of shrinking to his usual proportions. His arm fell to his side, and he turned away to hide his altered look. "I'll fight for this boy," he said. "I'll fight the whole world ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... he wouldn't. But everyone was at the dinner. Some of them came home early, I believe. But it was all kept quiet, because Aline Pearsall is such a little shrinking violet, I suppose," Mrs. Breckenridge said. "The Pearsalls are to think it was just an impromptu affair. Billy and Aline of course have no idea what a party it was. But Clarence says that poor Berry was worse than he, and a few of them are still keeping ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... clear that she was holding the balance between himself and Colonel Faversham; and realizing that her income must some day inevitably be exhausted, shrinking from an appeal to her aunts at Sandbay, that she was determined to take Time by the forelock ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... — had we not better wait until next week, Josiah?" questioned Mrs. Stanhope timidly. She was a pale, delicate woman of forty, of a shrinking nature, easily ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... course, something of the same shrinking from the elemental facts of life in England; it seems to run with the Anglo-Saxon. This accounts for the shuddering attitude of the English to such platitude-monging foreigners as George Bernard Shaw, the Scotsman ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... into the cuddy, followed by the girl, who walked unaided. The madman, in the grasp of the big sailor named Johnson, stood near the gangway; and as I scrambled on deck, one of the men was holding a pannikin full of water to his face. The poor wretch was shrinking away from it, with his eyes half out of their sockets; but suddenly tearing his arm with a violent effort from the rope that bound him, he seized the pannikin and bit clean through the tin; after which, throwing back his head, he swallowed ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... and loyalty to its life and weal—love tender and strong, tender as the love of son for mother, strong as the pillars of death; loyalty generous and disinterested, shrinking from no sacrifice, seeking no reward save country's honor ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... words she uttered a little cry, and, letting fall the hand of Umslopogaas, clasped mine, shrinking up ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... pray?" fiercely demanded Bascomb, towering above the shrinking lad and scowling blackly. "That's what ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... guarding the rapid stood ready with their poles, and more were wading and splashing up both sides of the pool. The otter's pace was getting slower; sometimes it seemed to stop; and now and then it vanished among the ripples. Carroll saw that Evelyn's face was intent, though there were signs of shrinking in it. ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... out his land, And the Negro tills the same. One works; one loafs and takes command; But I know who wins the game! And it's, oh, for the white man's shrinking soil, As the black's rich acres grow! Well I know how the signs point out at last, I know; ah, ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... congeniality or fitness for such a relation! Of all assumed social offices, that of the match-maker is one of the most pernicious, and her character one of the most detestable. She should be shunned with the same shrinking aversion with which we shun a serpent which crosses ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... the taking these precautions is within our own power; we can all rely upon the blessed promises of the Saviour that he will not desert us in our hour of need if we will only truly seek him; there is more infidelity in this shrinking and fear of investigation than in almost any open denial of Christ; the one who refuses to examine the doubts felt by another, and is prevented from making any effort to remove them through fear lest he should come to share them, shews either that he has no faith ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... face, attired in a long trailing dress of a shimmering corn-straw tint, but when she stood looking at the audience Miss Rawlinson noticed a hint of tension in her expression. Agatha Ismay had sung at unimportant concerts with marked success, but that evening there was something very like shrinking in her eyes. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... floor of Jackson's Hole runs the Shoshone, or Snake River, which takes its rise from Jackson's Lake at the northern end of the basin, and then, as if shrinking from the threatening brows of the Tetons, whose fall would block its progress, makes a detour of one hundred miles around the buttressed heights of the range before it finds a clear way across Idaho, and so on to the Columbia ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... at his place, and his people seemed to me to be well behaved and prosperous. Majinje was a chieftainess, a little girl whom nobody was allowed to see. Her location was a miserable affair, and her tribe was yearly shrinking in numbers. Then there was Magata farther north among the mountains. He had no quarrel with me, for he used to give me a meal when I went out hunting in that direction; and once he turned out a hundred of his young men, and I had a great battue of wild dogs. Sikitola, the biggest of all, lived some ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... Eleanor, shrinking; "Robert is so much to me that I cannot run the risk of having even a doubt disturb the perfect understanding that ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... ill-chosen, from his point of view, that it caused him dismay. And he had in vain tried to catch sight of the Countess or find means of communicating with her without arousing suspicion. He had other motives too for shrinking from such expressions of friendliness as he had reason to anticipate from his host. But he did not expect anything so disconcerting as the proposal which the Count actually laid before him when he unwillingly entered ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... her own rank in the neighbourhood. She was too high-minded to complain much to Clara; and her sister Valencia was the very last person to whom she would confess that her run-away-match had not been altogether successful. So she lived alone and friendless, shrinking into herself more and more, while the vulgar women round mistook her honour for pride, and revenged themselves accordingly. She was an uninteresting fine lady, proud and cross, and Elsley was a martyr. "So handsome and agreeable as ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... the young girl's name. A stranger might think that the name did not suit her. In her manner was nothing of the shrinking nature that is a characteristic of the violet. Timidity and reserve she probably did have somewhere in her heart,—as all women do,—but it had never been her part to play them out. She had all her life been called upon to show only energy, activity, and self-reliance. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... clinging to him. She was not shrinking away; her arms of love were wrapped round his neck as tenderly as even in old childish days; they had power over Mr. Copley, power which he could not quite resist nor break away from. He returned their pressure, ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... and Mrs. French drove up to the jail. There, at the bleak north door, swept by the chill March wind, and away from the genial light of the shining sun, they found Paulina and her children, a shivering, timid, shrinking group, looking pathetically strange and forlorn in their quaint ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... is not he!" she cried, shrinking away in terror, and she stood face to face with the conscript, gazing at him with ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... it," cried Amy, shrinking from the very mention of such a thing. "I couldn't swim at all if I thought anybody was ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... over the ages as winds over the blue AEgean, and woman, shrinking from their blasts and the agitations that have followed them, has prayed to her gods, and been suspended between the depths of man's depravity and the heights of his achievements, around whose wintry peaks winds of ambition ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a clear perception of the real devilishness of the torture flashed into Lennon's abnormally active mind. He was to lie outstretched through the long hours, without food or water, while the shrinking rawhide dragged him with frightful slowness closer and closer to those ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... sacred in her own eyes to be in haste at such a juncture. Her truly shrinking spirit was a stranger to all manner of auctioning, but she believed in fair play, and could not in conscience quite forget her exhilarating skirmish with Mr. Ravenel on ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... softened the woman's haggard features. Then her face darkened again and she pointed at two barefooted children shrinking against ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... to the acre, whereas, for the ten years ended 1895, it fell below 29 bushels. A large expansion in the acreage of the wheat crop would probably be attended by a decline in the average yield per acre, for when a crop is shrinking in area the tendency is to withdraw from it first the land least suited to its growth. The general average for the United Kingdom might then recede to rather less than 28 bushels of 60 lb. per bushel, which was for a long time the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... be held a thing impossible that the Christian Religion, instead of shrinking into itself, (!) may again embrace the thoughts of men upon the earth?" (that is to say, "embrace the thoughts" of—Mr. Jowett!)—"Or is it true that since the Reformation 'all intellect ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... this gathering she thrust her way. And, in a moment, her worst suspicions were realized. Her boy, Snake Foot, was bound to the tree-trunk. Bared to the waist, cowering but silent, he was shrinking under the cruel blows of the quirt. Nicol, his dark eyes blazing with a merciless fury, was flinging every ounce of his strength into each blow of the terrible weapon in his hand. Keeko's horrified eyes missed nothing. She saw that Little One Man and Med'cine Charlie were amongst ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... Cherry Malotte, accompanied by an Indian girl in shawl and moccasins—a slim, shrinking creature who stood as if bewildered, twisting her hands and staring about with frightened eyes. Behind them, head and shoulders above the sailors, towered a giant copper- hued breed with a ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... house will suspect your bonfire, until the heap of charcoal and ashes is found. Dampness and decay, unsavory odors and impure air, chilly bedrooms and cold floors, will be unknown. The ears in the walls will be stopped, there will be no settlement from shrinking timbers, no jelly-like trembling of the whole fabric when the master puts his foot down. Finally, the dear old house will be just as sound and just as lovely when the future John brings home his bride as when his grandsire built it. And it won't cost a cent more ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... and its thin brown skin rubbed off with a linen cloth. Having thus prepared a sufficient number of roots, the operator should spread them on a tin plate in a hot oven for eight or ten minutes, until they get to look horny, but without shrinking in size: and being then withdrawn, they may be dried with more gentle heat, or by exposure to the air. Their concocted juice can be employed with the same intentions and in the same complaints as gum arabic,—about which we read that ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... picturesqueness and excitement that are its chief excuse and charm. It is like a fire that flares up brilliantly for a while and then leaves everything blacker and bleaker than before. After every important war in South-East Europe in recent times there has been a shrinking of the area of chronically disturbed territory, a stiffening of the area of chronically disturbed territory, a stiffening of frontier lines, an intrusion of civilised monotony. And imagine what may happen at the conclusion of this war if the Turk should really ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... petted heiress, who counted her admirers by the score, should have tried so hard to win the love of this one man and have failed; that her beauty, her grace, her wit, and her talent had been lavished upon him, and lavished in vain. "Was that simple girl, with her shy, timid, shrinking manner, more lovable than I?" she ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... accuse me? "Moi!" exclaimed one. Pause of deep silence: a lean angry little Figure, with broad bald brow, strode swiftly towards the tribune, taking papers from its pocket: "I accuse thee, Robespierre,"—I, Jean Baptiste Louvet! The Seagreen became tallow-green; shrinking to a corner of the tribune: Danton cried, "Speak, Robespierre, there are many good citizens that listen;" but the tongue refused its office. And so Louvet, with a shrill tone, read and recited crime ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... whang, however, handling with all the deftness in the world the broadest and subtlest themes, and the doodle standing for a patriotism of the noblest. Those who came into close connection with him say that he grew morbidly fastidious, shrinking from coarse contacts and was happy at last only in a delicate environment. When in health, nevertheless, he was a Yankee of the truest, though sublimated by his genius and superb accomplishments. I know a little inn far ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... punishment is important. It is no use roughly smacking a shrinking, sensitive child. And yet, if a child is too shrinking, too sensitive, it may do it a world of good cheerfully to spank its posterior. Not brutally, not cruelly, but with real sound, good-natured exasperation. And let the ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... was sitting in a box on four low wheels, in a little room in a small street in Westminster; his age was some fifteen or sixteen years; his face was clear-cut and intelligent, and was altogether free from the expression either of discontent or of shrinking sadness so often seen in the face of those afflicted. Had he been sitting on a chair at a table, indeed, he would have been remarked as a handsome and well-grown young fellow; his shoulders were broad, his arms powerful, and his head erect. He had ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... part of the ship, and in the ears of an invalid; and moreover, as the hatchets had anything but an attractive look, and the handlers of them still less so, it was, therefore, to tell the truth, not without some lurking reluctance, or even shrinking, it may be, that Captain Delano, with apparent complaisance, acquiesced in his host's invitation. The more so, since, with an untimely caprice of punctilio, rendered distressing by his cadaverous aspect, Don Benito, with Castilian bows, solemnly ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... He does not, in fact, apply this reckoning; he may possibly not have time, at the urgent moment, to work it out; his heroism is inspired by the universal praise or blame that reward self-devotion or punish shrinking from it, and thus render acts moral or immoral by the habitual association of ideas. The martyr or patriot does not, indeed, stop to calculate; he does not feel the subtle egoism that is hidden in the desire for applause; ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... difficult to be understood," replied Belfield, and attempted to draw on Cecilia, who, much alarmed, was shrinking back. ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... this place?" I asked, clinging to the others and shrinking back in alarm from its sheer edge and bottomless depth, for that this was enormous we could see by the shaft of light which flowed downwards farther than ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... dainty shrinking from everything in the room which her hands or her clothes touched in the process, and then opened the window. The autumn air felt keen and sweet; and the little patch of sky that she could see was warmly bright already with the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Samuel Hardwicke and under his command, on the expedition which he is about beginning. We have been duly warned of the dangers and hardships to be encountered; we freely undertake to endure the hardships without shrinking, and to face the dangers as soldiers should; and, understanding the necessity of discipline and obedience, we promise, each of us upon his honor, fully to recognize the authority of Samuel Hardwicke as our ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... intention of the man of the tenth century in Europe was as good as that of the man of the twentieth, that the man of the tenth century was as capable of self-sacrifice—was, it may be, less self-seeking. But what I am trying to hint is that the shrinking of the world by our developed intercommunication has made us ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... forced out of the archegonium, and then by thoroughly washing away the potash, neutralizing if necessary with a little acetic acid, very beautiful preparations may be made. If desired, these may be mounted permanently in glycerine which, however, must be added very gradually to avoid shrinking the cells. ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... pair of scissors, and each time laid them down again, wondering if it were little short of a madcap freak; then, shrinking from the grinding hiss of the cutting blades, she clipped with feverish haste the hair that had been her pride. It was a difficult task, and but a rough job at best when finished, but the change in her appearance was marvelous; ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... question at once. The end might be very near indeed, I told myself, as I strode out with the last remains of my limp quite vanished. But what prompted those doubts; a genuine disbelief in the authenticity of the handwriting, or a perception of the logical consequences and a very natural shrinking from them? I wondered very much. The fact that she had refrained from asking a single question as to what I meant to do, suggested the second solution. And yet it was curiously ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... a bit odd (see "{The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer}" in Appendix A). Assembler is generally no longer considered interesting or appropriate for anything but {HLL} implementation, {glue}, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems programs. FORTRAN occupies a shrinking ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... severe than to pass sentence of death upon a man, corrupt his blood, and confiscate his estate, upon parole evidence; especially of such a wretch who, by his own confession, had been engaged in a crime of the blackest nature, not a convert to the dictates of conscience, but a coward, shrinking from the danger by which he had been environed, and even now drudging for a pardon. He invalidated the evidence of Goodman's examination. He observed that the indictment mentioned a conspiracy to call in a foreign power; but as this conspiracy had not been put in practice, such an ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... innocence of the general spirit of the words, trite as might be the image they conveyed, there was something that contrasted so fearfully their own thoughts and minds that they sat silent, looking vacantly into each other's faces, and shrinking perhaps to ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of this little bride, although she might have been radiantly happy at heart, and undoubtedly was, to appear tearful and shrinking and as she was escorted up the aisle by her bridesmaid one might have thought she was being led to slaughter. White is not becoming to the Chinese and besides it is a sign of mourning, so she had chosen pink for her wedding ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... nation of maritime traditions and facility; we are a nation of constructive capacity, competent to build ships; we are eminent, if not preeminent, in the construction of machinery; we have abundant capital seeking investment; we have courage and enterprise shrinking from no competition in any field which we choose to enter. Why, then, have we retired from this field in which we were once ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... in the doorway. A man was standing, with his back to him, holding a pistol in his hand. Another, similarly armed, stood by the side of a young woman who, in a loose dressing gown, sat shrinking in an armchair, into which she had evidently been thrust. A third was in the act of crawling under the bed. An elderly man, in his nightshirt, was standing up. A gag had been thrust into his mouth; and he was ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... mother, and how she had turned away when other girls were being caressed and loved. But never had it entered her mind to imagine that her parents were like this. The picture of the hut in which the wee woman had died rose within her—the death agony had been so plainly described. The tall, shrinking, sobbing man against the wall was her father! Even that afternoon, when Governor Vandecar had told her of her birth and her mother's death, and of her father in the lake hut, she had not imagined him like this man. Yet something pleaded for him, some subtle, gentle spirit hovering ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... call it? It is a good old word." She said this quite calmly, with a very happy face one could see the flush of pleasure and success on even in the moonlight, and there was no reluctance, no shrinking in her, from her share of the outcome the Major had not waited to see. "Millais' Huguenot" was complete. Rosalind Graythorpe, or Palliser, stood there again with her husband's arm round her—her husband of twenty years ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... scorn, and were generally in the end either laughed out, or "hated out," of the neighborhood, or else got rid of in a still more summary manner. Among a people naturally brave and reckless, this public opinion acted fairly effectively, and there was generally but little shrinking from military service.[49] ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... sensation can be imagined than that of one who continually invites the skill of a sharp-shooter, and the Texan met the difficulty not by shrinking, like a turtle, within his protection, but by climbing stealthily out upon the planking, where he remained extended at ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... of the Fall. From the story of the Fall he has passed on to the doctrine of original sin, to the belief that Nature in general, and human nature in particular, is corrupt and ruined, and therefore intrinsically evil. Shrinking from the hopeless prospect which this belief opens up to him, he has found refuge in the conception of another world,—of a world above and beyond Nature, a world of Divine perfection from which information and guidance can at God's good ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... the women and the very children on the level housetops were hurling stones or any missiles that came to hand on the hated foreigners below. Strength and skill were of no avail; such qualities could not even prolong the agony; the veteran and the tyro, the brave and the shrinking, were struck or cut down with equal ease and swiftness. Only one man succeeded in slipping through the gates. This was the commandant Turpilius himself. Even the lenient view that a lucky chance or the pity of his host had given him his freedom, did not clear him of the stain ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the stamping and plunging of horses, and in imagination could picture the whole scene with the restless, excitable animals, shrinking from being backed, and pretending to bite, but calming down the moment they felt a ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... Messianic ideas of his people. In these, glory, not rejection and death, was to be the Messiah's portion. That he was always superior to current expectations is no sign that he did not feel their force. They quite mistake who find the bitterness of Jesus' "cup" simply in his physical shrinking from suffering. The temptation was ever with him to find some other way to the goal of his work than that which led through death. What Peter said hid a force greater than any word of the disciple's. It voiced the crucial temptation of ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... Sir John, so soon as he had come pretty near them, and in so loud a voice that all on deck might have heard the words; and as he spoke he waved his cane back and forth as though he would have struck the young lady, who, shrinking back almost upon the deck, crouched as though to escape such a blow. "You hussy!" he bawled out with vile oaths, too horrible here to be set down. "What do you do here with this Yankee supercargo, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... the next morning, stood Lady Isabel, listening whether the coast was clear ere she descended to the gray parlor, for she had a shrinking dread of encountering Mr. Carlyle. When he was glancing narrowly at her face the previous evening she had felt the gaze, and it impressed upon her the dread of his recognition. Not only that; he was the husband of another; therefore it was not expedient ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... rise for an instant through the boiling foam, though the blue stripe of a sailor's jacket, or a red rag of a flag would do all our hearts good, we are not allowed to have it; it would make us too comfortable, and prevent us from shivering and shrinking as we look, and the artist, with admirable intention, and most meritorious self-denial, expresses his piece of wreck with a dark, cold brown. Now we think this aim and effort worthy of the highest praise, and we only wish ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... she knew not whither; for clouds and darkness were in the forward distance. At every step, she found a new strength and a new power of endurance growing up in her young spirit. Thought, too, was becoming clearer and stronger. The mature woman had suddenly taken the place of the shrinking girl. ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... the chief of toil, his country's rod {84c} of power, Darted like an eagle {84d} to our harbours, {84e} when allured To the compact {85a} that had been formed; his ensign was beloved, {85b} More nobly was his emblazoned resolution {85c} performed, for he retreated not, With a shrinking mind, {85d} before the host of Gododin. Manawyd, {85e} with confidence and strength thou pressest upon the tumultuous fight, Nor dost thou regard {86a} either spear or shield; No habitation rich in dainties can be found, ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... world, the re-establishing of her father's name—could she forego what she had planned? Was it not a nobler aim than the gratification of self that urged the easier way? Yet would it be the easier way? Was she not really in her heart shrinking from the difficulty and sadness that this loveless marriage would bring? Was it not cowardice that prompted a supposed nobility of thought that now appeared ignoble? She wrung her hands in desperation. Had she no courage ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... way to where Christine and Johanna Schmidt were shrinking into a corner, painfully aware that their festal dress was very different from their neighbors'. Marian asked after the children and said one or two pleasant things to make them feel at home, then, raising her voice a trifle so that the whole room might hear, she lifted a corner of Johanna's apron, ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... beautiful it is without seeing it," said Ruth, with a sudden shrinking; but she added hastily, "There is no such needle-woman as ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... genius so shrinking and rare That you hardly at first see the strength that is there; A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet, So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so fleet, Is worth a ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... failure. Sir W. Fairbairn adds: "The danger arising from broken tires does not, according to my opinion, arise so much from changes of temperature as from the practice of heating them to a dull red heat, and shrinking them on to the rim of the wheels. This, I believe, is the general practice, and the unequal, and in some cases, the severe strains to which they are subject, has a direct tendency ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... sandy desert with dunes; broad, flat intensely irrigated river valleys along course of Amu Darya, Syr Darya (Sirdaryo), and Zarafshon; Fergana Valley in east surrounded by mountainous Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan; shrinking Aral Sea in west ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... statue of the Virgin is indeed by St. Luke is attested by St. Eusebius, a man of eminent piety, and no less enlightened than truthful, and the store which he set by it is proved by his shrinking from no discomforts in his carriage of it from a distant country, and by his anxiety to put it in a place of great security. His desire, indeed, was to keep it in the spot which was most near and dear to him, so that he might extract from it the higher incitement to devotion, and more sensible comfort ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... street! And higher and higher Aloft moves the Column of Fire! Through the vistas and rows Like a whirlwind it goes, And the air like the steam from a furnace glows. Beams are crackling—posts are shrinking— Walls are sinking—windows clinking Children crying— Mothers flying— And the beast (the black ruin yet smoldering under) Yells the howl of its pain and its ghastly wonder! Hurry and skurry—away—away, The face of the night is as clear as day! As the links in a chain, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... blinded by strong feeling, failed to perceive, that the silence which, with him as with hundreds of good and earnest men, would indeed have indicated a fatal lack of patriotic emotion, was in the case of Hawthorne only the inevitable shrinking of a rare and sensitive spirit from contact with the awful ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... movement betrayed an instant's shrinking from her fate, as the cold heap of clay covered Beatrice to the very neck. Her face was still above ground, and the infuriated bigot, whose word was to save her or stifle her voice for ever, once more approached. He knelt beside her thrust his crucifix close ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... she felt the child should not be parted from this gift of his dying mother. But at length, when a knowledge of writing made it possible for him to read the letters, he was possessed with a feeling of shrinking from doing so, as one might shrink from opening a message ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... of a hoped reciprocation, in the bosom of that peerless child of the forest, the beautiful Fluella; and all the more intense were its workings, because confined to its own deep recesses, where the hidden flame was laboring constantly for an outlet to its pride-walled prison, but as constantly shrinking in terror from the disclosure. She had once, however, through the violence of emotions which she could not control, accidentally betrayed the state of her feelings; but it was to one in whose discretion and ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... fear," said the nurse, shrinking away. "You look so very strange. Why you glare at me wiz ze eye? Why you ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... the withered creature mirthlessly as she gazed with unsmiling eyes upon the shrinking beauty. 'Be not afraid; this weapon is intended for you, but not ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... As he watched, shrinking back against the wall, the grayness deepened, took the form of a man. And out of that mistiness a face was etched, a face that had no single line of humor in it, a bleak face with the fire ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... normal mood, and in her efforts to meet him in it, as if he had no other, he read a tolerance that was worse than contempt. When he tried to make her think differently, if that was what she thought of him, he fancied her rising to the notion he wished to give her, and then shrinking from it, as if it must bring her the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... must really forgive me) your weakness in the matter of Omphale did seem, to those who knew you not, like want of self-respect. I have the reputation of shrinking, in the pursuit of pleasure, from no fantastic disguise, but I never sat spinning in the garments of a servant-maid. You must have looked a strange daughter of the plough, Heracles. I blush for you to think ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... Satan sets up his recruiting office. A mighty host of children danced and ran and played in the street. Some in rags, some in clean white and beribboned, some wild and restless as young hawks, some gentle-faced and shrinking, some shrieking rude and sinful words, some listening, awed, but soon, grown familiar, to embrace—here were the children playing in the corridors of the House of Sin. Above the playground forever hovered a great bird. The bird was known to humorists as the stork. But the people of Chrystie street ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... there was an infinitely dreadful shrinking and, it seemed, a simultaneous hurling of herself into its radiance. As it wrapped its swirls around her, permeated her—the crystal chorus burst forth—tumultuously; through and through her the radiance pulsed. Began then that infinitely dreadful, ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... could not overcome, held him back. He could not take part by act or word in anything that concerned her again; not even, poor creature, in her funeral; not from any enmity or hatred to her, poor unfortunate one, but because of the horror, the instinctive shrinking, which he could not overcome. Dick determined, however, to send the man who had charge of his chambers, a man half servant, half clerk, in whom he could fully trust. It was Friday when he received the letter. He sent him down next day to Liverpool with instructions to represent him at the ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... was brought over and pitched close at hand. By this time, as their prospects really looked good, Jim had told him the true history of the nugget he had brought home, and how much they owed to Frank; and he so far overcame his shrinking from intercourse with his neighbours, as to become really cordial with Frank, who, when supper was over, often strolled across and smoked a pipe with Jim ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... of earthquakes and volcanoes are usually associated in the same region, one cannot fairly be said to be the cause of the other. Both are rather effects of a common cause, or rather of common causes, the chief of which is the shrinking and readjustment of the rocky strata within the earth. The suggestion that there is some physical connection between the recent eruptions of Vesuvius and the earthquake at San Francisco does not accord with the generally accepted views ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... once, perhaps, in village plenty blest, Has wept at tales of innocence distrest; Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn; Now lost to all; her friends, her virtue fled, Near her betrayer's door she lays her head. And, pinch'd with cold, and shrinking from the shower, With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour, When idly first, ambitious of the town, She left her wheel ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... but namelie, for the greate abhominable sin of vn- // Contempt kindnesse: but what vnkindnesse? euen such // of Gods vnkindnesse as was in the Iewes, in contemninge // trewe Re- Goddes voice, in shrinking from his woorde, in // ligion. wishing backe againe for gypt, in committing aduoultrie and hordom, not with the women, but with the doctrine of Babylon, did bring all the plages, destructions, and Captiuities, that fell so ofte and horriblie, vpon Israell. We haue cause also in England ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... than could have been gathered elsewhere beyond the limits of Paris and the court. Throngs of lovely dames and gallant gentlemen greeted the arrival of the bridal-party from La Pontoise, and if the shrinking bride attracted attention, her emotion was attributed to maiden shyness, none dreaming that a desperate terror ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... at Banks with a sudden feeling of anxiety. I was afraid that he meant at last to use that "pull" he had hinted at on the hill; and I had an intuitive shrinking from the idea of his doing that. This open defiance was fine and upright. The other attitude suggested to my mind the conception of something cowardly, a little base and underhand. He looked, I admit, the picture of sturdy virtue as he stood there challenging ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... ISOLDA (jeeringly). In shrinking trepidation his shame he seeks to hide, While to the king, his relation, he brings the corpse-like bride!— Seems it so senseless What I say? Go ask himself, our gracious host, dare he approach my side? No courteous heed or loyal care this hero t'wards his lady turns; but to meet her his heart ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner
... centre of a fruit pie is two-fold. It answers the purpose of supporting the crust, which, being usually thin and light, has but little strength in itself, probably less than that of a meat pie, while, by the shrinking of the fruit in baking it is left unsupported: and it further serves, not indeed as some good ladies seem to suppose, to increase the quantity of juice, but to keep a portion of it in reserve; so that the pie may not become too dry when a few spoonfuls of its more liquid ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... said she, starting and shrinking as if from a blow. "How can I venture to acknowledge that I love you when I am ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... The cold stars twinkled over snow-blurred forest, struck tiny gleams from stumps that were now white-capped pillars. A night swell from the outside waters beat, its melancholy dirge on the frozen beach. And, as she always did at that hushed hour before dawn, she experienced a physical shrinking from those grim solitudes in which there was nothing warm and human and kindly, nothing but vastness of space upon which silence lay like a smothering blanket, in which she, the human atom, was utterly ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... knowledge of Lydgate's character; for character too is a process and an unfolding. The man was still in the making, as much as the Middlemarch doctor and immortal discoverer, and there were both virtues and faults capable of shrinking or expanding. The faults will not, I hope, be a reason for the withdrawal of your interest in him. Among our valued friends is there not some one or other who is a little too self-confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... imagination of the tailor is sure to fall short if the cloth don't. Next time I'll have 'em made to measure with a ten-foot pole instead of a yardstick. If they're too long I can roll 'em up and let out a link or two when they shrink. Ever since I was a boy I have been troubled with shrinking pants." ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... gay, spirituette, and coquettish; gradually, she became quiet and reserved. The giddy school-girl had given place to the shrinking virgin. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... perfidious, as perfect in deception as in effrontery, proceeding to atrocities either from cool calculation or a spirit of revenge, abandoned to all kinds of passion, and, for gratification of them, shrinking from no sort of crime. However, she died quietly at Paris, in 597 or 598, powerful and dreaded, and leaving on the throne of Neustria her son Clotaire II., who, fifteen years later, was to become sole king of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the brink of dark despair, With smiling face she stands; And to the victim shrinking there, Outspreads her eager hands: In accents low that sweetly flow To his awakening ear, She woos him back—his deathward track. Toward ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... spoke, I indicated the shrinking figure of Agnes, and turned to meet the storm. Verily the storm did come, but ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... sweet and suave as ever, but I found myself creeping away from her and even shrinking ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... blarm your body!" cried Tooler, shrinking back. "Here, yow Jim, kim here, bor, and take this 'ere devil of a ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... peace," said Caleb, shrinking back before her. "Spare your reproaches; if I have sinned much it is ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... and her hair, which waved softly around her forehead, was wound in a flat knot low in her neck, making her look very young, as she sat shrinking from the fire of eyes directed towards her and saw, if she did not hear, the low whispers of the people, many of whom had never seen her before, and were surprised at her extreme youth and beauty. ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... It was this shrinking from publicity, among all save the most ordinary workers, by this time largely foreign, that made one difficulty in the way of census enumerators. By 1860 it had become plain that an enormous increase in their numbers was taking place, and that no just idea of this increase could be formed ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... of this terrific Truth! Another of the many shapes in which it started up about him, out of vacancy. This man, of all men in the world, a spy upon him; this man, changing his identity; casting off his shrinking, purblind, unobservant character, and springing up into a watchful enemy! The dead man might have come out of his grave, and not confounded and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... that made the young fellow fancy that the fierce, black orbs confronting him were burning holes in his brain. For two minutes, that seemed two full hours, the gaze was concentrated upon him. Windybank felt his body shrinking into a smaller compass under the fascination. His breath came thickly, his knees trembled, and his heart laboured in ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... story—a mountain people pillaging the lowlands, exercising a dangerous and embarrassing control over the passes, and thereby calling down upon themselves conquest from without; weakened by a contracting territory within the highlands and a shrinking area of plunder without, doomed to eventual defeat by the yet more ominous weakness of ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... ran away shrinking like a dog, and the priest walked up and down the unfinished church. "She tries my temper more than anyone I ever met," he said to himself. At that moment he heard some loose boards clanking, and thinking it was the old woman coming back he looked round, his eyes flaming. But the ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... him, picked it up again, and read on uneasily, and when at last he rose he was shrinking from himself. In hopes that he might sleep it off he went early to bed, but his contrition was still with him in the morning. Then Elspeth was shown the article which had saved him, and she, too, shuddered ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... world grim and desolate as this around me?—then there would be nothing to seduce us. But our path is a constant fight; Nature is made only to be resisted; we must walk the sharp blade of the sword over the fiery chasm to Paradise. Come, then!—no shrinking!—let me turn my back on everything dear and beautiful, as now on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... the rescue where need was, and quickest to see the need not obvious to all. The aloofness of the mere observer was not his; he was too completely one with all he saw to stand apart and let it go its way alone. Fearful and distrustful of himself he long was, but his timidity was only the natural shrinking before new and untried duties of a soul that saw more clearly and felt more keenly than most. The imperative demands inevitably made upon him by every situation led him instinctively to dread putting himself where he could not help responding ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... and after pacing back and forth sat down again, a little closer to Jennie. Jennie moved away to the extreme end of the bench, and the shrinking away of Jim as if he had been repelled by some sort of negative magnetism showed ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... Amyas had a shrinking, which all will understand, from drawing bow in cool blood on men so utterly unsuspicious and defenceless, even though in the very act of devilish cruelty—for devilish cruelty it was, as three or four drivers armed with ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Timidity, an instinctive shrinking from the slanders, calumnies, and intrigues of the court, appeared to be the most pronounced characteristic of queens who seemed to believe themselves too inferior to their husbands to dare to offer any political counsel. ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... Moccolo! Senza Moccolo!'; low balconies full of lovely faces and gay dresses, struggling with assailants in the streets; some repressing them as they climb up, some bending down, some leaning over, some shrinking back—delicate arms and bosoms—graceful figures—glowing lights, fluttering dresses, Senza Moccolo, Senza Moccoli, Senza Moc-co-lo-o-o-o!—when in the wildest enthusiasm of the cry, and fullest ecstasy of the sport, the Ave Maria ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... cry, passing into a prolonged wail of fear, roused old Beharilal, and he saw a sight that nearly caused him to swoon with terror. The little man, a moment ago so placid and happy, was shrinking back with "I don't like that thing" inscribed in lines of anguish on his distorted face, and not three feet from him a huge cobra, just emerged from the roll of matting, eyed him with a stony stare, its head raised and its hood expanded. ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... it done that the fascinated throng could not at first understand what had happened to the executioner, who sprang into the air, screamed, and stood clawing and plucking at the arrow while his bow hung dripping with blood, yet nailed to his shrinking palm. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... gasp, the horse doubled his head under himself as he galloped his last stride, and falling in a round heap rolled over and over forwards with frightful violence, till he suddenly lay stiff and stark with twisted neck and outstretched heels, within a yard of the shrinking crowd, his rider crushed to death on the grass behind him. And still the others came tearing down the hill, more and more, faster and faster, as if no earthly power could stop their rush. First ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... chapter I have occason to speak of fear. There I mean by fear a sort of shrinking demeanor or disposition to accept insults and other petty persecutions as just dues, or to leave them unpunished from actual cowardice, to which fear some have been pleased to attribute my generally good treatment. This latter fact has been by many, to my ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... inequality is chief among the "portentous consequences" for which he declares that improvements should be arrested. No, sir. When the President intimates that something in the way of improvements may properly be done by the General Government, he is shrinking from the conclusions to which his own arguments would force him. He feels that the improvements of this broad and goodly land are a mighty interest; and he is unwilling to confess to the people, or perhaps to himself, that he has built an ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... storm burst upon him, and he who had sat all the session shrinking unnoticed in his quiet, back seat, unnerved when a colleague asked the simplest question, found himself the centre and point of attack in the wildest melee that legislature ever saw. A dozen men, red, frantic, with upraised arms, came at him, Hurlbut the first of them. But the lobby was ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... exciting scene, Walter getting almost as severe handling from Calhoun, nurses and children huddling together in the farthest corner of the room, Baby Herbert screaming at the top of his voice, and the others crying and sobbing while shrinking in nervous terror from the hideous disguises lying in a heap upon ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... and the lawns and trees and shrubs of the garden lay in bright moonlight. She hurried, wrapped in a dark cloak, to the place from which she had fled from Mackenzie in the afternoon. She felt an impulse of shrinking as she saw his tall figure striding up and down on the grass, but she put it away from her and ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall |
