"Smallness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with darker hair. The great difficulty was my hands and feet; but the different shape of a boy's shoes made my feet pass; and I crumpled my hands up and kept them out of sight as much as possible. But they are not of a degenerated smallness," she added, looking at them critically; "it is more their shape. However, when I dressed myself and put on that long ulster, I saw the disguise would pass and felt pretty safe. But isn't it surprising the difference dress makes? I should hardly ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... beard," he said with genial brusqueness; and nothing, perhaps, could better have summed up his faculty for forming independent judgments which Shelton found so admirable. He made no apology for the smallness of the dinner, which, consisting of eight courses and three wines, served by a butler and one footman, smacked of the same perfection as the furniture; in fact, he never apologised for anything, except ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the old and the blatancy of the new. The little parish church is of the very far past, having lost its Cathedral rank over six hundred years ago to Sainte-Marie in Grasse, a town scarcely younger than its own. It is the type of the church of this coast, with its unpretentious smallness, its strength, and its disfiguring restorations; and it is, especially in comparison with Vence and Grasse, of small architectural interest. The facade, and the double archway which connects the church and the tower, are of the ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... army on its left was still unbroken, and had been joined by large numbers of troops from the centre. On discovering the smallness of the force under Lord Cornwallis, they attacked it in overwhelming numbers, led by Tippoo himself. The British infantry advanced to meet them with the bayonet, and drove them back with heavy loss. They rallied, and returned to the attack again ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... either come or fight me," Judge Custis remarked. "I have tried to be a peaceable man and Christian magistrate, albeit a poor hypocrite in some, things, but I am pushed too far. My wife's smallness is worse than insanity and wickedness put together. Between her and this money-broking fiend, and my neglected child entrapped into such a marriage, by God! I will clean my old duelling arms, and appeal to injustice ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... I could have screamed again for very fright, but I had no voice left. The thing vanished suddenly, and it seemed to my disturbed senses that it made its exit through the open port, though how that was possible, considering the smallness of the aperture, is more than any one can tell. I lay a long time upon the floor, and the captain lay beside me. At last I partially recovered my senses and moved, and I instantly knew that my arm was broken—the small bone of the left forearm near ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... head. We have not loved one another for twenty years for a trumpery title to come between us now! And you need not fear being too well off for the position. The agent, Hailes, has been continually apologising to me for the smallness of the means. He says either we must have no house in London, or else let Northmoor. He cannot tell me yet exactly what income we shall have, but the farms don't let well, and there is not ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Diary, he might feel that what he left behind him was indeed himself. There is perhaps no other instance so remarkable of the desire of man for publicity and an enduring name. The greatness of his life was open, yet he longed to communicate its smallness also; and, while contemporaries bowed before him, he must buttonhole posterity with the news that his periwig was once alive with nits. But this thought, although I cannot doubt he had it, was neither his first nor his deepest; it did ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with a quick, mobile face, and a lithe and shapely, if as yet somewhat unformed figure. The long thick plait in which her chestnut hair was arranged could not hide its plenitude and beauty, while the smallness of her hands and feet showed breeding, as did her manners and presence. The observant Godfrey, at his first sight of Juliette, for such was her name, marvelled how it was possible that she should be the daughter of that plain ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... Estate to be as moderate as the Riches of your Mind are abundant, I must challenge to my self some part of the Burthen; and as a Parent of your Child. I present her with Twelve hundred and fifty Crowns towards these Expences; which Sum had been much larger, had I not feared the Smallness of it would be the greatest Inducement with you ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... whites. This may be true, in the main, for a white man is known to have died at no great distance from Ravensnest, within the last five-and-twenty years, who numbered more than his six score of years; but aged negroes and aged Indians are nevertheless so common, when the smallness of their whole numbers is remembered, as to render the fact apparent to most of those who have seen much ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... monk, rising through more radiant clouds? Look, however, how radiant, in the small space allowed out of the blue, they are in reality. You cannot anywhere see a lovelier piece of Giottesque colour, though here you have to mourn over the smallness of the piece, and its isolation. For the face of St. Francis himself is repainted, and all the blue sky; but the clouds and four sustaining angels are hardly retouched at all, and their iridescent and exquisitely graceful wings are left with really very tender and ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... that only a limited few besides those interested in the case would be allowed in the court-room was the reason of the smallness of the crowd. People, knowing that they could not get in to see the trial, did not—beyond a few of the more curious—care to merely get a look ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... with man. And Laulani was beautiful; that Keola should be made into a spearhead for her! She was formed like a queen, and her body was a long bowl of sweetness, and her fingers lomi'd' (massaged) 'to slimness and smallness at her mother's breast. For ten generations have we remembered her beauty. Your father's singing boys to-day sing of her beauty in the hula that is named of her! This is Laulani, whom you hold ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... still sleepless! "Never have I been so badly treated. I have now discovered what the disappointment of the world means," he murmured, while the boy Kokimi lay down beside him fast asleep. The smallness of his stature, and the graceful waving of his short hair, could not but recall to Genji the beautiful tresses of his sister, and bring her image vividly before him; and, long before the daylight appeared, he rose up, and returned to his residence with all speed. ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... with thick bushes. Henry Kingsley's explanation (1859), that the word means shrubbery, is singularly misleading, the English word conveying an idea of smallness and order compared with the size and confusion of the Australian use. Yet he is etymologically correct, for Scrobb is Old English (Anglo-Saxon) for shrub; but the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... and shutting his hand in ironical adieu, and looking smaller and smaller as our tender drifted away and the vast liner loomed immense before us. He may have contributed to its effect of immensity by the smallness of his presence, or it may have dwarfed him. No matter; he filled no slight space in our lives while he lasted. Now that he is no longer there, was he really a bad little boy, merely and simply? Heaven knows, which alone knows good ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... it, as it is evident, from experience, that the more they are separated and diffused the more care and attention are bestowed on them by their masters, each proprietor having it in his power to increase their comforts and conveniences in proportion to the smallness of their numbers." ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... at this band of powerful, lithe, wiry, covetous savages, and thought of the hundreds of others whom they could summon by a single war-whoop to their side, and of the smallness of our own party, I could not help feeling that moral influence was a powerful factor in the affairs of man. No doubt they were restrained to some extent by the certain knowledge that, if they attacked ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... fashion, for if it is desirable to indulge in an ornament, it is equally desirable that everybody should be gratified by the exhibition thereof. We presume that it is with this commendable feeling that pins'-heads (whose smallness in former days became a proverb) should now resemble the apex of a beadle's staff; and, as though to make "assurance doubly sure," a plurality is absolutely required for the decoration of a gentleman. In these times, when political partisanship is so exceedingly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... depart. Her gloves and riding-whip lay on the table. The afternoon was far spent, and already the shadows were lengthening on the mountain-side. She paid the trifling account, Antonio taking the money with such a deep bow that the smallness of the coin was quite atoned for. He brought her horse ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... James Prince was living in a small, choice residential district near the Lake. Its choiceness was great, but was not duly guarded. The very smallness of the neighborhood—a triumphant record of early fortunes—put it upon a precarious basis: there was all too slight a margin against encroachments. And, besides, the discovery came to be made, ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... child's death, were drawn in to purchase, thinking themselves safe in the concurrence of his lordship's brother, upon presumption that he was next in remainder to the succession; others, tempted by the smallness of the price, which rarely exceeded half a year's purchase, as appears by many deeds, though they doubted the truth of the boy's being dead, ran small risks, on the contingency of his dying before he ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... obstacle was the smallness of his studio. If he had only had the old garret of the Quai de Bourbon, or even the huge dining-room of Bennecourt! But what could he do in that oblong strip of space, that kind of passage, which the landlord of the house impudently let to painters for four hundred francs ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... time seemed to pass more rapidly, or rather that the time of the world he had left appeared to move more slowly, as he adventured into smallness. He had been flying, it seemed to him, nearly an hour when he reached the level of ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... must be fully as severe as ours," said Cortlandt, "on account of their length, the planet's distance from the sun, and the twenty-seven and a half degrees inclination of its axis, we can account for the smallness of its ice-caps only by the fact that its oceans cover but one fourth of its surface instead of three quarters, as on the earth, and there is consequently a smaller evaporation ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... lodge of the great villa behind, whose garden trees at sunset cast their shadow over the cottage and its terrace on to the steep white road. But any of the country people could tell him that this, too, is Casa Signorile, spite of its smallness. It stands somewhat high above the road, a square, white house with a projecting roof, and with four green-shuttered windows overlooking the gay but narrow terrace. The beds under the windows would have fulfilled the fancy of that French poet who desired that in his garden ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... shall be unable to supply you with tea, sugar, and rum; but such other articles as we have and can spare you will be furnished with; but should you consider it will in any way endanger your party going overland without the stores you have asked for, or from the smallness of the number for which you can carry stores, or for protection, I do not consider that it is imperative you should do so, having every reason to believe that Mr. Walker's party will do everything that is possible and necessary to continue ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... has continued to our own day. The reason why the diminutive ending was favored does not seem far to seek. That suffix properly indicates that the object in question is smaller than the average of its kind. Smallness in a child stimulates our affection, in a dwarf, pity or aversion. Now we give expression to our emotion more readily in the intercourse of every-day life than we do in writing, and the emotions of the masses are perhaps ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... my rule, which he hath engraved to admiration, for goodness and smallness of work: it cost me 14s. the doing. This day, for a wager before the King, my Lords of Castlehaven and Arran, (a son of my Lord of Ormond's) they two alone did run down and kill a stoute bucke in ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... the ants might have seemed to us more promising. Their smallness of size was not necessarily too much of a handicap. They could have made poison their weapon for the subjugation of rivals. And in these orderly insects there was obviously a capacity for labor, and co-operative ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... There is, too, a delightful appreciation of climax. As one walks up a spacious avenue, passing through gate after gate, each more magnificent than the last, one is being prepared by this cumulative splendor for the tomb itself. One feels everywhere the dignity of space. There is no smallness, no crowding. One feels the greatness of the people that has done these things: a race that looks at life and death with a vision as broad ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... how many faults I have, and to deny them has never been my practice; but this is the honest and earnest truth, that no smallness of mind, or narrowness of feeling, or want of large or fine sentiments made me bolt my door when that girl was in the house. I simply refused, after seeing her once, to have any thing more to say to her; by no ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... leaf-beetle found on Robinia pseudacacia. The chromosomes are comparatively few in number, 16 in the spermatogonia (figs. 58 and 59), and of immense size when one considers the smallness of the beetle. In some of the spermatogonial cysts many of the chromosomes are V-shaped as in figure 58, while in others all, with the exception of the small one, are rod-shaped as in figure 59, which looks like a hemipteran equatorial plate. The spermatogonial resting nucleus (fig. 60) ...
— Studies in Spermatogenesis - Part II • Nettie Maria Stevens
... way, passing Malta at a respectful distance, and coasting the Morea, till he dropped anchor in the Bay of Salonica.[25] By his route, which touched Santa Maura and Navarino, he appears to have been looking for Doria, in spite of the smallness of his own force (which had, however, been increased by prizes); but, fortunately, perhaps, for the Corsair, the Genoese admiral had returned to Sicily, and the two had missed ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... a difficult monthly flow, and is always preceded by severe pains in the back and lower part of the abdomen. It is caused by taking cold during the period; fright, violent mental emotions, obstinate constipation, sedentary occupations, smallness of the mouth and neck of the womb. Females subject to this trouble are generally relieved by marriage. The symptoms are severe bearing-down pains in the region of the uterus, like labor pains; restlessness, coldness, flashes of heat, with headache; aching in the small of the back, lower part ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... God forbid! But Micromegas was on site, which makes him a reliable witness, and I do not want to contradict anyone. Micromegas, after having toured around, arrived at the planet Saturn. As accustomed as he was to seeing new things, he could not, upon seeing the smallness of the planet and its inhabitants, stop himself from smiling with the superiority that occasionally escapes the wisest of us. For in the end Saturn is hardly nine times bigger than Earth, and the citizens ...
— Romans — Volume 3: Micromegas • Voltaire
... third degree fatality about the usually debonair Penny that exacted obedience. George unwillingly looked him in the eye, and had a ghastly feeling of having his suddenly realized smallness X-rayed. ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... very interesting house. At first, you come to the front next to the road, which you do by a steep descent down the plantation. You are struck, having a great castle in your imagination, with the smallness of the place. It is neither large nor lofty. Your ideal Gothic castle shrinks into a miniature. The house is quite hidden till you are at it, and then you find yourself at a small, castellated gateway, with its crosses cut into the stone pillars on each side, and the little ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... sufficient demand for this size to cause British firms to manufacture them. The nearest size in central-fire cartridge to seven millimetres is called the 300, which is .3 of an inch. Seven millimetres is .276 of an inch. The point to which I want to draw your attention is the extreme slightness and smallness of the revolver with which Mrs. Heredith was killed. As Captain Nepcote told Merrington yesterday, it is little more than ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... it must be considered seriously that if the trade be carried on by way of the cape of Buena Esperanza, it would be quite possible that the Chinese—who, in order to go to Manila, have to sail, both in the open and among islands, with some risk and danger because of the smallness of their craft—after seeing that the Spanish ships had to make a way-station at Malaca or Xava, would go from the river of Canton, which is the gateway from which the Chinese ships set out, coasting from land to land along their own country, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... had left school in Paris but a few months, was the very counterpart of her lovely mother in her leading features. She had just completed her seventeenth year, and was of tall, graceful stature, with a perfect figure. The smallness of her waist contrasted perfectly with the ravishing fullness of bosom and wideness of hips. She had the liquid eyes of her mother, but they were suffused with a humidity that was perfectly maddening, and the expression of every feature of her lovely face and palpitating form ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... Fate for having equipped him so poorly. Measured by the German standard, however, his modest patrimony suggested princely opulence; and its possessor became conscious of a certain agreeable expansion, peculiar to capitalists. Smile as he might at the smallness of the social conditions which allowed him to play the role of a Croesus in the fancy of love-sick maids, he could not deny that he found it a pleasant thing to be the object of such tender rivalry. It seemed to add a cubit to his height and two to his self-esteem. He revelled in ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... reference to his poverty was a feature of Gourlay's talk now, when he spoke of money to his family. It excused the smallness of his doles, yet led them to believe that he was only joking—that he had plenty of money if he would only consent to shell it out. And that was what he wished them to believe. His pride would not allow ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... Mr. Brunton. Of the short time he had for instructing her, no part was lost. The appearance of Mr. Brunton's daughter in Euphrasia, with a prologue written for the occasion, was announced, and notwithstanding there were not wanting wretches mean and miserable enough to trumpet abroad her youth and smallness of stature, as insurmountable obstacles to her personating the Grecian daughter, more just ideas of her, or perhaps curiosity brought a full house. Mr. Brunton himself spoke the prologue, which was written for him by the ingenious Mr. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... The officers of the Golden Hind were unwilling to return, but consented on Sir Humphrey's promise that they should come back in the spring; they sailed for England on the 31st of August. All wished him to return in the Golden Hind as a much larger and safer vessel; the Squirrel, besides its smallness, being encumbered on the deck with guns, ammunition, and nettings, making it unseaworthy. But when he was begged to remove into the larger vessel, he said, "I will not forsake my little company going homeward with whom I have passed so many storms and perils." ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... From the smallness of the harbor, Columbus gave it the name of El Retrete, or The Cabinet. He had been betrayed into this inconvenient and dangerous port by the misrepresentations of the seamen sent to examine it, who ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... to Columbus, served to strengthen his opinion. The success indeed of his undertaking depended greatly on two happy errors: the imaginary extent of Asia to the east, and the supposed smallness of the earth. A deep religious sentiment mingled with his meditations. He looked upon himself as chosen by Heaven for the accomplishment of its purposes, that the ends of the earth might be brought together, and all ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... along the road to the end of the world. Any one who has read Browning's longer poems knows how constantly a simile or figure of speech is selected, not among the large, well-recognised figures common in poetry, but from some dusty corner of experience, and how often it is characterised by smallness and a certain quaint exactitude which could not have been found in any more usual example. Thus, for instance, Prince Hohenstiel—Schwangau explains the psychological meaning of all his restless and unscrupulous activities by comparing them to the impulse which ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... with Spleen and Choler, he rails at better Men than himself, and will be for ever uneasie, because it is impossible he should think his Merit sufficiently rewarded. The next Heart that I examined was remarkable for its Smallness; it lay still at the Bottom of the Phial, and I could hardly perceive that it beat at all. The Fomes was quite black, and had almost diffused it self over the whole Heart. This, says my Interpreter, is the Heart of Dick ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... somehow humiliated at the smallness of the sum, and at the thought that this advertisement would be read by his friends and school-companions. The softer thoughts, which but just now came to him, were banished, and he determined, whatever hardships awaited him, to remain ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... had ceased to feed. Nobody was standing at the Cross, the few inhabitants being indoors at their dinner. No human being was on the down, and no human eye or interest but Anne's seemed to be concerned with it. The bees still worked on, and the butterflies did not rest from roving, their smallness seeming to shield them from the stagnating effect that this turning moment of day had on larger ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... the hour of triumph had always found him calm and thankful, rather than elated and arrogant. But many a modest and generous winner has proved himself a poor loser. It is the moment of adversity that tries men's souls and revels the greatness or smallness of character, and subjected to this test more than one commander in the war had been found wanting. McClellan, staggering from his campaign against Richmond, blamed almost everyone but himself for the result; Pope, scurrying toward the fortifications of Washington, ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... covered as these were by their works, and able to receive re-enforcement from the opposite shore. Consequently, when the officer in immediate local control, Major-General Riall, embarrassed by the smallness of his field force, suggested the destruction of Fort Niagara, except a citadel of restricted extent, needing a less numerous garrison, his superior replied that not only would such smaller work be much more easily taken, but that in every event the loss ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... its good vicariously and shifts its sins and responsibilities on to the past, is a religion that can never elevate character; it simply makes a man more intensely what he was before. It is all self, self, self. Think of the infinitesimal smallness, the irredeemable worthlessness, the unutterable meanness of a soul that could forsake those it had loved, and be happy believing that they were suffering and ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... important a factor in generating voice, writers on voice-production have described it with much minuteness, and because of these minute descriptions readers may have obtained an exaggerated idea of the size of this organ. But one of the marvels of voice-production is the smallness of the organ in which voice is generated, the size of the average larynx being about two inches in height by an inch and a half in width. Yet so numerous are the adjustments in shape of which this small organ is capable that the phenomenal soprano, Mara, could make 100 changes ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... cannot positively state that he wrote more than is now extant in the book bearing his name, but I am astonished at the smallness of the quantity, we possess, for the sacred writer asserts that the prophet prophesied for ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... not conceal it from himself—Elizabeth appealed to him. Being built on a large scale himself, he had always been attracted by small women. There was a smallness, a daintiness, a liveliness about Elizabeth that was almost irresistible. She was so capable, so cheerful in spite of the fact that she was having a hard time. And then their minds seemed to blend so remarkably. There were no odd corners to be smoothed away. Never in his life had he felt so supremely ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... not want to give up his shoes, and even offered to fight for them, till he felt the horseshoer's strength in Ernest's hands. Carlson afterward reported several blisters and much grievous loss of skin due to the smallness of the shoes, but he succeeded in doing gallant work with them. Back from the lip of the hole, where ended the young man's obliterated trial, Carlson put on the shoes and walked away to the left. He walked ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... if we take it for a deficiency in pursuing great things, is properly opposed to magnanimity by default; but if we take it for the mind's attachment to things beneath what is becoming to a man, it is opposed to humility by default; since each proceeds from a smallness of mind. In the same way, on the other hand, pride may be opposed by excess, both to magnanimity and humility, from different points of view: to humility, inasmuch as it scorns subjection, to magnanimity, inasmuch as it tends to great things inordinately. Since, however, pride ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... economies, more narrowly than usual; but the cheapness of the place suited the occasion, and the little villa, like a mere tent among the vines, charmed us, though the doors didn't shut, and though (on account of the smallness) Robert and I had to whisper all our talk whenever Wiedeman was asleep. Oh, I wish you were in Italy. I wish you had come here this winter which has been so mild, and which, with ordinary prudence, would certainly have suited ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... the Prince of Wales, and was doing everything the way he thought the Prince would do it. For bringing his four valises aboard and stowing them in the nettings, he gave his porter four cents, and lightly apologized for the smallness of the gratuity —just with the condescendingest little royal air in the world. He stretched himself out on the front seat and rested his pomatum-cake on the middle arm, and stuck his feet out of the window, and began to pose as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Miloradowitch, the thunders of which were prolonged amid the double darkness of night and the forests. Several times the relics of these brave troops, conceiving that they were attacked, crawled to their arms. Next morning, when they fell into their ranks again, they were astonished at the smallness ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... tempted me as little as the chances of defeat. Twice we found women on board; and though I have seen towns sacked, and of late days in France some very horrid public tumults, there was something in the smallness of the numbers engaged, and the bleak dangerous sea-surroundings, that made these acts of piracy far the most revolting. I confess ingenuously I could never proceed unless I was three parts drunk; it was the same even with the crew; Teach himself was fit ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... powers of physical strength, upon the number of their mechanical agents, nor can a host of authors be reckoned like the troops which compose an army; on the contrary, the authority of a principle is often increased by the smallness of the number of men by whom it is expressed. The words of a strong-minded man, which penetrate amidst the passions of a listening assembly, have more power than the vociferations of a thousand orators; and if it be allowed to speak freely in any public ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... soldiers paid for their beer, and left; and some of the townspeople came in, and took the places they had left. Their conversation, of course, turned on the Prussian occupation, and deep were the curses heaped upon the invaders. The only thing mentioned in their favor was the smallness of their number. There were not over two hundred men; and this amount weighed but lightly upon Saverne, compared with the fifty, sixty, or a hundred quartered at every little village along the ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... landscape stretched out like patchwork below. Then with the night and the absence of all human sounds had come that sweet and mystical sense of loneliness which had so often brought him peace at a time when the smallness of the day's events and the tyranny of his home life had filled him with bitterness. It was here that courage had come to him to plan out his emancipation, here that he had fed his brain with sweet but ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... view—from that of the comparative anatomist who has made the study of the greater modifications of animal form his chief business—a surprise of another kind dawns upon the mind; and under this aspect the smallness of the total change becomes as astonishing as was its greatness under ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... right," said Sam, agreeably surprised with the smallness of the charge in comparison with the extortionate demands of New York hackmen. He considered it only gallant to offer to pay the hack fare, and was glad it would not be too heavy a ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... She turned to the door, and all the smallness of her own conduct dawned upon Trix. Her generous heart—it was generous in spite of all this—smote ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... plantar cushion the effects of the atrophy are noted in the smallness of the organ, in its becoming whiter in colour than normal, and more ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... indeed, who maintained that the smallness and delicacy of her features was out of keeping with her stature and her ample gliding motions. But here, again, the impression of delicacy was transformed half way into one of brilliancy by the large hazel eyes and the vivid whiteness of the skin. Kendal ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the interests we have at stake and considering the smallness of difference between foreign and native tonnage on French vessels alone, it might perhaps be thought advisable to make the sacrifice asked, and especially if it can be so done as to give no title to other the most favored nations to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... saw on one side a great number of Moros coming down a defile to prevent our retreat to the camp. A few cannon-shots were fired at them, and they quickly hurried back to the hill. His Lordship wished to halt here and await the attack by Nicolas Gonalez, but the smallness of his forces compelled him to retire, which he did, the drums beating, as before, until we reached the camp. The wounded were placed, for that night, in a cabin in front of the mosque; and in the morning we transferred them to the champans, burying three who had died. Many were of the opinion ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... were they chased by the Malay proas, which infested the islands, but the swiftness of their little peroqua was their security; indeed the chase was, generally speaking, abandoned, as soon as the smallness of the vessel was made out by the pirates, who expected that little or no booty was ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... distressing fact that in England the Moravians had only twenty congregations, in Ireland only six, and that the total number of members was only four thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven. The question is sometimes asked to-day: How is it that the Moravian Church is so small? For that smallness more reasons than one may be given; but one reason was certainly the singular policy expounded in ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... of power. Through it all, behind it all, was man, governing and controlling, expressing himself, as of old, by his mastery over matter. It was colossal, stunning. White Fang was awed. Fear sat upon him. As in his cubhood he had been made to feel his smallness and puniness on the day he first came in from the Wild to the village of Grey Beaver, so now, in his full-grown stature and pride of strength, he was made to feel small and puny. And there were so many gods! He was made dizzy by the swarming of them. The thunder of the streets ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... instant of giving herself to this man did not seriously occur to me. His face was like the face of thousands of successful men whom we see daily in the great marts of the world. His forehead was broad but low, his eyes inclined to smallness and set closely together, his brows shaggy and overhanging: his cheeks were heavy, and the fleshy formation of his mouth and chin denoted both cruelty and sensuality. He was a wealthy man: such men are always rich. He had the reputation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... And Mr. Cave perceived that the buildings, with other peculiarities, had no doors, but that the great circular windows, which opened freely, gave the creatures egress and entrance. They would alight upon their tentacles, fold their wings to a smallness almost rod-like, and hop into the interior. But among them was a multitude of smaller-winged creatures, like great dragon-flies and moths and flying beetles, and across the greensward brilliantly-coloured ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... nothing, but he looked on the pretty little boy with much favor. If the earth were not to crumble into nothingness after all, this child would be a real treasure trove; and when Dada begged him to find a corner for Papias in his house, though he hinted at the smallness of his earnings and the limited space at his command, he yielded, if reluctantly, to her entreaties, on her offering him her gold brooch to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... mean by nature, let him give full swing to his meanness. Such a fellow brings discredit upon generosity by putting on its semblance. If he attempts to disguise the smallness of his soul, he only adds to his contemptible trait of meanness the still more despicable vice of hypocrisy. Mean by the sacred institution of Nature, and without a generous trait to mar the excellence of his native ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... overlooking Oulton Broad, and was sheltered from the winds of the sea and marshland by a belt of storm-rent pines. The house contained a sitting-room on either side of the entrance-hall, a kitchen, four bedrooms, and two attics. It was its smallness and compactness that commended it to Borrow, and it also had the extra recommendation to a man of his disposition of being quiet and secluded. Indeed, so out-of-the-way was its situation that to take a boat upon the broad was looked upon as the best and most direct means of attaining this isolated ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... characterizations of parts. They are taught to allow their demeanor and gesture and expression to rise out of the situation, to "get up" their parts from their own ideas; and these ideas are interfered with only if they run definitely counter to the ideas of stage-manager or author. The smallness of the Abbey Theatre has saved them from the necessity of heightening effects that they may carry to the farthest corners of a large house, a necessity that leads so often to over-emphasis by our own actors. There are less than six hundred seats in the Abbey theatre (five hundred and sixty-two ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... most picturesque forms to a painter's eye. We were soon conducted to the famous dockyard, constructed by Bonaparte, which had been the source of so much uneasiness to this country; and could not help being surprised at the smallness of the means which he had been able to obtain for the overthrow of our naval power. The docks did not appear to us at all large; but they are very deep, and during the siege, by the English and Prussian troops, contained 20 ships of the line, besides 14 frigates. When we saw ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... nor spread itself upon the face, and writ sad stories upon the forehead. No wringing of hands, knocking the breast, or wishing oneself unborn; all which are but the ceremonies of sorrow, the pomp and ostentation of an effeminate grief, which speak not so much the greatness of the misery as the smallness of the mind! Tears may spoil the eyes, but not wash away the affliction. Sighs may exhaust the man, but not eject the burden. Sorrow, then, would have been as silent as thought, as severe as philosophy. ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... and passionate, and the last red-hot plumes of it covered up the sun like something too good to be seen. The whole was so close about the earth, as to express nothing but a violent secrecy. The very empyrean seemed to be a secret. It expressed that splendid smallness which is the soul of local patriotism. The very sky ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... how the whole empire was to be kept together, and possibly another added to it, he felt convinced that his mercenaries did not make up for the smallness of their numbers by their superiority to the subject peoples. Therefore he must keep together those brave warriors, to whom with heaven's help the victory was due, and he must take all care that they did not lose their valour, hardihood, and skill. [71] To avoid the appearance of dictating ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... at court. Barkilphedro became the motive power. Have you remarked, in certain mechanisms, the smallness of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... of the specimens from Padre Island were commented upon by Nelson (op. cit.:149) who found smallness of bullae to characterize many of the specimens from the eastern part of the geographic range of L. c. merriami. In the northeastern part of the geographic range of L. c. merriami, as Nelson pointed out, the small size of the tympanic bullae was one of several evidences of intergradation ...
— Mammals Obtained by Dr. Curt von Wedel from the Barrier Beach of Tamaulipas, Mexico • E. Raymond Hall
... In the smallness of the room, sitting as it were at his feet on the sofa, surrounded and encaged by a hundred domestic objects and by the glow of the fire and the radiance of the gas, she certainly did seem to Edwin to be ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... respect to the many works and factories erected on the canal banks, or on bases connected therewith, there was with canal navigation no item of expense corresponding to the cost of cartage to the railway stations, yet the smallness of the railway rates for heavy goods, and the greater speed of transit, were found to be more than countervailing advantages. But when private individuals have embarked their capital in an undertaking, they do not calmly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... minute. Her shoulders were Chili, she thought she should freeze, But a warm Paisley shawl put her quite at her ease. Her rich Diamond jewelry sparkled and shone; Her shoes were Morocco, of smallness unknown; And her kerchief diffused a sweet smell of Cologne. A Superior dancer, she floated around, With Washington great or Columbus was found. With Madison flirting or dancing a jig, Montgomery, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... bought her in town, at Christmas time, a pair of white satin slippers, partly to test the smallness of her feet on which in younger days he had rallied her, and partly because she had mentioned a possible white dress. They were a cheap, plain pair but dainty, ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... polled for the first Abolitionist presidential ticket. The man who gave it did not try to hide his responsibility—in fact, he seemed rather proud of his aloneness—but he was mercilessly guyed on account of the smallness of his party. His rejoinder was that he thought that he and God, who was, he believed, with him, made a ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... have a cruel tongue," said the elder brother; and he pulled out the clear pebble, and turned its light on his brother; and behold, the man was lying; his soul was shrunk into the smallness of a pea, and his heart was a bag of little fears like scorpions, and love was dead in his bosom. And at that the elder brother cried out aloud, and turned the light of the pebble on the maid, and lo! she was but a mask of a woman, and withinsides she was quite dead, and she ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... small island lying about 4 leagues from the north-west point of Ceram. I was informed by the Dutch sloop before mentioned that, notwithstanding its smallness, it has one fine river, and that the Dutch are there settled. Whether there be any natives on it or not I know not, nor what its produce is. They further said that the Ceramers were their mortal enemies; yet that they were settled ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... remembered all; only I may not forget Allan Water, nor birch-wetting Rogie, nor yet Almond; nor, for all its pollutions, that Water of Leith of the many and well-named mills—Bell's Mills, and Canon Mills, and Silver Mills; nor Redford Burn of pleasant memories; nor yet, for all its smallness, that nameless trickle that springs in the green bosom of Allermuir, and is fed from Halkerside with a perennial teacupful, and threads the moss under the Shearer's Knowe, and makes one pool there, overhung by a rock, where I loved to sit and make bad verses, and is then kidnapped in its infancy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the truthful old chronicler, Robert Knox, "are in great abundance in the woods, from the largeness of a cow to the smallness of a hare, for here is a creature in this land no bigger than the latter, though every part rightly resembleth a deer: it is called meminna, of a grey colour, with white spots and good meat."[1] The little creature which thus dwelt in the recollection of the old man, as one of the memorials of ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... the croupier, raking in the piece with a contemptuous air at the smallness of the bet, and in no way pleased that the interest Mr. O'Leary excited should prevent the other ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... of this strange event we must return to Arnold and his stratagem. He had, on learning the peril of the fort, been about to advance despite the smallness of his force, when an opportunity occurred to send terror in advance of his march. There were in his hands several Tory prisoners, among them an ignorant, coarse, half-idiotic fellow named Hon-Yost Schuyler, who had been condemned to death for treason. His mother pleaded for his life, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... infinitely below what He deserves from us; the smallest will not be rejected by Him. For it is the motive, not the gift, which our Lord regards. The poor widow's mite was more acceptable to Him than the ostentatious and lavish donations of the wealthy. Yet the smallness, the seeming worthlessness, of our means is often pleaded as an excuse for withholding them altogether. Because men can do so little, they do nothing. It was the servant who had received only one talent that wrapped his lord's money in a napkin, and ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... approaching only distantly those of to-day; and, in fact, when we come to inquire into the size and populousness of mediaeval German cities, as into those of the classical world of antiquity, we are at first sight staggered by the smallness of their proportions. The largest and most populous free Imperial cities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Nuernberg and Strassburg, numbered little more than 20,000 resident inhabitants within the walls, a population rather less than that of (say) many an English country town ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... left in the Indies for the sole purpose of removing the merchandize belonging to the Portuguese in the factory at Cochin to Cananor and Coulan, and not to defend him against the power of the zamorin; which he was even disposed to think were true, in consideration of the smallness of the fleet under his command. Pacheco felt indignant at the suspicion which the rajah entertained, and endeavoured to convince him that he had been imposed upon by the Moors out of enmity to the Portuguese, assuring him that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... 20-83, Francis Bingham, writing of the corals and sponges and shells and crinoids that Dr. Hahn had asserted that he had found in meteorites, says, judging by the photographs of them, that their "notable peculiarity" is their "extreme smallness." The corals, for instance, are about one-twentieth the size of terrestrial corals. "They represent a veritable ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... less perfectly dried mica, did not get so good a result as to smallness of residual charge ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall |
