"Diminish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... may be cajoled into imagining that your own special trade or your own industry will be encouraged by a protective tariff, but it stands to reason that such legislation must in the long run keep away wealth from the country, diminish the value of our imports, and lower the general conditions of life in ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... day became an object of increased and deeper interest to Myra. His appearance and manners had always been attractive, and the mystery connected with him was not calculated to diminish curiosity in his conduct or fate. But when she discovered that he was the unseen hero of her childhood, the being who had been kind to her Endymion in what she had ever considered the severest trial of her brother's life, had been his protector from those who would have ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... on the surface had now increased considerably. On July 4th the thickness was 2.57 metres. On July 10th I was amazed to find that the ice had increased to 2.76 metres, notwithstanding that it would now diminish several centimetres daily from surface melting. I bored in many places, but found it everywhere the same—a thin, somewhat loose ice mass lay under the old floe. I first thought it was a thin ice-floe that had got pushed under, but ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... can possibly doubt that a provision of this character would largely diminish the number of ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... persecutions of whole classes of the most industrious of his subjects, had exhausted his treasury, and overwhelmed the nation with debt. The old monarch clung to his selfish magnificence, and could not be induced to diminish his enormous expenditure; and his minister of finance was driven to his wits' end to devise all kinds of disastrous expedients to keep up the royal state, and to extricate the nation from ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... all, I think it will be conceded that Michael Faraday is the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen; and I will add the opinion that the progress of future research will tend not to diminish or decrease, but to enhance and glorify, the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... heavy blow did not damp the spirits nor diminish the energies of the defence, though it must have warned Baden-Powell that he could not afford to drain his small force by any more expensive attempts at the offensive, and that from then onwards he must content himself by holding grimly ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... opposition in carrying out his plans, and had he been less popular than he was with the people his efforts might have cost him his throne and his life: but the Rebu were devoted to him, and as the priests came gradually to see that the change would not diminish their power, their opposition died away, especially as many of the younger men were soon convinced by the arguments of the king and his minister, and preached the new religion with enthusiasm among the people. But it was ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... of loose or broken backs, the study should be to save the leather cover and the boards or sides of the book intact, so as to diminish by more than one-half the cost of repair. As the volume cannot be restored to a solid and safe condition without being re-sewed, it may be carefully separated from the cover by cutting the cords or bands at their junction with the boards, then slowly stripping the book out of its cover, little by ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... has already deprived thousands of southern farmers of cheap labor. And the movement bids fair to continue. That it will have both good and bad effects is obvious. It will distribute the negro population more evenly throughout the States and thus tend to diminish race friction. But unless there is a change of spirit on the part of northern unions, it will increase the danger of labor troubles in ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... position changed the whole basis and tactics of the Foreign Minister's proceedings. He had to obtain the supplies of grain asked for from Germany and thus to diminish political pressure on that country; but at the same time he had to persuade the Soviet delegates to continue negotiations, and finally to arrive at a settlement of peace under the most acceptable conditions possible ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... the sea-waves that devastated the neighbouring shores, being variously estimated at from 50 to 135 feet, is sufficiently accounted for by the intervention of islands and headlands, etcetera, which, of course, tended to diminish the force, height, and volume of ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... his head he wore a turban. It was often rumoured that when he had gained sufficient money he would not continue to forbid the working of the Serbian salt-mines, lest the profits of his own mines in Roumania should diminish; and it is not creditable that he should have made his subjects pay their contributions to the Turkish Tribute in the currency of Austria, while he would forward it in Turkish currency—of course ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... it be possible for the farmers all over the country to form so perfect and well-disciplined an organization that every member shall diminish his remittances to market of grain, wool, meat, hay, or what not, enough to raise prices; or that he shall refrain from selling all these articles below a certain defined price? It must be plain to every intelligent person that it would be a practical impossibility to ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... been taken out for methods of regulating this supply: the general principle being to make the engine supply the fire with small quantities of fuel at regular intervals by means of a hopper, and to make it diminish this supply when the engine works too quickly. One of the incidental advantages of this plan is, that by throwing on a very small quantity of coal at a time, the smoke is almost entirely consumed. The dampers of ashpits and chimneys are also, in some cases, connected with machines ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... as your creature, and never once doubted of making what terms you pleased with him. This is so true that the same language is still held to the catechumens in Jacobitism. Were the contrary to be avowed even now, the party in England would soon diminish. I engaged on this principle when your orders sent me to Commercy, and I never acted on any other. This ought to have been part of my merit towards the Tories; and it would have been so if they had continued in the same dispositions. ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... training of children, and assistance rendered to adults in critical moments of their lives, may diminish crime, but cannot suppress it entirely. Such methods should be supplemented by institutions which undertake to cure criminals, while protecting society from their attacks, and by others for the segregation ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... bright steel legs called pistons; these are propelled by steam, and in proportion as more steam is applied to the upper extremities (the hip-joints, I suppose) of these pistons, the faster they move the wheels; and when it is desirable to diminish the speed, the steam, which unless suffered to escape would burst the boiler, evaporates through a safety valve into the air. The reins, bit, and bridle of this wonderful beast, is a small steel handle, which applies or withdraws the steam from its legs or pistons, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... was clear. Unless the story could be contradicted, and it never was, Pope was himself the thief. The sheets common to the two volumes had been traced to his possession. Nor was there a word in the P. T. narrative to diminish the force of these presumptions. Indeed it was curiously inconsistent, for it vaguely accused Curll of stealing the letters himself, whilst in the same breath it told how he had bought them from P. T. In fact, P. T. was beginning to ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... that it expresses man's allegiance to his destiny. In every age the great poet triumphs in all that he knows of necessity; thus he is the world made vocal. Other generations of men may know more, but their increased knowledge will not diminish from the magnificence of the music which he has made for the spheres. The known truth alters from age to age; but the thrill of the recognition of the truth stands fast for all our human eternity. Year by year the universe grows vaster, and man, by virtue of the growing ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... Cumming and a thousand mightier doctors could not talk it out of me, I think. I don't, for the rest, like Dr. Cumming; his books seem to me very narrow. Isn't the tendency with us all to magnify the great events of our own time, just as we diminish the small events? For me, I am heretical in certain things. I expect no renewal of the Jewish kingdom, for instance. And I doubt much whether Christ's 'second coming' will be personal. The end of the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... of goods, nearly similar, but of less value. Amongst a democratic population, all the intellectual faculties of the workman are directed to these two objects: he strives to invent methods which may enable him not only to work better, but quicker and cheaper; or, if he cannot succeed in that, to diminish the intrinsic qualities of the thing he makes, without rendering it wholly unfit for the use for which it is intended. When none but the wealthy had watches, they were almost all very good ones: few are now made which are worth much, but everybody has one in his pocket. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... must not reach a point where the business activity of the country becomes crippled, and its economic equilibrium is thrown out of gear, because that would harm every element of the commonwealth and diminish the ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... stronger life, as the earth after rain, or the shock still echoes like distant thunder through a cloudless sky. It is impossible to recover absolutely the former life; love will either increase or diminish. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... and Lucknow relieved. The Sepoys thought that they had the game entirely in their hands, and that they would sweep us right out of India almost without resistance. They have failed, and when they see that every day their chances of success diminish, their ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... gave a sigh of relief, and Hiram Borringer, who had been rather silent, seemed to shake himself into activity at the mention of Gloria. Mr. Selwyn said nothing, but watched his wife with the wondering admiration which some twenty years of married life had done nothing to diminish. ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... your own actions and dangers. However pleasant it may be to you to enlarge upon the risks you have run, others may not find such pleasure in listening to your adventures. Avoid provoking laughter also: it is a habit from which one easily slides into the ways of the foolish, and apt to diminish the respect which your neighbors feel for you. To border on coarse talk is also dangerous. On such occasions, if a convenient opportunity offer, rebuke the speaker. If not, at least by relapsing into silence, colouring, and looking ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... of locusts (?) did not diminish for three hours, when it tailed off. Their bumping into one's ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... measure before the Senate but rejected one to give the franchise to woman relatives of the men who were killed in the war. The Radical members fear that to give women a vote would strengthen the power of the Catholic church; the Conservatives fear that the political emancipation of women would diminish the influence of the clergy. Thus the situation remains in ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... nothing of the physiology of ferns and mosses, but as a matter of fact I think they will be found to increase and diminish together all over the world. Both like moist, equable climates and shade, and are therefore both so abundant in oceanic islands, and in the high regions ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... rained pellets or balls of fire, these phosphorescent trains gleaming spectrally, while a kind of half audible crackling accompanied the fall. Shooting in irregular shoals or volleys, they would increase and diminish, and recurrent explosions announced the arrival at the ground of some ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... dimensions greatly exceeding those of most builders, varying, as they do, from six feet to twenty feet in length, and being often as much as seven or eight feet in breadth and height. As the building rises, the stones diminish in size, and the upper courses are often in no way remarkable. Stones of various sizes are used, and often the courses are not regular, but one runs into another. A tower in the wall of Eryx is a good specimen of ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... at length replied, "I cannot perceive any particular advantage that can accrue from such a measure. It will neither add nor diminish the power you possess to command obedience to your will, if you are determined to command it, either from your daughter, or ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... he had become something of a national figure. When he got eighty-one votes for the presidential nomination in our party's national convention his brain was dizzied. Now he was in a tremor lest my clients should demand of him things that would diminish or destroy this sapling popularity which, in his dreams, he already saw grown into a mighty ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... complexion I should have great pleasure in beholding. It must add to her charms, and cannot diminish the character, sense, and shrewdness which distinguish her physiognomy, and which she possesses in a great degree, with a happy engrafting of a high-bred foreign air upon an English stock ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... of Glafira did not diminish; all receipts and expenditures were settled, as before, by her. A Valet, who had been brought from abroad, a native of Alsace, tried to compete with her, and lost his place, in spite of the protection which his master generally afforded him. In all ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... priceless. She performed each function as if it were the last of her life. While rebuffs were not lacking, she parried them easily, and even the refusal of the parish priest to accept her aid in his bazaar did not diminish the delight of her happy situation. She knew the meaning of his refusal: she, an upstart, having got within the gates of Castle Moyna by some servility, when her proper place was a shebeen in Cruarig, offered him charity from a low ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... fairly definite. If a species is especially protected until it becomes unusually abundant, the removal of the protection commonly brings it down promptly to its original numbers. On the other hand, an accident of severe character or a special persecution may much diminish the number of the species, and still it will, within a comparatively few years, ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... last to the end, if I should wait for seven or eight years more, now that I can no longer write. Happily, there is nothing to fear. But what I have suffered since I have been incapable of writing, and have felt my hoard of gold shrink and diminish in my hand like the Magic Skin of Balzac, is frightful. Now you understand me, do you not? and you will no longer bid me take care of myself. No; if you still pray to God, ask him to send ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... painted wooden floors rugs are placed before the beds, before the sofa, and under the table which always stands before it. One luxury is seldom wanting,—a good writing-desk, with pens and ink ready for use. It is no trouble to a German hostess to increase or diminish the number of beds in a room, the narrow bedsteads being carried with ease through the double doors, from room to room, as ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... which the Tenor had begun by exciting in the breasts of the quiet inhabitants of Morningquest did not diminish all at once, as might have been expected. He was only a lay clerk, to be sure, but then he was so utterly unlike any other lay clerk. He was always so carefully dressed, for one thing, and maintained so successfully that suggestion ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... offended, and walked no more with Him:" when his hearers and admirers would grow fewer and more few, some through bigotry, some through envy, some through fickleness, some through cowardice, till He was left alone with a little knot of earnest disciples; who might diminish, alas, but too rapidly, when they found at He, as in Judea of old, did not intend to become the head of a new sect, and to gratify their ambition and vanity by making them His delegates. And so the world, the religious world as well as the rest, might let Him go His way, and vanish from ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Nature, we must now be married by Law." But Fleur was Forsyte enough to feel such a proceeding dubious, and to dread her father's face when he heard of it. Besides, she did not believe that Jon would do it; he had an opinion of her such as she could not bear to diminish. No! Mary Lambe was preferable, and it was just the time of year to go to Scotland. More at ease now she packed, avoided her aunt, and took a bus to Chiswick. She was too early, and went on to Kew Gardens. She found ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... make purchases from the producers they would both benefit themselves and drive the slave-dealer from the market. It might be useful to establish a sanatorium, to which missionaries might come from less healthy districts to recruit. This would diminish the reluctance of missionaries to settle in the interior. For himself, though he had reared three stations with much bodily labor and fatigue, he would cheerfully undergo much more if a new station would answer such objects. In referring to the countries drained by the Zambesi, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... and threw forward their ears. For some moments we sat in our saddles surveying the hideous and extravagant spectacle without a word, and our tongues were loosened only when it began rapidly to diminish and recede, and at last was resolved into a train of mules and wagons, barely visible on the horizon. They were miles away and outlined against ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... "that enchanting possibility seems to be more remotely positioned than ever. Again has the clay-souled Wang Ho, on the pretext that he can no longer make his in and out taels meet, sought to diminish the monthly inadequacy of cash with which he rewards this person's ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... wholesome ordinances, and to consult upon the necessary affairs of the whole jurisdiction if necessity so required; and some image hereof is yet to be seen in the north parts. But as the number of churches increased, so the repair of the faithful unto the cathedrals did diminish; whereby they now become, especially in their nether parts, rather markets and shops for merchandise than solemn places of prayer, whereunto they were first erected. Moreover, in the said cathedral churches upon Sundays and festival days the canons do make certain ordinary ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... 'Dicky Random,' and, I suppose, in 'Captain Murderer' too, while in 'Prince Life,' to which we soon come, which is frankly an allegory, the habit is carried beyond Bunyan, who made his attributes very like men and called them Mr. or Lord to increase the illusion or diminish the cheat. The drawback to this kind of nomenclature is that it weakens the realism of the story. It also perplexes one a little when one thinks of later generations. Jemima's two brothers, for example, would marry one day, and their children would necessarily be called Placid ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... concessions which Austria always said (and she was perfectly right) would lead to a general attack upon her power, but when the attack began, the British Government strained every nerve to limit its extension and diminish its force. That Lord Palmerston in his own mind disliked Austria, and would have been glad to see North Italy free, does not alter the fact that he played the Austrian game, and played it with success. He strongly advised ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... tranquil men with monogamous instincts and not fond of change. Lastly, we must not forget that super-abundant feeding and idleness exalt the sexual appetite and tend to polygamy, while hard work, especially physical, and frugal diet diminish it. ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... hope. The vigor and energy of the nation revived. Paris, weary of its long gloom, gave itself up to fetes and pleasures of which it had been so long deprived. The first acts of the Consulate did not diminish any hopes, and Liberty felt no alarm. The First Consul issued a proclamation to the inhabitants of the West. The eloquent allocutions addressed to the masses which Bonaparte had, as it were, invented, produced ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... would be very satisfactory to him, and a saving of trouble to ourselves, if we settled his claim of twelve doti of good cloths at once. We did not think it the best way of proceeding, knowing as we did the character of the native African; so we at once proceeded to diminish this demand; but, after six hours' hot argument, the Mutware only reduced it by two. This claim was then settled, upon the understanding that we should be allowed to travel through Uhha as far as the Rusugi River without being ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... one more calculated to obstruct the acquisition of sound knowledge and to give full play to the "crammer" and the "grinder" could hardly have been devised by human ingenuity. Of late years great reforms have taken place. Examinations have been divided so as to diminish the number of subjects among which the attention has to be distributed. Practical examination has been largely introduced; but there still remains, even under the present system, too much of the old evil inseparable from the contemporaneous ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... strictest sense of the word partisan; the question is whether the author has designedly falsified the facts or mutilated the texts. To this question we may boldly answer, No. He commits errors,[14] especially in his earlier pages, but they are not such as to diminish our confidence. ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... not these little romances little lies? Sophie's imagination was limited. As the years went on Christine finally got possession of the medallion, and held it against all opposition. Somehow, with it on this morning, she felt diminish the social distance ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... maintain my position, I have only about seventeen thousand men in this neighborhood. It is impossible for me to obtain additions to my strength from Columbus; the generals in command in that quarter consider that it would imperil that point to diminish their force, and open Tennessee to the enemy. General Zollicoffer can not join me, as he guards the Cumberland, and prevents the invasion and possible revolt of ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... other property of the United States provided for the first, and the clause last quoted provided for the other. They have no connection with the general powers and rights of sovereignty delegated to the new Government, and can neither enlarge nor diminish them. They were inserted to meet a present emergency, and not to regulate its ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... thought of all the blood spilled and yet to be spilled—this is the reason that we side with no party. The past misdeeds of the legitimate Government of Versailles damp our enthusiasm for it, while some few laudable ideas put forth by the illegitimate government of the Hotel de Ville diminish our horror of its crimes, and our ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... peculiar to its own propensities upon the administration of the finances of the State. If the first of the three exclusively possesses the legislative power, it is probable that it will not be sparing of the public funds, because the taxes which are levied on a large fortune only tend to diminish the sum of superfluous enjoyment, and are, in point of fact, but little felt. If the second class has the power of making the laws, it will certainly not be lavish of taxes, because nothing is so onerous as a large impost which is levied ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the heat of the weather should render it too soft to receive the impression of the mould, it may be put into small vessels, and allowed to swim in a trough of cold water, provided the butter do not come in contact with the water, which would diminish some of its best qualities. A little common salt must be worked up in the butter at the time of making it, and care must be taken not to handle it too much. Meat hung in a dairy will taint the air, and spoil the milk.—See ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... cords and even closer, reducing the cup space in the larynx to its dimensions before mutation. To secure a good quality of tone in falsetto the singer must have complete control of the cup space—be able to diminish it not only by allowing the false cords to drop down almost upon the vocal cords, but also by contracting it laterally. If he can do this, he can produce some genuinely artistic effects in falsetto. ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... confided to her when young, and an imaginative temperament had done the rest. The secresy with which she guarded these ideas served to strengthen them. He could only hope that the life she was now leading would diminish their influence, or perhaps totally destroy her singular belief. Maurice thought it would be easy to wait for time to effect this change, but he had not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... 'rustling in silks' is long since over, but the courtier's place in the pageant of the 'Faery Queene' remains, and grows clearer with the lapse of ages. That time, against which he built so perseveringly, and fortified himself on so many sides, will not be able to diminish there 'one dowle that's in his plume.' [He was also a patron of Plays and Players in this stage of his career, and entertained private parties at his house with very recherche performances of that ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Several People mix that of Caraqua with that of the Islands, half in half, and pretend by this Mixture to make the Chocolate better. I believe in the bottom, the difference of Chocolates is not considerable, since they are only obliged to encrease or diminish the Proportion of Sugar, according as the Bitterness of the Kernels require it. For it must be considered, as we have already said, that there is but one kind of Cocao-Tree, which grows as naturally in the Woods of Martinico, as in those of the Coast of Caraqua, ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... their deities, and throws additional light on those ideas. They did not as yet know too much about the divine beings and their powers and wishes; familiarity had not yet bred contempt; religio, as we saw, was still strong among them—the feeling of awe that is likely to diminish or disappear when you have your god before you in the form of an idol. It is a principle of human nature that where knowledge is imperfect, care must be taken to be on the safe side; this is true of all practical undertakings, and as the religion ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... distresses failed to diminish his joy in the very fact of living, even less did they affect his powers of work. His father had declared that 'procrastination was his besetting sin,' and Mozart was certainly given to putting off the evil day as far as possible; but no one knew better than Leopold Mozart ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... dagobas repaired, of tanks constructed and priests endowed with lands reclaimed and fertilised by the "forced labour" of the subjugated races. Civil dissensions, religious schisms, royal intrigues and assassinations contributed equally with foreign invasions to diminish the influence of the monarchy and exhaust the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... commanding it like a citadel, they surround it with a wall: and the Saguntines raise an inner wall before the part of the city which was not yet taken. On both sides they exert the utmost vigour in fortifying and fighting: but the Saguntines, by erecting these inner defences, diminish daily the size of their city. At the same time, the want of all supplies increased through the length of the siege, and the expectation of foreign aid diminished, since the Romans, their only hope, were at such a distance, and all the country round was in the power of the ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... in company with others, these fears would not have disturbed me; for there reciprocal assistance can be rendered, and the consciousness of this fact seems materially to diminish the danger. ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... expand and intensify political and military cooperation throughout Europe, increase stability, diminish threats to peace, and build relationships by promoting the spirit of practical cooperation and commitment to democratic principles that underpin NATO; program under ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... multiplied into thousands. He bought fine clothes, purchased fine horses, gave grand entertainments, made handsome presents, lived as if he had been as rich as Sir James Lowther, or his Grace of Bedford, and yet the five thousand pounds never seemed to diminish. No wonder that he gave where giving was so easy; no wonder that he was generous with Fortunatus's purse in his pocket. I say no wonder that he gave, for such was his nature. Other Fortunati tie up the endless purse, drink ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... advised of the advance of the foraging party, mounted their horses, rifle in hand, from every direction; and, occupying well protected positions along the main road, also faithfully endeavored to diminish the number of his Majesty's forces, and hastened the retreat of the British into Charlotte, the survivors swearing after their arrival that "every bush along the road ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... see my old friends, whom distance cannot diminish, figuring up in the air (so they appear to our optics), yet on terra firma still, for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, has made to spring up beneath their sandals. I love the men with women's faces ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... John Newton is precisely in point. In very early life this man formed a strong attachment to a lady, under circumstances which did not permit him to make it known which was probably well for both parties. It did not diminish her happiness, so long as she remained in ignorance on the subject; and in scenes of sorrow, suffering, and temptation, the hope of one day obtaining her soothed him, and kept him from performing many dishonorable actions. 'The bare possibility,' he says, 'of seeing ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... stated that the allod, though not inalienable, was commonly transferable with the greatest difficulty; and moreover, it descended exclusively to the agnatic kindred. Hence an extraordinary variety of distinctions came to be recognised, all intended to diminish the inconveniences inseparable from allodial property. The wehrgeld, for example, or composition for the homicide of a relative, which occupies so large a space in German jurisprudence, formed no part of the family domain, and descended according to rules of succession altogether ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... universal measure of the public impositions by the degrees of freedom and servitude; and ventures to assert, that, according to an invariable law of nature, it must always increase with the former, and diminish in a just proportion to the latter. But this reflection, which would tend to alleviate the miseries of despotism, is contradicted at least by the history of the Roman empire; which accuses the same princes of despoiling the senate of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... bushels of wheat for seed, gave up 300 lbs. weight of flour, which was his own private property, for the public use; besides which, the expedients of fishing and shooting wild animals were tried, but with no great success. Crime appeared rather to increase than to diminish with the increase of temptation and opportunities; and at this awful period of trial for the whole population, it was judged necessary to execute one criminal. A female convict was at this time robbed of her week's ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... did not at first seem likely to diminish the power of his family. Harold, his eldest surviving son, was highly endowed with mental powers and personal beauty and prowess, and was much preferred by Edward the Confessor to the old Earl himself. He obtained all his father's lands, and, shortly after, distinguished himself ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... rest of the nation: they are generally about thirty or thirty-five years old; and such is the deference paid to courage, that their seats in council are superior to those of the chiefs, and their persons more respected. But, as may be supposed, such indiscreet bravery will soon diminish the numbers of those who practise it; so that the band is now reduced to four warriors, who were among our visitors. These were the remains of twenty-two, who composed the society not long ago; but, in ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... offenses against ideal culture. Rough jocoseness, diffusiveness, local prejudice, a life spent on details, a lack of philosophy.—these are faults, but they are British faults, Anglo-Saxon faults. They scarcely limit affection or greatly diminish respect. De Quincey was a sophist, a rhetorician, a brilliant talker. There are men of that sort in every club, in every community. We forgive their eccentricity, their lack of fine humor, the most rigid logic, or the highest learning. We do not attempt to reply to them. It is enough ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... English neighbour. The public-houses, bars, eating-houses, places of amusement and so forth, will come to cater more and more for money-yielding German patronage. The stream of British emigration will swell rather than diminish, and the stream of Teuton immigration will be equally persistent and progressive. Yes, the military-service ordinance was a cunning stroke on the part of that old fox, von Kwarl. As a civilian statesman he is far and away cleverer than Bismarck was; he smothers ...
— When William Came • Saki
... ceremonies the tendency is to mass and organize them—they are made to occur at regular times and under fixed conditions, as in the Christian Lent, the Moslem Ramadan, and the Creek Busk. Such arrangements give orderliness to outward religious life, but are likely to diminish or destroy spontaneity in observances. Ceremonies of this sort have great vitality—they are handed on from age to age, the later religion adopting and modifying and reinterpreting the forms of the earlier. In such cases the lower conceptions survive in the minds ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... its weight forced to settle down, and can only accomplish this result by wrinkling. An analogous action may be seen where an apple or a potato becomes dried; in this case the hard outer rind is forced to wrinkle, because, losing no water, it does not diminish in its extent, and can only accommodate itself to the interior by a wrinkling process. In one case it is water which escapes, in the other heat; but in both contraction of the part which suffers the loss leads to the folding of the outside ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... come from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, the English headquarters in this country, to Washington, complain about the pro-German feeling there. I feel sure in my own mind that the Government hopes, by reviving the Mexican question, to diminish the export of arms and munitions to Europe. Public opinion, apart from the anti-German clique, would probably welcome such a move, as it is widely felt that the traffic in arms and munitions is hardly consistent with the continual appeals to humanity sent out all over the world from Washington. ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... prosperity. Mobs are not so altogether lovely that one should desire their indefinite increase. A village is honorable, not according to the number, but the character of its residents. The drunkards and the paupers and the thieves and the idiots rather diminish than increase its respectability. It seems to me that the world would be greatly benefited by thinning out. Most of the places that I have seen would be much improved by being decimated, not to say quinqueted or bisected. If people ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... risks, and took what President Smith in his recent testimony, when telling of his own quintette of helpmeets, called "the chances of the law." To lower these risks, and diminish them to a point where in truth they would be no risks, the Mormon Church, under the lead of its bigamous President several years rearward, became a political machine. It looked over the future, considered ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... strength rather diminished than improved. I wish the month of March was well over. You are right in conjecturing that I am somewhat depressed; at times I certainly am. It was almost easier to bear up when the trial was at its crisis than now. The feeling of Emily's loss does not diminish as time wears on; it often makes itself most acutely recognised. It brings too an inexpressible sorrow with it; and then the future is dark. Yet I am well aware, it will not do either to complain, or sink, and I strive to do neither. Strength, I hope and trust, will yet be given in proportion ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... when they set out again; and the same herd, perhaps, yields a sufficient quantity to load all the carts, each carrying about one thousand pounds,—an enormous quantity in the aggregate; yet the herd is sometimes so numerous that all this slaughter does not seem to diminish it. ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... epoch, if any, meriting Beaconsfield's epithet. The work had the fortune which Gibbon and Montesquieu craved for their own—it was read in the boudoir as much as in the study. Nor did its power diminish. It contained the best writing, the deepest thought, the most vivid portraiture, devoted to men and things English, over a continuous period, until the works ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... the door of the adjoining room, and without seeking to diminish the importance of her offense, mildly offered to prepare a fresh bowl of ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... and with the other plundered them. Nothing was superior to their insolence, nothing on a level with their greed. They were never glutted, and never relaxed their extortions. But in proportion as their needs increased on the one hand, so did their resources diminish on the other. Their oppressed subjects soon found that they must escape at any cost from oppressors whom they could neither appease nor satisfy. Each population took the steps best suited to its position and character; some chose inertia, others violence. The inhabitants of the plains, powerless ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Hereditary Princess of Potztausend-Donnerwetter (that serenely-beautiful woman) use her knife in lieu of a fork or spoon; I have seen her almost swallow it, by Jove! like Ramo Samee, the Indian juggler. And did I blench? Did my estimation for the Princess diminish? No, lovely Amalia! One of the truest passions that ever was inspired by woman was raised in this bosom by that lady. Beautiful one! long, long may the knife carry food to those lips! the reddest and ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... see the evil of this," said the Douglas: "the ruffians will destroy each other, and the deer of the Highlands will increase as the men diminish. We shall gain as hunters the exercise we lose ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... Books Mysterii or of Occultation, is thus summed up: The intention of God The Blessed was to form Impersonations, in order to diminish the Light. Wherefore HE constituted, in Macroprosopos, Adam Kadmon, or Arik Anpin; three Heads. The first is called, "The Head whereof is no cognition"; the second, "The Head of that which is non-existent"; and the third, "The Very ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the abundance did not diminish. On the day of departure, canoe after canoe put off to us. Tehei brought cucumbers and a young papaia tree burdened with splendid fruit. Also, for me he brought a tiny, double canoe with fishing apparatus complete. Further, he brought fruits and vegetables with the same lavishness as at ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... likely to find a satisfying range in any mode of existence that would be shared by Sibyl. But he clutched at any chance of extensive travel. It might be necessary—it certainly would be—to make further incision into his capital, and so diminish the annual return upon which he could count for the future; but when his income had already become ludicrously inadequate, what did that matter? The years of independence were past; somehow or other, he must make money. Everybody did ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... compelled to return by the way we had entered, to extricate ourselves from the dangers of so intricate a navigation. Islands began to appear, moreover, and we had indications that the main passage itself, was beginning to diminish in width. Under the circumstances, therefore, it was resolved to get everything ready, and to let go two anchors, as soon as we could find a suitable spot. Between the hours of two and four, the ship passed seventeen islets, some of them quite near; ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... inherent in the peculiar attributes of combined expeditions, in the facility with which their line of operation can be concealed or changed, and there seems no reason why in the future it should be less than in the past. Good railway connections in the theatre of the descent will of course diminish the effect of feints, but, on the other hand, the means of making them have increased. In mine-sweeping vessels, for instance, there is a new instrument which in the Russo-Japanese War proved capable of creating a very strong impression ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... had gone below, and was kept out of his sight till she was ready to leave the ship. He came to assist her down the side. She gave him a look full of sorrow, but which he interpreted to mean, "Do not think that what I have heard can diminish my affection for you; it were worth little if it did." But she had scarcely time to falter out a few words before her father stepped up and effectually stopped ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... indeed bruised from his neck to his heels. Even in his passion the pirate had avoided striking him on the head, as a disfiguring mark on the face would diminish his value. Sitting there, he congratulated himself that he had been beaten with a stick and not with a whip; a stick is a weapon, and he did not feel the same sense of dishonour that he would have experienced had he been beaten with a whip. That such ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... "I will trust thee;" and she descended from the verge of the battlement, but remained standing close by one of the embrasures. "Here," she said, "I take my stand. If thou shalt attempt to diminish by one step the distance now between us, thou shalt see that the Jewish maiden will rather trust her soul with God than her honour to ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... bore all the pain which it caused him with exemplary patience; and, though he could not always resist the tendency to discouragement and depression with which the perpetual presence of such a torment wears upon the soul, he did not allow it to diminish his exertions, or suspend, at any time, the ceaseless activity with which he labored for the welfare of ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... this aera, formed the first wave of the torrent which assaulted, and finally overwhelmed, the barriers of the Roman power in Britain. The subsequent events, in which they were engaged, tended little to diminish their military hardihood, or to reconcile them to a more civilized state of society. We have no occasion to trace the state of the borders during the long and obscure period of Scottish history, which ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... elements which belong to the item now to be examined. States are made up of families. Wealth is a blessing in those States which have it so distributed, as to give the greatest number of homes to the families which compose them. Wealth, so distributed in States, as to diminish the number of homes, is a curse to the families which compose them. Home is the nursery and shield of virtue. No right-minded man or woman, who had the means, could ever consent to have a family without a home; and no State should make wealth her boast, whose ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the animals which they eat, is a belief that, if the bones are preserved, they will in course of time be reclothed with flesh, and thus the animal will come to life again. It is, therefore, clearly for the interest of the hunter to leave the bones intact since to destroy them would be to diminish the future supply of game. Many of the Minnetaree Indians "believe that the bones of those bisons which they have slain and divested of flesh rise again clothed with renewed flesh, and quickened with life, and become fat, and fit for slaughter ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... sped, at th' extreme bound, a part Excell'd in lustre all the front oppos'd. And as the glow burns ruddiest o'er the wave, That waits the sloping beam, which Phaeton Ill knew to guide, and on each part the light Diminish'd fades, intensest in the midst; So burn'd the peaceful oriflame, and slack'd On every side the living flame decay'd. And in that midst their sportive pennons wav'd Thousands of angels; in resplendence each Distinct, and quaint adornment. At their glee And carol, smil'd the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... passed the evening, in what windy confusion of mind, in what squalls of anger and lulls of sick collapse, in what pacing of streets and plunging into public-houses, it would profit little to relate. His misery, if it were not progressive, yet tended in no way to diminish; for in proportion as grief and indignation abated, fear began to take their place. At first, his father's menacing words lay by in some safe drawer of memory, biding their hour. At first, John was all thwarted ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... weight rowed strong and straight, And led from start to finish; Their slow and steady thirty-eight No spurts could e'er diminish: Till Darbyshire, not given to lose, Sees Cambridge rowing past him; And Goldie steps into his shoes; Long may ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... sufficient washboards, soap, and flatirons to have kept the charming costumes so immaculate is a mystery which will probably never be solved—especially since the number of relics appears to increase instead of diminish with the ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... paid another visit to the Uffizi gallery this morning, and found that the Venus is one of the things the charm of which does not diminish on better acquaintance. The world has not grown weary of her in all these ages; and mortal man may look on her with new delight from infancy to old age, and keep the memory of her, I should imagine, as one of the treasures of spiritual existence hereafter. Surely, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... been collected, amounting to three thousand three hundred and thirty-six, into Sicily to Marcus Valerius, the proconsul, and to receive from him two legions and thirty quinqueremes. The withdrawing of these legions from the island did not at all diminish the force employed for the protection of that province, either in effect or appearance; for though, in addition to two veteran legions which were most effectively reinforced, he had a great number of Numidian deserters, both horse and foot, he raised also a body of Sicilian ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... Where flames consume, and yet we freeze with cold. Sorrow adds sulphur unto fury's heat, And chops them ice whose chattering teeth do beat; But sulphur, snow, flame, frost, nor hideous crying Can cause them die that ever are in dying, Nor make the pain diminish or increase: Sorrow is slack, and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... Tactics have adopted two new expedients to accelerate the advance of battalions, and diminish the loss to which columns of attack are liable—Division Columns and Advancing by ...
— A Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms: Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry • Francis J. Lippitt
... then that improvements in production and emigration of capital to the more fertile soils and unworked mines of the uninhabited or thinly peopled parts of the globe, do not, as it appears to a superficial view, diminish the gross produce and the demand for labour at home, but, on the contrary, are what we have chiefly to depend on for the increasing both, and are even the necessary conditions of any great or prolonged ...
— A Letter from Major Robert Carmichael-Smyth to His Friend, the Author of 'The Clockmaker' • Robert Carmichael-Smyth
... increased by indulgences, beyond the power of a manager to gratify: I proved by mathematical demonstration, that small theatres wanted nothing but good dialogue to support them: I entreated you to send your gorgeous trumpery to rag-fair, and to diminish your overgrown Drury, which no man could now think of entering unaccompanied by a telescope and an ear-trumpet. All the persuasions of a Tully, all the energy of a Waithman, were enlisted into my harangue; which finished ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... followers, since he has a reputation to keep up in the eye of the world. You must somewhat reform your dress, upon a more grave and composed fashion; wear your cloak on both shoulders, and your falling band unrumpled and well starched. You must enlarge the brim of your beaver, and diminish the superfluity of your trunk-hose; go to church, or, which will be better, to meeting, at least once a month; protest only upon your faith and conscience; lay aside your swashing look, and never touch the hilt ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... (besides the diversity between a construction and a translation) you know there be many mystical secrets in this writer, which uttered in English would show little pleasure and in my opinion are better to be untouched than to diminish the grace of the rest with tediousness and darkness. I have therefore followed the counsel of Horace, touching the duty of a good interpreter, Qui quae desperat nitescere posse, relinquit, by which occasion somewhat I have in ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... fire behind the bars of the grate. He closed them in pain and, under his closed eyes, he saw negroes leaping before him in an obscene and bloody riot. While he sought to remember from what book of travel, read in boyhood, these blacks emerged, he saw them diminish, resolve themselves into imperceptible specks, and disappear into a red Africa, which little by little came to represent the wound seen by the light of a match on the night of ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... practice, the physician is bound to consider the next female he attends in labor, unless some weeks at least have elapsed, as in danger of being infected by him, and it is his duty to take every precaution to diminish her risk ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that known and incontrovertible Maxim in Law, That no Man can be called a Rebel, who is not first proved to be a subject. I omit the injuries and prejudice they do to the King himself, when they spoil and ravage his Kingdoms, and as much as in them lies, diminish and impair all his Right and Title to the Indians, nay in plain English invalidate and make it null and void. And these are the worthy Services which the Spaniards do for our Kings in those Countries, by the injust and ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... in the wings—as with the Pouter, where the wings have been greatly lengthened but not so much as the body.[28] Slender bodies, too, and the lessened divergence of the furculum,[29] would slightly diminish the spread of the wings, and so would affect the measurements taken. As the wing-bones, moreover, are to some extent correlated with the beak and the feet, the artificial selection of shortened beaks might ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... upon it, that, if you have any value for my alliance or my friendship, you will decline any thoughts of engaging farther with a girl who is, as you are a relation of mine, so much beneath you. I know there may be at first some difficulty in your compliance, but that will daily diminish; and you will in the end sincerely thank me for my advice. I own, indeed, the girl is handsome; but beauty alone is a poor ingredient, and will make but an uncomfortable marriage."—"Sir," said Joseph, "I assure you her beauty ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... knowing something of the mind of certainly a great man, and who has had more effect on his age than any one else. There is something almost fearful in the energy of his intellect. I wish indeed you were in London to see all these pictures: I am sure their greatness would not diminish your pleasure in your own small collection. Why should it? There is as genuine a feeling of Nature in one of Nursey's sketches as in the Rubenses and Claudes here: and if that is evident, and serves to cherish and rekindle one's ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... within a few years after 1900 the rate of increase had fallen in the Middle West to about one half, and in the East to less than one third, of what it formerly had been.[89] It might be thought that, the country being now well served with secondary schools, the rate of growth must diminish. This may be true of a part of the rural districts, but an examination of the situation or school reports of our large cities will show how far it is from being ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... tell you how much I deprecate any steps which may tend to diminish the authority of the native office; how entirely I dissent from any plans of further assimilation to the foreign English Church. Indeed, the consequences of such schemes at this moment would in my opinion ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... murder. Next, Lester Ward had been permitted to disappear at the very moment when he might have been induced to shed light on the crime. Since all crimes must be proved through witnesses, the loss of two of the most important ones was a staggering blow to Britz. It did not diminish his confidence in himself nor in his belief that he would eventually find the murderer. But to prove his case in court—his future efforts would have to be attended by more luck than had been vouchsafed him hitherto, if a successful ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... of the stomach, instead of being preserved and submitted to chemical analysis were, according to his own acknowledgment, thrown away. The royal tribunal adjudged him to be deprived of his appointment, and to be banished from the kingdom. This decision would not of course, diminish the suspicion already excited; and among other physicians, who were consulted on the case, M. Lodin, professor of Medicine at Lynkoping, presented two memoirs, in which he stated it as his opinion, that a slow ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... utterly lost in the boundless wilderness of this new world. All communication with their friends in France was cut off. There was no hope that any French vessel would ever search for them; or could find them, even if such search were undertaken. The Indians were hostile. Death would gradually diminish their numbers, and finally the remnant would either be exterminated or carried into captivity ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... support it, however imperfect its details might be, are parts which it has in common with the former bill. It destroys nomination; it admits the great body of the middle orders to a share in the government; and it contains provisions which will, as I conceive, greatly diminish ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of it, or even dare trust myself to recollect it. I have seen," continued he, "ah, that I could forget it! a woman, beauteous as the day, before whom the charms of Miss Frampton disappear, as, before the rising sun, each little star hides its diminish'd head. Her features, full of sensibility, her voice such as to thrill the soul and all she says, pervaded with wit and good sense." "And where," cried the baronet, in a lively ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... been enamoured of Diana; this indeed has been questioned. D'Urfe, however, was sent to the island of Malta to enter into that order of knighthood; and in his absence Diana was married to Anne. What an affliction for Honore on his return to see her married, and to his brother! His affection did not diminish, but he concealed it in respectful silence. He had some knowledge of his brother's unhappiness, and on this probably founded his hopes. After several years, during which the modest Diana had uttered no complaint, Anne declared himself; and shortly afterwards Honore, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... literary discrimination, whatever may be thought of him politically, was prime minister under Isabel II. He had become interested in the work of Gustavo, and, knowing the dire financial straits in which the young poet labored, he thought to diminish these anxieties and thus give him more time to devote to creative work by making him censor of novels. A new period of calm and comparative comfort began, and for the first time in his life Becquer had the leisure ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... which was fast at both ends. So he gave in, and followed his less noble leader. Cow after horse, and horse after cow, with a majority of cows, followed, to the number of twenty or so; after which the joints began to diminish in size. Two calves were at the tail of the last cow, a little Highland one, with a sheep between them. Then came a goat belonging to Charles Chapman the wool-carder, the only goat in the place, which as ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... to making a will is, that hostile Indians, in search of chance scalps, would be hovering about the column of troops, and so leave the by-path unmolested. But the servants of the party follow the route of the column: a measure, we are told, dictated by the sagacity of the Indian guide, in order to diminish the marks of their trail, if, haply, the Canadian savages should be prowling about so far in advance of their army! Certainly, all the sagacity of the fort would seem to have been concentrated in the person of the Indian. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... therefore, that so long as a country remains physically unchanged, the numbers of its animal population cannot materially increase. If one species does so, some others requiring the same kind of food must diminish in proportion. The numbers that die annually must be immense; and as the individual existence of each animal depends upon itself, those that die must be the weakest—the very young, the aged, and the ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... also advised him to the course, regarding it as the easiest method of keeping good the fortune of Sheldon, whose choice of literature as a profession tended rather to diminish than increase his coffers. And so he embarked his all with Hardin; and all thought him sure to succeed in the enterprise, with so far-seeing and judicious a ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... controversial, while the facts and the arguments would remain the same. His object is not to condemn, but to convince: not to hold up to obloquy those who are in error, but, as far as he may be allowed, to diminish an evil where it already exists, and ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... straightness of the lines in which the trees are planted on Boston Common, and the rapidly increasing thickness of their foliage, destroy in the summer season the effect of breadth and liberty, hide both the immediate and the distant landscape, stifle the breeze, and diminish the attractiveness of the spot? Fewer trees, scattered in clumps and paying little regard to paths, would vastly improve the effect. The colonnades of the malls furnish all the shade desirable in so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... great game had now begun, and each time the ball went through a goal it counted one tally. The score-keepers, who were chosen from the older sachems of the tribes, were invested with peculiar powers. If one team was making far less tallies than its opponent, they could diminish its rival's score (without the players' knowledge, however) in order that the contest might be protracted. Games of this vigorous kind have made the athletes of the Six Nations noted in both Canada and the United States down to the ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... it be, I mention this circumstance attending my introduction to college, because it formed the first cause which tended to diminish my faith in the institution to which I was attached. I soon grew to regard my university training as a sort of necessary evil, to be patiently submitted to. I read for no honours, and joined no particular ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... care of girls. Whatever modification may take place in our view of the relation of the sexes, Nature's great fact will remain, that the man is the stronger—a difference which civilization and culture seem to strengthen rather than diminish; and from his earliest years he ought to be taught that he, therefore, is the one that has to serve. It is the strong that have to bear the burden of the weaker, and not to prostitute that strength by using it to master the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... applications when our horses were sick. He found Mrs. Shimerda sitting by the horse with her lantern, groaning and wringing her hands. It took but a few moments to release the gases pent up in the poor beast, and the two women heard the rush of wind and saw the roan visibly diminish ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... way: "O Minaya Alvar Fanez! For thee what glorious day! Thou bringest here these ladies, whence we shall have great good, The fighting Cid his consort, and the daughters of his blood. We all shall do thee honor for his fortune groweth great. Though we wished him ill, we cannot diminish his estate; He will have alway our succor either in peace or war. The man who will not know the truth, he is ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... she began to grasp that, everywhere and always, even while you revelled in them, things were perpetually rushing to a close; and the fact of them being things you loved, or enjoyed, was powerless to diminish the speed at ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... so, though; for, as you well say, her pride is insufferable, and I, who have long known her, can assure you it does not diminish upon intimacy." ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... be well accounted for by the greater number of Republicans who had gone to the war, and for whose voting outside the State no provision had been made. No result could have been more distasteful to the Administration than the triumph of Mr. Seymour, and the experience of after years did not diminish the regret with which they had seen him elevated to a position of power at a time when the utmost harmony was needed between the National and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... which I write my narrative, but to consider that, though the diversity of incidents may sometimes break the thread of the history, yet I will tell you nothing but with all that sincerity which the regard I have for you demands. And to convince you further that I will neither add to nor diminish from the plain truth, I shall set my name in the ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... yesterday from his friends at Aylesbury tallies with Chaplin's, as to the possibility of Bernard's success, though it is not quite so sanguine as to numbers. If he succeeds at all, this last point may be no misfortune to him, as it will diminish the claims upon him. ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... convicted, and the chance of his reformation would be lessened by each subsequent experience of this kind. The great object of the indeterminate sentence, so far as the security of society is concerned, is to diminish the number of the criminal class, and this will be done when it is seen that the first felony a man commits is likely to be his last, and that for a young criminal contemplating this career there is ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... the motives which make us adopt a thousand errors without other foundation than the dangerous word of those who have educated us; even the being forbidden to reason upon what they tell us, does not diminish our confidence, but contributes often to increase our ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... the present mode of victualling and clothing the convicts from the king's stores, the settlers should be allowed a stipulated premium with them, one fifth less than the actual cost of maintaining them, and that this premium should diminish one fifth yearly from the date of the changes in the colonial polity, ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... unfavourable, be attended with the certain consequence of their being drifted the contrary way; and nothing could therefore be done but still to watch, which we did most anxiously, every alteration in the state of the ice. The wind, however, decreasing as the night came on, served to diminish the hopes with which we had flattered ourselves of being speedily extricated from our present ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... seemed to diminish; by degrees it died away; was this any proof that the fire had ceased? Or, perhaps, all who could had already fled, and left the prisoners to ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... startled Queen interrupted him: "That would surely, inevitably be the evil fruit which would grow from such a treaty. It would deliver to the Pope, with fettered hands, this very Council which your Majesty so confidently expected would remove or diminish, in orderly methods, the abuses which are urging so many Christians to abandon the Catholic Church. How often I have heard even her most faithful sons acknowledge that such abuses exist! But if you make the alliance, the self-interest of the hierarchy will know how to prevent the introduction ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... whatever is admitted into ITS pages, has at least been taken pains with, and, with few exceptions, has sterling merit. Indeed, among the original communications which abound in it, there are few which would misbecome the first academical collections; and if any thing could diminish our regret at the long suppression of those noble memoirs, which are destined to adorn future volumes of that of the Institute, it would be the masterly abstracts of them which from time to time appear ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... of the Inca would be upon them. Their movements would be anticipated by a foe far better acquainted with the intricacies of the Sierra than themselves; the passes would be occupied, and they would be hemmed in on all sides; while the mere fact of this retrograde movement would diminish the confidence and with it the effective strength of his own men, while it doubled that ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... the Roman Empire with its institutions and its spirit was the sole origin of European civilization; to forget or to diminish the truth that the Empire accepted in its maturity a certain religion; to conceal the fact that this religion was not a vague mood, but a determinate and highly organized corporation; to present in the first centuries some non-existant "Christianity" in place of the existant ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... capable of doing this because Charles Lamb had a very distinguished, a very sensitive, and a very honest mind. His emotions were noble. He felt so keenly that he was obliged to find relief in imparting his emotions. And his mental processes were so sincere that he could neither exaggerate nor diminish the truth. If he had lacked any one of these three qualities, his appeal would have been narrowed and weakened, and he would not have become a classic. Either his feelings would have been deficient in supreme beauty, and therefore less worthy to ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... one thousand miles a minute, it would flyaway toward Polaris for thousands upon thousands of years, till a million years had passed away, before it reached that northern dome of the distant sky, and gave its new allegiance to another sun. The sun it had left behind it would gradually diminish till it was small as Arcturus, then small as could be discerned by the naked eye, until at last it would finally fade out in utter darkness long before the new sun was reached. Light can traverse the distance around our earth eight times in ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... that a Circle—proud of his ancestry and regardful for a posterity which might possibly issue hereafter in a Chief Circle—would be more careful than any other to choose a wife who had no blot on her escutcheon. But it is not so. The care in choosing a Regular wife appears to diminish as one rises in the social scale. Nothing would induce an aspiring Isosceles, who had hopes of generating an Equilateral Son, to take a wife who reckoned a single Irregularity among her Ancestors; a Square or Pentagon, who is confident that his family is steadily on the rise, ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... and John Thompson and other white men that had looked upon her and felt her power. But she gazed upon the wide blue eyes and rose- white skin of this woman that advanced to meet her, and she measured her with woman's eyes looking through man's eyes; and as a man compeller she felt herself diminish and grow insignificant before this radiant and ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... night and early part of the morning the wind was usually light from the northward and at ten o'clock, gradually dying away, was succeeded by a wind from the sea, generally from South-West or South-East; this sea-breeze occasionally blew fresh until four o'clock in the evening when it would gradually diminish with the setting ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... all his heart. If a man will follow after beauty, he is foolish not to conceive the beauty of all bodies as one and the same. As soon as he has learned this, he will become a lover of all beautiful forms; his fervent passion for one will diminish, he will scorn the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... rights of man. It is unequivocally democratic, and implies a growing cleavage between the working man and the capitalists. It repudiates all tradition, and aspires to recast the whole social order. Instead of proposing simply to diminish the influence of government, it really tends to centralisation and the transference of power to the lower classes. This genuine revolutionary principle did not become conspicuous in England until it was introduced by ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... her probation, that she has necessarily gained an influence over her; at such times therefore she will watch her daughter very closely, endeavour to turn the course of her ideas, breaking her by hard work, and by occupying her mind; she must not leave her alone, must diminish her prayers, if need be, restrict her hours of office, lessen her fasts, give her, if the case demands it, better food. In other cases, on the contrary, she will have recourse to more frequent communions, lessen her food or cause her to be blooded, mix cooling ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans |
