"Diminutive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... woman between sixty and seventy, so faded it was and reticulated with wrinkles; and into a pair of eyes that wavered between ingenuousness and a childish cunning; and from them down to her slim ankles and a pair of dancing-shoes, so fairy-like and diminutive that they seemed scarcely to press the ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... a pale girl of fourteen, who appeared to be scarcely more than twelve, so diminutive ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... Philip with a return to seriousness. And the girl hastily tucked her diminutive shoes underneath her chair, as she saw the man's ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... that at Domstadtl there is a defile, or confused woody hollow, of unequalled quality! Mosel jumbles on all day with his Train, none molesting; at night gets to his appointed quarters, Village of Neudorff; [The L, or EL, is a diminutive in these Names: (NEUDORFL) "New-ThorpLET," (DOMSTADTL) "Cathedral-TownLET," and the like.] and there finds Ziethen: a glad meeting, we may fancy, but an anxious one, with Domstadtl ahead on the morrow. Loudon concerts with Ziskowitz this day; calls in all reinforcements possible, and takes ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... cock would separate from the pack, and running out to some distance, would leap upon a rock that was there; then, after dropping his wings, flirting with his spread tail, erecting the ruff upon his neck, and throwing back his head, he would swell and strut upon the rock, exhibiting himself like a diminutive turkey-cock. After manoeuvring in this way for a few moments, he would commence flapping his wings in short quick strokes, which grew more rapid as he proceeded, until a 'booming' sound was produced, more like the rumble ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... the above letter, he became so much depressed in spirits that many of his friends thought it advisable to use other means to bring about the happy union. "Strange," said he, "that the contents of this diminutive letter should cause me to have such depressed feelings; but there is a nobler theme than this. I know not why my MILITARY TITLE is not as great as that of SQUIRE VALEER. For my life I cannot see that my ancestors are inferior ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... road some fine faces with long elegant features, quite Grecian; some intelligent noble-looking girls, and here and there hideous mendicants cleaning their hairy breasts. But the race is much superior to that of Naples, where it is deformed and diminutive, the young girls there appearing like stunted, pallid grisets. The railroad skirts the sea a few paces off and almost on a level with it. A harbor appears blackened with lines of rigging, and then a mole, consisting of a small half-ruined fort, reflecting a clear sharp shadow in the luminous ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... of the Greeks. A bridge, or mole, hastily built, formed a base for one of his largest cannon. The galleys, with troops and scaling ladders, approached the most accessible side of the walls, and, after a siege of forty days, the diminutive garrison, exhausted by a double attack, could hope no longer to avert the fate of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... ducks the other day, to notice that the mallard would attack the swans if they took any food that he fancied. One would have thought that such powerful birds as swans—one stroke of whose wings is supposed to be capable of breaking a man's leg—would not have stood any nonsense from an unusually diminutive mallard. But not a bit of it: the mallard ruled the roost; all the other birds, even the great swans, ran away from him when he attacked them from behind with his beak. This state of things continued for some days. But after a time the male swan ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... parents the child was never addressed as "Bob" or "Bobby," or by any other diminutive. In their practical opinion a child's name was his name, and ought not to be mauled or dismembered on the pretext of fondness. Similarly, the child had not been baptized after his father, or after any male member of either the Machin or the Cotterill family. Why ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... eyes at him with a purposefully artificial effect. From the time when she was a child of four she had carried on a violent and highly appreciated flirtation with "Cousin Billy," being the only person in the world who employed the diminutive of ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... him; he was a small gas-bag of diminutive size, beneath which was suspended a little car, the most ridiculous little travesty of an airship I have ever seen. He was nosing along at about 800 feet ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... peculiar thing happened. Instead of running away, the boy took a step forward, and the man paused, scarcely believing his eyes. Another step forward, and yet another, came the diminutive figure, until almost within the aggressor's reach; then suddenly, quick as a cat, it veered, dropped upon all fours to the floor, and head first, scrambling like a rabbit, disappeared into the open mouth of ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... uncertain derivation, but forus, of which it is clearly the diminutive, is used by Virgil for the cells ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... with that the dwarf pulled his cap hard over his brows and took two turns, of three feet long, up and down the room, lifting his legs up very high and setting them down very hard. This pause gave time for Gluck to collect his thoughts a little, and, seeing no great reason to view his diminutive visitor with dread, and feeling his curiosity overcome his amazement, he ventured on a question ...
— The King of the Golden River - A Short Fairy Tale • John Ruskin.
... my notion of their power has been less vague, and more founded upon experience—borne along by the flight of a pair of fiery horses, slender and shapely as one sees them in the drawings of Constantin Guys, carrying on its box an enormous coachman, furred like a cossack, and by his side a diminutive groom, like Toby, "the late Beaudenord's tiger," I saw—or rather I felt its outlines engraved upon my heart by a clean and killing stab—a matchless victoria, built rather high, and hinting, through ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the same time of the Buffalo, the genus Acronatus among the large Antelopes, and numerous other representations of the same form. The fourth type is our Bos Pusio: here we find the horns, when present, remarkably small, but in many cases absent; and the size is diminutive to an extreme. These also are distinguishing marks of the groups it is to represent: the Tenuirostres among birds, and the Glires, or mice, among quadrupeds, are the smallest of their respective classes; and both are ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... the two ranks, which were formed facing each other, came the Sultan on a white steed—a beautiful Arabian—and having at his side his son, a boy about ten or twelve years old, who was riding a pony, a diminutive copy of his father's mount, the two attended by a numerous body-guard, dressed in gorgeous Oriental uniforms. As the procession passed our carriage, I, as pre-arranged, stood up and took off my hat, His Serene Highness promptly acknowledging the salute by raising his ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... exterior appearance; and if he had not previously been eulogised as the most estimable of college servants, I should not have caught the impression from a first glance. He was somewhere about sixty years of age, of diminutive stature and spare habit, a lean brother with a scarlet countenance, impregnated with tints of many a varied hue, in which however the richness of the ruby and the soft purple of the ultramarine evidently predominated. ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... way into vulgar popularity, as a term for small coins, and sometimes for money in general, is the diminutive of the Gipsy word pashero or poshero, a half-penny, from pash a half, and haura or harra, ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... On the contrary, we were concerned to discover the best method of continuing the war. We knew, I need scarcely say, that humanly speaking ultimate victory for us was out of the question—that had been clear from the very beginning. For how could our diminutive army hope to stand against the overwhelming numbers at the enemy's command? Yet we had always felt that no one is worthy of the name of man who is not ready to vindicate the right, be the odds what they may. We knew also, that the Afrikanders, although devoid of all military discipline, had the ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... Clatsops, Chinnooks, Cathlahmahs and Wac-ki-a-cums resemble each other as well in their persons and dress as in their habits and manners.- their complexion is not remarkable, being the usual copper brown of most of the tribes of North America. they are low in statue reather diminutive, and illy shapen; possessing thick broad flat feet, thick ankles, crooked legs wide mouths thick lips, nose moderately large, fleshey, wide at the extremity with large nostrils, black eyes and black coarse hair. their eyes are sometimes ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Sir John Lade, diminutive associate of George IV. in his young days (and afterwards, coming upon disaster, coachman to the Earl of Anglesey), once lived at Haremere Hall, near by. As we have seen, the First Gentleman in Europe visited ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... no means to ascertain his age, and must have concluded him only six months old from his small size; but from his teeth and walking alone, he was more likely to have been two years old, and his diminutive size was probably occasioned by the miseries of the climate, and wretchedness of every kind to which these outcasts of nature ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... be beautiful. You can envelop yourselves in an atmosphere of moral and intellectual beauty, through which your otherwise plain faces will look forth like those of angels. Beautiful to Ledyard, stiffening in the cold of a northern winter, seemed the diminutive, smokestained women of Lapland, who wrapped him in their furs and ministered to his necessities with kindness and gentle words of compassion. Lovely to the homesick heart of Park seemed the dark maids of Sego, as they sung their low and simple song of welcome beside his ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Mr Yarrell's diminutive examples already alluded to, could not have gone down to the sea with the great majority of their kind, during the spring preceding that in which they were captured; because, in that case, having remained a much longer time than usual in salt water, they would have returned as very large grilse ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... the gloom, like diminutive goblins that beckon; Onward we stagger and gasp in the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... any apparent law or ascertained principle of arrangement. Seeing how imperfect is our acquaintance with even the larger objects of this class, it is rash to insist on the antiquity or permanence of such diminutive objects, or to dogmatise about the cessation of lunar activity in connection with features where the volcanic history of our globe, if it is of any value as an analogue, teaches us it is most ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... about twenty-five, fifteen, and ten. The oldest—the man—is not much above five feet in height, the other two short in proportion. All three, however, are stout-bodied, broad-shouldered, and with heads of goodly size, the short slender legs alone giving them a squat diminutive look. Their complexion is that of old mahogany; hair straight as needles, coarse as bristles, and crow-black; eyes of jet, obliqued to the line of the nose, this thin at the bridge, and depressed, ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... seats at the Concert des Ambassadeurs were crowded by the Parisians consuming their brandied cherries under the canopy of fluttering light green leaves of the opening limes. I sat, one of the audience, and heard the band clashing, and watched the dancers flit on and off the glittering diminutive stage, with ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... from that in use to-day. It was an adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon 'wyrm,' meaning a dragon or snake; or from the Gothic 'waurms,' a serpent; or the Icelandic 'ormur,' or the German 'wurm.' We gather that it conveyed originally an idea of size and power, not as now in the diminutive of both these meanings. Here legendary history helps us. We have the well-known legend of the 'Worm Well' of Lambton Castle, and that of the 'Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh' near Bamborough. In both these legends the ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... two varieties of chimneys which are to be found on the old Venetian palaces (whose style is to be traced partly to the Turk, and partly to the Moor). The curved lines of n harmonize admirably with those of the roof itself, and its diminutive size leaves the simplicity of form of the large building to which it belongs entirely uninterrupted and uninjured. Fig. o is seen perpetually carrying the whiteness of the Venetian marble up into the sky; but it is too tall, and attracts by far too much attention, being ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... untouched. I sat next to her. I talked to her. She had the most delightful little voice, the gayest little laugh, the pleasantest and most fascinating little ways, that ever led a lost youth into hopeless slavery. She was rather diminutive altogether. So much the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... through a still darker hall, and into the front parlor, which looked out upon the Bowery. This was comparatively comfortable, for there was a fire in the stove, and the carpet the same which Aunt Betsy remembered to have seen in Mrs. Tubbs' best room at Silverton. But the diminutive dimensions of the apartment struck her at once, and she mentally decided that it must be the "libry." But, alas! the so-called "library" was a large-sized closet, or single room, at the other end of the hall, and ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... in all her rambles by a diminutive nondescript kind of dog—a tiny, long-haired, silky looking creature, the colour of coffee freshly ground, no bigger than a large squirrel, with brilliant black eyes, bushy tail, and a pert little face, which ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... a strange mingling of the pitiful and comic—among a division (the 35th) known as the Bantams. They were all volunteers, having been rejected by the ordinary recruiting-officer on account of their diminutive stature, which was on an average five feet high, descending to four feet six. Most of them came from Lancashire, Cheshire, Durham, and Glasgow, being the dwarfed children of industrial England and its mid-Victorian cruelties. Others were from London, banded ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... country, the peasants, were not quite so free as when Rurik landed. They began to be known as moujik, a contemptuous diminutive of the word mouj or man, literally manikin. The merchants or gosti did not form a distinct class, but in larger cities, such as Novgorod and Kief, they had a voice in the administration. These cities ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... his little brothers and cousins. If he lives near the river he spends a few hours a day in the water, bathing, splashing his playmates, and catching frogs and other edibles. A favorite pastime of his is to make a diminutive bow and ply his arrows at some old stump or some unlucky lizard or other living thing that he may have espied. If monkeys, crows, or other bold marauders are overnumerous, he probably has to sit out in the rude watch-house in the little clearing ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... decent. Now I can't stay here any longer, so good-by for the present." She took up a little basket containing an old pair of gloves, large scissors, and a ball of twine, and walked briskly away to attend to the plants in her diminutive conservatory. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... The nest, which is well described by Mr. Davison, is made of black, fibry roots, sparingly lined with fine grass-stalks, and covered outwardly with small pieces of lichens bound to the sides with cobwebs. It is a very neat diminutive cup, measuring externally 1.9 inch across by an inch deep; internally 1.5 by half ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... screen, the little table and the diminutive chair blazed gallantly, and with such a volleying of poisonous fumes that Cobb could scarce hold his ground to do battle. Louise out of the way, he at once became cool and resourceful. Before a flame ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... small sombre room within, with a bare yellow-washed floor and ragged curtains at the little window. In a corner was a diminutive altar draped with threadbare lace. The red glow of the taper lighted a cheap print of St. Joseph and a brazen crucifix. The human element in the room was furnished by a little, wizened yellow woman, who, black-robed, turbaned, and stern, sat ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... diminutive form of sabana (English, "Savannah"); a name given by Corcuera's Spanish soldiers to the fortress which was constructed, under the direction of Father Melchor de Vera, at that point in Mindanao, south from Lake Lanao. Puerto ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... came back, she was attended by Juliana carrying a tray of lemonade glasses. Juliana proved to be a diminutive lass of about fourteen whose cheerful, freckled face wore an expansive grin of pleasure. Evidently Juliana was as fond of "company" as her mistress was. Afterwards, the girls overheard a subdued colloquy between Miss Sally and Juliana out ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... had an undesirable reputation, for its inhabitants were loose-livers, and the scandal of the surrounding countryside. But even in this environment the monk's family had made themselves conspicuous by their low and unmentionable customs. The young Gregory, known by the diminutive of Gricha, began his exploits at a very tender age, and earned the sobriquet of Rasputin, which means "debauched." He was mixed up in all kinds of dubious affairs—for instance, thefts of horses, the bearing of false witness, and many acts of brigandage. He was even sentenced ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... the drawing-room, here Colonel Berknowles had drunk a glass of mulled wine on that black morning over a hundred-and-thirty years ago when he went out with Councillor Kinsella and shot him through the lungs by the Round House on the Arranakilty Road. The diminutive Tom Moore had sung his songs here "put standing on the table" by the other guests, and the great Dan had held forth and the wind had dashed the ivy against the windows just as it did to-night with fist-fulls of rain from ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... the familiar diminutive of "Al" paused a moment before reply, an odd smile flitting about his bearded lips. A stronger, firmer type of scout and frontiersman than Al Sieber never sat in saddle in all Arizona in the seventies, and he was a noted character among the officers, soldiers, pioneers, and Apaches. The former ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... where Edward Billings Henry wished to go! And here was a rapid-transit vehicle, with room enough for ten such diminutive persons as he! Without loss of time, he limped up on his aching stone toe and jogged the arm ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... said Dot, kindly. "I've got a handkerchief," and she pulled forth from her pocket a diminutive bit of cambric. "You get some shoeblacking and ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... came Michael, a diminutive Russian exile with valvular heart trouble and a most atrocious vocabulary. The one seemed as incurable as the other. Margaret MacLean had wrestled with the vocabulary on memorable occasions—to no avail; and although she had ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... over such a recital, have a more appreciative listener. Stephen Bocqueraz's sympathetic look met hers whenever she looked up; he nodded, agreed, frowned thoughtfully or laughed outright. They sat through the next dance, and through half the next, hidden in one of the many diminutive "parlors" that surrounded the ball-room, and when Susan was surrendered to an outraged partner she felt that she and the great man were fairly started toward a real friendship, and that these attractive boys she was dancing with were really ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... duennas of the most staid and severe aspect, and six beautiful demoiselles, formed her female attendants. She was guarded by several very ancient, withered, and grayheaded cavaliers; and her train was borne by one of the most deformed and diminutive dwarfs in existence. ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... with its marvellous progress in the sixteenth century, I do not propose to enter. The enthusiasm of a Francis Xavier is not an everyday event, and the Japanese of the sixteenth century was, mayhap, more impressed by the missionaries of those days, arriving in flimsy and diminutive vessels after undergoing the perils and hardships of long voyages, having neither purse nor scrip nor wearing apparel except what they stood up in, than he is by the modern missionary arriving as a first-class ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... and superior qualities been combined in one woman. She had great personal beauty; her brow and eye were remarkable. Although small in stature, it is said of her as it was of Channing, he too being of diminutive size, that she made you think she was larger than she was. She had a look of command. The amount of will force and intelligent power in her small body was enough to direct the universe; yet she was modest and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... which I had first viewed nine miles off from one of the little kiosquelets crowning the minarets of the Jammah Masjid, improved upon closer acquaintance. One recognizes in the word "minaret" the diminutive of "minar," the latter being to the former as a tower to a turret. This minar of Koutab's—it was erected by the Mussulman general Koutab-Oudeen-Eibeg in the year 1200 to commemorate his success over the Rajput emperor Pirthi-Raj—is two hundred and twenty feet high, and the cunning architect ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... she discovered that the power of speech had left her. She had for some time been struck with a kind of whispering and tittering about her. In order to make out whence this proceeded, she leaned out of her bed, and, peering between the silk curtains, perceived two smart diminutive cupbearers, in garments of blue, with green aprons, and small yellow caps. She had scarcely got sight of the little gentlemen when their whispering took the character of audible words; and the dumb Swanhilda was enabled to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... announces two visitors. "Show them in at once," says Florence, quickly, as if to forestall any possible objection from her father. The negro withdraws, and presently, with a rapid swish of skirts, in marches a very spick and span young lady, her diminutive but exceedingly trim figure dressed like an animated fashion-plate. She is Miss Edna Hill, and she comes brisk and dashing, with cheeks afire from the cold, bringing into the dull, dreamy room the life ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the words of a contemporary, "this Anglo-Teutonic, castellated, gothized structure must be considered as an abortive production, at once illustrative of bad taste and defective judgment. From the small size of the windows and the diminutive proportion of its turrets, it would ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... diminutive, and ludicrously out of proportion with the enormous horses of the equipage, and had sharp, sallow features, and small, restless fiery eyes, and faces of cunning and malice that chilled the children. The little coachman was ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... to the fact that they are not what we would call "horse Indians" and that they hunt barefoot over their wide domain. The same causes, perhaps, account for the only real deformity I noticed in the Seminole physique, namely, the diminutive toe-nails, and for the heavy, cracked, and seamed skin which covers the soles of their feet. The feet being otherwise well formed, the toes have only narrow shells for nails, these lying sunken across the middles of the tough ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... Then, the roundness and fixity of her dry, owl-eyes, the enormous size of her protruding nose, and the great dark cavern of her mouth. Finally, her dress, like that of a young woman of Avapies—the new little cotton handkerchief which she wore on her head, tied under her chin, and a diminutive fan which she carried open in her hand, and with which, in affected modesty, she was covering the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... found to be similar to those of the Ancient Egyptians and southern Europeans. Other facial characteristics suggest that a Mongolian racial connection is highly improbable; the prominent Sumerian nose, for instance, is quite unlike the Chinese, which is diminutive. Nor can far-reaching conclusions be drawn from the scanty linguistic evidence at our disposal. Although the languages of the Sumerians and long-headed Chinese are of the agglutinative variety, so are those also which are spoken by the broad-headed ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... yawned; Marguerite sat silent with troubled brows; Dr. Ludwig Zimmern gazed abstractedly toward the cold electric imitation of a fire, above which on a mantle stood two casts, diminutive reproductions of the figures beside the door of the Emperor's palace, the one the likeness of William the Great, the other the Statue of the German God. But I was thinking of the news I had heard that afternoon from my Ore Chief—that Captain ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... portraits; butchers and fishmongers were haled before courts-martial for like indications of ill-will; and—matter for laughter and matter for tears are inseparable in modern Greek history (perhaps in all history)—one met a cabman beaten again and again for calling his horse "Cotso" (diminutive of "Constantine"), or a woman dragged to the police-station because her parrot was heard whistling the Constantine March. Volumes would be needed to record the petty persecutions which arose from {212} the use of that popular name: suffice ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... all, Maria Clara grew up amidst smiles and love. The very friars showered her with attentions when she appeared in the processions dressed in white, her abundant hair interwoven with tuberoses and sampaguitas, with two diminutive wings of silver and gold fastened on the back of her gown, and carrying in her hands a pair of white doves tied with blue ribbons. Afterwards, she would be so merry and talk so sweetly in her childish simplicity that the enraptured Capitan Tiago could do nothing but bless the saints of Obando ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Marie with a tolerant smile. The room was almost bare of furniture. A bed such as peasants sleep on; a few chairs; a dressing-table tottering against the window-breast, and modestly screened in one corner, the diminutive washing-stand still used in southern France. For Gemosac had been sacked and the furniture built up into a bonfire when Marie was a little child and the Abbe Touvent a fat-faced timorous boy at the Seminary ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... is a diminutive of Gully, a narrow ravine. It is lovely even now, and will be delightful when you come to ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... but he talked on. He slid a five-dollar bill from his diminutive roll and gallantly paid up. His only comment when, in the car, Mother secretly asked how much he had been overcharged, was the reflection, "They certainly ought to make money out of those tea-rooms. Their profit must be something like five hundred per cent. That ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... gathering fury as he came. Like lightning the Blue-grass lad's face changed, whitening a little as he sprang forward to meet him, but Jason, motioning with his thumb, swerved behind the chimney, where the stranger swiftly threw off his coat, the mountain boy spat on his hands, and like two diminutive demons they went at each other fiercely and silently. A few minutes later the two little girls rounding the chimney corner saw them—Gray on top and Jason writhing and biting under him like a tortured snake. A ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... This portion were termed boshmen, or bushmen, and have still retained that appellation: living in extreme destitution, sleeping in caves, constantly in a state of starvation, they soon dwindled down to a very diminutive race, and have ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... halt in the work of building up the Navy, providing every year additional fighting craft. We are a very rich country, vast in extent of territory and great in population; a country, moreover, which has an Army diminutive indeed when compared with that of any other first-class power. We have deliberately made our own certain foreign policies which demand the possession of a first-class navy. The isthmian canal will greatly increase the efficiency ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Spofford, the treasurer, wife of the proprietor of the Riggs House, and Miss Ellen H. Sheldon, secretary of the Association. To these ladies is due much of the success of the convention. Mrs. Sheldon is of diminutive stature, with gray hair, and Mrs. Spofford is of large and queenly figure, with white hair. Her magnificent presence is always remarked ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... just how do you suppose we are going to get this in the pie?" replied Alice, lifting from its position behind the bed a box so huge that the pie itself seemed almost diminutive in comparison. ...
— Grandfather's Love Pie • Miriam Gaines
... Hadebusch's was a little cafe known as The Paradise. Everything in it was diminutive, the proprietor, the waitress, the tables, the chairs and the portions. There the brethren from the Vale of Tears assembled to drag the gods down into the dust and destroy the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... been possible, was now useless, as there was neither hill nor rising ground of any kind within the compass of our view, which was only bounded by the horizon in every quarter, entirely devoid of timber except a few diminutive gums on the very edge of the stream, might be so termed. The water in the bed of the lagoon, as it might now be properly denominated, was stagnant; its breadth about twenty feet, and the heads of grass growing in it, shewed it to be ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... from his pocket a diminutive vial, the smallest I had ever seen, in which were a number of little white granules, about the size of the head of a pin. A printed label was wound around the vial, and it bore the word "Arsenicum." It passed from hand to hand, and ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... true, Rattray." He searched in his breast pocket and brought out a diminutive pocket-book. "May I show those two little things I copied?" he begged, selecting a folded sheet of letter-paper from its contents. "This is serious, you know, really. We must go into all ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... minute we remained motionless on our knees while the king stood gazing at us, it seemed to me with an air of doubt. Then slowly, and with a gait that smacked of majesty despite his ungainly appearance and diminutive stature, he stalked across to the doorway and ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... although their elegance is often too elaborate and their thoughts and feelings too artificial. Besides these, Ariosto, Tasso, Machiavelli, and Michael Angelo, whose genius was practiced in more ambitious tasks, did not disdain to shape and polish such diminutive gems as the canzone, the madrigal, and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... form of the word fidelity. An esquire is a scutiger (L.), or shield-bearer; for he carried the shield of the knight, when they were travelling and no fighting was going on. A vassal was a "little young man,"— in Low-Latin vassallus, a diminutive of vassus, from the Keltic word gws, a man. (The form vassaletus is also found, which gives us our varlet and valet.) Scutcheon comes from the Lat. scutum, a shield. Then scutcheon or escutcheon came to mean coat-of-arms— or the marks and signs on his shield by which the ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... Polly drew her diminutive rocker to the stove and settled back against its gay cretonne cushions—a vivid bird of Paradise flamed just where her ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... Murray. Pelican and ducks floated upon it, and mussle-shells of extraordinary size lay in such quantities, where the natives had been in the habit of eating them, as to resemble snow covering the ground. But even that reach seemed diminutive when compared with the vast body of water whereof traces had, at another season, been left there; these affording evidence that, although wide, they had still been impetuous in their course. Verdure alone shone now, over the wide extent to which the waters sometimes rose. Beyond that ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... modicum of peace seemed out of the question. Here, for instance, was found living with the Mexicans by the plaza a quarrelsome fellow named Juan Trujillo, better known by the sobriquet of Juan Chiquito or "Little John," which his diminutive stature had earned for him. This worthy is represented as a constant disturber of the peace, and he met the tragic fate which his reckless life had invited. From being a trusted friend he had incurred the enmitv of a noted character named Charley Antobees, than whom, perhaps, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... very much cooler at Newport, where our travelers found themselves assigned to a couple of diminutive bedrooms in a faraway angle of an immense hotel. They had gone ashore in the early summer twilight and had very promptly put themselves to bed; thanks to which circumstance and to their having, during the previous hours, in their commodious cabin, ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... had sympathized with her microscopic cut fingers, he had smiled into her glowing, damp little face when she stuttered to him long tales of bad doggies and big 'ticks; he had brought her "jacks" and paper-dolls and hair ribbons; he loved the diminutive femininity of the creature; she was all a woman, even at three. Alix he proudly called his "boy"; Alix used hair ribbons to tie up her dogs, and demanded hip boots and an air rifle and got them, too, and used them, but when he took Alix in his arms she was apt to bump his nose violently with ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... By exception, one listener sat it out with unwearied attention. Nothing precisely cherubic in face or figure of Lord FISHER OF KILVERSTONE, better known on sea and land by the affectionate diminutive JACKY FISHER. Nevertheless, as he sat perched in Peers' Gallery immediately over the clock, a place ever associated with the genial presence of EDWARD PRINCE OF WALES, there flashed across the mind a familiar couplet ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... and melancholy strain of music—melancholy enough to make one shiver—and shrill, shrill as the song of the grasshoppers, it began to make itself heard, very softly at first, then growing louder and rising in the silence of the noonday like the diminutive wail of some poor Japanese soul in pain and anguish; it was Chrysantheme ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... comparison with my aunt's performance of the part, which was one of her famous ones. A friend of hers and mine, my dear and excellent William Harness, said that seeing me was exactly like looking at Mrs. Siddons through the diminishing end of an opera glass. My personal likeness to her, in spite of my diminutive size and irregular features, was striking, and of course suggested, to those who remembered her, associations which were fatal to my satisfactory performance of the part. I disliked the play and the character of Belvidera, and I am sure I must have ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... vol. i. xxxi. 1. 1, where the dwarfs and pigmies who came to the court of the king, in the period of the Ptolemies, to serve in his household, are mentioned. Various races of diminutive stature, which have since been driven down to the upper basin of the Congo, formerly extended further northward, and dwelt between Darfur and the marshes of Bahr-el-Ghazal. As to the Danga, cf. what has been said on p. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... a distance down this turbulent river of nearly six hundred miles, with a descent toward sea-level of 2645 feet, without a serious accident, we were all in a happy frame of mind, notwithstanding the exceedingly diminutive food supply that remained. We felt that we could overcome almost anything in the line of rapids the world might afford, and Steward declared our party was so efficient he would be willing to "run the ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... served secondarily as a very partial shelter for the men and primarily as a stable for an extraordinary water-wagon, composed of a wooden barrel on two wheels with shafts which would not possibly accommodate anything larger than a diminutive donkey (but in which I myself was to walk not infrequently, as it proved); parallel to the second stone wall, but at a safe distance from it, stretched a couple of iron girders serving as a barbarously cold seat for any unfortunate ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... proceedings sat on a stool, placed in a corner, a little girl, some nine or ten years old, with a basket of flowers on her knee. The child was very diminutive, even for her age, and her smallness was increased by personal deformity, occasioned by contraction of the chest, and spinal curvature, which raised her back above her shoulders; but her features were sharp and cunning, indeed almost malignant, and there was a singular and unpleasant ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... dastard enough to strike a woman, would allow himself to be beaten by a woman, were she to make at him in self-defence, even if, instead of possessing the stately height and athletic proportions of the aforesaid Isopel, she were as diminutive in stature, and had a hand as delicate, and foot as small, as a certain royal lady, who was some time ago assaulted by a fellow upwards of six feet high, whom the writer has no doubt she could have beaten had she thought proper to go at him. Such ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... all rude societies similar notions are found. There are at this day countries where the Lifeguardsman Shaw would be considered as a much greater warrior than the Duke of Wellington. Bonaparte loved to describe the astonishment with which the Mamelukes looked at his diminutive figure. Mourad Bey, distinguished above all his fellows by his bodily strength, and by the skill with which he managed his horse and his sabre, could not believe that a man who was scarcely five feet high, and rode like a butcher, could be the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... arrival, who seemed to be a thin diminutive-looking fellow of any age, whose perfectly smooth face looked peculiarly yellow, planted his hands one on either side of the cask, sank down, and then sprang up again, cleverly passed his legs over the side ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... repelling invasion—which was what Lord Milner had especially desired—the actual deficiencies of the existing Cape garrison[84] were made good by the despatch in July of small additions of artillery and engineers, and by directing General Butler to provide the fresh transport without which even this diminutive force was unable to mobilise. At the same time certain special service officers,[85] including engineers and officers of the Army Service Corps, were sent out to organise the materials, locally existing, for the defence of the eastern frontier of the ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... the girl, but she did not finish. The little figure before her drew itself to the full extent of its diminutive height. ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... transept crossing is a work of the sixteenth century, and is perhaps more remarkable than its rather diminutive appearance, in contrast with the huge bulk of ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... and modest youth could not easily be so happily united in another as they were in Jonathan, albeit his handsome expressive face bore the impress of traits which were perhaps a little too soft, and almost effeminate, and his diminutive and weak but elegant bodily frame bespoke a tender intellectual spirit. When he reflected further that the two children had always been together, and how evident had been their mutual liking for each other, he was really puzzled to understand how it was that he had not ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... say?" asked Danny Griswold, who had been prancing the deck like a diminutive admiral, stopping now and blowing a cloud of cigarette ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... already said that the first came out with flames emanating from his body and hence he was called Bhrigu. From the rays of the sacrificial fire sprang another called Marichi. From Marichi (afterwards) sprang Kasyapa. It has been already said that from the (burning) charcoals sprang Angiras. The (diminutive) Rishis called Valakhilyas sprang from the blades of Kusa grass spread out in that sacrifice. From the same blades of Kula grass, O thou of great puissance, sprang Atri. From the ashes of the fire sprang all those that are numbered among the regenerate Rishis, viz., the Vaikhanasas, endued ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... andante (going or walking) andantino (diminutive of andante and therefore meaning literally "going less," but because of a misconception of meaning now often understood as meaning slightly faster ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... appointed captain in the prince's Swiss guards, one of the most honorable commissions that could have been conferred on him. The comte de Crussel and the prince d'Henin were named captains of the guard to M. d'Artois. This prince d'Henin was of such diminutive stature that he was sometimes styled, by way of jest, the "prince of dwarfs," "the dwarf of princes." He was the beloved nephew of the marechale de Mirepoix, whose fondness could not supply him with the sense he so greatly needed; he was besides very profligate, and continually running into some ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... sands, beside a river she had read of in her geography when a girl, under palm trees, amid pyramids and temples and the buried cities of a buried people. And before her skipped, figuratively speaking, the diminutive figure of Galusha Bangs, guiding, pointing, declaiming, describing, the incarnation of enthusiastic energy, as different as anything could be from the mild, dreamy little person who had sat opposite her at the supper table so short ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Latin diminutive of variola), a specific contagious disease characterized by an eruption of vesicles in the skin. The disease usually occurs in epidemics, and is one of childhood, the patients being generally between two and six years old. The incubation period is from ten to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... confined in time, your friends had much better wait till May-but, however, they will be very welcome to go when they please. I am more personally interested in hoping to See you there this summer—you must visit my new tower. Diminutive as it is, it adds much to the antique air of the whole in both fronts. You know I shall sympathize with your gout, and you are always master of your ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... that much depended upon one lucky shot, and although but a single inch of the warrior's body was exposed, and at a distance of one hundred yards, yet he resolved to take the risk of a shot at this diminutive target. Coolly raising the rifle to his eye, and shading the sight with his hand, he threw a bead so accurately that he felt perfectly confident that his bullet would pierce the mark; but when the hammer fell, instead of striking ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... flocks of fieldfares, flying round and round, to exercise the newly-fledged young. There were a few habitations scattered along the margin of the fiord; and two or three boats might be seen far off, with diminutive figures ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... appeared to come from the region of George Knight's heart. Mrs. Hare looked around in surprise; the white cat stirred uneasily. The next second the boy had shaken his overcoat, and from out of a large side pocket jumped the diminutive Waggie. The cat, with one bound, took a flying leap to the kitchen stairs, and brushing past the half-opened door at the bottom of the flight, fairly tore up to the second story, where she disappeared. Waggie gave a shrill yelp of emotion, but evidently concluded ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... diminutive friend was examining the embryo of a theory already established in his mind. It was a mere shadow, something vague and dark and uncertain in outline. But it existed, and would assume recognizable shape when an active imagination had fitted ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... for the man. She was very small and slenderly made, with dark hair, luminous eyes, and ivory-white complexion, a sensitive nose and mouth, a wisp of nerves and passion. She carried her head high and, for so diminutive ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... coiffure of black and gold studded with enormous diamonds, any one of which would make the fortune of a Pall-Mall pawnbroker. A score of attendants about his own age were standing at the back of the young heir, while four diminutive dwarfs and four jesters in comic garb crouched at his feet, and innumerable other subordinates—such as the fan-holder, the handkerchief-holder, the tea- and bouquet-holders, etc. etc.—made up the retinue of this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... account of tramp-life for the second edition of this volume, was well known as author, sociologist, and tramp. He was especially, and it would seem by innate temperament, the tramp, which part he looked to perfection (he himself referred to his "weasoned face and diminutive form") and felt completely at home in. He was thus able to throw much light on the psychology of the tramp, and his books (such as Tramping with Tramps) are valuable from this point of view. His real name was F. Willard and he was a nephew of Miss Frances Willard. He died in Chicago, in 1907, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... one twinkling glance at his companion and then was instantly among the litter of the closet floor. He emerged strapping a belt about him, the holster tugging far down, so that the muzzle of the gun was almost at his knee. Bull appreciated the diminutive size of the man for the first time, seeing him in conjunction with the big gun on ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... a giant in the midst of the little tropical people, and seemed to feel his size in the general diminutive setting. Yet there was balance and fitness about his splendid physical organization, which suggested that he could be quick as a mink in action. He chaffed the native who waited upon him, and his face softened into charming boyishness ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... a pure Muscular as we had stated. The class member's mistake came from the fact that the acrobat appeared taller than he really was. High platforms always give this illusion. Furthermore his partner in the act was of diminutive height and the acrobat looked tall ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... the son of Francesco Sarpi and Isabella Morelli, Venetians of the humbler middle class. He was born in 1552, christened Pietro, and nicknamed Pierino because of his diminutive stature. On entering the Order of the Servites he adopted the religious name of Paolo, which he subsequently rendered famous throughout Europe. Since he died in 1623, Sarpi's life coincided with a period of supreme interest and manifold vicissitudes in the decline of Venice. After the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... running to the window, waved to a diminutive telegraph boy, who, being new to his job, had come up to the front entrance of the Lodge instead of the back, and was now—recognising his misdeed—retreating in alarm from the mere aspect of "the great fortified post." He saw the lady at the window, however, ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... to the Berkshire Hills, and took a house in the town of Lenox. It was a little red cottage, and was situated on the shore of a diminutive lake called the Stockbridge Bowl. He was now the most famous novelist in America, and had thousands of admirers in the Old World. His "Scarlet Letter" had won him fame, and had brought his earlier works more prominently ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... now growing tired of his own company in the guest-room, accepted Sir Charles' invitation with alacrity; and they walked down from the Abbey to the village of Malford, which was situated at the confluence of the Mall and the Nodder, two diminutive tributaries of the Wey, which itself is not ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... Ocean, for a voyage on it is one of the most monotonous things that can be imagined. The appearance of another ship is a rare occurrence; and the water is so calm that it resembles a stream. Very frequently I used to start up from my desk, thinking that I was in some diminutive room ashore; and my mistake was the more natural, as we had three horses, a dog, several pigs, hens, geese, and a canary bird on board, all respectively neighing, barking, grunting, cackling, and singing, as if they were in ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... diminutive as it appeared, still managed to contain two single bedsteads (French), a wash-hand-stand, wardrobe, used in common by landlord and lodgers, a table, and two chairs. We paid in rent twelve florins a month, or barely ten shillings between us; add to this, for washing, candles, and morning ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... of the room. At dinner Sipiagin ordered champagne, and before drinking his son's health made a speech. He spoke of the significance of "serving the land," and indicated the road he wished his Nikolai to follow (he did not use the diminutive of the boy's name), of the duty he owed, first to his family; secondly to his class, to society; thirdly to the people—"Yes, my dear ladies and gentlemen, to the people; and fourthly, to the government!" By degrees Sipiagin became ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... article in No. 16., "on Pet Names," had not been Scottish, I should have been less surprised at the author's passing over the name of Jock, universally used in Scotland for John. The termination ick or ck is often employed, as marking a diminutive object, or object of endearment. May not the English term Jack, if not directly borrowed from the Scottish Jock, have been formed through the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... mouth of a creek, named Chango Creek, and in a small bay or roadstead about a mile long by perhaps half that width formed by six islands, the largest of which was nearly two miles long by half-a-mile wide, while the smallest and most easterly of all was a very diminutive affair, of perhaps not more than an acre in area, densely overgrown, like the rest of them, with thick, impenetrable bush. In the very centre of this small roadstead, to which we had been piloted by ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... home from his release to his death (unhappily demolished fifty years back), shows the humble character of his daily life. It was a small cottage, such as labourers now occupy, with three small rooms on the ground floor, and a garret with a diminutive dormer window under the high-pitched tiled roof. Behind stood an outbuilding which served as his workshop. We have a passing glimpse of this cottage home in the diary of Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary. One Mr. Bagford, otherwise ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... wrote, "is a lay-conventicle, good-fellowship turned puritan, ill-husbandry in masquerade; whither people come, after toping all day, to purchase, at the expense of their last penny, the repute of sober companions: a rota-room, that, like Noah's ark, receives animals of every sort, from the precise diminutive band, to the hectoring cravat and cuffs in folio; a nursery for training up the smaller fry of virtuosi in confident tattling, or a cabal of kittling critics that have only learned to spit and mew; a mint of intelligence, that, to make each man his penny-worth, draws out into petty parcels ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... priest, heedless of the admonition, suffered himself to be led by the child; and together they passed slowly out into the living room, through the kitchen, and thence into the diminutive rose garden, the pride ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... concealed all of his face but his eyes, the tip of his nose, and the frozen end of a beard which stuck out between the laps of his turned-up collar like a horn. For all the world he looked like a diminutive drum-major, and Philip rose speechless, his pipe still in his mouth, as his strange visitor closed the door behind him ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood |
