"Leanness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her head erect and high, walking with a firmness and elasticity of step such as would not have been expected in one whose outward appearance conveyed so little impression of strength. It is true that she had never been ill in her life and that her leanness was due to the most natural of all causes; but these facts were not patent to the observer, and for reasons which will presently appear she herself would have been the last to mention them. There was something, too, in the look of her blue eyes, shaded by long brown lashes which had retained ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... distempers was ridiculous, because it was not a bean but the fruit of a tree discovered by goats and camels; that it was hot and not cold, as alleged; that it burned up the blood, and so induced palsies, impotence, and leanness; "from all of which we must necessarily conclude that coffee is hurtful to the greater part of the inhabitants ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... of the inclined ways, the disastrous lack of symmetry in the church of the Rosary and the Basilica, the former looking too heavy, like a corn market, whilst the latter had an anaemical structural leanness with no kind of style ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... had all these Advertisers arrived to that Skill they pretend to, they would have had no Need for so many Years successively to publish to the World the Place of their Abode, and the Virtues of their Medicines. One of these Gentlemen indeed pretends to an effectual Cure for Leanness: What Effects it may have had upon those who have try'd it I cannot tell; but I am credibly informed, that the Call for it has been so great, that it has effectually cured the Doctor himself of that Distemper. Could each of them produce so good an Instance of the Success of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... impatient to begin the campaign which was to end in the rout of the enemy, he got up and took a turn the length of the room. He didn't look the least bit in the world like a confidence-man to-night and the two boys marvelled at their earlier suspicions. Miller was tall, lean with the leanness of muscles unhampered by useless flesh, and lithe. He had very clear brown eyes, a straight nose and high cheek bones that somehow reminded Steve of the engraved portrait of John C. Calhoun that hung in the library at home. Altogether, ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... but he was handsome compared with the others. Opposite him sat a tall fellow very erect and stiff in his chair. A candle had recently been lighted, and it stood on the table near this man. It showed a wan face of excessive leanness. His eyes were deep under bony brows, and they alone of the features showed any expression as the game progressed, turning now and again to the other faces with glances that burned; he was winning steadily. A red-headed man was on his left, ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... their walk, looking up at him. He had to look up much less than a couple of years before—he had grown, in his loose leanness, so long and ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... watchings, cares, studies, and for the remaining part of it never so much as tasted the least of pleasure; ever sparing, poor, sad, sour, unjust, and rigorous to himself, and troublesome and hateful to others; broken with paleness, leanness, crassness, sore eyes, and an old age and death contracted before their time (though yet, what matter is it, when he die that never lived?); and such is the picture of this great ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... wilt under the blight of poverty, and to revive under the fuller harvesting of this world's goods, and Mr. Shelton, Sr., who had, in the days of his leanness, let Polly run wild with all the college boys of Harmouth, became suddenly particular, as his bank account fattened, in regard to the niceties of conduct in his daughters. His scruples even embraced Deena; he said ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... Maha-Sohon cause the chin-cough, leanness of the body, thirst, madness, and mad babblings, he will come down at half-past seven, and accept the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... Charlotte. An abundance of cattle, few sheep; the cattle mostly milch cows, or cows with calf, which, at that season of the year, was the best beef. When the army was in Charlotte we killed, upon an average, one hundred head per day. The leanness of the cattle will account for the number killed each day. At this period the royal army was supported by Lord Rawdon's moving with one half of the army one day, and Colonel Webster with the other ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... to the tips of her fingers. The demands of the public sometimes forced upon her odious ballet-skirts, sometimes she wasted her talent on the futilities of skirt-dancing; but chiefly she loved the national measures, and her phenomenal leanness made her only comfortable in the national dress. She travelled from place to place in Spain with another woman whom she had taught to dance, and whose beauty she used cleverly as a foil to her own uncomeliness; and so wasted herself in these low resorts, earning ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... mournful song. Thus then we draw near and look reluctant and dismayed into the bare truth of things. We see, it may be, our poor pretences tossed aside, and the embroidered robe in which we have striven to drape our leanness torn from us; but we must gaze as steadily as we can, and pray that the vision be not withdrawn till it has wrought its perfect work within us; and then, with energies renewed, we may set out again on pilgrimage, happy in this, that we ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... loss of appetite, leanness, hollow eyes, groans, griefs, sadness, sighing, sobbing, alternating blushes and pallor, feverish or unequal pulse, suicidal impulses, are other symptoms occurring among such advanced nations as the Greeks and Hindoos and often accepted as evidence of true love; but since, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... about as well you called me in. It's been a bad summer for the children; he's had to take his turn with the rest of them, and it has pulled him down. Poor little youngster!" And one huge forefinger gently hooked itself into the neck of the little gown, drew it away and disclosed the piteous leanness of the throat and chest beneath, the fragile leanness of the baby bird just fallen from the nest. "Poor little youngster!" he repeated. "He has had a hard time of it in this world. Sometimes it does seem as if they didn't start with quite ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... stolid Indian, and ant-like plodder of teeming India,—are but the outward symbols of that contrariety of moral, or rather immoral existence which is the fate of barbarism. They have no equality of beauty nor ugliness, leanness nor obesity, vice nor virtue, but varying differences, such as the spontaneous growth of uncultured nature in different climes exhibits in the vegetable and lower orders of the animal creation. What a contrast is this to that ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... on the ice, but when the snow was soft on the ground it was put upon a frame; to make it glide more easily it was rubbed, Esquimaux fashion, with sulphur and snow. Six dogs drew it; notwithstanding their leanness these animals did not appear to suffer from the cold; their buckskin harness was in good condition, and they could draw a weight of two thousand pounds without fatigue. The materials for encampment consisted of a tent, should the construction ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... taking up my abode. While seated there I beheld a very tall and emaciated Rishi, clad in rags and skins, approaching towards me. Possessed of the wealth of penances, he was named Tanu. Compared, O mighty-armed one, with other men, his height seemed to be eight times greater. As regards his leanness, O royal sage, I can say that I have never beheld its like. His body, O king, was as thin as one's little finger. His neck and arms and legs and hair were all of extra-ordinary aspect. His head was proportionate to his body, and his ears and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the leading Prussian social stars Opines that War, although it makes for leanness, Not only banishes discordant jars And purifies Berlin of all uncleanness, But places her, beatified by Mars, Upon a pinnacle of mental keenness, Changing the cult of trencher and of bowl To feasts of reason and o'erflows ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... law is fulfilled in love: and if so, then where love is wanting, it needs must follow the whole law is broken. It is where love grows cold that sin abounds; and therefore the want of unity and peace is the cause of that leanness and barrenness that is among us; it is true in spirituals as well as ...
— An Exhortation to Peace and Unity • Attributed (incorrectly) to John Bunyan
... behind his lips; also, she liked his hair, which was thick and brown, with hints of red in it here and there, and a strong inclination to curl where it was longest. She had known he was tall when he stepped into the light of the door; now she saw that he was slim to the point of leanness, with square shoulders and a nervous quickness when he moved. His fingers were never idle; when he was not eating, he rolled bits of biscuit into tiny, soggy balls beside his plate, or played a soft ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... will not follow the course that wise grace and gracious wisdom hath prescribed; we will not open our mouth wide, that he might fill us; nor go to him with our narrowed or closed mouths, that grace might make way for grace, and widen the mouth for receiving of more grace; but lie by in our leanness and weakness. And, alas! we love too well to be so. O but grace be ill wared on us who carry so unworthily with it as we do; yet it is well with the gracious soul that he is under grace's tutory and care; for grace will care for him when he careth not ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... He forth again departs who looks behind." As in the hinges of that sacred ward The swivels turn'd sonorous metal strong, Harsh was the grating, nor so surlily Roar'd the Tarpeian, when by force bereft Of good Metellus, thenceforth from his loss To leanness doom'd. Attentively I turn'd, Listening the thunder that first issued forth; And "We praise thee, O God," methought I heard, In accents blended with sweet melody, The strains came o'er mine ear, e'en as the sound Of choral voices, ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... "The leanness and roughness of the wild pig gives it quite a different appearance from the domesticated variety; and hence a gaunt, ill-shaped, or sorry-looking pig is everywhere called in derision ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... stamped with swine's grease, wasteth away the kernels by the throat; and women do usually make pottage of Cleavers with a little mutton and oatmeal, to cause leanness, and to keep them from fatness." Dioscorides reported that: "Shepherds do use the herb to take hairs out of the milk, if any ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... honed by the interim of training to even a new leanness, and sailing-orders heavy and light in his heart, Lieutenant Kantor, on two days' home-leave, took leave of home, which can be ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... cheerful pair of check trousers, and he was wearing pajamas of a virulent pink and green. His neck seemed longer and more stringy than it had been even in our schooldays, and his upper lip had a wiry black moustache. The rest of his ruddy, knobby countenance, his erratic hair and his general hairy leanness had not ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... almost see the bone of his face through the thin covering of skin; and if one might judge from the fact that his smart black frockcoat fitted like a stocking, it was fair to surmise that he was actually proud of his leanness. One got the idea that all the nourishment of his body had gone out into his ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... associations and without hope of overcoming my fault sufficiently to enable me to make a fresh start. It meant not only money, but employment, and congenial employment. It meant that after all, these years of leanness have not been wasted, that I have something to say if I can only retain the knack, the trick, of saying it in the way people will like, the public like. This alone would be much, but with it goes, you see, some money, so, as I said, one thing brings another; and money ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... it has hawkers' barrows and chaotic shop windows. It has the curiosity-stimulating, cosmopolite air of all dockside areas, but to the Englishman accustomed to the picturesque bedragglement of East End costumes, it is almost dismayingly well-dressed. Its young men have the leanness of outline that comes from an authentic American tailor. Its Jewesses have the neat crispness of American fashion that gives their vivid beauty a new and sparkling note. It was astonishing the number of beautiful young women one saw on the Bowery, but not astonishing when one recalls the number ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... and active enforcement of this wicked act—an act evidently destructive of the very nature and essence of that mutual relation between pastor and people, and which has the native and necessary tendency to schism in the church, spiritual leanness, and starving of the flock, by thrusting in idle, idol shepherds upon them, such as serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own bellies; feed themselves, but not the flock; and seek not them, but theirs, contrary to John x, 2, 9; Heb. v, 4; 1 Tim. iii, ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... our mistaken Endeavours after heightening the Sentiments, by a figurative Expression; This is very ill Judg'd: The little Ornaments of Rhetorick might serve, fortunately enough, to swell out the Leanness of some modern Compositions; but to shadow over the Lustre of a divine Hebrew Thought, by an Affectation of enliv'ning it, is to paint upon a Diamond, and call ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... converted there are some delightful examples in the diary of 1799, who evince the power of the grace of God; though the missionary, under a sense of his own unworthiness, cried out, "My leanness! my leanness!" It is a practice with the missionaries, occasionally, to read to the Esquimaux extracts from the accounts of other missions, particularly those of Greenland, that nation having so great a resemblance to themselves, in their language, manners, ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... chas'd, And by new dread succeeded, when in view A lion came, 'gainst me, as it appear'd, With his head held aloft and hunger-mad, That e'en the air was fear-struck. A she-wolf Was at his heels, who in her leanness seem'd Full of all wants, and many a land hath made Disconsolate ere now. She with such fear O'erwhelmed me, at the sight of her appall'd, That of the height all hope I lost. As one, Who with his gain elated, sees the time When all unwares ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... fearful leanness of all those thirteen cats moved me to go into a neighbouring fish shop, and there to buy a quantity of fishes. Then I returned and threw them all over the railing at the top of the great wall, and they fell for thirty ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... that most travellers are struck by the lowness of stature, the leanness and the paleness which present themselves so commonly to the eye at Manchester, and above all, among the factory classes. I have never been in any town in Great Britain, nor in Europe, in which degeneracy of form and colour from ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... "were Phoebe so far in love with me, my flocks would be more fat and their master more quiet; for through the sorrows of my discontent grows the leanness of my sheep." ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... the animal, and is generally, by Indian courtesy, left to the share of the master of the lodge, such conduct appeared very strange to the hunter. Supposing, however, that they had been a long time without food, for he attributed their extreme leanness and ghastliness to hunger and privation, he forbore to accuse them of rudeness, and his wife, following her husband's example, was equally guarded in her language. On the following evening, the same scene was repeated. He brought home the best portions of the deer he had ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... good morning. Renwick nodded curtly. He had planned another nap and hardly relished sitting awake and staring at the sepulchral visitor. Where last night's weariness had sealed his eyes to the ever-present sense of danger, morning brought counsel of caution and alertness. The leanness of the huge intruder was of the kind that suggested endurance rather than malnutrition, a person who for all his pacific and rather gloomy exterior, could be counted on ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... Laespodias, a general Las, the courtesan Lamachus, better opinion of Lamia, transformed Lamiae (the) Lamias, unknown Lampadephoria, the Lampon, a diviner —prediction of Lasus, the poet Laurium, the mines of Leather, allusion to old Leogaras, an epicure Leotrophides, his leanness Lesbian women, tricks of Literature, heavy Locksmiths, Spartan Lots, drawing Love exercises, ref. to Love's Labour's Lost Lovers, gifts of —paid Lycabettus 'Lycimnius,' a tragedy Lycus, a titulary god —statue of Lyre, sound imitated Lysicrates, a treacherous ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... the Fops of empty Heads and Pockets may know where to be sure of a Cully; and may they rook ye till ye lose, and fret, and chafe, and rail those youthful Eyes to sinking; watch your fair Face to pale and withered Leanness. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... be threading unfrequented hill trails armed with a revolver and a brown leather jug?" No answer suggested itself, and summoning her haughtiest, coldest look, she met the glance of the man who drew rein beside her. His features were clean-cut, bronzed, and lean—with the sinewy leanness of health. His gray flannel shirt rolled open at the throat, about which was loosely drawn a silk scarf of robin's-egg blue, held in place by the tip of a buffalo horn polished to an onyx luster. The hand holding the bridle ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... closely-cropped hair and the smooth tonsure at the back. The nose was larger and of more noble shape, and Paolo's complexion was less yellow than his brother's; the features were not surrounded by furrows or lines, and the leanness of the priest's face threw them into relief. The clean shaven upper lip showed a kind and quiet mouth, which smiled easily and betrayed a sense of humour, but was entirely free from any suggestion of cruelty. Don Paolo was scrupulous of his appearance, and his cassock ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... convinced also that one sees and hears best when unclogged with food, undulled with drink, undrugged with smoke. For me, also, weariness, though not exhaustion, seems to sharpen all the senses. Keenness goes with leanness. When I have been working hard or tramping the country roads in the open air and come in weary and hungry at night and catch the fragrance of the evening along the road or upon the hill, or at barn-doors smell the unmilked cows, or at the doorway, the comfortable odours of cooking supper ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... sale at twelve cents a bushel, when a mighty crop of wheat brings its possessor but fifty cents a bushel, when cows are worth but fifteen dollars apiece, and good butter sells for eight cents a pound, while thousands in the land are known to be suffering because of the lack of these things, a leanness of pocket-book results which the farmer may understand, but to which he ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... the days of his leanness, had beautiful hands, and he displayed them with a certain coquetry. As he grew stouter his hands became superb; he took the utmost care of them, and looked at them when talking, with much complacency. He felt the same satisfaction ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... am pining at your affliction, growing thin, waxing old, and shockingly wasting away. Wretched man that I am, I'm but skin and bone through leanness; nor does anything ever do me good that I eat at home; even that ever so little which I taste out of ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... gaunt in being old: Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast; And who abstains from meat, that is not gaunt? For sleeping England long time have I watch'd; Watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt: The pleasure that some fathers feed upon Is my strict fast,—I mean my children's looks; And therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt: Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave, Whose hollow womb inherits nought ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... a person of conspicuous appearance, both by reason of his great height and leanness as well as his extreme age, who now descended the straight stairway leading from the corridor above. At Court they would have told you that the Prince de Gatinais was a trifle insane, but he troubled the Court very little, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... which is broad and comprehensive and generous. They are generally men who are accomplishing things, and who let other people tell about it. Thus, the padre liked Courtlandt's voice, his engaging smile, his frank unwavering eyes; and he liked the leanness about the jaws, which was indicative of strength of character. In fact, he experienced a singular jubilation as he ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... present a cut of a Devon cow; but with the remark, that she presents a deficiency of bag, and stands higher on the leg, than she ought to do; and her leanness in flesh gives her a less graceful appearance than is her wont, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... are like the smooth muscular trunks of beech trees, which have also the angular edges of reeds. How different from the harp-strings which form the aerial skeleton of Chartres! No, in spite of all, Beauvais, like Reims, and like Paris, is a fleshy cathedral; it has not the elegant leanness, the perennial youthfulness of form, the Patrician stamp of Amiens, and more especially ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... place was stimulating his brain; he kept stealing glances at the scantiness around; the room, the parson, the furniture, the very fire, all gave him the feeling caused by seeing legs that have outgrown their trousers. But there was something underlying that leanness of the landscape, something superior and academic, which defied all sympathy. It was pure ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... so foolish! And then I married him. I got w-what I wanted. But there's a verse about leanness in the soul, isn't there? That's what I had. He wanted some one to look after the children, and I looked after you—no more. The struggling hasn't ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... place, he is stout, like myself. We are both agreed that many of the defects of American letters to-day are due to the sorry leanness of our writing men. We have no Chestertons, no Bellocs. I look to Don Marquis, to H.L. Mencken, to Heywood Broun, to Clayton Hamilton, and to my friend here portraited, to remedy this. If only Mr. Simeon Strunsky were stouter! He is plump, ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... very small—she threw back the heavy hair to see them better, turning her face sideways to the glass; that her throat was over-slender, and her neck and arms far too thin for beauty, but with a young leanness which might improve with time, though nothing could ever make them white. She was dark, on the whole. She was willing to admit that she was sallow, that her eyes had a rather sad look in them, and even that one was almost imperceptibly larger than the other, though ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... time when American women prided themselves on their fragility. To be healthy, strong or plump was thought to be the height of vulgarity, and refinement was held to be inseparable from leanness and consumption. These views still obtain—so it is said—in Boston, and especially in Bostonian literary circles; but elsewhere the American woman is growing plump and healthy, and is actually proud of it. While wise men are heartily glad of this change ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... life, which had been nothing but a succession of holy deeds, had finally conferred upon her a sort of pallor and transparency; and as she advanced in years she had acquired what may be called the beauty of goodness. What had been leanness in her youth had become transparency in her maturity; and this diaphaneity allowed the angel to be seen. She was a soul rather than a virgin. Her person seemed made of a shadow; there was hardly sufficient body to provide for sex; a little matter ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Incidentally he bought young sheep in season, and chickens from the Mexican ranchers, and even a bear that had been shot up in the mountains very early in the spring, before the fat had given place to leanness. Whatever else Starr did he kept carefully to himself, but his meat buying was perfectly authentic and satisfactory. And if those who knew his past record wondered at his occupation, Starr had plenty of reasons for the change, and plenty of time in ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... fright, Engulf'd the victor steed from mortal sight. Haste from thy woods, mine Arbuthnot, with speed, Rich woods, where lean Scotch cattle love to feed: Let Gaffer Gooch and Boodle's patriot band, Fat from the leanness of a plundered land, True Cincinnati, quit their patent ploughs, Their new steam-harrows, and their premium sows; Let all in bulky majesty appear, Roll the dull eye, and yawn th' unmeaning cheer. Ye veteran Swiss, of senatorial ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... shall the Lord, the Lord of Hosts, send among his fat ones, leanness; and under his glory he shall kindle a burning like the burning of ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... insignia, for he stood head and shoulders above his companions and bore himself with an air of authority. He was unusually tall, at least six feet three, and very slim, very lithe; he was alert, keen; he was like the blade of a rapier. The leanness of his legs was accentuated by his stiff, starched riding-breeches and close-fitting pigskin puttees, while his face, apart from all else, would ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... can make out a pointed shape, like a mounted picture, silhouetted against the curtains, which slightly blacken the window. It is as though the quilt were lifted from underneath by a stick, for my Aunt Josephine is leanness itself. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... finished, devoured everything that was left in his calmly hungry way, and then sat back on his haunches with one paw on the plate, as though for the sake of memory. Drollo's hunger was of the chronic kind: it seemed impossible either to assuage it or to fill him. There was a gaunt leanness about him which I am satisfied no amount of food could ever fatten. I think he knew it too, and that accounted for his resignation. At length, just before sunset, the boat returned, floating up the river with the tide, old Bartolo steering and managing the brown sails. Felipa sprang up joyfully: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... round and flexible as the branch of a willow; what elegance there was in her modest corsage, which displayed for the first time her lovely arms and neck, half afraid of their own exposure. She still was not robust, but the leanness that she herself had owned to was not brought into prominence by any bone or angle, her dark skin was soft and polished, the color of ancient statues which have been slightly tinted yellow by exposure to the sun. ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... checked itself within a yard of Margaret, and the lady—a stranger—held back long enough to stamp on her hostess a sharp impression of sallowness, leanness, keenness, before she said, in a voice that might have been addressing an unruly committee meeting: "I am Lady Caroline Duckett—a fact I found it impossible to make clear to the young woman ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... kindly permitted to visit the Sultan's harem as often as I pleased and there look upon the 'lights of the world.' These 'lights of the world' consisted of five hundred bodies of unwieldy avoirdupois. The ladies of the harem gazed upon my leanness with commiserating wonder." ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... have half good enough opinions of our possibilities; do not expect half enough of ourselves; we do not demand half enough, hence the meagerness, the stinginess of what we actually get. We do not demand the abundance which belongs to us, hence the leanness, the lack of fulness, the incompleteness of our lives. We do not demand royally enough. We are content with too little of the things worth while. It was intended that we should live the abundant life, that we should have plenty of everything that is ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... a cushion for the stone, standing silhouetted against the shadow of the walls, whilst the slight breeze blowing the snow-white raiment outlined the tremendous width of shoulder, the slimness of the waist, and the muscular leanness ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... I was astonished at the divine magnificence of the limbs. The breast was powerful, broad, and arched; the arms and thighs were full, and softly muscular; the feet were elegant, and of the most perfect shape; nowhere, on the whole body, was there a trace either of fat or of leanness and decay. A perfect man lay in great beauty before me; and the rapture which the sight caused made me forget for a moment that the immortal spirit had left such an abode. I laid my hand on his heart—there was a deep silence—and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the year '92—the year of leanness—the scene a spot between Sukhum and Otchenchiri, on the river Kodor, a spot so near to the sea that amid the joyous babble of a sparkling rivulet the ocean's deep-voiced thunder was ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... flash of her first glance the girl's eyes took in every particular and detail of him. She noted the huge frame, broad, yet lean with the gaunt leanness of health, and endurance, and physical strength. The sinew-corded, bronzed hands that clenched slowly as his glance rested for a moment upon the face of Lapierre. The weather-tanned neck that rose, columnlike, from the open shirt-throat. The well-poised ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... door. They looked up on my entrance, but refrained from saluting me, which, as I was plainly dressed, and much travel-stained, was excusable. By the fire, partaking of a coarse meal, sat a fourth man of so singular an appearance that I must needs describe him. He was of great height and extreme leanness, resembling a maypole rather than a man. His face matched his form, for it was long and meagre, and terminated in a small peaked beard, which like his hair and moustachios was as white as snow. With all this his eyes glowed with something of the fire of youth, and his brown ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... each other, pressing closely together their twisted and knotty fingers. Even here, among hundreds of his own kind, he attracted attention by his resemblance to a sparrow-hawk of the steppes, by his rapacious leanness, his easy stride, outwardly calm but alert and watchful as the flight of the ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... gazed at his approaching host. Bushy whiskers and yellowish gray hair, stained by camp smoke, concealed most of the face, but failed wholly to hide the gaunt, almost cadaverous, cheeks. It was a healthy leanness, Smoke decided, as he noted the wide flare of the nostrils and the breadth and depth of chest that gave spaciousness to the guaranty of oxygen ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... When I had introduced them they looked each other up and down appraisingly, Entedius appearing to relish Tanno's swarthy vigor, warm coloring and exuberant health as much as did Tanno his hard-muscled leanness and weather-beaten complexion. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... which subdivide in old age or in youth, when becoming lean? Which are the parts of the limbs of the human frame where no amount of fat makes the flesh thicker, nor any degree of leanness ever diminishes it? ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... On the mountain we might buy eggs and fowls; but as the first were generally bad when sold to us, we soon got disgusted with them; and though we put up with the fowls as a change of diet, their toughness and leanness would have made them rejected everywhere else. Being the rainy reason, we had great difficulty in purchasing a little honey. Wild coffee was now and then obtainable; but it made, in the absence of sugar, and with or without ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... bowie-knife, and laying them fraternally, three in a bed, in the frying-pan. 'Blessed be Moses, who forbade thee to the Jews, whereby we, of freer dispensations, heirs of all the ages, inherit also pigs more numerous and bacon cheaper! O Pork! what could campaigners do without thy fatness, thy leanness, thy saltness, thy portableness?' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Quixote's niece and his housekeeper got word of his homecoming. When they saw him, and observed his pallor and leanness, they began to weep and beat their breasts, and ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... I imagine, if I live to be old. Showing us his withered fleshless arms, and taking hold of his armlets, he observed: "The time was when these armlets could not slip off. Now, see how easily they come away." He then abused me for my leanness, and admired the Taleb (Overweg), because he had more flesh on his bones. His highness also stated that he and a single man went to Damerghou and back in thirteen days, bringing a caravan of ghaseb. They never stopped on the road, but travelled ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... except Forese, skimmed away like cranes, swift alike through eagerness and through leanness. Forese lingered a moment to have a parting word with his friend, and to prophesy the violent end of the chief of his family, Corso, run away with and dragged at the heels of his horse faster and faster, till the frenzied animal smites him dead. Having given the poet this information, the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... creature, this Tiedor, tall and straight in his muscular leanness and with wide-set gray eyes in the face of a Greek god. Olive-skinned like the messenger, he was, and with the high forehead of an intellectual. He swept the assemblage with a haughty gaze when ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... carbine knife, and two revolvers. They found about him bills of exchange, Canada money, and a diary. A venerable old negro living in the vicinity had the misfortune to possess a horse. This horse was a relic of former generations, and showed by his protruding ribs the general leanness of the land. He moved in an eccentric amble, and when put upon his speed was generally run backward. To this old negro's horse was harnessed a very shaky and absurd wagon, which rattled like approaching dissolution, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... was one of the handsomest and most accomplished princes in Europe, was very desirous of becoming the husband of Anne Nevile," etc.—Miss STRICKLAND: Life of Margaret of Anjou.] Spare, like Henry V., almost to the manly defect of leanness, his proportions were slight to those which gave such portly majesty to the vast-chested Edward, but they evinced the promise of almost equal strength,—the muscles hardened to iron by early exercise in arms, the sap of youth never wasted by riot and debauch. His short purple manteline, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... refrained from saluting me, which, as I was plainly dressed and much stained by travel, was in some degree pardonable. By the fire, partaking of a coarse meal, was a fourth man of so singular an appearance that I must needs describe him. He was of great height and extreme leanness. His face matched his form, for it was long and thin, terminating in a small peaked beard which, like his hair and mustachios, was as white as snow. With all this, his eyes glowed with much of the fire of youth, and his brown complexion ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... ascertained, marched till about midnight to the small town of Leitersburgh, where he rested his worn and wearied command. His condition was really pitiable. A large number of his men were mounted on shoeless horses, whose leanness showed that they had made many a long march through and from Virginia. Or, as was the case with a large proportion of them, they had fat horses, which were stolen from the fields and stalls of the invaded States, but, being entirely unused to such hard and cruel treatment ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... early youth, giving a glow to her countenance and animation to the lithe but scarcely-formed figure, Margaret, with the same original mould, had the pallor and puffiness of ill-health in her complexion, and a largeness of growth more unsatisfactory than leanness, and though her face was lighted up and her eyes sparkled with the joy of meeting her sisters, there were lines about the brow and round the mouth ill suited to her age, which ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which, combined with original vigour of constitution, yet betrayed itself in the veins on the hands and temples, the occasional quiver of the upper lip! His was the frame above all others the most alive to pleasure—deep-chested, compact, sinewy, but thin to leanness—delicate in its texture and extremities, almost to effeminacy. The indifference of the posture, the very habit of the dress —not slovenly, indeed, but easy, loose, careless—seemed to speak of the man's manner of thought and life—his ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... quiet man, his great height accented by a fit leanness, a narrowness of waist and hip, a length of leg and arm. His main article of clothing was the universal shorts of the Xecho settler. But, being fashioned of saffron yellow, they were the more brilliant because of his darkness of skin. For he was not the warm brown of the Terran Negroes ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... English society and if it were superior to American; also if the tone were very high in London. She thought his questions 'academic'—the term she used to see applied in the Times to certain speeches in Parliament. Bending his long leanness over her (she had never seen a man whose material presence was so insubstantial, so unoppressive) and walking almost sidewise, to give her a proper attention, he struck her as innocent, as incapable of guessing that she had had a certain observation ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... science. Painters and sculptors are deeply impenetrated with this truth; for in representing those who practice abstinence by choice or duty as misers or anchorites, they always give them the pallor of disease, the leanness of misery, and the wrinkles ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... other faithful ministers, he was often compelled to mourn on account of the backsliding of the people. These were seasons of depression, when he became subject to severe temptation, and mourned the leanness of his own soul. The beginning of every year however, was a time of refreshing, as he regularly and solemnly made the renewal of his covenant ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean
... daylight. A daring thought flashed into Zaidos' head. He knelt and once more leaned through the opening of the door. He thanked his schoolboy leanness. There was enough space! He waited until the sentry's heavy footfall dragged to the end of the block; then with a struggle he twisted through the door and stood in the open, ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... mistook for Nature, and endeavored to overcome sterility of imagination and want of passion by veneering with magniloquent epithets. They padded their ill-favored Muse, belaced and beruffled her, and covered her with garments stiffened with tawdry embroidery to hide her leanness; they overpowdered and overrouged to give her the beauty Providence had refused. I say their Muse, but they had no Muse of their own; they imported an inferior one from England, and tried her in every style,—Pope's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... so, but the Horses would tell me another Tale, if they could but speak: Though indeed their Leanness speaks loud enough. ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... he arose from his knees, and with a grave, simple grace came forward to greet us. He was not more than eight-and-twenty years old, and he was slightly built and thin—not emaciated, but lean with the wholesome leanness of one who strove to keep his body in the careful order of a machine of which much work was required. His face still had in it the soft roundness and tenderness of youth, that accorded well with its expression of gracious sweetness; but there was a firmness about the fine, strong chin, and in the ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... argued for their lives. Now, if my present purpose thrives, I'll prop my former proposition By building on a small addition. A certain wolf, in point of wit The prudent fisher's opposite, A dog once finding far astray, Prepared to take him as his prey. The dog his leanness pled; 'Your lordship, sure,' he said, 'Cannot be very eager To eat a dog so meagre. To wait a little do not grudge: The wedding of my master's only daughter Will cause of fatted calves and fowls a slaughter; ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... drew himself up, he was not quite so tall as the Russian, but of no mean height, and his intense, ascetic face, emaciated to extreme leanness, now reddened with passion, while the veins stood out upon his high, narrow forehead. He was always very irritable when crossed, and his obstinate ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... reception he felt confident that Horace Endicott had fairly disappeared beneath the new man Dillon. His figure had filled out slightly, and had lost its mournful stoop; his face was no longer wolfish in its leanness, and his color had returned, though melancholy eyes marked by deep circles still betrayed the sick heart. Yet the figure in the glass looked as unlike Horace Endicott as Louis Everard. He compared it with the accurate portrait sent out by his pursuers through the press. Only the day ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... had been confiscated by the committee of public unsafety in '93. Others declared that she had been a popular actress in a small theatre in the days of Napoleon. She was tall and thin—nay, of an exceptional leanness—and her complexion was of a more agreeable yellow than the butter that appeared on her hospitable board; but she had flashing black eyes, and a certain stateliness of gait and grandeur of manner that impressed those young Bohemians, her boarders, with a kind of awe. They talked ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... made such sacrifices for liberty as the French had made. Through years of famine they had starved with grim determination, and the leanness of their race was a byword for more than a generation. They had been for over a century the victims of a system abhorrent to both their intelligence and their character—a system of absolutism which had subsisted on foreign wars and on successful appeals to the national vainglory. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... bight of a sand-hill and protected as well as might be with sails and palmetto branches; and to this, Dickenson, with "Great trembling and Pain of Hartt," carried his baby in his own arms and laid it in its mother's breast. Its little body was pitiful to see from leanness, and a great fever was upon it. Robert Barrow, the crippled captain, and a sick passenger shared the child's shelter. "Whereupon two Canibals appeared, naked, but for a breech-cloth of plaited straw, with Countenances bloody and furious, and foaming at ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... places like Waihee, the path of his journey was marked afterward by leanness and famine. But a king must be fed, and it is not good to anger a king. So, like warning in advance of disaster, Waihee heard of his coming, and all food- getters of field and pond and mountain and sea were busied with getting food for the feast. And behold, ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... older persons. Also, if the carbon of the food does not have a requisite supply of oxygen from the air, or other sources, the body becomes emaciated, although nourishing food may be used. And on the other hand, if there be a diminished supply of food, but an abundance of atmospheric air, leanness and emaciation are sure to follow; owing to the fact that if the oxygen has no waste carbon from the body to unite with, it combines with the fat, and some other soft portions of the body, which the Author of nature seems to have provided for this very purpose; as is seen in the case of ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... without being very regular, were very white and sound, and he never suffered from them. His nose of Grecian shape, was well formed, and his sense of smell perfect. His whole frame was handsomely proportioned, though at this time his extreme leanness prevented the beauty of his features being especially noticed, and had an injurious ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... demands of the Sardinian market. The savage Sards would not have appreciated beauty or grace; but to the savage mind there is something congenial in grotesqueness. Hence gods with four arms and four eyes,[762] warriors with huge horns projecting from their helmets,[763] tall forms of extraordinary leanness,[764] figures with abnormally large heads and hands,[765] huge noses, projecting eyes, and various other deformities. For the home consumption statuettes of a similar character were made; but they were neither so rude nor so devoid ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... remarked, "all about difficulties! but the proverb says, 'A camel dying of leanness is even bigger by much than a horse!' No matter what those distresses may be, were you yet to pluck one single hair from your body, my old friend, it would be stouter ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... tall girls are the fashion. It means not only that the tall girl has come in, but that girls are tall, and are becoming tall, because it is the fashion, and because there is a demand for that sort of girl. There is no hint of stoutness, indeed the willowy pattern is preferred, but neither is leanness suggested; the women of the period have got hold of the poet's idea, "tall and most divinely fair," and are living up to it. Perhaps this change in fashion is more noticeable in England and on the Continent than in America, but that ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... saying much but smiling slightly all the time. Through the thin white clothes which they wore, it was possible to see the lines of their bodies and legs, the beautiful curves of their muscles, his leanness and her flesh, and it was natural to think of the firm-fleshed sturdy children that would be theirs. Their faces had too little shape in them to be beautiful, but they had clear eyes and an appearance of great health and power ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... ragged old frock-coat. Every English word he spoke was supplemented by an Italian vowel, so that his language, though it was perfectly fluent and correct, sounded quite foreign. His extraordinary height and leanness made him grotesque to look at, but neither the comicality of his figure nor his theatrical voice and gesture could kill the fact that he was in earnest, and I felt an ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... the continuation of the clerestory, the proportions, of the western bays at least, are almost the same as those of the nave, and the whole is covered again with a wooden vault, plastered and ribbed to look like stone; and yet that air of leanness, flatness, and emptiness, the chief fault of the ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... particulars about animal and vegetables foods in Russia. "The country," he said, "has no veal—I mean eatable veal, for cows produce calves here as well as elsewhere; but these calves are of Republican leanness. Beef, such as one gets in Paris, is a myth; one remembers it only in dreams. In reality, one has meat twenty years old, which is stringy and which serves to bulk out the packets of hemp intended for exportation. One consoles one's self with excellent tea and exquisite ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... to fatness, leanness, boniness, muscularity and nervousness, and this predisposition is so much a part of the warp and woof of the individual that he can not disguise it. The urge given him by this inborn mechanism is so strong as to be practically ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... one which had the no meaning of a proper name in real life, and which yet was capable of recalling a number of very different, but all pertinent, recollections, as old armour, the precious metals hidden in the ore, &c. Don Quixote's leanness and featureliness are happy exponents of the excess of the formative or imaginative in him, contrasted with Sancho's plump rotundity, and recipiency ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... black and brimstone colour; and behind him a transparent head-covering hung in two gauze-like wings nearly down to the ground. His clothes fitted tight everywhere. He also wore a girdle round his body, which rendered his leanness still more striking. Besides this, the nail of his middle finger was very long, and bent over like a hoe. His whole figure had the appearance of an ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... rations, but grim famine itself is advancing with large strides. The "daily twenty ounces of meal" has sunk to half that quantity; the "ounce or so of butcher's-meat once a week" has vanished, or become HORSE of extreme leanness. The cavalry horses have not tasted oats, nothing but hay or straw (not even water always); the artillery horses had to live by grazing, brown leaves their main diet latterly. Not horses any longer; but walking trestles, poor animals! And the men,—well, they are fallen pale; but they are resolute ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle |
