"Lilliputian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great because nothing greater is at hand; they prefer reigning in hell (excuse the word, I quote Milton) to serving in heaven; in London they would be nothing, at Hogs Norton Spa, or Pumpington Wells, they are every thing; making difficulties about admissions to Lilliputian Almack's." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... first part of the review; and now, with the assistance of their rather Lilliputian battery, and Tom's double headers, they went through some firing quite loud enough to make the little girls start and jump uncomfortably; so this part of the entertainment was brought to rather a sudden conclusion. Jerry had just issued the order, "Close up in ranks to ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks. Part Second - Being the Second Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... of water not easy to describe. Words seem colorless—inadequate to convey the picture it presented or the sense of awe it inspired. Looking at it from among the boulders on the shore it seemed the last degree of madness for human beings to pit their Lilliputian strength against that racing, thundering flood. Certain it was that The Big Mallard was the supreme ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... is an entrance to McCreery's, although that establishment faces on Thirty-fourth Street. Above McCreery's, opposite the corner where the New York Club once had its home, and on property part of which was formerly the house of the Engineers Club, is Best's, once Lilliputian in more than one sense, but no more so. Thereafter every block has its imposing monument to commerce. Silverware is represented by Gorham's at Thirty-sixth Street. Furs in magnificent display fill the windows ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... swaying rush of sound burst joyously on the silence—the slumbering trees awoke, their leaves moved, their dark branches quivered, and the grasses lifted up their green lilliputian sword-blades. Bells!—and SUCH bells!—tongues of melody that stormed the air with sweetest eloquence—round, rainbow bubbles of music that burst upon the wind, and dispersed in delicate ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... political purposes, a congeries of sovereign states, generally centring round the urban metropolis of a rural district smaller than that of an average English county. The material upon which Greek political thought worked was, therefore, from our modern point of view not only small-scale but almost Lilliputian. This can best be appreciated when we consider how many gradations of scale are interposed in the modern world between the government of a town or district of the size of fifth-century Athens and the government of our own sovereign state, the British ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... for a "parliamentary king and a parliamentary constitution, but not a parliamentary God and a parliamentary religion." The interval of a century has not weakened the force of the remark. It is indeed time that we should leave off these petty cavils on frivolous points, these Lilliputian sophistries, whether our "eggs are best broken at the broad ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... lost his chance of preferment there, the furious exile never fails to rage and curse. Is it fair to call the famous "Drapier's Letters" patriotism? They are masterpieces of dreadful humour and invective: they are reasoned logically enough too, but the proposition is as monstrous and fabulous as the Lilliputian island. It is not that the grievance is so great, but there is his enemy—the assault is wonderful for its activity and terrible rage. It is Samson, with a bone in his hand, rushing on his enemies and felling them: one admires not the cause so much as the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... with no ordinary emotion that Katherine Grandison heard that this perfect cousin Ferdinand had at length arrived. She had seen little of him even in his boyish days, and even then he was rather a hero in their Lilliputian circle. ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... Joseph, "when I feel that perhaps I ought at least to risk even my life in order to do something here, in this country. But what is one man's life in the face of this sea of blunders? What is even a giant's effort, against the Lilliputian swarm of modern men who are ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... after her health, his answer had invariably been, of late, "Why, Mrs. A.—is—not very well;" and a smile would play about his mouth, as though he had a delightful vision of a widower-hood. The mystery was at length solved, by the exhibition of sundry articles of a Lilliputian wardrobe, followed by an announcement in the Morning Post, under ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various
... wit, used to be frequented by minor members of 'The Fancy,' who are technically called flat-catchers, and who picked up a very pretty living by a quick hand, a rattling tongue, a deal board, three thimbles, and a pepper-corn. The game they played with these three curious articles is a sort of Lilliputian game at cups and balls; and the beauty of it lies in dexterously seeming to place the pepper-corn under one particular thimble, getting a green to bet that it was there, and then winning his money by showing that it is not. Every ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... and he had plenty of spare time on his hands, which he spent in birdnesting, making whistles out of reeds and scrannel straws, and erecting Lilliputian mills in the little water-streams that ran into the Dewley bog. But his favourite amusement at this early age was erecting clay engines in conjunction with his chosen playmate, Bill Thirlwall. The place is still pointed out where the future engineers made their first essays in modelling. The boys ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... right arm, puny as it was at the period in question. Our battles were obstinate and frequent; but as the quarrels of the two families and their relations on each side, were as bitter and pugnacious in fairs and markets as ours were in school, we hit upon the plan of holding our Lilliputian engagements upon the same days on which our fathers and brothers contested. According to this plan, it very often happened that the corresponding parties were successful, and as frequently, that whilst the Caseys were well drubbed in the fair, their sons were victorious at school, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... "pictures." North of Waldorf is Pelham, consisting of 1,200 acres, one of the largest fruit farms in the world. Passing Esopus Island, which seems like a great stranded and petrified whale, along whose sides often cluster Lilliputian-like canoeists, we see Brown's Dock on the west bank at the mouth of Black Creek, which rises eight miles from Newburgh on the eastern slope of the Plaaterkill Mountains. Flowing through Black Pond, known ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... care is exercised. There are no partitions on this floor, nothing but massive columns of clay to support the ceiling. These columns are more than a metre in height. It is a gigantic cathedral in which the lilliputian architects have displayed considerable art. By means of this immense empty chamber a huge reservoir of air is placed in the very centre of the construction; through the galleries in the external wall it is sufficiently renewed for the purposes of respiration ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... and arrows, my little man?" said her ladyship to Hal, as she reviewed her Lilliputian regiment. "You can't march, man, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... proper distance; and with the Needle Rocks, constituting a whole that is scarcely to be equalled:"—another declares that "the most lofty and magnificent fabrics of Art, compared with these stupendous works of Nature, sink in idea to Lilliputian size:"—and a third, that "the towering precipices of Scratchell's Bay are of the most elegant forms;" and "the pearly hue of the chalk is beyond description by words, probably out of the power ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... their duty as a religious body. What could an earnest, direct character, like Isaac T. Hopper, do in the midst of a sect thus situated? He proceeded as he always did. He walked straight forward in what seemed to him the path of duty, and snapped all the lilliputian cords with which they tried ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... the travellers' brows as they reclined against mounds of sand, while the flowers in the valley sent up their dying notes. One by one the moons arose, till four—among them the Lilliputian, discovered by Prof. Barnard in 1893—were in the sky, flooding the landscape with their silvery light, and something in the surroundings touched a sympathetic cord in ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... North except the oleander. Even that had wholly changed its habits and appearance, and resembled the pot-grown plant of Northern households only as the gigantic sequoia of California resembles the stunted Lilliputian pine of the Siberian tundra. The Key West oleander is not a plant, nor a shrub; it is a tree. In the yard of a private house on Carolina Street I saw an oleander nearly thirty feet in height, whose branches shaded an area twenty ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... place of atoms, mighty spheres in place of 'dust,' 'the firmament above' instead of 'the firmament beneath.' In fact, the astronomer, in sweeping with his telescopic eye the 'blue depths of ether,' is, as it were, some Lilliputian inhabitant of an atom prying into the autumnal structure of some Brobdignagian world of saw-dust; organised into spiral and other elementary forms, of life, it may be, something like our own. The infinite height appears, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... to play the part of Gulliver, only visit the inferior planets, such as Mercury, Venus, or Mars, whose density is a little less than that of the earth; but do not venture into the great planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune; for there the order will be changed, and you will become Lilliputian." ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... when passing a depot for literature, especially in a strange place; but on the present occasion a Brobdignagian notice caught my eye, and gave me a queer sensation inside my waistcoat—"Awful smash among the Banks!" Below, in more Lilliputian characters, followed a list of names. I had just obtained notes of different banks for my travelling expenses, and I knew not how many thereof might belong to the bankrupt list before me; a ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... deer; perfect and beautiful, but cast in a Lilliputian mould. It stood barely a foot high, the most delicate thing he had ever looked upon. Mature in every detail of its proportion, the dainty hoofs, the fragile legs, smooth-coated body, and small, wide-antlered head—a ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... the daring flights of the previous century, writers contented themselves with marking time. Chenedolle, whose verse Madame de Stael said to be as lofty as Lebanon, and whose fame is lilliputian to-day, was, with Ducis, the representative of their advance-guard. In painting, with Fragonard, Greuze and Gros, there was a greater stir of genius, yet without anything corresponding ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... of diving, feeding, coquetting, quarreling swimmers, relieving the colorless ice with groups of jetty velvet and scoter ducks, gray and white-winged coots, crested mergansers in their gorgeous spring plumage, and fat, lazy black ducks, with Lilliputian blue and green winged teal, filling the air with the whirr of swift pinions, and the ceaseless murmur of the mating myriads, rested from their long northward journey, a host such as mortal eye hath seldom ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... over them, I saw that the shining shaft was an unbroken span of cubes; not multi-arched like the Lilliputian bridge of the dragon chamber, but flat and running out over an abyss that gaped at my very feet. All of a hundred feet they stretched; a slender, lustrous girder crossing unguessed depths of gloom. From far, far below came the faint ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... then goes on with his hearty laudation of this lilliputian luminary of the fields, and hesitates not to describe it as "of all floures the floure." The famous Scottish Peasant loved it just as truly, and did it equal honor. Who that has once read, can ever forget his harmonious and pathetic address to a mountain daisy on turning it up ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... to pay my promised visit to the Emperor of Blefuscu, when one day a Lilliputian noble called at my house privately, and at night; and without sending in his name, he asked me to allow him to come in ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... hair. When next the street-boy sorrowfully exclaims on your passing that 'it's no wonder the barbers all 'list for soldiers,' or some puny idiot at your club—a lilliputian model of popular 'manhood'—sniggers to his friend behind his coffee as you come in: call to mind pictures of certain brave 'tailed men' of old, at the winking of whose eyelid your tiny club 'man' would have expired on the instant. Threaten him with a Viking. Show him in ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... remember the time," returned Mrs. Brewster, "when we ran away from school to see the Lilliputian bazaar and your mother was there and walked you out by the ear?" Thus the flow ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... in Wurtemburg, Switzerland, Hanover, Thuringia, Hesse, certain parts of Sweden, France, and Russia, the subdivision of property has been carried out to an extent which has produced truly Lilliputian holdings. In Switzerland there is a certain commune where the custom obtains of transmitting by will to each child its proportional share of each parcel; so that a single walnut-tree has no fewer than sixty proprietors. This reminds ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... largely on street carromatas. We had a force of small boys, clad in what Mr. Kipling calls "inadequate" shirts, whose business it was to go forth in response to the command, "Busca carromata," and to return not till accompanied by the two-wheeled nightmare and the Lilliputian pony. ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... mysterious and sweet. The grand terraces about the castle were still, save for the buzz of summer insects and the low, sleepy twittering of birds. There was not a star to be seen and only the glow-worm lent an occasional lilliputian effulgence to the great, dark world. All within the castle appeared to have retired earlier than usual; perhaps for the purpose of an earlier awakening, as their Graces of Ellswold were to set out early on the morrow morning, aiming to make ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... you quite confuse me with being so silly,' said Mrs. Gibson, fluttered and annoyed as she usually was with the Lilliputian darts' Cynthia flung at her. She had recourse to her accustomed feckless piece of retaliation—bestowing some favour on Molly; and this did not hurt Cynthia ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... handcuffs, and, passing her hand softly and caressingly over his head, lamented the loss of his poor hair. Amongst them they relieved him of his straitjacket, set up his head, covered his feet, and he slept like a top for want of drastics and opiates, and in spite of some brilliant charges by the Lilliputian cavalry. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... when one can lift his nose up, by grace of an eddy in the tide, one cannot help seeing the whiteness of a mess-tin, the blue steel of a helmet, the black steel of a rifle. Anon, by the dazzling jet of sparks that flies from a pocket flint-and-steel, or the red flame that expands upon the lilliputian stem of a match, one can see beyond the vivid near relief of hands and faces to the silhouetted and disordered groups of helmeted shoulders, swaying like surges that would storm the sable stronghold of the night. Then, all goes out, and while each tramping soldier's legs swing to and fro, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... was a subsequent proprietor. Dugdale supposes the village took its name from a castle, once on the premises; and that the castle-hill yet remains: but this hill is too small, even to admit a shelter for a Lilliputian, and is evidently an artificial trifle, designed for a monument. It might hold, for its ancient furniture, a turret, termed a castle—perhaps it held nothing in Dugdale's time: the modern is a gladiator, in the ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... when Drake, at the age of twenty-seven, sailed out of Plymouth on the Nombre de Dios expedition that brought him into fame. He led a Lilliputian fleet: the Pascha and the Swan, a hundred tons between them, with seventy-three men, all ranks and ratings, aboard of them. But both vessels were 'richly furnished with victuals and apparels for a whole year, and no less heedfully provided with all manner of ammunition, artillery [which then ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... conventional art than painting or sculpture; and it is the least striking, as it is the most comprehensive of the three. To hear a strain of music to see a beautiful woman, a river, a great city, or a starry night, is to make a man despair of his Lilliputian arts in language. Now, to gain that emphasis which seems denied to us by the very nature of the medium, the proper method of literature is by selection, which is a kind of negative exaggeration. It is the right of the literary artist, as Thoreau ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the marching when, later on, the Lilliputian army formed itself in line and kept step to the music of a lively tune, and he was far too shy on the first day to join in the play, though he watched the game of the Butterfly with intense interest from his nook by ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... inspection, he informed us that he had discovered uranium, and that it now remained only to submit it to certain operations in a laboratory in order to prepare the substance that was to give renewed life to those lilliputian monsters in the car, which fed upon men's breath and ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... Jane's mind a memory picture of Nannie Slade Hunter before the joyfully hailed arrival of the Teddybear,—the tiny, white, enameled chiffonier with its little bunches of painted flowers spilling over with offerings—Lilliputian garments as 'fine as a fairy's first tooth'—the chortling pride of Edward R.—the beaming, nervous mother and mother-in-law—the endless flowers and books; Nannie herself, cunningly draped and swathed in Batik crepe, prettier than ever before in ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... its past, its childhood, the tiny life with the dew upon it; they saw its youth when the dew was melting, and the creature raised its Lilliputian mouth to drink from a cup too large for it, and they saw how the water spilt; they saw its hopes that were never realized; they saw its hours of intellectual blindness, men call sin; they saw its hours of all-radiating insight, which men call ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... doors. Their brains are absolutely set madding with Punch and the Puppet-Show, the Flying Horses, Signior Polito, the Fire-Eater, the celebrated Mr. Paap, and the Irish Giant. The children too lavish all their holiday money in toys and gilt gingerbread, and fill the house with the Lilliputian din of drums, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... in facsimile, since which there has been added to it a Standard edition of Goldsmith's Works, edited by Mr. Gibbs. I had the pleasure of making many researches respecting the old London publisher (Goldsmith's friend), John Newbery, respecting his Lilliputian Classics, and I have been enabled to introduce several of the Quarto early editions to the firm, and have had great pleasure in writing and placing on record numerous facts and data, since utilized in the very interesting ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson
... reviewing some troops. They have actually changed his features and figure, and, if I recollect rightly, altered his cockade and Uniform.... In the Musee des Arts and Metiers are some models of ships; even these were obliged to strike their Lilliputian tri-colours and hoist the white Ensign. And now Paris, fare thee well.... Thou art a mixture of strange ingredients. "Oh," said the Hairdresser who was cutting Kitty's hair yesterday, "had we your National spirit we should be a great people, mais c'est l'Egoisme qui regne a Paris." ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... his headset followed, after which Mac oozed into the Lilliputian air lock at the bottom, now rear, wall of the cabin. He nodded to Ruiz, who secured the air lock, then adjusted his suit control to force a little pressure into his suit. Gradually the suit became livable. Then he cracked the other air-lock valve and allowed pressure to leak ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing
... with them. Only the crow and the raven tarry with us. Our city lies in the midst of a desert of the purest —most unadulterated, and compromising sand—in which infernal soil nothing but that fag-end of vegetable creation, "sage-brush," ventures to grow. If you will take a Lilliputian cedar tree for a model, and build a dozen imitations of it with the stiffest article of telegraph wire—set them one foot apart and then try to walk through them, you'll understand (provided the floor is covered ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... changes since we met; A patient little seamstress yet, With small means striving, Have you a Lilliputian spouse? And do you dwell in some doll's house? —Is ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... teach the art of dwarfing, training, and grafting trees and plants, and of laying out miniature landscapes, into which artificial mountains and valleys are introduced, and very frequently lakes, studded with lilliputian fern-covered islands, around which gold and silver fish may be seen darting about; or, if the sun is hot, taking refuge under curious Japanese bridges, or the broad leaves of the lotus, which usually cover a portion of the surface—the only thing out of proportion, probably, ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... paper, Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, for instance. At the other extreme of size may be cited the Pickering diamond classics, also in a large-paper edition, pretty, dainty little books, with their Lilliputian character only emphasized by their excess of white paper. But their print is too fine to read, and their margins are out of proportion to the printed page. Though their type is small, they by no means exhibit the ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... recorded forever in the chronicles of that empire, while posterity shall hardly believe them, although attested by millions. I reflected what a mortification it must prove to me to appear as inconsiderable in this nation as one single Lilliputian would be among us. But this I conceived was to be the least of my misfortunes; for, as human creatures are observed to be more savage and cruel in proportion to their bulk, what could I expect but to be a morsel in the mouth of the first among ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... slowly, cleaving the dull-colored tide, gazing, as we sit enthroned in easy-chairs on the upper deck, out upon the few public institutions of Belgrade—the military college and the handsome road leading to the garden of Topschidere, where the Lilliputian court has its tiny summer residence. Sombre memories overhang this "Cannoneer's Valley," this Topschidere, where Michael, the son and successor of good Milosch as sovereign prince of the nation, perished by assassination in 1868. In a few minutes we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... call the speech of the landscape—in contrast with those grander and vaster regions of the earth which keep an indifferent aspect in the presence of men's toil and devices. What does it signify that a lilliputian train passes over a viaduct amidst the abysses of the Apennines, or that a caravan laden with a nation's offerings creeps across the unresting sameness of the desert, or that a petty cloud of steam sweeps for an instant over the face of an Egyptian colossus ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... was always the occasion for the display of the family plate, with the Lilliputian cups, of rare old family china, out of which the guests sipped the fragrant herb. A large lump of loaf sugar invariably accompanied each cup, on a little plate, and the delightful beverage was sweetened by an occasional nibble, amid the more ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... and well-intended address[32] to the mechanics upon their combinations. Will it do good? Umph. It takes only the hand of a Lilliputian to light a fire, but would require the diuretic powers of Gulliver to extinguish it. The Whigs will live and die in the heresy that the world is ruled by little pamphlets and speeches, and that if you can sufficiently ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... melancholy ways; here and there I got a glimpse of faded turf, looking like a worn-out bit of carpet, or some appearance of a kitchen garden, the sparse vegetables of which (potatoes, cabbages, and lettuces), would have figured appropriately upon a Lilliputian table. A few sickly wallflowers were trying to enjoy the air ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... of me this literary attempt is quite indifferent—a Lilliputian affair. In comparing my work with other work of the same kind, I find a sort of relative satisfaction; but I see the intrinsic futility of it, and the insignificance of its success or failure. I do not believe in the public; I do not believe ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... criminal than else it must have been thought was the condition of the roads at night during the assizes. At that time, all the law business of populous Liverpool, and also of populous Manchester, with its vast cincture of populous rural districts, was called up by ancient usage to the tribunal of Lilliputian Lancaster. To break up this old traditional usage required, 1, a conflict with powerful established interests, 2, a large system of new arrangements, and 3, a new parliamentary statute. But as yet this change was merely in contemplation. ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... to vases. They should, for the most part, be simple in design and uniform in tint. Avoid 'fishy' mouths, too wide for their (the vases') hight. Never put Lilliputian flowers, in no matter how large a quantity, into Brobdignagian vessels. In other respects, endeavor to adapt your boxes to the character of your flowers. For dahlias, flat dishes will be found very convenient, spread with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... only the edges of the flower faces turned to the sky, while the stems were visible down to the ground, and formed a Lilliputian forest in which it were easy to imagine tiny creatures spending days as secluded and as happy as I enjoyed in my forest of beech and birch and maple, which came down to the very ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... unremitting labours and perils. But we shall preserve it; and our mass of weight and wealth on the good side is so great as to leave no danger that force will ever be attempted against us. We have only to awake and snap the Lilliputian cords with which they have been entangling us during the first sleep which succeeded ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... what was, to all ordinary eyes, a mere horse-pond. Besides, did I not once find thee gazing with respect at a lizard, in the attitude of one who looks upon a crocodile? Now this is, doubtless, so far a harmless exercise of your imagination; for the puddle cannot drown you, nor the Lilliputian alligator eat you up. But it is different in society, where you cannot mistake the character of those you converse with, or suffer your fancy to exaggerate their qualities, good or bad, without exposing yourself not only to ridicule, but to great and serious inconveniences. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... view of him, with his ancient, swarthy, and grim complexion. I screamed out exceedingly; my sister also and our companions set up a roar, and the former dragged me with violence over the stile on which, at the instant I was disengaged from it, this warlike Lilliputian leaned and stretched himself after me, but came not over. With palpitating hearts and loud cries we ran towards the house, alarmed the family, and told them our trouble. The men instantly left their dinner, with whom still trembling we went to the place, and ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... forest not discernible at more than a mile's distance, for the trees that compose it are "shin oaks," the tallest rising to the height of only eighteen inches above the surface of the ground. Eighteen inches is enough to conceal the body of a man lying in a prostrate attitude; and as the Lilliputian trees grow thick as jimson weeds, the cover will be a secure one. Unless the pursuers should stray so close as to tread upon them, there will be no danger of their being seen. Further reflection has by this time satisfied them that the Indians are not upon the upper ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... their Alphabet," Either before or after composing his lines on Eliza, however, Pope chose to attribute the volume to her. The passage which doubtless provoked his noble rage against shameless scribblers was part of a debate between Lilliputian Court ladies who were anxious lest their having been seen by Gulliver in a delicate situation should reflect on their reputations. The speaker ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... float great flakes of gray fluff, which remain there, motionless. In the foreground, in front of and below this almost fantastic landscape, is a miniature garden where two beautiful white cats are taking the air, amusing themselves by pursuing each other through the paths of a Lilliputian labyrinth, shaking the wet sand from their paws. The garden is as conventional as possible: not a flower, but little rocks, little lakes, dwarf trees cut in grotesque fashion; all this is not natural, but it ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... attacks upon her father. Out of that attitude was born for her a hard dilemma of conflicting loyalties. It was all a fabric woven of gossamer threads, but Gulliver was bound into helplessness by just such Lilliputian fetters. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... bulk but built upon exactly the same plan and proportions, say a Brobdingnagian and a Lilliputian, and let both show their powers in the arena. Suppose the first to weigh a million times more than the second. If the giant could raise to his shoulder, some thirty-five feet from the ground, a weight twenty thousand pounds, the dwarf can raise ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... made a powerful speech in relation to the arrest of General Stone. It was powerful, patriotic, and rises to the skies over the Lilliputian oratory of the thus-called scholars, etc. Wade is a monolith,—he is cut out full ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... of the highroad, the flat mountain face opened a black, egg-shaped mouth at me. I got out of the carriage to approach it, and while I stood peering down the dark throat, as if I were a Lilliputian doctor examining the tongue of Giant Gulliver, I was suddenly clapped upon the shoulder. It flashed into my mind that perhaps it was forbidden to stare at the tunnel-in-making; and turning to defend myself from a lash of red tape, with the adage that "a ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... makes us dumb in face of that living immensity. Then we understand that this host whose fountain-head is out of sight is being frightfully cannonaded by our 75's; the shells set off behind us and arrive in front of us. In the middle of the lilliputian ranks the giant smoke-clouds leap like hellish gods. We see the flashes of the shells which are entering that flesh scattered over the earth. It is smashed and burned entirely in places, and that ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... edgeways, and of sufficient length to allow of two hundred of them to rest in that position one against another. The trough thus charged is fixed slopingly upon the machine, over a little table, as big as the plate of an ordinary sovereign-balance. The coin nearest to the Lilliputian platform drops upon it, being pushed forward by the weight of those behind. Its own weight presses the table down; but how far down? Upon that hangs the whole merit and discriminating power of the machine. At the back and on each ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... enough professional seamen to work the vessels and lay the guns. But, though Captain Pringle manoeuvred the flotilla and Lieutenant Dacre handled the flagship Carleton, the actual command remained in Carleton's own hands. The capital ship (and the only real square-rigged 'ship') of this Lilliputian fleet was Pringle's Inflexible, which had been taken up the Richelieu in sections and hauled past the portages with immense labour before reaching St Johns, whence there is a clear run upstream to Lake Champlain. The Inflexible carried thirty ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... was the fashion to clothe children in garments similar to those worn by their elders. A company of little ones, therefore, looked like an assemblage of Lilliputian merveilleuses and incroyables. The little men and women also accompanied their mamas to receptions and the theatre, where they joined in the conversation, danced vis-a-vis with their elders, made ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... burden of which weighed very heavily upon him, for many reasons. His strong sense of justice made it painful for him to owe debts he could not pay. He had an exceeding love of imparting to others, and these pecuniary impediments tied down his large soul with a thousand lilliputian cords. He had an honest pride of independence, which chafed under any obligation that could be avoided. His strong attachment to the Society of Friends rendered him sensitive to their opinion; and at that period ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child |
