"Puny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... continues to fall, or as long as the sea continues to send its tax-gatherers to the land. In this great cycle of give and take of the elements, the affairs of men cut but a momentary figure; how puny they are, how transient! How the great changes, which in time amount to revolutions, go on over our heads and under our feet, and we rarely heed them, and are powerless to stay them! A summer shower carries the soil of my side-hill, ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... an obituary notice, says of Chopin that "he lived ten years, ten miraculous years, with a breath ready to fly away" (il a vecu dix ans, dix ans de miracle, d'un souffle pret a s'envoler). Another writer remarks: "In seeing him [Chopin] so puny, thin, and pale, one thought for a. long time that he was dying, and then one got accustomed to the idea that he could live always so." Stephen Heller in chatting to me about Chopin expressed the same idea in different words: "Chopin was often reported to have died, so often, indeed, that people ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... homage as king, he was at first seen about a corner of the High House with his nurses; and then in a while it was said, and the tale noted, but not much, that he must needs go for his health's sake, and because he was puny, to some stead amongst the fields, and folk heard say that he was gone to the strong house of a knight somewhat stricken in years, who was called Lord Richard the Lean. The said house was some twelve miles from Oakenham, not far from the northern ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... and to follow the stream of folly, whatever course it shall happen to take. The good-natured man is commonly the darling of the petty wits, with whom they exercise themselves in the rudiments of raillery; for he never takes advantage of failings, nor disconcerts a puny satirist with unexpected sarcasms; but while the glass continues to circulate, contentedly bears the expense of an uninterrupted laughter, and retires ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... noise we made, I heard them running up the stairs, and crying out—I heard my mother crying out—and Peggotty. Then he was gone; and the door was locked outside; and I was lying, fevered and hot, and torn, and sore, and raging in my puny way, upon ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... tunnel, and emerged a few seconds later, screeching hoarsely, right in London. It hit me below the belt. I experienced what they call a 'sinking' feeling in the pit of my stomach. I thought what a fool I was, how puny and insignificant; and, again, what a fool I must be, to come blundering along here into the maw of this vast beast, this London—I and my miserable five-and-twenty pounds! For one wild moment the panic-born thought of ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... a sufficient quantity of waste paper. I perhaps may add to the heap; for, as men do not always know the motive of their own actions, I may possibly be induced, by the same sort of vanity as other puny authors have been, to desire to be in print. But I am very well satisfied with you for my judge, and if you should not think proper to take any notice of the hint I have here sent you, I shall conclude that I am an impertinent ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... me, I experienced an involuntary respect for the stranger. I admired his intimate knowledge of balls, dresses, faux pas, marriages, and gossip of all sorts—and still more I admired his bulk. I have an instinctive feeling of reverence towards "Stout Gentlemen;" and, while contrasting my own puny form with his, I laboured under a deep consciousness of personal insignificance. From being five feet eight, I seemed to shrink to five feet one; from weighing ten stones, I suddenly fell to seven and a half; while my portly rival sat opposite to me, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... crash came. Our efforts to escape the pier were of no avail. I made a puny effort to break the impact with a pole, but was sent sprawling on the deck. Al tumbled headlong on top of the engine, which he had stopped at last, our passenger rolled over and over, but we all stayed with ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... Essay on Man, because he poured into them a still more vivid energy. But I doubt if there is any reasonable definition of poetry which would exclude even Pope the "essayist" from the circle of the poets. He was a puny poet, it may be, but poets were always, as they are to-day, of all shapes ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... I have already said that I don't intend to waste a word on the puny, narrow-chested, short-winded crew whom we are leaving astern. Pulsating life no longer concerns itself with them. I am thinking of the few, the scattered few amongst us, who have absorbed new and vigorous truths. Such men stand, as it were, at the ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... girders. Suspended beneath was a series of tracks carrying traveling and revolving cranes capable of handling the heaviest pieces. We climbed to the top and looked down at the vast stretch of hundreds of feet of deck. It was so vast that it seemed rather the work of a superman than of the puny little humans working ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... thou, Tho' puny be our forms to thine, These forms possess, yea, even now, A spark, a ray ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... children. I was urged to "set by," so I went inside the house. The mother was lying on a bed in the corner, and I said to her, "Are you sick?" (You must never ask a mountaineer if he is ill, that is equivalent to asking him if he is cross.) "Yes," she said, "I'm powerful puny." "Have you been sick long?" was my next question. "I've been punying around all winter." "Has it been cold here?" "Yes, mighty cold." "Have you had any snow?" "Yes, we've had a right smart of snow twicet, and oncet it was ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 3, July, 1900 • Various
... the individual is concerned, a most irrational thing; and so far as the world of beasts and emotional men and women is concerned, it is a most necessary thing. That life may live and continue to live, a driving force is needed that is greater than the puny will of life. And in the disorder produced by the passion for perpetuation, whether or not assisted by imagination, is found this driving force. As Ernest Haeckel, that brave old hero of ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... successful than those of Greece and Rome, for Osiris, etc., by the might of the devil, of darkness, are truly terrific. Cybele stands as a middle term half-way between these dark forms and the Greek or Roman. Pluto is the very model of a puny attempt at darkness utterly failing. He looks big; he paints himself histrionically; he soots his face; he has a masterful dog, nothing half so fearful as a wolf-dog or bloodhound; and he raises his own manes, poor, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... ever remind these puny controvertists, that those acts are laws of permanent obligation; that two of them are now in force, and that the other expired only when it had fulfilled its end. Such laws the commons cannot make; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... celebrated for his writings on many subjects of science, deserves especial mention; who, in the six books in which he, sometimes incorrectly, attacks Cicero, imitating those malignant farce writers, is justly blamed by the learned as a puppy barking from a distance with puny voice against the ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... small and poorly-ventilated houses or rooms, injure or destroy the health of multitudes of wives, and injure the health of multitudes of infants and children. Tobacco using injures the unborn child by giving it a puny body and an imperfect start in life. Tobacco using ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... to be "raised from the dunghill, set among princes, and made to inherit a throne of glory?" is dust and ashes, a puny rebel, a guilty traitor, to be pitied, pardoned, loved, exalted from the depths of despair, raised to the heights of Heaven—gifted with kingly honour—royally fed—royally clothed—royally attended—and, at last, royally crowned? O my soul, look ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... industry contracted. The wise and good trembled for the destiny of the people, the government trembled for itself—idle fear. That which shook this colony for a moment settled it as firm as a granite mountain and made it great with a rapidity that would have astounded the puny ages cant appeals to ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... insignificant stream, of scarcely sufficient tide to turn a mill; but in no better case are Ilissus and Cephissus found to be in the present day. The shade of Socrates still seems to linger over the Attic streamlet, swelling its puny tide to the capacity of the loftiest musings of the humanized; and the memory of Homer is wedded to these waters of Meles. The critics who would disprove the existence of the bard, and assign the different members of his compositions to numerous anonymous authors, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... and small, they roam the vast wilderness of the stars, and soar the very empyrean of thought and action, and they fear and crouch and kneel; and in their quaking fears and driveling doubts seem like puny things crawling on the ground; they are saints and sinners; sometimes emissaries of light and love, and yet again harbingers of ill, and sometimes the very Nemesis of hate; but in the composite elements of their human thinking, throbbing energies of heart and mind, ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... emissaries at an early period amongst us,' said the Armenian, 'seducing the minds of weak-headed people, persuading them that the hillocks of Rome are higher than the ridges of Ararat; that the Roman Papa has more to say in heaven than the Armenian patriarch, and that puny Latin is a better language ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... simple, like the annals of the poor," he replied. "From England in infancy, on a ranch in northern Alberta for ten years, a puny little wretch I was, terribly bothered with asthma, then"—the boy hesitated a moment—"my mother died, father moved to Edmonton, lived there for five years, thence to Wapiti, away northwest of Edmonton, our ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... would have believed that such a buxom woman, who looked as if her crupper were as warm as her looks, and who assuredly must have liked to be well attended to, could be satisfied with such a puny husband; with such an ugly, weak, red-headed fellow, who smelled of his own hair and of the mustiness of the carrion which he ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... got a great respect and love for women, because I've got a mother, and if ever there was a woman on the face of this earth that deserves the love of a son, that woman is my mother. Sister," he added, turning to one of those who sat on a bench near him with a thin, puny, curly-haired boy wrapped up in her ragged shawl, "the best prayer that I could offer up for you—and I do offer it—is, that the little chap in your arms may grow up to bless his mother as heartily as I bless mine, but that can never be, so long as you love the strong drink and ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Each puny brother of the rhyming trade At every turn implores the Painter's aid, And fondly enamoured of own foul brat Cries in an ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... whetting his knife for my throat for the last year. Why, this is what he wants; this is why he brought the prisoner here! Would you have me walk into his trap? Would you have me sacrifice my men, this garrison, why, this country even, to save the life of one puny Englishman, who is probably himself a spy?" He stopped a moment. "Why, man, you sicken me!" he cried, and he slashed at me with his sword as if I were ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... the huge city, so full of life, its busy hum rising to the height where I stood; and 200 feet below, the beautiful cemetery, where its dead await the morning of the resurrection. Yet, while contrasting the trees and atmosphere here with the comparatively stunted, puny foliage of England, and the chilly skies of a northern clime, I thought with Cowper respecting my own ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... young Poet at a full pit. Unused to crowds, the parson quakes for fear, And wonders how the devil he durst come there; Wanting three talents needful for the place— Some beard, some learning, and some little grace. Nor is the puny Poet void of care; For authors, such as our new authors are, Have not much learning, nor much wit to spare: And as for grace, to tell the truth, there's scarce one 10 But has as little as the very Parson: Both say, they preach and write for your instruction: But 'tis ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... not require either condolences or revenge. He was well pleased at an opportunity to measure his hardihood against a worthy opponent. He had found that his courage exceeded his strength, as it always should, for how could we face the gods and demons of existence if our puny arms were not backed up by our invincible eyes? and he displayed his contentment at the issue as one does a banner emblazoned with merits. Mrs. Makebelieve understood also that the big man's action was merely his energetic surrender, ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... is thronged. It is a place favored by the native gig drivers to whip heavily laden coolies out of the way. A big Chinaman with powerful limbs, carrying a great burden, hastens to give the road to a puny creature driving a puny pony, lashing it with a big whip, and scrambles furiously away from a two-wheeler whirling along a man able to ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... saw my pursuers. High up on the left side, and rounding the rim of the cup, were little black figures. They had not followed my trail, but, certain of my purpose, had gone forward to intercept me. I remember feeling a puny weakling compared with those lusty natives who could make such good going on steep mountains. They were certainly no men of the plains, but hillmen, probably some remnants of old Machudi's tribe who still ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... of strength of Milton, thus alone on the stage, and knowing himself to be confronted and surrounded by a jeering multitude, was a somewhat puny and unnecessary one. It was an onslaught on Dr. Matthew Griffith for his Royalist sermon. He wanted some object of attack, and the very notoriety given to Dr. Griffith's performance by the rebuke of the Council ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... the mire, I am tempted to exclaim, 'What merits has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some previous state of existence, that he is ushered into this state of being with the sceptre of rule, and the keys of riches in his puny fist, and I am kicked into the world, the sport of folly, or the victim of pride?... Often as I (p. 090) have glided with humble stealth through the pomp of Princes Street, it has suggested itself to me, as an improvement on the present human figure, that a ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... skraekja, identical with the English screech. A crowd of excited Indians might most appropriately be termed Screechers.[223] This derivation, however, is not correct. The word skraeling survives in modern Norwegian, and means a feeble or puny or insignificant person. Dr. Storm's suggestion is in all probability correct, that the name "Skraelings," as applied to the natives of America, had no ethnological significance, but simply meant "inferior people;" ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... was soon made, and as the boats left the shore, beneath the same cold and stormy sky that had led them forth, and feebly breasted the hissing waves which seemed to sneer at their puny efforts, the eighteen men who remained ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... in the House - Beckford produced an accusation in form against Admiral Knowles on his way to an impeachment. Governor Verres was a puny culprit in comparison! Jamaica indeed has not quite so many costly temples and ivory statues, etc. as Sicily had: but what Knowles could not or had not a propensity to commit in rapine and petty larceny, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Thou shalt in puny wood be shown, Thy image shall preserve thy fame, Ages to come thy worth shall own, Point at thy limbs, ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... institutions have been surrounded strike awe by their magnificence and mystery into the hearts of the governed. We contemplate natural objects, such as mountains, mighty rivers and the oceans, with awe because we feel so little and puny in comparison, and we do not "enjoy" contemplating them because we hate to feel little. Or else we grow familiar with them, and the awe disappears. The popular and the familiar are never awe-full, and even death loses in dignity when one has dissected ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... I picture the growth and development of the twins in that cherished home! Where shall I find words delicate and subtle enough to describe the change as I saw it from day to day, from puny atoms the size of a honey-bee to fledged and full-grown hummingbirds! Every morning, watching and waiting till the whole of our little world was at breakfast, I drew down the fateful branch and indulged in a long, close look at them, and no language at my command is adequate ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... temperature rose, she became talkative and incoherent, and Catherine would sometimes tremble as she caught the sentences which, little by little, built up the girl's hidden tragedy before her eyes. London streets, London lights, London darkness, the agony of an endless wandering, the little clinging puny life, which could never be stilled or satisfied, biting cold, intolerable pain, the cheerless workhouse order, and, finally, the arms without a burden, the breast without a child—these were the sharp fragments of experience, so common, so terrible to the end of time, which rose on the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is the condition of a great career. What would Gladstone have accomplished with a weak, puny physique? He addresses an audience at Corfu in Greek, and another at Florence in Italian. A little later he converses at ease with Bismarck in German, or talks fluent French in Paris, or piles up argument on argument in English for hours in Parliament. There are families ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... were only known to travellers and a few shepherds. But although this great change has been brought about by railway enterprise, the gorge is still uninhabited, and has lost little of its grandeur; for when the puny train, with its accompanying white cloud, has disappeared round one of the great bluffs, there is nothing left but the two pairs of shining rails, laid for long distances almost on the floor of the ravine. But though there are steep gradients to be climbed, ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... bookish and solitary life was invaded by interest in a living, breathing figure. At church, I used to look around with a feeling of coldness and disdain, which, though I now well understand its causes, seems to my wiser mind as odious as it was unnatural. The puny child sought everywhere for the Roman or Shakspeare figures, and she was met by the shrewd, honest eye, the homely decency, or the smartness of a New England village on Sunday. There was beauty, but ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... return to shore, jaded from all these natural wonders," Conseil added, "think how we'll look down on those pitiful land masses, those puny works of man! No, the civilized world won't be good enough ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... pecuniary care that his father was carrying, and himself volunteered the wish that his uncle would take him to sea. However it happened, the suggestion staggered Suckling, who well knew the lad's puny frame and fragile constitution. "What has poor little Horatio done," cried he, "that he, being so weak, should be sent to rough it at sea? But let him come, and if a cannon-ball takes off his head, he will at least be provided for." Under ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... policy of his great predecessor. Where she with supreme tact had loosened the screws so that the great authority vested in her might not press too heavily upon the nation, he tightened them. Where she bowed her imperious will to that of the Commons, this puny tyrant insolently defied it, and swelling with sense of his own greatness, claimed, "Divine right" for Kingship and demanded that his people should say "the King can do no wrong," "to question his authority is to question that of God." If he ardently supported the Church ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... ignorance of this trait of his official: who had never felt the faintest scratch beneath the velvet of his favorite cat's-paw. Thus it was that Michael's momentary defeat had come about. Czar Nicholas crossed him openly; put upon him an affront unbearable; lowered him in the eyes of three hundred puny men and women over whom he had no power for revenge. It was, then, as a result of this, that treason had begun to surge through the mind of a brilliantly wicked man. And had he been able to read certain thoughts ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... adventures here placed before the public will appear puny beside the exploits of the original Crusoe; but it must be taken into consideration that the author does not, like Defoe's hero, revel in the impossible. At the same time it may be noted that the adventures detailed are of a sufficiently ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... subject-matter. Little movement can be contrived in a mere dialogue such as 'Paradise Regained '; it lacks the grandiose mise-en-scene and the shifting splendours of the greater epic; the stupendous figure of the rebellious archangel, the true hero of 'Paradise Lost,' is here dwarfed into a puny, malignant sophist; nor is the final issue in the later poem even for a moment in doubt—a serious defect from an artistic point of view. Jortin holds its peculiar excellence to be 'artful sophistry, false reasoning, set off in ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... would reel— Lost in immensity, would cease to feel! Whilst living, ah, how few were known to fame! One in a million has not left a name,— A single token, on life's shifting scene, To tell to other years that such has been. Yet man, unaided by a hope sublime, Thinks that his puny arm can cope with time; That his vast genius can reverse the doom, And shed a deathless light upon his tomb; That distant ages shall his worth admire, And young hearts kindle at the sacred fire Of him whose ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... profoundly affecting the latter might in that way exercise an influence on the germ-cells; that if the parent was starved, the germ-cells might be ill-nourished and the resulting offspring might be weak and puny. There is experimental evidence that this is the case; but that is not the inheritance of an acquired character. If, however, a white man tanned by long exposure to the tropical sun should have children who were ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... the prisoners! There were forty-eight—grey-haired men and puny boys—all ragged, and stalking with slippered feet from end to end with listless eyes. Some, all eagerness; some, crushed and motionless; some, scared and stupid; now singing, now swearing, now rushing about playing at some mad game; now hushed ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... not exactly epidemics; but they just fall like flies. Well, you know, these Jewish boys are so puny and delicate. They can't stand mixing dirt for ten hours, with dry biscuits to live on. Again everywhere strange folks, no father, no mother, no caresses. Well then, you just hear a cough and the youngster is dead. Hello, corporal, ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... us. Three of the brethren are Egyptians, and two are natives of Damascus. The rest are, like myself, descendants of a race supposed to have perished from off the face of the earth, yet still powerful to a degree undreamed of by the men of this puny age." ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... grade of this class of fruits is the almost useless sloe in the hedge; and none but those in some degree acquainted with the matter could, on beholding the acidous, puny sloe, and the ample, luscious magnum bonum plum, together, readily believe that they were kindred, or that the former was the primitive representative of the latter. The intermediate links of this connexion are the bullace, muscle, damacene, &c., of all which there are many varieties. ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... Niagara, a body of German airships drew itself together into a compact phalanx, and the Asiatics became more and more intent upon breaking this up. He was grotesquely reminded of fish in a fish-pond struggling for crumbs. He could see puny puffs of smoke and the flash of bombs, but never a sound came ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... farmer's lad was about the worst thing the goosey-gander knew anything about, and as soon as it dawned on him that this puny creature actually believed that he couldn't make the trip, he decided to stick it out. "If you say another word about this, I'll drop you into the first ditch we ride over!" said he, and at the same time his fury gave him so much strength ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... enter into the joys of his Lord, such as these might be. But I do not know that I ever met with a human being who seemed to me to have a stronger claim on the pitying consideration and kindness of his Maker than a wretched, puny, crippled, stunted child that I saw in Newgate, who was pointed out as one of the most notorious and inveterate little thieves in London. I have no doubt that some of those who were looking at this pitiable morbid secretion of the diseased social organism thought they ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... men, they also had adored him in time past, and had built temples in his honor. They also were puny mortals, scarcely longer of life than the birds themselves. The Phoenix had seen many generations of men grow up, do good or evil deeds, and die, sometimes leaving grand monuments upon the earth, sometimes disappearing from knowledge like the very ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... conscientious and in consequence rather depressing to live with. And for all that he so often plays the jackass-fool about women, like Grandma Pendomer, he is a man, Jack—a well-meaning, clean and dunderheaded man! You aren't; you are puny and frivolous, and you sneer too much, and you are making a fool of me, and—and that's why I like you, I suppose. Oh, I wish I were good! I have always tried to be good, and there doesn't seem to be a hatpin in the world that makes ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... him about a puny little deposit near the Logan farm," replied Sykes. "The big strike is on the other side of the satellite. I figured that if Vidac was honest it wouldn't hurt to delay sending information back about the big strike until later." He paused and added, ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... teeth, cast one glance of scornful contempt on the puny explorer, and started on, swinging thirty feet at a stretch and catching hold of the limbs with its ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... end of an hour the other survivors told me that, up to the time he got off at Sacramento, the button-nosed man had been getting better and better all the time. He certainly ought to be rounded up and put on exhibition at the Fair to show those puny and feeble Eastern fish-liars what the ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... meadows and Merton gardens (where the remains can still be seen) to Magdalen on the south, and with the numerous rivers and conduits which form so many natural moats on west and east, the city soon becomes impregnable. To-day such puny efforts would be ludicrous, but in those times of cannon balls which could scarcely pierce a two-inch board, they more than suffice, did he for whom the work was done ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... that their blind and unkind mother, Nature, had driven away before her this surplus, as unmoved as if they had been superabundant men. On the scorching funnels and ironwork of the ship they died away; the deck was strewn with their puny forms, only yesterday so full of life, songs, and love. Now, poor little black dots, Sylvestre and the others picked them up, spreading out their delicate blue wings, with a look of pity, and swept them overboard into ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... Aristotle, and Aristotle in the Schoolmen, as Lessing lived in Goethe, Goethe in Heine, and Heine in young Germany, so great literary fathers reappear in the progeny of the next generation; the reproduction is indeed oft puny enough, still the reproduction is there. But in Russia, while Pushkin lived in Gogol, and Gogol in Turgenef, the generation which was to inherit the kingdom left by Turgenef and Tolstoy is now buried in ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... until it has satisfied its appetite. Its subterranean excursions cannot cover a wide range, but they enable it to visit a few adjacent cells. I have mentioned how greatly the Tachytes' provision of Mantes varies.[4] The smaller rations certainly fall to the males, which are puny dwarfs compared with their companions; the more plentiful fall to the females. The parasitic grub to which fate has allotted the scanty masculine ration has not perhaps sufficient with this share; it wants an extra portion, which it can obtain by changing its cell. If it be favoured ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... level with the top of the lower pane of the window. Nothing broke the smoothness of its flow save the one track he had made in breaking a way out. That he should have tried to find his way through such an untracked desolation amazed her. He could never do it. No puny human atom could fight successfully against the barriers nature had dropped so sullenly to fence them. They were set off from the world by a quarantine of God. There was something awful to her in the knowledge. It emphasized their impotence. Yet, this man had ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... himself up to his full height, lifted his sword from the ground and hung it on his side, and strode away with Wattie, looking all the while like a great giant in company of a puny dwarf. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S.A., being the third daughter of Daniel Bridgman (d. 1868), a substantial Baptist farmer, and his wife Harmony, daughter of Cushman Downer, and grand-daughter of Joseph Downer, one of the five first settlers (1761) of Thetford, Vermont. Laura was a delicate infant, puny and rickety, and was subject to fits up to twenty months old, but otherwise seemed to have normal senses; at two years, however, she had a very bad attack of scarlet fever, which destroyed sight and hearing, blunted the sense of smell, and left her system a wreck. Though ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Succeeded; still with every rising Sun The Sport renew'd; or if some daring Foe Provok'd their Wrath, they bent the hostile Bow, Nor waited his Approach, but rush'd with Speed, Fearless of Hunger, Thirst, Fatigue, or Death. But we their soften'd Sons, a puny Race, Are weak in Youth, fear Dangers where they're not; Are weary'd with what was to them a Sport, Panting and breathless in One short Hour's Chace; And every Effort of our Strength is feeble. We're poison'd with the Infection of our Foes, Their very Looks and Actions are infectious, ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... Angouleme at his fingers' ends; he saw all the difficulties at a glance, and resolved to sweep them out of the way by a bold stroke that only a Tartuffe's brain could invent. The puny lawyer was not a little amused to find his fellow-conspirator keeping his word with him; not a word did Petit-Claud utter; he respected the musings of his companion, and they walked the whole way from the paper-mill to the Rue du ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... much futile speculation; but the one certain result of such persecution is to make the cuckoo, along with its fellow-sufferer, the owls, preferably active in the sweet peace of the gloaming, when its puny tyrants are gone to roost. Much heated argument has raged round the real or supposed sentiment that inspires such demonstrations on the part of linnets, sparrows, chaffinches, and other determined hunters of the cuckoo. It seems impossible, ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... be requested to convey the resolutions of the Livery to Mr. Alderman Combe, as soon as he could conveniently do so, and also to call another Common-Hall, to communicate the answer of the worthy Alderman to his constituents. This likewise was carried, with a faint opposition from the puny faction that surrounded the mortified and discomfited great little man. The Lord Mayor then stepped forward, and promised that the wishes of the Livery should be promptly executed; and, after he had given this promise, the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... of Marion was unpromising. At birth he was puny and diminutive in a remarkable degree. Weems, in his peculiar fashion, writes, "I have it from good authority, that this great soldier, at his birth, was not larger than a New England lobster, and might easily ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... over it again. The children all fell ill together—the two eldest were twin boys, one puny, the other a very fine fellow, and his father's especial pride and delight. As so often happens, the sickly one was spared, the healthy one ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the finest mountains of the world are soaring into the purple firmament. Like northern lights, they flash, or flush, or fade into a reclining gleam; like ladders of heaven, they bar themselves with cloudy air; and like heaven itself, they rank their white procession. Lonely, feeble, puny, I look up with awe and reverence; the mind pronounces all things small compared with this magnificence. Yet what will all such grandeur do—the self-defensive heart ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... many and many a day. Armstrong took the instrument of justice from its hook, and laid it on the table He took off his coat, and rolled up his left shirt-sleeve. He was left-handed. The arm he bared was corded and puny. It shook as if he had the palsy. His wife had a sudden pity for him, and ran at him with a ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... with this? Lady Ongar was very rich. Florence had already heard all this from Harry—was very rich, was clever, and was beautiful; and moreover, she had been Harry's first love. Was it reasonable that she, with her little claims, her puny attractions, should stand in Harry's way when such a prize as that came across him! And as for his weakness; might it not be strength, rather than weakness; the strength of an old love which he could not quell, ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... owners in the race for wealth, the railroad owners sprang at once into the lists of mighty wealth-possessers, armed with the most comprehensive and puissant powers and privileges, and vested with a sweep of properties beside which those of the petty industrial bosses were puny. Railroad owners, we say; the distinction is necessary between the builders of the railroads and the owners. The one might construct, but it often happened that by means of cunning, fraud and corruption, the builders were superseded by another set ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... that kind-hearted termagant, Aunt Becky, too well, to be long cast down or even flurried by her onset. When the same little Puddock, about a year ago, had that ugly attack of pleurisy, and was so low and so long about recovering, and so puny and fastidious in appetite, she treated him as kindly as if he were her own son, in the matter of jellies, strong soups, and curious light wines, and had afterwards lent him some good books which the little lieutenant had read through, like a man of honour as he was. And, indeed, what specially ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... with which, nowadays, every puny whipster gets the sword of Sir Walter has already been remarked. If any Tom o' Bedlam chooses to tell the world that all the New Scottish novelists are Sir Walter's masters, what does it matter to anybody? It is shamelessly silly and impertinent, ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... tremble, though it seemed to him the brute must hear the tumultuous throbbing of his heart and rush forth. Puny as was his strength, he meant that, if he did so, he would steady himself on his one support, and grasping the other with both hands, strike the dog with might and main. It is doubtful whether the blow would have stunned the dog, for the little fellow's confidence in himself was greater ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... strength in her little body. Her eyes smarted fiercely, her feet were bruised, the heat was suffocating; but 'Mazin' Grace never thought of deserting the post: she worked, as she had danced, with all her might and main, pitting her puny strength valiantly against that of ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... their puny knives with which to give battle to the serpent, the boys stood petrified with terror. Even Ben, to whom his rescue and Frank's peril had been unfolded so swiftly that he was half-dazed, seemed unable to ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... crowd of inhabitants, shouting and yelling with more than ordinary clamour. This time the centre of attraction was not ourselves, but a drunken woman, who had got a little ragged boy by the collar, and was beating him savagely on the head with her by no means puny fist. ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... sight of humanity as before! Should the whole nation be swarming below the mountain, armies drawn up before armies, with my eyes resting upon them, I should not see them, but sit here in sublime peace. Man's puny form were from this height as undistinguishable as the blades of grass in the meadows below. I know, that, if all the world stood beneath, and strained their vision to the utmost upon the very spot where I stand, I should ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... haphazard system of pairing, qualified more and more by worldly discretions, no longer secures a young population numerous enough or good enough for the growing needs and possibilities of our Empire. Statecraft sits weaving splendid garments, no doubt, but with a puny, ugly, insufficient baby in ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... with a puny joy, Accept amusement for their little while And feed upon some nourishing employ But otherwise shake their wise heads and smile— Protesting that one man can no more move the mass For good or ill Than could the ancients kindle ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... vessel, and her puny battery of four-pounders, Capt. Rathburne determined to undertake the capture of New Providence. Only the highest daring, approaching even recklessness, could have conceived such a plan. The harbor was defended by a fort of no mean ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... become jealous of the bevy of titled lords, who pay fawning court to my wealth and social position, here in Washington, you do yourself justice; while at the same time, you pay me the compliment of a lifetime! When compared with you, how puny and feeble are the princes and titled lords, made by kings and courts, in lands where selfishness reigns supreme at the expense of millions of unfortunate subjects! An impecunious host of these fortune-hunting ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... calling for a number of exquisite things that never appeared, and with the honour of his company. Mr. Cobbett is not a make-believe writer: his worst enemy cannot say that of him. Still less is he a vulgar one: he must be a puny, common-place critic indeed who thinks him so. How fine were the graphical descriptions he sent us from America: what a Transatlantic flavour, what a native gusto, what a fine sauce piquante of contempt they were seasoned with! If he had sat down to look ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... they hadn't, and that the monkey-men were getting ahead, were they too great-minded and decent to exterminate their puny rivals? ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... you answer, Victor Lamont?" cried the woman, shrilly. "Ten to one it's some girl whose puny, pretty face has fascinated you, and you're in love ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... friends!—not long now shall we wait for the Divine Pronouncement of the End. Hints of it are in the air,—signs and portents of it are about us in our almost terrific discoveries of the invisible forces of Light and Sound,—we are not given such tremendous powers to play with in our puny fashion for the convenience of making our brief lives easier to live and more interesting,—no, there is some deeper reason,—one, which in our heedless way of dancing over our own Earth-grave, we never dream ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare. Of English poets it may be said generally they are either born in London or remote country places. The large provincial towns know them not. Indeed, nothing is more pathetic than the way in which these dim, destitute places hug the memory of any puny whipster of a poet who may have been born within their statutory boundaries. This has its advantages, for it keeps alive in certain localities fames that would otherwise have utterly perished. Parnassus has forgotten all about poor Henry Kirke White, but the lace manufacturers of Nottingham ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... onrush of cloud, and the fact that the sun is only occasionally to be seen suspended in abysses of blue, and resembles a drooping flower, one feels that the apparent chaos has lurking in it a secret harmony of mundane, but imperishable, forces—so much so that in time even one's puny human heart comes to imbibe the prevalent spirit of revolt, and, catching fire, to cry to all the universe: "I ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... and evidently his senior in age. The smaller fellow had laid fast hold of his antagonist by the collar, and would not let go, despite the blows which, to extricate himself and in retaliation of the puny buffets of his youthful detainer, he ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... down on his back, but would be off again before he had time almost to turn his head. Had he chosen, I am sure he could have caught one or two of the most daring, and would soon with his powerful jaws have made an end of them; but he disdained to take offence at their puny efforts to annoy him, and continued to treat them ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... sexual vigor in men. This is human nature. Weakly and delicate fathers have weak and puny children, though the mother may be strong and robust. A weak mother often bears strong children, if the father is physically and sexually vigorous. Consumption is often inherited from fathers, because they furnish the ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... own thoughts; to thee Science appears but what in truth she is, Not as our glory and our absolute boast, But as a succedaneum, and a prop To our infirmity. No officious slave 215 Art thou of that false secondary power By which we multiply distinctions; then, Deem that our puny boundaries are things That we perceive, and not that we have made. To thee, unblinded by these formal arts, 220 The unity of all hath been revealed, And thou wilt doubt, with me less aptly skilled Than ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... with a look of deep and unutterable scorn. "But to thee!—words would fail to express my contempt, my derision, my defiance of thy puny power! Read, and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... He's shot! They don't see him!" shouted Tad. He cried out at the top of his voice to attract the attention of the ranchers, but in the uproar, no one heard him. His voice in that mad melee was a puny thing. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... With puny fists I pounded the panel. A small pane in it was transparent. Within the lock I could see the blurred figures of Anita and her captor—and, it seemed, another figure. The lock was some ten feet square, with a low ceiling. It glowed with a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... that are not superior to myself, reminds me of what will be thought of myself. I blush to flatter them, or to be flattered by them, and should dread letters being published some time or other, in which they should relate our interviews, and we should appear like those puny conceited Witlings in Shenstone's and Hughes' Correspondence,(94) who give themselves airs from being in possession of the soil of Parnassus for the time being; as peers are proud, because they enjoy the estates of great men who ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... folks have; and Mr. Miller and Kate are going home this summer, and they'll fetch me one. That makes me think Sunshine is so puny and sick like, that I'm goin' to let her go North with them. It'll do her good; and I'm going to buy her four silk gowns to go with, but for Lord's—no, for land's sake don't ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... a religious man is consciously thrown back on the aid of God—most of all in the greatest task of all. Eternal powers are cooperating with our puny efforts. That alone guarantees that our work is not wasted. We plant and water, but unless God's sun shines upon it, our work is nothing. He is a fool that is not reverent and humble. We sorely need this faith in the collaboration and patience of God ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... many portions of the island, and saw wherever I went, the same evidences of misrule and indolence; but, the negroes, who hold the western portion of it or Hayti, are physically, at least, a finer race of people than the degenerate, puny hybrids of the eastern part, who have "miscegenated" to an extent that would satisfy the most enthusiastic admirer of our sable "friends and fellow-citizens." I have never seen finer specimens of stalwart manhood than in "Solouque's" army years ago, although the "tout ensemble" of it was sufficiently ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... Supposing the man were to lose his way? Or he might be drunk? I wish I had asked Jim to come down for me. There's Miss Constance's mother never misses a single night; I wonder who she thinks is going to run away with that puny-faced creature!" ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... moved gracefully and easily over his path, from time to time increasing his speed as though practicing, and then again more slowly to smoke a cigarette. The Tauri-Mauri are long-limbed and slender, giving the impression of being above the average height. There is scarcely any flesh on their puny arms, but their legs are as muscular as those of a greyhound. In short running they have the genuine professional stride, something rarely seen in other Indian racers. In traversing long distances they ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... but yesterday, although more than a half century ago, that I, a puny boy, stood on the hilltop and looked for the first time upon this, the earliest home of which I have any vivid recollection. It was a fair scene of rustic tranquillity, where a contented mind might delight to spend a lifetime mid hum of bees and ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... But we puny mortals are all puppets in the hands of Fate. Even as the train was bearing Desmond, thus rebellious, Londonwards, Destiny was already pulling the strings which was to force the "quitter" back into the path he had forsaken. For this purpose Fate ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... shillings and six pence, and, You are welcome: with this shril addition, Anon, Anon sir, Score a Pint of Bastard in the Halfe Moone, or so. But Ned, to driue away time till Falstaffe come, I prythee doe thou stand in some by-roome, while I question my puny Drawer, to what end hee gaue me the Sugar, and do neuer leaue calling Francis, that his Tale to me may be nothing but, Anon: step aside, and Ile shew thee ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... gone? Where are they, the strong lusts and hates and triumphs—the satisfactions of the old days? The world has grown puny. It is empty, ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... it to be so introduced? Certainly not by the very puny efforts made hitherto. The quantity sent should be multiplied many times, and arrangements made to forward it on arrival, to some, if not all, of the great cities in the interior. There it should be sold at auction to the highest bidders, ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... want of attention to the feelings of others, from a neglect of the golden rule of putting ourselves in their place, and not from innate malice or a diabolical delight in giving pain, that the sorrows caused by domestic tyrants and puny oppressors chiefly proceed. Were self-love reduced within proper bounds, earth would resemble heaven. Let those, then, who deeply feel those "wrongs which patient merit of the unworthy takes," temper their aspirations after a state where universal good-will is the source and ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... realize that the valley is several miles long, and has an average width of about one-half a mile. The great height of the surrounding walls dwarfs your idea of distance. Even the trees, many of which are of great size, look small and puny. ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... our aim and aid. Companioned by the sweetest, ay renewed, Unconquerable, whose aim for aid is Good! Advantage to the Many: that we name God's voice; have there the surety in our aim. This thought unto my sister do I owe, And irony and satire off me throw. They crack a childish whip, drive puny herds, Where numbers crave their sustenance in words. Now let the perils thicken: clearer seen, Your Chieftain Mind mounts over them serene. Who never yet of scattered lamps was born To speed a world, a marching world to warn, But sunward from the vivid Many springs, Counts conquest ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at the edges of the stone, screaming and swearing in his excitement; but it had lain in that bed for many ages, and would not budge for such puny efforts as his. From the lip of the pit I was bawling at him to come up out of the way; but not until he had strained himself well-nigh senseless would he unlock his fingers from their grip, and even then he would not voluntarily resign his place. But I could not ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... shrunken and withered like an old man's; the more so, perhaps, as the masculine down had grown upon cheek and chin, and there was a matured manliness of expression in the whole countenance, which formed a strange contrast to the still puny and childish frame—alas! Not a whit less helpless or less distorted than before. ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... him—it was stupendous. And yet, how about the Simmses, Colonel Woodruff, the Hansens and Newton Bronson, now just getting a firm start on the upward path to usefulness and real happiness? How could he leave the little, crude, puny structure on which he had been working—on which he had been merely practising—for a year, and remove to the new field? Jim was in exactly the same situation in which every able young minister of the gospel finds himself sooner or later. The ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick |
