"Shrink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... difficulty that presented itself to him was, that the nuns would be so appalled by the approach of the French that it would be unlikely that they would think of leaving the protection—such as it was—of the convent, and would shrink from encountering the wild turmoil in the streets. Even if they did so, it would be too late for them to have any chance of getting across the bridge, which would be thronged to a point of suffocation by the mob of fugitives, and might ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... upflung face, her whole slender body tightened at the rough contact of blue flannel against her cheek. Almost before they held her she struggled madly from the circle of his arms. White of face, white of lip, she broke away from him and darted through the gap in the hedge, only to shrink back against him in panic the next instant before the black shape upon a blacker horse, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... yours of the 6th instant. I am sorry the militia are deserting,* because there is no greater support. If they were influenced by proper principles, and were impressed with a love of liberty and a dread of slavery, they would not shrink at difficulties. If we had a force sufficient to recover the country, their aid would not be wanted, and they cannot be well acquainted with their true interest to desert us, because they conceive our force unequal to the reduction of the country without their consent. I shall ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... however, over-estimate the significance of this statement. The diameter of the sun is so great, that a diminution of 10,000 miles would be but little more than the hundredth part of its diameter. If it were suddenly to shrink to the extent of 10,000 miles, the change would not be appreciable to ordinary observation, though a much smaller change would not elude delicate astronomical measurement. It does not necessarily follow that the climates on our earth ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... we are Christ's; for Christ has conquered him. If he be ours, our servant, our minister, sent but to bring us into the presence of our Lord, then, indeed, his terrors, his merely natural terrors, the outside roughness of his aspect, are things which the merest child need not shrink from. Then disease and decay, however painful to living friends to look upon, have but little pain for him who is undergoing them. For it is not only amidst the tortures of actual martyrdom that Christians have been more than conquerors,—in common ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... them; their shattered cornices and coping, the tops of their frowning walls, appear piled from both sides to the center of the street. It seems that a touch would now send the shattered masses left standing, down upon the people below, who look up to them and shrink together as the tremor of the earthquake again passes under them, and the mysterious reverberations swell and roll along, like some infernal drumbeat summoning them to die. It passes away, and again is experienced ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... go through, and which occupied them from morning till night, for the colonel knew that on any day the regiment might receive orders to embark, and he wanted to get it in something like shape before setting sail. Jack did, however, shrink from the company in which he found himself. With a few exceptions the regiment was made up of wild and worthless fellows, of whom the various magistrates had been only too glad to clear their towns, and mingled with these were the sweepings of the jails, rogues and ruffians of every description. ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... Antioch the decree of the Council at Jerusalem, and it was probably about this time that St. Peter paid to Antioch the visit of which we read in the Epistle to the Galatians[16], when his fear of "them which were of the circumcision," led him to shrink from continuing to eat and drink with the Gentiles, and drew down St. Paul's stern rebuke. [Sidenote: Separation of St. Paul and St. Barnabas.] The difference of opinion about St. Mark soon after separated the two Apostles, whose ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... must have been to make this sacrifice. He came accredited by all the claims of finished culture, a man consecrated to the scholar's life.[A] Then, with the sensitiveness that springs from intellectual breeding, one will look to see him shrink from conflict with the callous condition of feeling around him. The glamour of book-lore will spread over it, and hide it from his sight. He has a noble enough mission, at all events: to raise the standard of educational culture in a city that hardly knows ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... shrink from this, and think that they are doing God service by shrinking; the only thing from which they should really shrink, is the falsehood which has overlaid the best established fact in all history ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... disastrous haste. We devour the words but lose their essence. Hence there is a grave danger that through this neglect we shut out one of the main streams by which our life must be fed if it is not to shrink ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... nerving himself during a long slow silence for that. He could almost as easily have struck her a blow, and indeed the effect of it was precisely that. But though she tried to shrink away he held her tighter and went on. "I don't believe there's anything in the whole picture now that I don't see and understand. But—but the way out ... Oh, Mary darling, it isn't the one you ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... embraces us all, and is the foundation of all our hopes. But it had to reach its purpose by a bitter road which He did not shrink from travelling. He desires to save us, and to realise the desire He had to die. 'It became Him for whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through suffering.' What He had to do, we have to accept. Unless ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... done, steel jackets or sleeves would be put on, red-hot, and allowed to shrink. Then would come a winding of wire, to further strengthen the tube, and then more sleeves or jackets. In this way the gun ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... disappointment. "I would sooner part with life than relinquish the pledge I have received from you. But I am content that my constancy should be put to the test you propose. During the long term of my probation, I will shrink from no trial of faith. Throughout Europe I will proclaim your beauty in the lists, and will maintain its supremacy against all comers. But, oh! sweet Geraldine, since we have met in this spot, hallowed by the loves of James of Scotland and Jane Beaufort, let us here renew our vows of ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... he understands him perfectly well. They are strange things. It must have been the finger of God. That executioner cut off Jurand's hand, tore out his tongue, and put out his eyes. That executioner is such that where men are concerned he would not shrink from inflicting any torture, even if he were ordered to pull the teeth of the victim; but, where girls are concerned, he would not lift up his hand to kill them, or to assist in torturing them. The reason for this determination is, because he too had an only daughter whom he loved dearly, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... breath in, thronged with spirits now invisible, and which otherwise would be the most terrible; we should view the secret transactions of those messengers who are employed when the parting soul takes it's leave of the reluctant body, and perhaps see things nature would shrink back from with the utmost terror and amazement. In a word, the curtain of Providence for the disposition of things here, and the curtain of judgment for the determination of the state of souls hereafter, would be alike drawn back; and what ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... difficult to define, but I certainly don't mean pernicketty. Of course, there is a fastidiousness which makes one shrink from unpleasant things, but Harry's is the other kind. It impels him to do them ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... happiness, ("sua si bona norit"), was exposed to the attacks, more or less open, of every unmarried woman. Alas! he was insensible to his privileges; a steady man of fifty-five, a dignitary of the church, devoted to study, and shy in his habits, he seemed to shrink from the kind attentions he received, and to wish for a less favoured, a less glorious state of existence. His desires seemed limited to reading the Fathers, writing sermons, and doing his duty as a divine; and he appeared of opinion that no helpmate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... Fear is neither reason nor philosophy. The true spirit of philosophy by giving knowledge gives a manly confidence, and substitutes rational firmness in the place of vain presumption. A man of real taste is always a man of judgment in other respects; and those inventions which either disdain or shrink from reason, are generally, I fear, more like the dreams of a distempered brain than the exalted enthusiasm of a sound and true genius. In the midst of the highest flights of fancy or imagination, reason ought to preside from first to last, though I admit ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... the hotel, knew but the history of that calm dignified-looking gentleman who sits under her, and over whose patient back she frantically advances and withdraws her two-franc piece, whilst his own columns of louis d'or are offering battle to fortune—how she would shrink away from the shoulder which she pushes! That man so calm and well bred, with a string of orders on his breast, so well dressed, with such white hands, has stabbed trusting hearts; severed family ties; written lying vows; signed false oaths; torn up pitilessly tender appeals for redress, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shall try to fulfill the duty thus devolving upon me, if it cost me my life. This is service for my country. It matters little, whether I perform it as lieutenant in the army, or as a mountaineer. I certainly shall not shrink from duty because the Senate does not confirm an ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... me that I might safely offer money to the vice-consul, but recommended that I should give no more to him than to “the others,” meaning any other peasant. I felt, however, that there was something about the man, besides the flag and the cap, which made me shrink from offering coin, and as I mounted my horse on departing I gave him the only thing fit for a present that I happened to have with me, a rather handsome clasp-dagger, brought from Vienna. The poor fellow was ineffably grateful, and I had some difficulty in tearing myself from ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... very civil to me however. How much I might say about your Letter to me! you will hardly comprehend how it is I almost turn my Eyes from it in this Answer, and dally with other matter. You make me sad with old Memories; yet, I don't mean quite disagreeably sad, but enough to make me shrink recurring to them. I don't know whether to be comforted or not when you talk of India as a Land ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... personality which may be said in a certain manner to epitomize and symbolize the character of a race. "I and my nation are one": thus Poland's greatest poet, Adam Mickiewicz, sums up the devotion that will not shrink before the highest tests of sacrifice for a native country. "My name is Million, because I love millions and for millions suffer torment." If to this patriotism oblivious of self may be added an unstained moral integrity, the magnetism of an extraordinary personal charm, the glamour of ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... first faint glimmering of the possible origin of his life breaks upon him, even the first inevitable risings of resentment against Sir Hugo are softened and toned down by the old yearning affection; and the longings for the unknown mother, intense as they are, yet shrink from full discovery of what she may have been or may still be. He and he alone, in unconscious dignity, stands up uncowering before Grandcourt. His whole relations to Mordecai are characterised by a deep suppressed enthusiasm, that fully responds to ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... Thorgerd went into the dairy as well. Then spoke Bolli, "Now it is safe, brothers, to come nearer than hitherto you have done," and said he weened that defence now would be but short. Thorgerd answered his speech, and said there was no need to shrink from dealing unflinchingly with Bolli, and bade them "walk between head and trunk." Bolli stood still against the dairy wall, and held tight to him his kirtle lest his inside should come out. Then Steinthor Olafson leapt at Bolli, ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... and subsisted wholly upon tepid milk, had all his work cut out for him in considerate dealings with his own digestion. So soon as prudence has begun to grow up in the brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds its first expression in a paralysis of generous acts. The victim begins to shrink spiritually; he develops a fancy for parlours with a regulated temperature, and takes his morality on the principle of tin shoes and tepid milk. The care of one important body or soul becomes so engrossing, that all the noises of the outer world begin to come thin and faint ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and Satyrs and Aegipans danced before his eyes, the darkness of the thicket, the dance on the mountain-top, the scenes by lonely shores, in green vineyards, by rocks and desert places, passed before him: a world before which the human soul seemed to shrink back and shudder. Villiers whirled over the remaining pages; he had seen enough, but the picture on the last leaf caught his eye, as he almost ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... himself had to act. But Nelson could not expect his own spirit in the King of the Two Sicilies. Even if the course suggested were the best for Naples under the conditions, it is the property of ordinary men, in times of danger, to see difficulties more clearly than advantages, and to shrink from steps which involve risk, however promising of success. The Neapolitan Government, though cheered by the appearance of the British fleet, had to consider danger also on the land side, where it relied upon the protection of Austria, instead of trusting manfully to its own arms ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... interests of a leisure class. For, as we have already stated, humanistic studies when set in opposition to study of nature are hampered. They tend to reduce themselves to exclusively literary and linguistic studies, which in turn tend to shrink to "the classics," to languages no longer spoken. For modern languages may evidently be put to use, and hence fall under the ban. It would be hard to find anything in history more ironical than the educational practices which have identified the ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... employed to cut off the head of a slain enemy, displaying the head in sight of their surviving enemies with triumphant dance and song. They carried no shield; perhaps because the excessive length of the spear required the constant employment of both hands—yet they did not shrink from meeting the Greeks occasionally in regular, stand-up fight. As they had carried off all their provisions into hill-forts, the Greeks could obtain no supplies, but lived all the time upon the cattle which they had acquired from the ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... much against the desire of the said individual. To his entreaties and objections the first General of the Society made answer, on the 9th August 1552, that he was indeed edified by the humility which caused Father de Comara to shrink from a position which many envied; nevertheless, he was of the opinion that he should obey his Highness in this, as in other things, "for the honour of God our Lord." St. Ignatius went on to say that he need not occupy himself with any but good and pious objects, neither ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... monster did not drop him. Instead, in its death agony, its grip tightened, and the Americans witnessed an incredible sight. Before their very eyes the monster began rapidly to shrink. Its tenuous body telescoped together, becoming thinner and thinner in the process, until on the floor there lay the lifeless body of a snake-like creature not more ...
— The Heads of Apex • Francis Flagg
... technical education is not enough. We must have every American citizen well grounded in the classical ideals. Such an education will not unfit him for the work of the world. Did those men in the trenches fight any less valiantly, did they shrink any more from the hardships of war, when a liberal culture had given a broader vision of what the great conflict meant? The discontent in modern industry is the result of a too narrow outlook. A more liberal culture will reveal ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... homes they took it to the council-lodge, and hung it up before the fire, fastening it with raw hide soaked, which would shrink and become tightened by the action of the fire. 'We will then see,' they said, 'if we cannot ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the hangman on January 25th. Even a reward of L1,000 failed to discover the author, printer, or publisher of this paper, the condemnation of which rather whets the curiosity than satisfies the reason. I would shrink from saying that a paper so widely disseminated no longer exists; but even if it does not, its non-existence affords no proof that in ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... no friend of the people. As a force, by which the tenor of the time is conditioned, they inspire me with distrust, with fear; as a visible multitude, they make me shrink aloof, and often move me to abhorrence. For the greater part of my life, the people signified to me the London crowd, and no phrase of temperate meaning would utter my thoughts of them under that ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... rather an oddity on the staff, and puzzled the reporters not a little. Most of his predecessors had differed much from each other, but they were all alike in one thing, and that was profanity. They expressed disapproval in language that made the hardened printers' towel in the composing room shrink. ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... proportions to which ale will exalt the sentiments within us, and our delivery of them, are apt to dwindle and shrink even below the natural elevation when we look back on them from the hither shore of the river of sleep—in other words, wake in the morning: and it was with no very self-satisfied emotions that Evan, dressing by the full light of day, reviewed his share in the events of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... are growing too, as all must grow who live on life's firing line, and shrink not from meeting the very hardest problems of today. The working-woman, in her daily struggle comes up against every one of them, and not one ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... the State, Their duty to our gracious king, and bloody treason's fate." A horror seizes every breast—a stifled cry of dread: "Who sheds the blood of innocence, the blood on his own head!" That pack'd and perjured jury shrink in conscience-struck dismay, And wish their hands as clear of guilt as they were yesterday. Mackenzie's cold and flinty face is quivering like a leaf, Whilst with quick and throbbing finger he turns o'er and o'er his brief; And the misnamed judges ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... rebel knowingly. Then fierce wrath flames out from the darkened spirit, and the whole priestly population of Nob are summoned before him, loaded with bitter reproaches, their professions of innocence disregarded, and his guard ordered to murder them all then and there. The very soldiers shrink from the sacrilege, but a willing tool is at hand. The wild blood of Edom, fired by ancestral hatred, desires no better work, and Doeg crowns his baseness by slaying—with the help of his herdsmen, no doubt—"on ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... sing, unasked he sends us to proclaim. We who have followed o'er the billowy brine Thee and thine arms, since Ilion sank in flame, Will raise thy children to the stars, and name Thy walls imperial. Thou build them meet For heroes. Shrink not from thy journey's aim, Though long the way. Not here thy destined seat, So saith the Delian god, not thine the shores ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... speaking faintly, doubly jarred by the cold touch and the mystery. He was not apprehensive or timid through his imagination, but through his sensations and perceptions he could easily be made to shrink and turn pale like ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... we shall see later in the case of Hastings, he would not be false to his convictions, and if he judged that a cause was worth maintaining, even at the cost of weakening his own position, he did not shrink from his duty. This is proved by his conduct with reference to ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... it crushes fame like a dead leaf, and all the spirits and ministers of the mind shrink away before it, and can no more allure, no more console, but, sighing, pass ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... her, I had held her hand. She had insulted me with the subtlest of insults and yet I was not angry. Suddenly the game I was playing became invested with a tremendous solemnity. My old antagonists, Stumm and Rasta and the whole German Empire, seemed to shrink into the background, leaving only the slim woman with her inscrutable smile and devouring eyes. 'Mad and bad,' Blenkiron had called her, 'but principally bad.' I did not think they were the proper terms, for they belonged to the narrow world of our common experience. This was something ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... surprised, Frank, at what you have said. In fact I have expected it for some time. I have observed you looking over books upon foreign countries, and have seen that you often sat thoughtful and quiet. I guessed, therefore, what you had in your mind. Of course, dear, as a woman, I shrink from the thought of leaving all our friends and going to quite a strange country, but I don't think that I am afraid of the hardships or discomfort. Thousands of other women have gone through them, and there ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... to its old greatness of less moment to England. Philip was yet to send an armada against her coasts; he was again to stir up a fierce revolt in northern Ireland. But all danger from Spain was over with the revival of France. Even were England to shrink from a strife in which she had held Philip so gloriously at bay, French policy would never suffer the island to fall unaided under the power of Spain. The fear of foreign conquest passed away. The long struggle for sheer existence was over. What remained was the Protestantism, ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... as hearts can think; Welcome, again, as much as tongue can tell,—Welcome to joyous tongues, and hearts that will not shrink: God thee preserve, we pray, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the sunken, deathlike look; ghastly protruding bones; the faltering, hollow voice; preaching audibly from the shattered, shaking skeleton; piercing to the most vital marrow of the bones, and sapping the manly strength of youth—faugh! the idea sickens me. Nose, eyes, ears shrink from it. You saw that miserable wretch, Amelia, in our hospital, who was heavily breathing out his spirit; modesty seemed to cast down her abashed eye as she passed him; you cried woe upon him. Recall that hideous image to your mind, and your Charles stands before you. His kisses ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... several minutes ensued, during which Mrs. Elwood looked sadly and meaningly from the husband to the son, both of whose countenances seemed to fall and shrink ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... will be so good for me as this pure, bracing mountain atmosphere," her father replied, gently. "I would shrink from going to any place where we should be likely to find familiar faces—nothing would break me down so quickly. Be patient, Virgie for a little longer, and then you shall go back to the world, where you ought long ago to have been with people of ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... only sufficient for one crust at a time. Lay this, the flat side upon the board, and roll evenly in every direction, until scarcely more than an eighth of an inch in thickness, and somewhat larger than the baking plate, as it will shrink when lifted ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... course to pursue both in justice to the learned judge and to myself. Either I am unfit to sit in this House, or the judge has no right to his place on the bench. I have courted investigation in every shape; and I trust that the learned lord will not shrink from it or suffer his friends on the opposite side to evade the consideration of these charges by ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... that thou didst ever commit, though thou makest a light matter of it, is a greater evil than the pains of the damned in hell, setting aside their sins. All the torments in hell are not so great an evil as the least sin is; men begin to shrink at this, and loathe to go down to hell and be in ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... modestly pretend to shrink from it; but I well know the joy these words afford you; you wish it were ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... promised. She adored shopping, and this would be a labor of love. So she went off to dress for dinner, full of visions of bright pinks and blues and laces and ribbons that would have made Halcyone shrink if ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... that an English political campaign is fought for a principle or for an abstract idea, and equally rarely that in America the watchword on one side or the other is not some such high-sounding phrase as Englishmen rather shrink from using. It is true that behind that phrase may be clustered a cowering crowd of petty individual interests; the fact remains that it is the phrase itself—the large Idea—on which orators and party managers rely to secure their hold ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... over the cauliflowers and seal at once. Glass jars are the most convenient, as they may be examined frequently to see if their contents are keeping well. If not, repeat the scalding. In all pickles the vinegar should be two inches or more above the vegetables, as it is sure to shrink, and if the vegetables are not thoroughly immersed in ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... transports me into a luxurious vision sinking back through one hundred and thirty years, in which I see Addison, Phillips, both John and Ambrose, Tickell, Fickell, Budgell, and Cudgell, with many others beside, all cudgelled in a round robin, none claiming precedency of another, none able to shrink from his own dividend, until a voice seems to recall me to milder thoughts by saying, 'But surely, my friend, you never could wish to see Addison cudgelled? Let Strephon and Corydon be cudgelled without end, if the police can show any warrant for doing ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... confessed that he saw, or fancied he saw, a something, he declared himself wholly at a loss to explain what that something was: moreover, contrary to former habits of an ostentatious boldness, he seemed meekly to shrink from observation: and, as he piously acquiesced in the annoyance, would observe that his unpleasant jerking was "a little matter after all, and that, no doubt, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... pardon. Never did children more abhor a lie: we spurned its meanness, while trembling at its guilt; and nothing bound us more closely and exclusively together than, the discoveries we were always making of a laxity among other children in this respect. On such occasions we would shrink into a corner by ourselves and whisper, "Do they think God does not hear that?" Self-righteousness, no doubt, existed in a high degree; we were baby Pharisees, rejoicing in the external cleanliness of cup and platter; but I look back with great thankfulness on the mercy that so far restrained ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... were particularly lively and vivacious, even as they are in the sanguine sketches of Antoine Watteau a hundred years afterwards, I am "confidous"—as Mrs. Slipslop would say. For my theory (in reality a foregone conclusion which I shrink from dispersing by any practical resolvent) is, that Mile. de Mons was some delightful seventeenth—century French child, to whom the big volume had been presented as a picture-book. I can imagine the alert, strait-corseted little figure, with ribboned hair, eagerly craning across the ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... commonplace speech than the reflection darted through her mind like a lightning flash that she had never spoken a bit of her heart out like this in all her life before. The reason came to her in the same flash: she was not being looked at; her disfigured face was hidden. This man, at least, could not shrink, turn away, shiver, affect indifference, fix his eyes on hers with a fascinated horror, as others had done. Her heart was divided between a great throb of pity and sympathy for him and an irresistible sense of gratitude for herself. Sure of protection and comprehension, her lovely soul came out ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... woman, that the true greatness wears an invisible cloak, under cover of which it goes in and out among men without being suspected; if its cloak does not conceal it from itself always, and from all others for many years, its greatness will ere long shrink to very ordinary dimensions. What, then, it may be asked, is the good of being great? The answer is that you may understand greatness better in others, whether alive or dead, and choose better company from these and enjoy and understand that company better when you have chosen it—also that ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... I do not see how this logic can be escaped. But sad experience makes me fear that some of you may still shrink from radically saying with me, in abstracto, that we have the right to believe at our own risk any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our will. I suspect, however, that if this is so, it is because you have got away from the abstract logical point of view altogether, and are thinking ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... me, Then shall my ghost come to thy bed, And thee, feign'd vestal, in worse arms shall see: Then thy sick taper will begin to wink, And he, whose thou art then, being tired before, Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think Thou call'st for more, And, in false sleep, will from thee shrink; And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected thou Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat wilt lie A verier ghost than I. What I will say, I will not tell thee now, Lest that preserve thee; and since my love is spent, I'd rather ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... when the smuggling captain came and stood before him; but the man did not speak—he only glared down, apparently with the idea that he was frightening the lads horribly. Vince did not shrink, for he did not feel frightened, only troubled about home and the despondency there, as the time went by without news of their fate. For it was evident to him that the time had come for them to be taken on board ready ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... cries or of parties Is worth but a whisper from thee, While only the trust of thy heart is At one with the soul of the sea. In justice her trust is Whose time her tidestreams keep; They sink not, they shrink not, Time casts them ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... that this was the mark that the Lord did set on Cain, even continual fear and trembling, under the heavy load of guilt that he had charged on him for the blood of his brother Abel. Thus did I wind, and twine, and shrink under the burthen that was upon me; which burthen also did so oppress me, that I could neither stand, nor go, nor lie, either ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... with a preceding passion play might occupy several hundred actors for a number of days. The texts as known to us are hardly 'literature' in the narrower sense. They were written by men of small poetic talent, who rimed carelessly, used the rough-and-ready language of the people, did not shrink from indecency and aimed at ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... splendid chance, for the brute was twenty feet long at least; the rugged knobs of its thick hide showed here and there through a coat of mud with which it was covered, and its partially open jaws displayed a row of teeth that might have made the lion himself shrink. The mud had partially dried in the sun, so that the monster, as it lay sprawling, might have been mistaken for a dead carcass, had not a gentle motion about the soft parts of his ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... was shown that the night was dark and recognition next to impossible, this evidence was held conclusive to prove the crime, and nothing now remained but to condemn the culprit. The judge's words came slowly forth, making the stoutest there shrink back and let that arrow from the bow of death glance by and set its mark on him upon whose face the crowd now turned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... savagery of his tone made the girl shrink away from him and turn pale. He managed to cover his break so quickly with a forced laugh and an effort to assist Gladwin to his feet that her fear ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... change as we contemplate it when parting from those we love, I confess I should shrink from the idea of years intervening before you and I met again; not that I apprehend any diminution of our affection, but it would be painful to be no longer young, or to have grown suddenly old to each other. But I hope ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... deriving of her spirit-state Is so remote from men and their believing, They shrink when she is cold, and estimate That hardness which is but a God's dismay: As when the Heaven-sent sprite thro' Hell sped cleaving, Only the gross air checkt him on ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... God's name,—such wisdom and such sin Are all about thy lips!—urge me no more. For all the soul within me is wrought o'er By Love; and if thou speak and speak, I may Be spent, and drift where now I shrink away. ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... an expression of pain and rage. Her brows drew downward, her thin lips curled themselves away from the gleaming teeth, and, at intervals of half a minute or more, her eyelids quivered, she shuddered, and her whole frame appeared to shrink together. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... ends in mistrust and alienation; and it lies at the root of too many of the fatal misconceptions of life. There are loving hearts that would pay any price to be freed from the self-enfolding toils that wrap them in these crisis hours. And so would Miriam's, for she felt herself shrink within herself at the approach of Matt. She knew nothing of mental moods, never having heard of them, nor being able to account for, or analyze, them. All she knew, poor girl, was that for the first time ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... Again, women shrink with passionate repugnance from receiving orders from another woman; witness the rarity of the American domestic. A pity? Yes; but what else can you expect? The Americans are a dominant race. Free education has made all classes too nearly equal for one woman ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... responsive movement. She seemed, if anything, to shrink a little away. Her head was thrown back, her dark eyes were filled with dislike. She turned suddenly to the Professor and spoke to him in her own language. She pointed to the signs upon the tent, drew her finger along one of the sentences, ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... forsook him, and you know I do not mean to forsake him. For yourself—do not try to desert. It would make no difference. Do not believe that any consideration would cause me willingly to give you a moment's pain, or that I should shrink from sacrificing myself to save you." With one of her small white hands she gently pressed my head towards her. Her lips touched my forehead, and she whispered: "Do not leave me. It will soon ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... great pleasure to me finding that to-day the Sakais no longer distrust civilization and some of them, especially the younger ones, do not refuse or shrink from work as they once did and neither do they oppose such an obstinate resistance to those innovations which I too had a part ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... into a besieged town would instantly induce the garrison to evacuate the place and quit; but the barbarity which would be involved in subjecting even an enemy to direct contact with the Bradley Sausage is so frightful that we shrink from recommending its use, excepting in extreme cases. The odor disseminated by the stink-pot used in war by the Chinese is fragrant and balmy compared with the perfume which belongs to this article. It might also be used profitably as a manure for poor land, and in a very cold climate, ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... The constant reference to a petty and puny race must cripple the boldness of the poet. Fortunately for his art, Shakespeare lived in an age extremely susceptible of noble and tender impressions, but which had still enough of the firmness inherited from a vigorous olden time not to shrink back with dismay from every strong and violent picture. We have lived to see tragedies of which the catastrophe consists in the swoon of an enamoured princess. If Shakespeare falls occasionally into ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... large pipes "robbed" their smaller neighbors of their due supply of wind, causing them to sound flat. By giving each pipe a pallet or valve to itself, the waste of wind in the large grooves was prevented. Another object was to get rid of the long wooden slides, which in dry weather were apt to shrink and cause leakage, and in damp weather ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... "—there's a bandage off most charmingly, and now comes the cool one,—makes you shrink at first, my poor dear fellow, don't it? but it will be comfortable presently,—it seems that the woman was a young woman, and a jealous woman, and a revengeful woman; revengeful, Handel, to the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... And his soul seemed to shrink back, as if into the recesses of the shell from which it had been peeping. His soul was tremendous, in solitude; but even the rumour of society intimidated it. His father and another were walking about the ground ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... she helped her mistress to pile up her wavy hair at the top of her head. But when at last it was ready, Mrs. Tiralla thought it so hideous, that she burst into tears and tore it down with an angry "Psia krew!" which made Rosa shrink. The child was crouching in a dark corner of the room with her hands clasped round her knees, gazing with admiration at the beautiful vision in the white ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... I will do it or die! Love that will not shrink from a crime must be love indeed. Is there a woman in the world for whom such a thing has been done? Poor boy! Come, do not lose time, dear M. Chesnel; and count upon me ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... No stone directs the stranger's eye To where his sacred relics lie, Nor can the weeping Burmans come To shed their tears around his tomb. And when their work on earth is done, No mourning daughter, wife, or son Can rest from toil the weary head, Beside him in his ocean bed. But while we shrink from such a grave, He rests as sweetly 'neath the wave As though in Auburn's bowers he lay, Where sunbeams through green branches play, And roses, wet with tear drops, bloom Around th' unconscious sleeper's tomb. Let no rude wind, no angry storm, The ocean's heaving breast deform,— 'Tis hallowed ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... unapproached affluence in dramatic instinct and invention—an affluence which enabled him to identify himself with every phase of emotion—the autobiographic element in his sonnets, although it may not be dismissed altogether, is seen to shrink to slender proportions. As soon as the collection is studied comparatively with the many thousand sonnets that the printing presses of England, France, and Italy poured forth during the last years of the sixteenth century, a vast number of Shakespeare's performances prove to be little ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... that she might indeed meet her dead lover at the ash-field stile; but though she shivered as this superstitious fancy came into her head, her heart beat firm and regular; not from darkness nor from the spirits of the dead was she going to shrink; her great sorrow had taken away ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... with you!" cried Sergei across the raft, accentuating his exclamation with a loud and cynical curse. Then he seemed to shrink together, as if himself afraid of the terrible drama which was unfolding itself before him; drama, which he was now compelled to understand. ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... of the whole matter seems to be, War and Union, or Peace and Disunion. If we have Union, it can only be now through war. We must 'seek peace with the sword.' The rebels have appealed from the civil law to the military law, from the Constitution to the sword; let us not shrink from the ordeal. No revolution to perpetuate oppression can hope for the favor of a God ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that have this instant opened on the world. There are two houses separated by but an inch or two of wall. In one, there are quiet minds at rest; in the other, a waking conscience that one might think would trouble the very air. In that close corner where the roofs shrink down and cower together as if to hide their secrets from the handsome street hard by, there are such dark crimes, such miseries and horrors, as could be hardly told in whispers. In the handsome street, there ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... fatigue and said that he would freeze if he rode. Besides, he added, it would be cruel to burden Fanny, in her present state of depression. The most likely thing was that we should have to carry her; and if she continued to shrink at her present rate per minute, soon we could slip her into ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... presented a dreadful spectacle, for my hair and collar were matted with blood, and I saw the guests stare and shrink from me. The clerk came toward me and stopped me at the entrance ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... movement among the directors. They shifted uneasily in their chairs, and several of them pushed them back. They did not know what might happen. Keith was the incarnation of controlled passion. Mr. Kestrel seemed to shrink up within himself. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... is idle to talk of municipal reform or popular Lords Lieutenant. The mild sway of a constitutional monarchy is not strong enough for a Roman Catholic population. The stern soul of a Republican would not shrink from sending half the misguided population and all the priests into exile, and planting in their place an industrious Protestant people. But you cannot do this, and you cannot convert the Irish, nor by other means make ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... they put those reasons on the journal, they would spread on it their own condemnation; adding that, by going out of the house, Mr. Adams might easily have avoided voting. The latter replied, "I do not choose to shrink from my duty by such an expedient. It is not my right alone, but the rights of all the members, and of the people of the United States, which are concerned in this question, and I cannot evade it. I regret the state ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... conceived how great a trial it is to me to write the following history of myself; but I must not shrink from the task. The words, "Secretum meum mihi," keep ringing in my ears; but as men draw towards their end, they care less for disclosures. Nor is it the least part of my trial, to anticipate that my friends may, upon first reading what I have written, consider much in ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... bloodthirsty, covetous—men who were almost always thieves, who were frequently cannibals, sometimes wreckers—who regarded foreigners as a cheap and very delicious kind of food. The pioneers of civilisation, always and everywhere, incur dangers from which ordinary mortals would shrink with dismay; but the earliest pioneers, the first introducers of the elements of culture among barbarians who had never heard of it, must have encountered far greater peril than others from their ignorance of the ways of savage man, and a want of ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Divorce can be pronounced, and the care of the child be legally secured to the mother. The only doubt and the only danger are there. If you are not frightened by the prospect of a desperate venture which some women would shrink from, I believe I see a way ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... remark the Goblin turned his telescope toward Davy, and uttered a faint cry of surprise; and Davy, peering anxiously through the large end, saw him suddenly shrink to the size of a small beetle, and then disappear altogether. Davy hastily reached out with his hands to grasp the telescope, and found himself staring through a round glass window into a farm-yard, where a red Cow stood gazing up ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... things move for ever; and not even ghosts can rest. So the corpses of their sisters, piling on them from above, press them outward, press them southward toward the sun once more; across the floes and round the icebergs, weeping tears of snow and sleet, while men hate their wild harsh voices, and shrink before their bitter breath. They know not that the cold bleak snow-storms, as they hurtle from the black north-east, bear back the ghosts of the soft air-mothers, as penitents, to their father, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... does not shrink back into itself because in the confused pell-mell of human life the alien souls which destiny has chosen for its companions do not satisfy, in this detail or the other detail, the desire of its heart. ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... as he swings his delicate cordage from one tree to another, he does not need to wear a gorgeous plumage; this old dusty coat and uncomely figure, that make a child shrink and cry out, these may well be forgotten by him who looks into life through prismatic glasses. Every drop of rain wears for him its Iris drapery; the dew on the flowers becomes a jewelled circlet; and the dazzling pictures brought by the sunbeams outshine and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... and deathlike as it was—suiting well the countenance of the speaker, and seeming rather the voice of some bodiless wanderer of the Styx than living mortal, would have made Ione shrink back into the pitiless fury of the storm, but Glaucus, though not without some misgiving, drew her ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... The photographer can procure every article needed for his work at moderate cost and in quantities suited to his wants. His prices have consequently come down to such a point that pauperism itself need hardly shrink from the outlay required for a family portrait-gallery. The "tin-types," as the small miniatures are called,—stanno-types would be the proper name,—are furnished at the rate of two cents each! A portrait such as Isabey could not paint for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the 'Hammer of the Arians,' could keep the heretics at bay, and do in the Latin Church what Gregory could not do in the Greek Church—maintain his position and his cause against all comers. For one thing, the retiring disposition of Gregory inclined him to shrink from the din of conflict, and his high ideals weakened his hopefulness. The result was that he abandoned his position and retired to Nazianzus in 381. Deprived by death of his life-long friend, and of his brother Caesarius, to whom he was bound by more than brotherly love, ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie
... have concluded this subject, by bringing under examination some of the arguments and quotations in the Epistle to the Hebrews; but upon looking over that Epistle, and contemplating my task, I confess I shrink from it. That Epistle is so replete with daring, ridiculous, and impious applications of the words of the Old Testament, that I am glad to omit it; and I think after the specimens which have been ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... would shrink from talking to a husband of the love they bore his wife, and an hour ago I should have shrunk from it, too, but you have forced me to it, and now you must listen while I tell you of my love for Katy. It began longer ago than she can remember—began when she was my baby sister, and I hushed ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... frequent exchange of perfectly harmless rifle-shots. And here in Prague, looking down over my newspaper from the terrace of my choice, I seemed to see the spires of the city mass closer together and take on the form of giant jungle trees, the broad Vltava to shrink to the narrow silver thread of a mountain stream at the crossing of which Wun Thu's sporting warriors had levelled their blunderbusses lashed to trees and warranted harmless to all but the men behind them; the paper told of another rising led by Wun Thu. ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... uncharacteristically petulant and anxious as she stood on the broad hearth at one side of the massive mantelpiece, one hand lifted to the high shelf; her red cloth gown with the amber-tinted gleams of the lines of otter fur showed richly in the blended light of fire and lamp. Her eyes seemed to shrink from the window, at which nevertheless ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... hills and lay the level plain of endless sand; so minute that, save with a powerful lens, you would never imagine the dust on your fingers to be more than dust. The thoughts of man are like these: each to him seems great in his day, but the ages roll, and they shrink till they become triturated dust, and you might, as it were, put a thousand on your thumb-nail. They are not shapeless dust for all that; they are organic, and they build and weld and grow together, till in the passage of time they will make a new earth and a new life. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... any important move I am making. So this is to inform you, in very strict confidence, of my latest dodge. For the effective organization of my particular branch of the W.S.P.U. activities, I must have an office. "The Lilacs" is far too small, and besides I shrink from having my little home raided or too much visited even by confederates. I learned the other day that the old Fraser and Warren offices on the top floor of 88-90 Chancery Lane were vacant. The Midland Insurance Co. that occupied ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... dauntless hardihood, 650 And brandish't blade rush on him, break his glass, And shed the lushious liquor on the ground, But sease his wand, though he and his curst crew Feirce signe of battail make, and menace high, Or like the sons of Vulcan vomit smoak, Yet will they soon retire, if he but shrink. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... this ghastly ceremony is that the spirit of the departed, of whom you have swallowed a piece, will for ever keep on friendly terms with you. When birds and dogs do not shrink from feeding, it is a sign that the body is healthy, and fit ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... a young man," I began, "and do you think that he will shrink from enduring any number of hardships to gain them? Are you ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... 'simmons for?" sharply rejoined the General. Then came the humorous reply that disarmed all of the officer's anger and appealed to his sympathy, while it hinted all "the boys" were suffering for the cause. "Well, the fact of it is, General, I'm trying to shrink up my stomach to the size of my rations, so I won't starve ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... by the fire; but, with his books slung over his shoulder, he sets out to face the storm. When he reaches the topmost ridge, where the snow lies in drifts, and the north wind comes keen and biting, does he shrink and cower down by the fences, or run into the nearest house to warm himself? No; he buttons up his coat, and rejoices to defy the blast, and tosses the snow-wreaths with his foot; and so, erect and fearless, with strong heart and ruddy ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... crooked garden," he said, at length, "is a combination from which all honest people should shrink. Those who frequent it must be, for the most part, crooked people. They were, for the most part, crooked ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... my head's a mop; I'm vet as any think; Oh! shan't ve cotch a cold!" "Your tongue is glib enough!" his rib exclaim'd, and made him shrink, —For ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... words and to realize that by his own efforts he had become a self-supporting member of society. It really seemed as though he increased in stature twice as fast after that little talk with his mother. At the same time his clothes appeared to shrink from the responsibility of covering an independent man, instead of the boy for whom they had ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... but defer it till I should meet her here,' said Robert. 'I shrink from seeing her with those cousins, or hearing her name with theirs. Phoebe, imagine my feelings when, going into Mervyn's club with him, I heard "Rashe Charteris and Cilly Sandbrook" contemptuously discussed by those very names, and jests passing on their ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she rose and dressed. She did not shrink from meeting the eyes of strangers. They simply did not exist for her. She took her place in the great dining saloon, looking neither to right nor left. The buzz of conversation all around her passed her by. She might have been sitting in utter solitude. And all the while the misery gnawed ever ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... scattered on the wind, a wretched spectacle was disclosed: men and officers tumbled in heaps, battalions resolved into a mob, order and obedience gone; and, when the British muskets were levelled for a second volley, the masses of the militia were seen to cower and shrink with uncontrollable panic. For a few minutes the French regulars stood their ground, returning a sharp and not ineffectual fire. But now, echoing cheer on cheer, redoubling volley on volley, trampling the dying and the dead, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... sun was risen More than two hours aloft; and to the sea My looks were turned. "Fear not," my master cried. "Assured we are at happy point. Thy strength Shrink not, but rise dilated. Thou art come To Purgatory now. Lo! there the cliff That circling bounds it. Lo! the entrance there, Where ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... away a chance; if they came on the British in the woods they were "to give them Indian play," and advance from tree to tree, pressing the enemy unceasingly. He ended by promising them that their officers would shrink from no danger, but would lead them everywhere, and, in their turn, they must be on the alert ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt |
