"Shrink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be her mortal illness; for the very next night she came suddenly to her end. Her loss was a heavy one, especially to her own household. She had always been a quiet person, of rather pensive humor, whose native diffidence caused her to shrink from observation; and after Amelia's death she was rarely seen abroad, except at meeting, on Sundays, or when she went to visit the poor, the sick, or the grief-stricken. It was at home that her worth was most apparent; for plain domestic virtues, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... expected! You shrink from me. You avoid my polluted hand. How could it be otherwise? A conscientious green-goods man would do the same." He rose from his seat. "Your attitude," he said, "confirms me in a decision that has been in my mind ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... disgrace is ours, not theirs. If slavery, however, is a blemish, a blot, an eating cancer in the body politic, it is not our fault if, by holding it up, others should see in the mirror of truth its deformity, and shrink back from the view. We have not, and we intend not, to use any weapons against slavery, but the moral power of truth and the force of public opinion. If we enter the slave States, and tamper with the slave contrary to law, punish ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... tranquillity: Lord of magnanimity strong in apparel: Lord of the crown high plumed: of the beautiful turban, of the tall white crown: the gods love thy presence: when the double crown is set upon thy head: thy love pervades the earth: thy beams arise ... men are cheered by thy rising: the beasts shrink from thy beams: thy love is over the southern heaven: thy heart is not (unmindful of) the northern heaven: thy goodness ... (all) hearts: love subdues (all) hands: thy creations are fair overcoming (all) the earth: (all) hearts are ...
— Egyptian Literature
... and beauty die. So be it, O my God, thou God of truth. Better than beauty and than youth Are saints and angels, a glad company: And Thou, O lord, our Rest and Ease, Are better far than these. Why should we shrink from our full harvest? why Prefer to glean ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... man shrink from the bitter tonics Of grief, and yearning, and need, and strife, For the rarest chords in the soul's harmonics Are found in the minor strains ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... is a lasting lesson: and, dubious monument as Don Juan may be, it towers over the century. Of course there is truth in what you say; but ought it to be the case? and is it the case in any absolute sense? You deal frankly with your sonnets, and do not shrink from radical change. I think that on Oliver much better than when I saw it before. The opening phrases of both octave and sestette are very fine; but the second quatrain and the second terzina, though with a quality of beauty, both seem somewhat to ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... From useful labor we will not shrink; But our fires we'll blow till the forges glow With a lustre that makes our eyelids wink. Clink, clink, ...
— The Nursery, November 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 5 • Various
... Heaven above, And it sings a song of undying love; And yet, tho' [2] its voice be so clear and full, You never would hear it; your ears are so dull; So keep where you are: you are foul with sin; It would shrink to the earth if you ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... whose linen we lave, we laundress drudges, could look in here, Wouldn't their feet shrink back with sickness, and wouldn't their faces go pale with fear? White, well-ironed, all sheen and sweetness, that linen looks when it leaves our hands; But they little think of the sodden squalor that marks the den where the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... my daughter. Her education has been sadly neglected, and she should be where she can have experienced tutors, and good social surroundings. With her delicate organization, and sensitive and susceptible nature, she needs motherly care and affection, and I shrink from committing her to the hands of strangers. I should feel at rest about her only with you. You have been my steadfast friend through many years; you have stood by me in, sore trials—may I not then ask you to do me now ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... be "y-touked," that is, dyed, it was done at this period, and it was then "y-tented," spread on the tenter-field and caught on tenter-hooks, to shrink and dry. ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... as discernible to any one honest enough and fearless enough to look; and the first and supreme of all is that which we have been considering this morning. The question for you and for me, my brethren, is simply this: Are our lives full of the grace of love? Do not shrink from the question. Do not deceive yourselves with any substitutes; there are many offering zeal, the gift of prayer or of speech, yea, the gift of faith itself. None of these will atone for the lack of love. Let each ask himself, Am ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... Even in this desponding hour, Though to think may taint the flower, Thy suggestion comes to nought,— In my power is not my thought But my act is in my power. I can follow to the brink, Free to pause or to pursue, Move my foot, or backward shrink, For it is one thing to do, And another thing ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... six, and said she was going by it, whether I did or not, because it was a pity to have too much of a good thing, and she hadn't the face to ask for the keys of that church again. I accompanied her. I fancy that the brown leather is liable to shrink in the sun, and I was not unwilling to get back to my slippers and stretch ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... day like this the most ardent lover of Nature could scarcely fail to shrink from her cold, pallid face and colder breath. Our return to the home, whose ruddy firelight is seen through the frosted window-panes, will be all the more welcome because we have been shivering ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... the Colonel, in whose steps I follow, faithful as his shadow, crouch sidewise: we must pass behind this inclined plane, which rests on roughly hewn rocks, that protrude till it appears impossible that any living thing, except a lizard, can find a passage. I am sure we must shrink from the original rotundity with which Nature blessed us. I feel as the frog in the fable might have felt, if, after successfully inflating himself to the much-envied dimensions of the ox, he had suddenly found himself reduced ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... and saying what he listed, now in the Queen's inner chamber, then in the midst of the Council, unconsidered, and the butt of all, he paid for his bed and bounty by shooting shafts of foolery which as often made his listeners shrink as caused their laughter. The Queen he called Delicio, and Leicester, Obligato—as one who piped to another's dance. He had taken to Buonespoir at the first glance, and had frequented him, and Lempriere had presently been added to his favour. He had again and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... answer that question to his own heart, much less to hers. He could not paint the shuddering horror which had forced him to veil his eyes and shrink aghast from that last ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... the darkness, but there was no answering clasp. The woman seemed to shrink away. And ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... and if the contrast between your finery and my high-necked gingham apron and white sun-bonnet sometimes struck me painfully, I had no wish to take the boots and sashes from you, whom they fitted so admirably; and as we grew older and you did not shrink from or slight Jerrie Crawford, I cannot tell you how great was the love which grew in my heart for you, the dearest girl friend I ever had, and a thousand times dearer now that I know you ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... in front of that terrible silent line, while his men seemed to shrink somewhat as they, too, pulled up. Then he faced Thorleif as boldly as if he had the army of Wessex behind him, ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... of my Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, fixed upon me with a deep gratitude and pride. It was all of a great pleasure to me except that I did not like very well to be so distinguished by a young man, which made the French grande dame in me to shrink. ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... George for an event which would place her own son in a position of honor and affluence. But many a time George Eildon recoiled from the people who did not conceal their opinion that he might not be broken-hearted at the death of his cousin. There is nothing that true, honorable, unworldly natures shrink from more than having low, unworthy feelings and motives ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... 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 than six ...
— The Heads of Apex • Francis Flagg
... at that Time, as I was assur'd by my Lord Lucas, Constable of it, upwards of twenty Thousand Barrels of Gun-powder, in that they call the White-Tower, when all at once the middle Flooring did not only give way, or shrink, but fell flat down upon other Barrels of Powder, together with many of the same combustible Matter which had been placed upon it. It was a Providence strangely neglected at that Time, and hardly thought of since; But let any considerate ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... innocent child, imprisoned here till he grew into an old man, and became a dull, worn-out creature like herself. Sometimes, watching him, she felt more sorry for him than even for herself; and then, seeing she looked a less miserable and ugly woman, he did not shrink from her as usual. ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... Bingo had fallen by his hand. But, oddly enough, that fact did not sear his conscience. He had been accused of drowning Lester Parmalee, and the thought of that accusation now made him shrink and writhe. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... their 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 make it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... am glad I am so soon to be rid of my vexed, joyless life; but you know it is all a dark mystery; and sometimes, when I recollect how I felt in my childhood, I shrink from the final dissolution. I have no hopes of a blissful future, such as cheer some people in their last hour. Of what comes after death I know and believe nothing. Occasionally I shiver at the thought of annihilation; but if, after ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... than we do now about a very wicked hobgoblin; he was one of the very worst, for he was a real demon. One day, when he was in a merry mood, he made a looking-glass which had the power of making everything good or beautiful that was reflected in it almost shrink to nothing, while everything that was worthless and bad looked increased in size and worse than ever. The most lovely landscapes appeared like boiled spinach, and the people became hideous, and looked as if ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Lady Catharine," replied Mary Connynge. "To the contrary, 'twould not surprise me to learn that he would not shrink from any adventure which ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... strangulation; corrugation; astringency; astringents, sclerotics; contractility, compressibility; coarctation[obs3]. inferiority in size. V. become small, become smaller; lessen, decrease &c. 36; grow less, dwindle, shrink, contract, narrow, shrivel, collapse, wither, lose flesh, wizen, fall away, waste, wane, ebb; decay &c. (deteriorate) 659. be smaller than, fall short of; not come up to &c. (be inferior) 34. render smaller, lessen, diminish, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... a storm had been so unpleasant that somehow they seemed to shrink involuntarily from a repetition so soon. Later on, when the memory became fainter, they might again take risks, after the manner of buoyant youth ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... perhaps, very natural that, with her feelings towards Charles Holland, Flora should shrink from every one who seemed to be of a directly contrary impression, and when Mr. Marchdale now spoke, she showed but little inclination to hear what he had to say ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... disregardful of these orders, began firing as soon as the trumpets sounded, though with small injury to the islanders, who mostly lay under the cover of trenches or other means of defence. Captain Lister then urged on the rowers, who began to shrink at the shot from the enemy which flew thick about their ears, and was himself the first to board one of the ships which lay farther from shore than the other, while we speedily followed, still plying the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... of seats, this is barely conceivable; and that, were it to take place, the Reichstag would promptly be dissolved for new elections on a narrower franchise. Bismarck himself contemplated this course, and his successors would not shrink ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... it seems you are an adept after all in all the philtres known to man, only you chose to conceal your knowledge all the while; or is it that you shrink from taking the first step because of the scandal you will cause by kindly advances to your brother? And yet it is commonly held to redound to a man's praise to have outstripped an enemy in mischief or a friend in kindness. Now if it seemed to me that Chaerephon were better fitted ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... to the Church in 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 ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... about it. Some thought he asked too much of man, some thought he saw too much in women; there was a fear that young people, knowing at last how far short they fell of what they ought to be, might shrink from the matrimony that must expose them to each other, now that they had Sandys to guide them, and the persons who had simply married and risked it (and it was astounding what a number of them there proved to be) wrote to the papers suggesting that he ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... not thy fortune troll upon the wheels Of yonder dancing cubes of mottled bone; And drown it not, like Egypt's royal harlot, Dissolving her rich pearl in the brimm'd wine-cup. These are the arts, Lothario, which shrink acres Into brief yards—bring sterling pounds to farthings, Credit to infamy; and the poor gull, Who might have lived an honour'd, easy life, To ruin, and an unregarded grave. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... If ye suffer in this manner, be ye not ashamed, but glorify God. Here he makes the suffering and anguish the more welcome, because it is great, insomuch that we praise God through it, and because we are not worthy of it. Yet now all will shrink therefrom. Of what advantage is it to embrace the cross in monasteries? The cross of Christ does not save me. I must, indeed, believe in His cross, but I must myself bear my own cross. His suffering must I experience inwardly, if I would possess ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... that, being a mortal like himself, I likewise found it a difficult task; but it did not become a person to shrink from a glorious but practicable undertaking, on account of the difficulties attending it, because in proportion to these difficulties, is the honour he acquires by it in the eye of man, and the merit in the sight of God. Our beneficent Creator is desirous, that, as he originally favoured human nature ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... murder, and there is not sufficient legal evidence, he is to be shut up in a narrow cell and fed with "the bread of adversity and the water of affliction" (Isa. xxx. 20). They give him this diet till his bowels shrink, and then he is fed with barley till (as it swells in his bowels) ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... 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 ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... could not bear that she should lose any happiness which might be hers; and the tender memory of the blessed companionship which had been withdrawn from his mortal sight only to be given back to him more fully as he had lived closer and nearer to spiritual things, made him shrink from forbidding the same sort of fullness and completion of life to one so dear as Nan. He tried to assure himself that while a man's life is strengthened by his domestic happiness, a woman's must either surrender itself wholly, or relinquish entirely the claims of such duties, if she would ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... 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 vinegar they ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... speaker went down on one knee to raise up the fallen lad, he uttered a cry of horror, and then let the young man's head hurriedly down, to shrink away with ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... swayed by Lady Gertrude, who is secretly rather bored by the dullness that has ensued on the strange absence of their host, decides to leave on the morrow, to the great distress of both Dora and Florence Delmaine, who shrink from deserting the castle while its master's fate is undecided. But they are also sensible that, to remain the only female guests, would be to ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... 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 ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Pyramus—'An' I may hide my face,' says he, 'let me play Thisbe too!' And so likewise, when the lion is mentioned, he would fain play the lion in addition to both, promising to aggravate his voice in such a way as to roar you as gently as any sucking-dove. The managing partner would shrink from this kind of active employment. She would compose the play, distribute the parts, shift the scenes, and snuff the candles; but she would take no part in the performance. This makes her character a difficult study; but though difficult, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... Extreme pacificists shrink from fighting evil with evil, hell with hell, and advise submission to outrage, or at least taking the risk of being forced into resigned submission. The believers in the religion of valor, on the other hand, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... compassion. "You were so young—it was all so sudden, so terrible, so incomprehensible. Draw up that hassock, Edith, and sit here by my side, and listen. No, you must let go my hand. How can I tell whether you will not shrink from it and me with horror when ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... saw them shrink with fear Who would not shrink from foeman's spear, When Olaf's lion-eye was cast On them, and called up all the past. Clear as the serpent's eye—his look No Throndhjem man could stand, but shook Beneath its glance, and skulked away, Knowing his king, ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... something in his past life prejudicial to his character from parasites and informers, this would be an ordeal which scarcely any mere man since the fall could endure. It would be to subject him to a reign of terror from which the stoutest and purest heart might shrink. I have passed triumphantly through this ordeal. My vindication is complete. The committee have reported no resolution looking to an impeachment against me; no resolution of censure; not even a resolution pointing out any abuses in any of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... to be done!" said she, "and there's an end of it! The clothes won't be dry until morning, and it won't do to put them too near the stove, or they'll shrink so he can't get them on. And he can't go away to hunt up lodgings wearing the Duke's dressing-gown ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... human faculties may as well be content to leave unanswered, though to its being supposed to emanate directly from the mind of Omnipresent Deity, one insuperable objection may be mentioned, which should be kept steadily in view. There are few of us who will not shrink with horror from a notion, according to which man, whenever doing as he pleases with any material object, applying it, as likely as not, to some base or criminal purpose, is disposing at his pleasure of a portion of the Divine ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... his tactlessness constantly precluded a due appreciation of his courage and nobility. For long years his violent and haughty temper made him the most unpopular man in England, except in Devonshire, where everybody doted on him. He was "a man of desperate fortunes," and he did not shrink from violent methods. In studying his life we are amused, we are almost scandalised, at his snake-like quality. He moves with serpentine undulations, and the beautiful hard head is lifted from ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... last, in answer to my looks rather than to my words, "I AM nervous, Dr. Hamilton. I have always been a timid man, and my timidity depends upon my frail physical health. But my soul is firm, and I can bring myself up to face a danger which a less-nervous man might shrink from. What I am doing now is done from no compulsion, but entirely from a sense of duty, and yet it is, beyond doubt, a desperate risk. If things should go wrong, I will have some claims to ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you fancy yourself a thing apart from the mass." And again, the same writer says: "Before you can attain knowledge you must have passed through all places, foul and clean alike. Therefore, remember that the soiled garment you shrink from touching may have been yours yesterday, may be yours tomorrow. And if you turn with horror from it when it is flung upon your shoulders, it will cling the more closely to you. The self-righteous man makes for himself a bed of mire. Abstain because it is ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... was Dunport, and in these very streets her father had played, and here her mother had become deeper and deeper involved in the suffering and tragedy which had clouded the end of her short life. It seemed to the young stranger as if she must shrink away from the curious glances that stray passers-by sent into the old carriage; and that she was going to be made very conspicuous by the newly-awakened interest in a sad story which surely could not have been forgotten. Poor Nan! she sent ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... with steady hand, "you are the only soul on this island who doesn't fear me. That woman above yonder, curse her, shuddered away from me as I looked at her dying. But your hand is steady. You and old Ben Hornigold are the only ones who don't shrink back, hey, Carib? Is it love or hate?" he mused, as the man made no answer. "More," he cried, again lifting the glass ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... do get to heaven, it will be on your ladder, Mate. You have coaxed me up with confidence and praise, you have steadied me with ethical culture books, and essays, and sermons. You have gotten me so far up (for me), that I am afraid to look down. I shrink with a mighty shrivel when I think of disappointing you in any way, and I expand almost to bursting when I think of justifying your belief ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... was abashed at the disproportionate and unusual effects of his movements. It was as though a retiring nature were to be accompanied at every step through a crowded drawing-room by the jingling of bells. Always the instinct was to pause in order that the row might die away, that the man might shrink to his accustomed unobtrusiveness. And instantaneously, without the grace of even a little transitional echo, the stillness fell, crowding so closely on the heels of the man's presence that almost he could feel the breath ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... themselves perfectly justified in declining to give us any assistance in finding the will, soothing their consciences by the reflection that by such refusal they are committing no offense of which the law takes cognizance; but while doing this they might shrink from the absolutely criminal offense of destroying the will. I do not say that now they have entered upon the path they have that they would not destroy the will if they thought there was a chance ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... gentleman who performs the service.[271] I heard him do so with the utmost propriety for my late friend, Lady Alvanley,[272] the arrangement of whose funeral devolved upon me. How little I could guess when, where, and with respect to whom I should next hear those solemn words. Well, I am not apt to shrink from that which is my duty, merely because it is painful; but I wish this day over. A kind of cloud of stupidity hangs about me, as if all were unreal that men seem to ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... of Denmark will not on account of the burden, shrink from the demands of justice; it will not allow it to be said that it refused to satisfy a claim, the justness of which has never been doubted by any civilized nation, nor will it suffer a number of its fellow citizens to be illegally ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... broad principle of absolute religious toleration proclaimed in our fundamental law, and rejoicing in the benign influence which it has exerted upon our social and political condition, I should shrink from a clear duty did I fail to express my deepest conviction that we can place no secure reliance upon any apparent progress if it be not sustained by national integrity, resting upon the great truths affirmed and illustrated by divine revelation. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... succeed in making her allow him to see her sometimes; and, counting over the list of his advantages: his social position—his fortune, from which she stood too often in need of assistance not to shrink from the prospect of a definite rupture (having even, so people said, an ulterior plan of getting him to marry her)—his friendship with M. de Charlus, which, it must be confessed, had never won him any very great favour from Odette, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... thirty-five years ago, it came loaded with fine reddish-colored sand. Though no longer accompanied by sand, it is so devoid of moisture as to cause the wood of the best seasoned English boxes and furniture to shrink, so that every wooden article not made in the country is warped. The verls of ramrods made in England are loosened, and on returning to Europe fasten again. This wind is in such an electric state that a bunch of ostrich feathers held a few seconds against ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Pope's malignant clan, He'll do whatever Prince or Hero can; Retrieve that martial Fame by Britons lost, And prove that Faith which graceless Christians boast. O! make his Cause, ye Powers above! your Care; Let Guilt shrink back, and Innocence appear. But, now, with State Affairs I must have done, And to the Business of my Lamps must run; When Sun and Moon from you do hide their Head, Your busy Streets with artful Lights are spread, And gives you Light with great indulgent ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... rule were adopted, it would be by the votes of States which were not Democratic, and would bring 'dismemberment and final breaking up of the party.' Walker laughed at Butler's 'tall vaulting' from the floor; and, refusing to shrink from the Van Buren issue, he protested against New York dictation, and warningly said that, if Van Buren were nominated, Clay would be elected."—Edward M. Shepard, Life of Martin Van Buren, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the ruling classes, and the still sterner haughtiness of their footmen. He had now abandoned Alice in Putney. And a mysterious demon seized him and gripped him, and sought to pull him back in the direction of the simplicity of Putney, and struggled with him fiercely, and made him writhe and shrink before the brilliant phenomena of London's centre, and indeed almost pitched him out of the car and set him running as hard as legs would carry to Putney. It was the demon which we call habit. He would have given ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... his cold hand in hers. A few hours ago she dared not have done this, knowing very well that at the caressing touch of her fingers, she would have felt his strong arms around her in a passionate and distasteful embrace. But there was no fear of this now. She would never have to shrink away from him again. ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by ourselves, and may hereafter be misconceived by others, to encroach upon the powers of the House. Principles that bear a remote affinity with usurpation on those powers will be rejected, not merely as errors, but as wrongs. Our sensibilities will shrink from a post where it is possible they may be wounded, and be inflamed by the slightest suspicion ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... 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 dramatic rather than ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... between two persons, one of whom is protective, but unrelated. But there are wild, forcible, unrestricted characters, on whom the necessity and even duty of loving their own child is a sort of barrier to love. They perhaps do not love their own traits, which they recognize in their children; they shrink from their own features in the reflection presented by these little mirrors. A certain strangeness and unlikeness (such as gives poignancy to the love between the sexes) would excite a livelier affection. Be this as it may, it is not probable that Doctor Grimshawe would have loved a child of his ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... muscle, to look straight in the face of death; who are capable for the sake of an idea of bearing unconceivable privations and sufferings, equal to torture; but then, these people are lost before the haughtiness of a doorman; shrink from the yelling of a laundress; while into a police station they enter in an insufferable and timid distress. And precisely such a one was Lichonin. On the following day (yesterday it had been impossible on account of a holiday and the lateness), having gotten ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... of agreeable physiognomy and manners, could not endure the presence of the most attractive young woman, but was seized with deadly terror and sudden collapse of all the powers of life, if he came into her immediate presence; if it were added that this same young man did not shrink from the presence of an old withered crone; that he had a certain timid liking for little maidens who had not yet outgrown the company of their dolls, the listener would be apt to smile, if he did not laugh, at the absurdity of the fable. Surely, he would say, this must be the fiction of some ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... crest of the slope he stopped, and yelped down, almost determined to go back to that black patch of forest and chase out everything that was in it. Then he turned toward Cragg's Ridge, and what he saw seemed slowly to shrink up the pugnaciousness that was in him, and his stiffened tail drooped until the knotty end of it touched ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... for it," exclaimed the old trapper, when Laurence brought him the intelligence of what had happened. "Whether Injuns or wolves wrong him, Michael Moggs is not the man to let them go unpunished;" and his eyes lighted up with a fierce expression which made the young boy instinctively shrink back from him. "We have three strong traps which will catch the biggest wolf on the prairies; and if they fail, I'll lie in wait till I can shoot the savage brutes down with my rifle. We shall have to tramp it on foot, boy, with the furs on our backs. That's bad for you, ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston
... hurried upstairs. It was part of her plan that she should be left alone in the villa chloroformed. Thus only could suspicion be averted from herself. She did not shrink from the completion of the plan now. She went, the strange woman, without a tremor to her ordeal. Wethermill took the length of rope which had fixed Celia ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... incompressible. It is nearly so. A pressure that would reduce air to one hundredth of its bulk would not discernibly affect water. Put a ton weight on a cubic inch of water; it does not flinch nor perceptibly shrink, yet the atoms of water do not fill the space they occupy. They object to being crowded. They make no objection to having other matter come in and possess the ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... At which time Pericles also lost his sister, and the greatest part of his relations and friends, and those who had been most useful and serviceable to him in managing the affairs of state. However, he did not shrink or give in upon these occasions, nor betray or lower his high spirit and the greatness of his mind under all his misfortunes; he was not even so much as seen to weep or to mourn, or even attend the burial of any of his friends or relations, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the richest man should look grand enough to make a simple man shrink in it, or luxurious enough to make a thoughtful man feel ashamed in it; it will not do so if Art be at home there, for she has no foes so deadly as insolence and waste. Indeed, I fear that at present the decoration of rich men's houses is mostly wrought ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... do her good. Still it would not be as it was at first. It was because her hands were busy and her days full, that she was helped then. It would be different now. And more than that, she seems quite to shrink from the thought of it. We will wait a while, and all that ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... drawing himself up with a look of defiance and a laugh of contempt, that caused the two men to shrink back in ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... stubborn to learn, they have had a lesson written in letters of blood, which would have long since convinced them—if it be necessary, it must be repeated I for one will not shrink from my duty. No though I should sink beneath the horrid task which it imposes ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... have supported the charge by attributing strange notions to me on no other authority than their own conjectures, owe it to themselves as well as to me not to refuse their attention to my own statement of the theory which I do acknowledge; or shrink from the trouble of examining the grounds on which I rest it, or the arguments which I offer in ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... regard any such proscription as an attack on the independence of Parliament, and would jointly oppose any administration who should resort to such proscription. But the bold and domineering spirit of Fitzgibbon—the leader of the Castle party, then, and long afterwards—did not shrink before even so formidable a phalanx. The Duke of Leinster was dismissed from the honorary office of Master of the Rolls; the Earl of Shannon, from the Vice-Treasurership; William Ponsonby from the office of Postmaster-General; Charles Francis Sheridan, from ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... so dense that the people were forced off the causeway, one of these six-feet gentlemen, on a black horse, rode straight at the place, making his horse rear very high, and fall on the thickest spot. You would suppose men were made of sponge to see them shrink away. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... along very well without conferring this right upon the female. But when you speak of it as a right, and as a great educational power in the hands of females, and I am called on to vote on the subject, I will vote that which I think under all circumstances is right, just, and proper. I shrink not from the question because I am told by gentlemen that it is unpopular. The question with me is, is it right? Show me that it is wrong, and then I will withhold my vote; but I have heard no argument that convinces me that the thing ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... have filled her time, mingled longings for her old life with blissful gloatings over Nino's beauty and cleverness. Her husband was always kind, but since his marriage delicacy of sentiment had made him shrink from having his wife pose even for himself, while naturally no thought of her doing so for another would have ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... mountains of earth, whose arena its valleys, to urge your peasant millions into gladiatorial war. You also, you tender and delicate women, for whom, and by whose command, all true battle has been, and must ever be; you would perhaps shrink now, though you need not, from the thought of sitting as queens above set lists where the jousting game might be mortal. How much more, then, ought you to shrink from the thought of sitting above a theatre pit in which even a few condemned ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... fail to be struck with the incongruity with which wealth and squalor are blended. Here a dainty restaurant is elbowed by a cheap American gargote, there a plate-glass window blazing with diamonds seems to shrink from a neighbouring emporium stocked with second-hand wearing apparel. Even the exclusive Zero Club with its bow window generally crowded with fashionable loungers, is contaminated by the proximity of a shabby drinking-bar, ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... blacks—and to reverse, under the very worst conditions, the universal verdict of racial history. And driven, sir, to this superhuman task with an impatience that brooks no delay—a rigor that accepts no excuse—and a suspicion that discourages frankness and sincerity. We do not shrink from this trial. It is so interwoven with our industrial fabric that we cannot disentangle it if we would—so bound up in our honorable obligation to the world, that we would not if we could. Can we solve it? The God who gave it into ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... 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 ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... left, leaning against the back of the chair, a girl well forward into womanhood. At sight of them Ben-Hur felt the blood redden his forehead; bowing, as much to recover himself as in respect, he lost the lifting of the hands, and the shiver and shrink with which the sitter caught sight of him—an emotion as swift to go as it had been to come. When he raised his eyes the two were in the same position, except the girl's hand had fallen and was resting lightly upon the elder's shoulder; both of them ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... is, and that, if it progresses at all, it progresses slowly. How many individuals see in spiritualism only a means of putting forward their wretched personalities or of exploiting their contemporaries! Such persons would not shrink from representing their lucubrations as communications from the next world; they would sign them with the most august of names if to do so would further their designs. Finally, it is not even necessary to suppose that these messages are due to dishonesty; the number of ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... loved and hated, All that I shunned and knew, Clears in broad battle lightening; Where they, and I, and you, Run high the barricade that breaks The barriers of the Street, And shout to them that shrink within, ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... all the virtues and all the powers that go with this original quality in Ireland. One of them is a sort of awful elegance; a dangerous and somewhat inhuman daintiness of taste which sometimes seems to shrink from matter itself, as though it were mud. Of the many sincere things Mr. Shaw has said he never said a more sincere one than when he stated he was a vegetarian, not because eating meat was bad morality, but because it was bad taste. It would ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... seized with faintness and trembling. The phantom Prince vanished suddenly from before him, and his own Veil that Blinds rose in darkening folds across his eyes. The Veil that Chokes swept across his mouth, and his turbulent voice was stilled. He began to shrink upward, to waver and fade, and presently he drifted helplessly into the great smoke dome and was ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... Official violence brutalised, and political ambition extinguished, every spark of nature in this great lawyer, when he struck at his victims, public or domestic. His solitary knowledge, perhaps, had deadened his judgment in other studies; and yet his narrow spirit could shrink with jealousy at the celebrity obtained by more liberal pursuits than his own. The errors of the great are as instructive as their virtues; and the secret history of the outrageous lawyer may have, at least, the merit of novelty ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... "Why do you shrink from me?" he asked. "I mean you no ill. You shall be queen; I swear you shall be queen. Come with me," and he held out his hand with an air of royal condescension which contrasted ridiculously enough with his grotesque ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... stooped to seize her, they struck back her ravening heads, and foul Scylla whined, as a whelp whines, at the touch of their gentle hands. But she shrank into her cave affrighted; for all bad things shrink from good; and Argo leapt safe past her, while a fair breeze rose behind. Then Thetis and her nymphs sank down to their gardens of green and purple, where live flowers of bloom all the year round; while the heroes went ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... we shall find the gates open far, So that close together we both come in; I shrink from the thoughts of the gates ajar, When only the one might ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... speak to Hollis, I know; that it was his will, I do not know; but she was assured that she knew, and she never changed her mind. It may be that it was his will for her to make a mistake and bring sorrow upon Marjorie; the Lord does not shrink from mistakes; he knows what ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... of a nerve, which contracts at the slightest touch of any thing heterogeneous; so every motive fiber of a muscle, yea, the muscle itself, and even the whole body shrinks from the touch of whatever is hard or cold. So also the substances or forms of the spiritual degree in man shrink from evils and their falsities, because these are heterogeneous. For the spiritual degree, being in the form of heaven, admits nothing but goods, and truths that are from good; these are homogeneous to it; but evils, and falsities that are from evil, are heterogeneous to it. This ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... omnivorous ravages of the white ants is that they shrink from the light, in all their expeditions for providing food they construct a covered pathway of moistened clay, and their galleries above ground extend to an incredible distance from the central nest. No timber, except ebony and ironwood, which are too hard, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... all the time she was aware of Wade, with his quiet, forceful presence, hovering near. Could he not see her hands trembling? And would he not think that weakness strange? Then driftingly came the thought that she would not shrink from Wade's reading her mind. Perhaps even now he understood her better than she ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... in accepting Irish independence we shrink from responsibility for the acts of England. We know that the disorder now ruling in Ireland is, to some extent, the result of English misgovernment in past generations, and instead of attempting by firmness and patience ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... 'Three Gods', and they know it to be false. They might, with equal justice, affirm that we believe in 'three suns'. The meanest peasant, who has acquired the first rudiments of Christianity, would shrink back from a thought so monstrous. Still the Trinity has its difficulties. It would be strange if otherwise. A 'Revelation' that revealed nothing, not within the grasp of human reason!—no religation, no binding over again, as before said: but these difficulties are shadows, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... beauty. Cries of terror and agony rang in his ears; and he saw himself afterward burying the bodies—partly eaten by the flames. Small icy drops broke out on his forehead. Though he was doing it for her, when it was done, Natalie could not but shrink from such a bloody wretch. It would part them forever. But it ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... shrink not, as at first: Be thou the judge of guilt; Thou knowest all my best and worst, Do ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... them without a blush. Indeed, it appeared to me that such is the impudent immorality and impurity now in Paris, that such an expression as an innocent blush would be difficult to detect, more especially as the conscience—that delicate sympathy of the mind which would cause it to shrink from all that was not perfectly pure and beautiful—is made to retire and give place to reason and materialism. The pleasure and satisfaction of the senses seems to be all that they consider worth living for. Pleasure is God, and both the ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... roaring torrent; tremendous mountains arose in every vista. The gigantic landscape, uncheered by a touch of changing light or a solitary ray of sun, was yet terribly distinct in its ferocity. The hearts of two lonely men might shrink a little, if they had to win their way for miles and hours among a legion of silent and motionless men—mere men like themselves—all looking at them with fixed and frowning front. But how much more, when the legion is ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... so much. Would you hesitate an instant if some poor famishing wretch were to ask you for food or water? Well, I am that poor wretch. What I have to tell you is a matter of life and death to me. Only a woman—only you—can help me; and you shrink because we have not had a proper introduction. My dear young lady, you have nothing to fear from me. I am unfortunate, but a gentleman,—a married man, if ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... him). Oswald, what is the matter with you? (OSWALD seems to shrink up in the chair; all his muscles relax; his face loses its expression, and his eyes stare stupidly. MRS. ALVING is trembling with terror.) What is it! (Screams.) Oswald! What is the matter with you! (Throws herself on her knees beside him ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... and the Peacock's cousin were sauntering through the Malay woods when they met the Peacock face to face. The Crow looked defiant and stood jauntily; but the Pheasant tried to shrink out of sight. The Peacock, however, had spied his poor relative, and was filled with cousinly ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... that her fears need not trouble her much longer—he did all the things that Robin disliked most. His boisterousness, heartiness, and good-fellowship, dislike of everyday conventionality, would all, she knew, count against him with Robin. She had seen him shrink on several occasions, and each time she had been triumphantly glad. For she was frightened, terribly frightened. Harry was threatening to take from her the one great thing around which her life was centred; if he robbed her of Robin he robbed her of everything, and she must fight to ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... her). But a certain curiosity came to the aid of her good sense; and, after all, she was a brave and haughty woman, and her natural courage began to rise. She thought to herself, "What, dares she come to me all this way, and shall I shrink from her?" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... spoken as likely to arise—not, as Laveaux says, after Raynal, to avenge, but to repair the wrongs of my colour. Low, indeed, are we sunk, deep is our ignorance, abject are our wills, if such a one as I am to be the leader of thousands—I, whose will is yet unexercised—I, who shrink ashamed before the knowledge of the meanest white—I, so lately a slave—so long dependent that I am an oppression to myself—am at this hour the ruler over ten thousand wills! The ways of God are dark, or it might seem that He despised ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... growing upon me that this order of men and women, wearing such a uniform as you wear, and with faces strengthened by discipline and touched with devotion, is the Utopian reality; but that for them, the whole fabric of these fair appearances would crumble and tarnish, shrink and shrivel, until at last, back I should be amidst the grime and disorders of the life of earth. Tell me about these samurai, who remind me of Plato's guardians, who look like Knights Templars, who bear a name that ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... refusal of all measures demanding expense which do not promise a pecuniary return:—such is the kind of liberality of sentiment which may ruin great nations. The qualities of the lamb may be very excellent qualities, but they are specially inapplicable to dealings with the wolf. Do those who shrink from expense think that the presence of Russia in Afghanistan will be inexpensive to us? Will the weakness which will be the temptation and the opportunity of Russia be less costly than effectual defence? ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... listened to it; still, she was not beloved. Weaknesses and foibles met with unmerciful severity, and well-meaning intentions and kind actions did not always escape without the keen sarcasm which it is so difficult for the best regulated mind to bear unmoved. The mild and gentle seemed to shrink from her; and thus she, who might have been the bright and beloved ornament of the circle in which she moved, was regarded with distrust, fear, and even hatred. This dangerous habit of making satirical ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... difficulties involved in administering distant territories, the ignorance and apathy of the public, the consequent erosion of responsibility, the chance that wrong will fail of discovery. But he did not shrink from his conclusion. "Let us do what we please," he said, "to put India from our thoughts, we can do nothing to separate it from our public interest and our national reputation." That is a general truth not less in Africa and China than in India itself. The main thought in Burke's mind was ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... the 15th he entered Moscow. This enormous city was deserted. General Rostopschine, its governor, had forced all the inhabitants to leave. This Rostopschine whom some have described as a hero, was a barbarian, who would shrink from nothing to achieve his aims. He had allowed the populace to strangle a number of foreign merchants, mainly the French, who were living in Moscow, on the sole grounds that they were suspected of hoping for the arrival of Napoleon's troops. Some days before the battle of Moscow, the Cossacks ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... there were sixty glad minutes in it. They sang and danced in their night-gowns. Such a deliciously creepy song it was, in which they pretended to be frightened at their own shadows; little witting that so soon shadows would close in upon them, from whom they would shrink in real fear. So uproariously gay was the dance, and how they buffeted each other on the bed and out of it! It was a pillow fight rather than a dance, and when it was finished, the pillows insisted on one bout more, like partners who know ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... Lord Garnon and I discussed this, oh, two years ago at the least. Really, I'm surprised that you seem to shrink from it, now. Of course, you're Venus-born, and customs there may be different, but ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... at them. Then he also fell to thinking that the hours were long; and a fear came suddenly upon him that she would not come. It was in these last hours that doubts crept in, and she was not there to drive them away. Would the great trial fail? Would she shrink at the last? But he would not think it of her, and he was smiling again, when the clock of the cathedral struck two, and told him that no more than one hour now parted her from him. For she would come; the princess would ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... who read; aye, you Who this very line may scan: Think of all you planned to do . . . Have you done the best you can? See! the tavern lights are low; Black's the night, and how you shrink! God! and is it time to go? Ah! the clock is always slow; It is later than you think; Sadly later than you think; Far, ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... said in conclusion, "to confide the service he rendered me, the intimacy that has sprung up between us, but to you alone,—not a word to your guests. When you have once seen him, you will understand why an eccentric man, who has known better days, would shrink from the impertinent curiosity of idle customers. Contented with his humble livelihood, he asks but ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... who habitually, and from a strong sense of duty, live on the shady side of life. Metaphorically speaking, the sunshine may almost touch the very path on which they are treading, but they shrink from and avoid it, having a strong preference for the shade, but considering themselves martyrs while they live in it. Mrs. Cameron was one of these people. The circumstances of her life had elected plenty of ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... M. P. has got over it. Without boasting, I think I have also. But that is neither here nor there. In the old days, I have seen people shrink from him." ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... Nejdanov thought... "when I last held her in my arms like this, her body was at least motionless, but now I can feel it—against her will, perhaps—shrink ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... marry Laurence!" His coolness returned, and with it serious reflections. If he insisted on marrying, would not Bertha carry out her threats? Evidently; for he knew well that she was one of those women who shrink from nothing, whom no consideration could arrest. He guessed what she would do, from what she had said in a quarrel with him about Jenny. She had told him, "I will confess everything to Sauvresy, and we will be the more bound together by shame than by all the ceremonies ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... frowning on their bare, rocky crests; the forest more dark, more black; the trees of the valleys more barren and shriveled; the stones in the road rolled beneath his feet as if fleeing from his touch; the sky contained something repellant; even the air of the island would finally shrink away from his nostrils. In his desperation Febrer realized that he stood alone. Everyone was against him. Only Pep and his family were left to him, and even they would finally draw away under the necessity of living ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... summoned by incantation, they may destroy the audacious mortal who demands their services. The most sagacious and sceptical men are apt to be mildly susceptible to conviction in the matter of their own pedigrees, and, a little conscious of their weakness, they shrink from letting the sacred tree be handled by relentless and unsympathising adepts. One of these intellectual tyrants, a man of great ability, when he quarrelled with any one, used to threaten to "bastardise" ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... everywhere. That fair scene,—trees, grass, flowers, sky, sunshine, is there to be looked at and enjoyed; it seems wrong, that with such a picture passing on before your eyes, your eyes should be turned upon anything else. Work, especially mental work, is always painful; always a thing you would shrink from if you could; but how strongly you shrink from it on a beautiful summer morning! On a gloomy winter day you can walk with comparative willingness into your study after breakfast, and spread out your paper, and begin to write your sermon. For although writing the sermon is undoubtedly ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... red and yellow! "Beside," quoth the Mayor, with a knowing wink, "Our business was done at the river's brink; We saw with our eyes the vermin sink, And what's dead can't come to life, I think. So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink From the duty of giving you something for drink, And a matter of money to put in your poke; But as for the guilders, what we spoke Of them, as you very well know, was in joke. Besides, our losses have made us thrifty; A ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to shrink into himself; and muttering something that might pass for thanks, he stumbled towards the door and rushed hastily out. Running after him, I listened eagerly to his steps. They went up ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... great influence is ascribed to the moon, not only in regulating the weather, but as affecting all the affairs of man's daily life. The lower orders, and many of the better sort, will not fell a tree for agricultural purposes in the wane of that orb, lest it should shrink and decay; nor will the housewife then slaughter for her family, lest the meat should shrivel and melt away in the pot. The moon is the domestic deity, whom the household must fear: the Fortuna who presides over the daily doings of sublunary ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... which is most important and useful when it is founded on the right knowledge of God: but which is not itself theology. For theology begins with God: but experimental religion, right or wrong, begins with a man's own soul. Therefore it is that men are unaccustomed to theology. They shrink from it as something very abstruse, only fit for great scholars and divines, and almost given up now-a-days even by them. They do not know that theology, the knowledge of God, is full of practical every-day ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... conceived for this man a strange feeling of dislike. It was he of whom Lincoln had spoken, and who was likely to be my rival for the captaincy. Was it this that rendered him repulsive? No. There was a cause beyond. In him I recognised one of those abandoned natures who shrink from all honest labour, and live upon the sacrificial fondness of some weak being who has been enslaved by their personal attractions. There are many such. I have met them in the jardins of Paris; in the casinos of London; in the cafes of Havanna, and the ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... is in the nature of the spiritual part of mankind to shrink from the earth, to aspire to something higher; a bird soaring in the blue above us has something of the ethereal; we give wings to our angels. On the other hand, a serpent impresses us as something sinister. Trees, with their ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... into repose, beguiled it, hidden it away under habits and work and activities. It was something firmer than work, something even more beautiful than beauty, more satisfying than love that I wanted; and most certainly it was not repose. I had grown to loathe the thought of that, and to shrink back in horror from the dumb slumber of sense and thought. It was energy, life, activity, motion, that I desired; to see and touch and taste all things, not only things sweet and delightful, but every passionate impulse, every fiery sorrow that thrilled and shook ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... seemed to know what the matter was, for he flung down the axe he was using and was first of the three at the side of the car when Janice stopped. Mr. Trimmins sauntered up, too, but the sullen Jack Besmith seemed to shrink from approaching the visitors. ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... not Christlike either to force our light upon them, or to constrain them to leave us; but to give up the Chapel to them, as they do not, in heart, go along with us. It cannot be expected that, for the sake of pleasing even those whom we love in Christ, we should shrink back from carrying out any truth which the Lord may lead us into; and, therefore, if our brethren cannot heartily go along with us, it is better that nothing should be imposed upon them contrary to their convictions. If it should be said that for the sake of a few we thus separate from ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... the front. When she arrived, instead of finding a few women as she had expected, a large church was packed with both men and women, eager to listen. The governor of the State and other officials were present. She had never spoken in a mixed assembly. Her conservative training made her shrink from it, and, unfortunately, made her feel incapable of ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... The rich, the refined, the educated, whose time is their own, do not educate their own children. They systematically send them to schools and colleges, or pay for tutors or governesses under their own roof. They wisely shrink from a work for which, if they have the time, they seldom have the acquirements or the gift, or the method of the perseverance or the patience. And if this be, as it is, universally true of those who are the most competent, ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... to the orchard. I gathered the apples diligently and spoke no word, but not for that did I escape. She stood calmly looking on till I had finished, then began with that terrible opening from which we all shrink. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... the infinite woe we dogs suffer in new homes, under strange tyrannies; you never heed how we shrink from unfamiliar hands, and shudder at unfamiliar voices, how lonely we feel in unknown places, how acutely we dread harshness, novelty, and scornful treatment. Dogs die oftentimes of severance from their masters; there is Greyfriars' Bobby now in Edinboro' town who never has been persuaded ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... her dependence upon One higher than man, and in doing this is obliged to do but little violence to her habits of thought and feeling, and no violence at all to such sentiments of independence as stand most in the way of man. Hence men shrink with horror from coming in contact with a godless woman. In their eyes she is monstrous, unreasonable and offensive. Even an utterly godless man, unless he be debauched and debased to the position of an animal, deems such a woman without an excuse. He looks on her with suspicion. ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... Disgust. Akin to the instinct of flight is that of repulsion, which impels us, instead of fleeing, to thrust the object away. It leads us to reject from the mouth noxious and disgusting objects and to shrink from slimy, creepy creatures, and has of course been highly useful in protecting the race from poisons and snakes. It still operates in the tendency to put away from us those things, mental or physical, toward which we feel aversion or disgust. ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... seemed rather that, as its home broke up, the soul withdrew little by little, and contracted itself like the pupil of an eye, to shrink to a pinpoint and vanish ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... of millions to a young man," I began, "and do you think that he will shrink from enduring any number of hardships to gain them? Are you not laughing ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... shrink from the task facing them. Work in the provincial capital had been of so totally different an order, and life in a large community of foreigners had limited their sphere to the oversight of a small school for girls, and the instruction ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... even for a single year, to live without the manufacture of spirits? It may be, indeed, that for a time they will find other pursuits less productive than this. And is not this, after all, the true reason why they shrink from the sacrifice? But if superior profits be a sufficient reason for continuing distillation, it is a reason that will justify the robber, the thief, and every other depredator upon the rights ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... images and set a smile upon the face of stateliness. "Such old, old panes," says someone. "Six hundred years and more. How wonderful!" Pardon me, but I have seen them, and it is not wonderful at all. Beneath their spell, centuries shrink to afternoons. The windows of Chartres are above Time. They are the peepholes ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... sat down and faced one another. A good woman would have called his look impudent—insulting. Kate returned it with a look that did not shrink, nor waver, but fearlessly, recklessly accepted the challenge. Playing with fire, were these two, and with no care for the fearful results which might follow. Both knew it was dangerous, and liked it the better for that. There was a long silence. The game was opening on a wider ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... wildly back.] You reckless fool,—do you not shrink with fear Before this child of death, but risen up A fleeting moment from ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... What nobler name can I tender you? How else can I love you? Yet you may well shrink from the name: have I not said we are but poor things? Yet there is a power that can ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw |
