"Shrivel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gull and laughing-stock for the gods again, that's all, Chris. How easily they fool us from their thrones, don't they? And our pitiful hopes and ambitions and poor pathetic little plans for happiness shrivel and die, and strew their stinking corpses along the road that was going to be so gorgeous. The time to spill the cup is when the lip begins to tremble and water for it—not sooner—the gods know! And now all's changed—excepting only the memory of ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... business led to anything, I should not say no; but just give me the names of five advocates here in Paris who by the time that they are fifty are making fifty thousand francs a year! Bah! I would sooner turn pirate on the high seas than have my soul shrivel up inside me like that. How will you find the capital? There is but one way, marry a woman who has money. There is no fun in it. Have you a mind to marry? You hang a stone around your neck; for if you marry ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... severely taxed her forbearance; or that since she was a creature of human limitations she did at times protest when the chowder stood forgotten in the tureen until it was of Arctic temperature; nor had she ever acquired the grace of spirit to amiably view freshly baked popovers shrivel neglected into nothingness. Try as she would to curb her tongue, under such circumstances, ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... moment, McMahon fairly shouted an indignant question at his wife as to her presence in this house. But that Amazonian female did not shrivel before the blistering growl of ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... have you ever noticed her? Have you never seen her creep, creep, like a tiger on its prey? Watch her dark face, and see the bad thoughts come and peep out of her eyes as the great black pupils swell and then shrivel, till they are no larger than the head of this black pin, and you will know that she is ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... killed, like any one of half a dozen others who have bit the dust, for any word that one of my 'friends' had said to warn me. When the race cry is started in this neck of the woods, friendship, religion, humanity, reason, all shrivel up like dry leaves ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the shepherd's voice on the mountain. The valleys then shall shake with fear, With dread the hills shall tremble. It comes, the day of terror comes! The awful morning dawns! Thy mighty arm, O God, is uplifted. Thou shalt shake the earth and heavens. They shall shrivel as a scroll ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... as pictured above, government, such as we know it, would gradually disappear. In an era of science and justice this makeshift institution, having lost its usefulness, would shrivel ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... by. Why do you deny your brothers so? You said you slept in the fields, eh? That is bad. You shouldn't. The earth here is full of evil, and the malaria comes up with the dampness. Your bones grow brittle and break, or they go all soft, you shrivel up and become white, or swellings come out on you and you get bigger and bigger until you die. No, no! God be ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... in this very uncomfortable state of mind, with the jungle wrapped in profound silence as well as gloom, there broke on the night air a wail so indescribable that the very marrow in Nigel's bones seemed to shrivel up. It ceased, but again broke forth louder than before, increasing in length and strength, until his ears seemed to tingle with the sound, and then it died away to ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... these worlds all marshalled, And their ways all governed for ever; And he felt the sight of his soul Shrivel up like a fire-licked ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... appetizing for supper than broiled ham, served with mashed potatoes, milk toast, or a poached egg on dry toast. Cut the ham as thin as possible, and broil quickly over hot coals, turning constantly until the fat begins to shrivel. Have everything else ready so that it can be eaten immediately. Cold cabbage ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... said the witch; 'after sunrise to-morrow I should not be able to help you until another year had run its course. I will make you a potion, and before sunrise you must swim ashore with it, seat yourself on the beach and drink it; then your tail will divide and shrivel up to what men call beautiful legs. But it hurts; it is as if a sharp sword were running through you. All who see you will say that you are the most beautiful child of man they have ever seen. You ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... piety, the cultivation of intellect, and the exercise of benevolence, no longer exist. Solitary and selfish from position, men of naturally generous temper and good disposition, feel their hearts contract and shrivel within them. Surrounded by a sordid and selfish crew, they find no objects for sympathy, no inducements for the increase or the preservation of knowledge, no animating impulse to lead them forward in a good cause. Struggling ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... anything else, before being a Serra, a woman, a member of society—anything! I feel as though I should like to give my heart for my people and my life for our country, if it would do any good. Of course, if it really came to making any great sacrifice, I suppose my courage would shrivel up and I should behave just like any ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... answered the Spartan; "and the Gods forbid that she should do so. When man ceases to grow in height he expands in bulk; when he stops there too, the frame begins to stoop, the muscles to shrink, the skin to shrivel, and decrepit old age steals on. I have heard it said of the Athenians that they think nothing done while aught remains to do. Is it not truly said, worthy ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... Sir John Warren, Tone was captured, taken to Dublin, and cut his throat in order to escape the ignominy of a public hanging. Another small French squadron entered Killala Bay late in October, but had to make for the open. Thus flickered out a flame which threatened to shrivel up ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... flames leaped up to grasp their prey, and Faith turned sick and faint as she watched them fasten upon that noble face, which seemed to contract and shrivel in its anguish as they seized ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... his purple umbrella. The rose in his hand shoots its petals up in thin quills of crimson. Then they collapse and shrivel like ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... However insignificant we may regard ourselves, the eyes of Europe and America are upon us, as a germ, destined to burst from its enclosure in the earth, unfold its petals to the genial air, rise to the height and swell to the dimensions of the full-grown tree, or (inglorious fate) to shrivel, to die, and to be buried in oblivion. Rise, fellow citizens, rise to a clear and full perception of your tremendous responsibilities! Upon you, rely upon it, depends in a measure you can hardly conceive the future destiny of your race. You—you ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... administered, there was no more hope for its victim than for the souls of the damned who have received the final judgment. One drop of that bright water upon the tongue of a Titan would blast him like Jove's thunderbolt, would shrivel him up ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... such a mental turmoil by the sudden proposal that she could not, at that moment, speak a further protest. She stood with white face, her heart seeming to shrivel, and fall away to laboring faintness. Colonel Landcraft was not considering her. He was thinking that he must have three hours' sleep in the hotel at Meander before ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... been brought up to think himself extraordinary, although his guardian had occasionally birched him when his own confidence had disturbed the peace; he was intensely proud of his military career, and aware of his fitness for the bar. But in the blaze of Hamilton's genius he seemed to shrivel; and as for having attempted to prepare himself for practice in four months, he might as well have grafted wings to his back and expected them to grow. It was some consolation to reflect that, as aide and confidential secretary for four years ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... was doing it; it was hard when he tried it himself. All the imps of confusion held high revel in his mind when he attempted to give the orders which he had conned until he supposed he had them "dead-letter perfect." he felt his usually-unfailing assurance shrivel up under the gaze of hundreds of mercilessly critical eyes. He ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... it in. He stepped back and caught up the incineration tube of concentrated fire ... and Bentley saw the body of the murdered man shrivel up so quickly it seemed as though it had dissolved before his eyes. Down from the ceiling of the hell-hole dropped the fine gray ash, all that remained—save the imprisoned brain—of ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... itself in tiny folds. It's the same way with the skin of the face. When the subcutaneous fat of the cheeks and brow—which, when we are young and plump and rosy, is abundant—begins to be absorbed and to gradually disappear, then the cuticle straightway starts in to shrivel and fall ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... corpuscles contain no nuclei except at certain periods of the development of the embyro. They are lighter or darker red according to the oxygen they contain. When treated with concentrated fluids they shrivel; when treated with diluted fluids they swell. They are rather coin-shaped, and when a drop of blood is quiet they are usually found aggregated in rows, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... the women of the filthy hovels in Kororadika. The wives of the missionaries tried to persuade them not to be tattooed; but a famous operator having arrived from the south, they said, "We really must just have a few lines on our lips; else when we grow old, our lips will shrivel, and we shall be so very ugly." There is not nearly so much tattooing as formerly; but as it is a badge of distinction between the chief and the slave, it will probably long be practised. So soon does any train of ideas become ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... remain a man, not shrink to a manikin, nor dwindle to a brute. But if he is not properly educated, if he has merely been crammed and stuffed through college, if he has merely a broken-down memory from trying to hold crammed facts enough to pass the examination, he will continue to shrink and shrivel and dwindle, often below his original proportions, for he will lose both his confidence and self-respect, as his crammed facts, which never became a part of himself, evaporate from his distended memory. Many a youth has ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... himself with few restraints. Foreigners used to describe him as a lean, hungry, nervous animal, gaunt, inquisitive, inventive, restless, and certain to shrivel into physical inferiority in his dry and highly oxygenated atmosphere. This apprehension is not well founded. It is quieted by his achievements the continent over, his virile enterprises, his endurance in war and in the most difficult explorations, his resistance ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... drop a kiss on the top of his head, Polly had been staggered by what she saw. Opposite the third verse of the first chapter of Genesis: "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light," he had written: "Three days before the sun!" Her heart seemed to shrivel, to grow small in her breast, at the thought of her husband being guilty of such impiety. Ceasing her pretence at sewing, she walked out of the house into the yard. Standing there under the stars she said aloud, as if some one, THE One, could hear her: "He ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... seasoned oysters, with a few very small bits of butter on them. Cover them thickly with crumbs, and put in another layer of oysters and butter, till the dish is filled up, having a thick layer of crumbs on the top. Put the dish into an oven, and bake them a very short time, or they will shrivel. Serve them up hot. ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... mentioned. The moment the liquid began to boil, they commenced to address their imaginary spirits in the following terms: "Is the party on whom I pour this water guilty or not? If he is, may it scald him and shrivel up his skin." If the application of the boiling liquid did not injure the suspected person he was declared innocent, but if it burned him he was pronounced guilty. People anxious to know the result of approaching warlike engagements put a ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... position should be sunny, and sheltered from the north. Some have advised that it should be grown under trees, but I have proved that when so treated the less ripened foliage has suffered with frost, whilst the specimens fully exposed to the sun have not suffered in the least; they would droop and shrivel as long as the frost remained, but as soon as the temperature rose they became normal, without a trace of injury. When planted as above, young specimens will soon become so established and inured to open-air conditions, that ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... while the party were looking at it, the flower continued to shrivel up, till it became as dry and fragile as when the doctor had first thrown it into the vase. He shook off the few drops of moisture which clung to ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... that Phoebe's nerves took a panic, and she drew Evadna away from the place. The boys edged closer, their hands resting suggestively upon their gun-butts. Old Peaceful half-raised his rifle, and held it so. It was like being compelled to watch a fuse hiss and shrivel and go black toward ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... for all his eager power, no other way of escape than to go with the king to the war. He saw quite clearly that "Gro struggled against the force deep in her heart. And yet the day's flaming sun could cause the weak chrysalis of the dream to shrivel so that no butterfly would break through the covering and rejoice in the strong light of midday. But with Soelver away, the longing for him would support the invisible growth of the dream and prepare the way ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... oral formations, and I looked for his epidermis to shrivel when she got her replications focused. She just soared up ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... young orchards; but here, in this land, only the flats along the river-courses are worthy of cultivation; the rest is sand and rock deeply covered with the forest mast, and fertile only while that lasts. And the forest once gone, land and water shrivel, unnourished, leaving a desert amid charred stumps and the white phantoms of dead pines. I was ever averse to the cutting of the forests here, except for selected crops of ripened timber to be replaced by natural growth ere the next crop had ripened; and Sir William Johnson, who ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... so long as the time that had gone by since the car had started. And he was jolting and swinging about in the stretcher, clutching hard with his hands at the poles of the stretcher. The pain in his legs grew worse; the rest of his body seemed to shrivel under it. From below him came a rasping voice that cried out at every lurch of the ambulance. He fought against the desire to groan, but at last he gave in and lay lost in the monotonous singsong ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... get pretty thoroughly ashamed of him for his childishness; and at last, when he repeated that imploring question still another time, I lost my patience for the moment, and spoke pretty brutally to him. It seemed to shrivel him up and cow him; and he looked so wounded and so humble after that, that I detested myself for having done the cruel and unnecessary thing. And so I was glad when Charley, another veteran, arrived toward the edge ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... so careless of literature and art, so intent upon the profits of the day and the pleasures of next Sunday, one has a vision of what perhaps may be our own lot. For the Dutch are very near us in kin, and once were nigh as great as we have been. Are we, in our day of decadence, to shrivel thus? "There but for the grace of God goes ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... come out and hang freely at the time of anthesis. So it is only at the time of the opening of the flowers that the lodicules are at their best. Then they are fairly large, fleshy and thick and conspicuous. In the bud stage they are usually small and after the opening of the flower they shrivel up and are inconspicuous. There are also species of grasses in which the lodicules are ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... fond of. She had a noble air, and something great in her mien, but such a noisome infectious breath, as threw all the servants that dressed her into consumptions; if she smelt to the freshest nosegay, it would shrivel and wither as it had been blighted: she used to come home in her cups, and break the china, and the looking-glasses; and was of such an irregular temper, and so entirely given up to her passion, ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... different ways. Lying in exhausted attitudes, they covered the roadway as if they had been merely tired to death. It was awful, and I began to have a terrible detestation for these Asiatic faces, which, because they are dead, become such a hideous green-yellow-white, and whose bodies seem to shrivel to nothing in their limp blue suitings. Such dead are an ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... glare of fire. He saw the village under a dark canopy spotted with sparks and glowing embers. The bell tower was burning like an enormous torch; the roof of the church was breaking into flames with a crashing fury. The glare of the holocaust seemed to shrivel and grow pale in the impassive ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... give Gladys Todd a hint of the rich depths of my voice. To make an impression on Gladys Todd had become the business of my life. I was glad that I had come to McGraw, because here I had met her. McGraw's past and future were of no moment to me; her growth was nothing. She might shrivel up until I was the only student, yet I should still be happy in my nearness to Gladys Todd. And what of Penelope? I did think of Penelope that night as I sat alone in my room, cocked on two legs of my chair, gazing blankly at the ceiling. I remembered the foolish, childish promises which ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... in the leaf bases or growth matured. Ordinarily, a hard freeze late in the season will cause the trees to drop the leaves the next day. The nuts on the trees were frozen solid and mostly turned black within a few days and began to shrivel. Development was stopped, with the result that the nuts on all varieties were very poorly filled. The cavities appeared on first cracking to be full of kernel, but on drying these shrunk so that they were practically valueless. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... periosteum of a bone is destroyed or removed the bone dies, and is then either absorbed, or separated from the living bone adjoining, by absorption of the connecting part. In the stag both skin and periosteum are removed from the antler: probably they would die and shrivel of their own accord by hereditary development, but as a matter of fact the stag voluntarily removes them by rubbing the antler against tree trunks, etc. When the bone is dead the living cells at its base dissolve and ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... within a few inches of the ground; they are extremely delicate, and a planter will be satisfied if every third or fourth produces fruit. In dry weather or cold, or wind, the little pods only too quickly shrivel into black shells; but if the season be good they as quickly swell, till, in the course of three or four months, they develop into full grown pods from seven to twelve inches long. During the last month of ripening they are subject to the attack of a fresh group of enemies—squirrels, ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... had so little of it in my life, and I have drawn it with a luxurious artistic emotion. I remember once saying of a friend that his work was light and trivial, because he had never descended into hell. Now that I have myself set foot there, I feel art and love, and life itself, shrivel in the relentless chill—for it is icy cold and drearily bright in hell, not dark and fiery, as poets have sung! I feel that I could wrestle better with the loss of health, of wealth, of love, for there would be something to bear, some burden to lift. Now there is ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... much magnanimity, and how much statecraft await the call of opportunity in simple manhood when it believes in the justice of God and the worth of man. Conventionalities are all very well in their proper place, but they shrivel at the touch of nature like stubble in the fire. The genius that sways a nation by its arbitrary will seems less august to us than that which multiplies and reinforces itself in the instincts and convictions of an entire people. Autocracy may have something in it more ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... sighs it as it flies away. Autumn is come; seest thou not in the skies, The stormy light of his fierce lurid eyes? Autumn is come; his brazen feet have trod, Withering and scorching, o'er the mossy sod. The fainting year sees her fresh flowery wreath Shrivel in his hot grasp; his burning breath Dries the sweet water-springs that in the shade Wandering along, delicious music made. A flood of glory hangs upon the world, Summer's bright wings shining ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... splendid, red, and round; but as soon as Aratoff looked at them, they began to shrivel and fall.... "Disaster is coming!" ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... is over the bank—the Farmers and Merchants Bank. Mr. Randolph E. Payne is the gentleman." "Great Scott!" gasped Mr. Schrimpe, actually appearing to shrivel, "Mr. Payne?" ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... the Wrong must fail Before the everlasting Right, So surely thy device shall pale And shrivel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... Louvre!" The Louvre! I can scarcely avoid a cry of horror. In a minute the enormity of the disaster has broken upon me. Oh! chefs-d'oeuvre without number! I see you devoured, consumed, reduced to ashes! I see the walls tottering, the canvases fall from the frames and shrivel up; the "Marriage of Canaan" is in flames! Raphael is struggling in the burning furnace! Leonardo da Vinci is no more! This was, indeed, an unexpected calamity! Fortune had reserved this terrible surprise for us! But I will not believe it, these rumours are false, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... And why? Does it derive peculiar sustenance from the lime of the masonry? I think not, for it grows in lands where lime is rare, and in the shadow of log-huts. It seeks shelter from the wind for its frail stalks and leaves, that shrivel wondrously when the plant is ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... be then? We might skin you with a sharp stone, perhaps, after you've done the trick, you know," he added reflectively. "But then we have no salt, so I doubt if you'd keep; and if we set your hide in the sun, I reckon the writing would shrivel up so that all the courts of law in London could not make head or ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... the first wisps of smoke arise and grow and unwind into long ribbons, reaching deep into the standing crop. Soon tongues of flame appeared and the green tops of the cane began to shrivel and to wave as the steady east wind took effect. From the nearest conflagration a great snapping and crackling of juicy stalks arose. The thin, dry strippings with which the earth was carpeted formed a vast tinder bed, and once the fire was started there was no checking it. Smoke billowed ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... promise not to give so much; but no more cocaine taking at all, missis would shrivel up and go out like one bit of paper in a candle! I will do what I can, missy, but missis always ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... hideous laughter, and his right hand flung out and pointed at her. None moved; none could. His laugh rang and broke, and rang again, outrageous and uncontrollable, merry and hearty and hateful. The woman, at the first peal of it, started and stood as though stricken to stone; they could see her shrivel under the blast of it, ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... won't shrivel up so I can't get in the same," Landy observed, anxiously. "A nice figure I'd cut going around day and night like this. And let me tell you the skeeters would fairly eat me alive. As it is, I'm cracking at them ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... producing their eggs and so shrivel as a storage battery atrophies when it dries up. An important member of the endocrine board of directors thus drops out, and so a rearrangement of gland activities, a new regime, becomes necessary. If a balance of power ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... complexities that was closing in upon Mr. Opp apparently affected his body more than his spirits. He seemed to shrivel and dwindle as the pressure increased; but the fire in his ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... harm then befell him thereby that thou thinkest to make mock of him? Seest thou not yonder sun, into how many a barren and filthy place he darteth his rays? Upon how many a stinking corpse doth he cast his eye? Hath he therefore any stain of reproach? Doth he not dry and shrivel up filth and rottenness, and give light to dark places, himself the while unharmed and incapable of receiving any defilement? And what of fire? Doth it not take iron, which is black and cold in itself, and work it into white heat ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... he muttered, half asleep. There is, you must know, in that region a species of very juicy mushrooms which live only a few days and then shrivel up and emit an insufferable odor. Brandes thought he smelt some of these unpleasant neighbors; he looked around him several times, but did not feel like getting up; meanwhile his dog leaped about, scratched at the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... leaves of the bayonet plants, already overshadowed by the newer ones above, were beginning to wilt and shrivel so that we could thrust our way in among the thickening stems without serious injury. A stab in the face or arm we did not heed. At the heart of the thicket I stopped, and ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... changed into the cry of Emancipation for the sake of the White Man. Before this cry, before the inevitable and mighty demand of the free white labor of the future on the territories of the South, all protestations against 'meddling' with emancipation shrivel up into trifles and become contemptible. The prayer of the ant petitioning against the removal of a mountain, where a nation was to found its capital, was not more verily frivolous and inconsiderable than are these timid ones of 'let it alone!' And why let it alone? The Emancipation-for-the-sake-of-the-white-man ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... us blows the inordinate desire.— Ah, who from Hell did the wisdom bring That would make life a formal thing? Who has invented all the manner and wont, The customary ways, That harness into evil scales Of malady our living? But how they shrivel and craze If love but glance on them! And as a bowl of glass to shattering Shivers at a sounding string, The brittle glittering self of man At beauty of Woman throbs apieces, And seems into Eternity spilled The being it contained. Let it touch Woman ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... widow'd; and the pain, When Single State comes back again To the lone man who, 'reft of wife, Thenceforward drags a maimed life? The economy of Heaven is dark; And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark, Why Human Buds, like this, should fall, More brief than fly ephemeral, That has his day; while shrivel'd crones Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; And crabbed use the conscience sears In sinners of an hundred years. Mother's prattle, mother's kiss, Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss. Rites, which custom does impose, Silver bells ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... saint, to whom he owes much more Than ever child to parent owed before, In life's first season, when the fever's flame Shrunk to deformity his shrivel'd frame, And turn'd each fairer image in his brain To blank confusion and her crazy train, 'Twas thine, with constant love, through lingering years, To bathe thy idiot orphan with thy tears; Day after day, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... heart, was killed in Macedonia, the Duke still came to the little upper room for his communion of remembrance. Hour after hour he would sit looking from the great window out over the wide green valley, mourning bitterly, and feeling his heart shrivel up within him, his body grow crabbed and cold, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... their roots, and with carbon by the air around, have all the little they need below, and grow and thrive in these conditions wonderfully. But if you were to cover them up with an air-tight glass case, so as to exclude fresh air, they'd shrivel up at once for want of carbon, which is their solid food, as water ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... animal man, which is never wholly extinguished, which merely lurks unsuspected under centuries of cultural veneer to rise lustily when slowly acquired moralities shrivel in the crucible of passion, now began to actuate Hollister with a strange cunning, a ferocity of anticipation. He would repossess himself of this fair-haired woman. And she should have no voice in the matter. Very well. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... 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 recalls the swordsmen of Japan ... and whose uniform you yourself are wearing. What are ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... to help matters along he is assured that he is not fit to think for himself, and to do so would be a sin. Man, in his present crude state, holds somewhat the same attitude toward reason that an Apache Indian holds toward a camera—the Indian thinks that to have his picture taken means that he will shrivel up and blow away in a month. And Stanley relates that a watch with its constant ticking sent the bravest of Congo chiefs into a cold sweat of agonizing fear; on discovering which, the explorer had but to draw his ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... Breede's and gave them blaze for blaze. The Great Reorganizer knew it not, but he no longer looked at Bunker Bean. Instead, he was trying to shrivel with his glare a veritable king of old Egypt who had enjoyed the power of life and death over his remotest subject. Bean did not shrivel. Breede glared his deadliest only a moment. He felt the sway of the great Ram-tah without identifying ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... language doesn't shrivel this paper. Now then, where in hades do you get this crazy notion?" Daney was thoroughly angry. She gazed up at him in vague apprehension. Had she gone too far? Suddenly he relaxed. "No; don't tell me," he ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... for a couple of months to the smoke of slow fires kept up underneath, whilst the nuts are spread on a grating about eight or ten feet above. The model of a perfect drying-house is easily to be obtained. Care should be taken not to dry the nuts by too great a heat, as they shrivel and lose their full and marketable appearance. It is therefore desirable to keep the nuts, when first collected, for eight or ten days out of the drying-house, exposing them at first for an hour or so to the morning sun, and increasing the exposure daily ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... sight of Evelina first inspired him with a sudden solicitude for the welfare of the clock? And what charms but Evelina's could have induced him to repeat his visit? Grief held up its torch to the frail fabric of Ann Eliza's illusions, and with a firm heart she watched them shrivel into ashes; then, rising from her knees full of the chill joy of renunciation, she laid a kiss on the crimping pins of the sleeping Evelina and crept under the bedspread at ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... dishonour! Pacify! 'Cardinal,' I said, and I felt his soul shrivel at my gaze, 'my power I received from the people—to the people alone I render it. For my soul, man's word cannot scathe it. Thou, haughty priest, thou thyself art the accursed, if, puppet and tool ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... death more beautiful than that of Pierre Loti. I could hear at last the great cry for sympathy, which is the music of this strange suffering world, and, listening to it, in my heart there rang an echo. The cruelty in my nature seemed to shrivel up. I was more gentle than I had been, more gentle than I had thought I ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... from lack of exercise wither away, and for good and all it ceases to claim any independence whatever. Indeed, so deep is the dodder's degradation that if it cannot find a stem of flax, or hop, or other plant whereon to climb and thrive, it will simply shrivel and die rather than resume habits of industry so long renounced as to be at ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... back as though someone had struck him. Then he seemed to lose his strength and to shrivel up, consumed by the flame of his bitterness and disappointment. At the sight, the girl's whole heart melted toward the unhappy man, and she longed to throw her arms around him and plead for forgiveness. ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... Bean and Pea. Why should the Morning-Glory have this jelly that the others have not? Why do the first leaves of the Sunflower change so much as the seedling grows? What becomes of their substance? Why do those of the Bean shrivel and finally drop off? By this time some bright pupil will have discovered that the baby-plant needs food and that this is stored around it in the Morning-Glory, and in the leaves themselves in the others. It is nourished upon this prepared food, until it has roots and leaves and can make ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... and said, "You also who forgot your mother in the midst of your selfish pleasures—hear your doom. You shall always blow in the hot dry weather, and shall parch and shrivel all living things. And men shall detest and avoid you from ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... leaves, was emptied with due solemnity into the fire, that destruction in the most classic form might avert from them all desecration. I ought by rights to have eaten their ashes, or drunk a decoction of them, or at least treasured them in a golden urn, but contented myself with watching them shrivel and crackle with much sentimental satisfaction. I remember a most beautiful myrtle tree, which, by favor of a peculiarly sunny and sheltered exposure, had reached a very unusual size in the open air in Edinburgh, and in the flowering season might have ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... disturbed by its publication during their life, and who could not even conceive why they should object to its being published after their death. But to write it—there is the rub. No man dare write it. No man ever will dare write it. No man could write it, even if he dared. The paper would shrivel and blaze at every touch of the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... realized that all sacrifices are wasted unless the ennobling of the sacrificer's character be considered. For true happiness, true content and goodness can not be given. They must be self-won, or they are no more than hothouse plants which shrivel together in the cold blast of an east wind. Lois had sacrificed herself to bring true happiness and content and goodness into Travers' life, and had failed. She had failed all the more signally because she had never loved him. ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... ossified men, women and children have formed about me, staring with unblinking eyes, till I feel as if I was full of peep holes. It is not life, for neither youth nor love nor sorrow has ever passed this way. The tiniest emotion would shrivel if it dared begin to live. Maybe they are better so. But then, ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... them in the market-places. Who will deliver me from Thought, from the base holiness of Intellect, the maker of chains and traps? Who will save me from the holy impurity of Emotion, whose daughters are Envy and Jealousy and Hatred, who plucks my flowers to ornament her lusts and my little leaves to shrivel on the breasts of infamy? Lo, I am sealed in the caves of nonentity until the head and the heart shall come together in fruitfulness, until Thought has wept for Love, and Emotion has purified herself to meet her lover. Tirna-nog is the heart of a man and the ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... recollect), by a period of bitterly cold weather. With an anguish which I am utterly incapable of describing, I saw my marigolds and mignonette and roses and peonies and dahlias and pansies and other leafy pets wither and droop and shrivel. In less than forty-eight hours' time they were all apparently as dead as that side of the moon which is invisible to us. The only flower or shrub in all that once blooming lawn which remained unshorn of its beauty by the bitter hyperborean blasts ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... can grow without water. Take a bean, for instance, and put it in an empty glass on the window sill; and even if the sun shines full upon it, nothing will happen, except that after a few days it will shrivel and dry up. But fill the glass with water, and in a few hours the bean will begin to swell; and in a few days it will burst, and a little shoot will grow out of one end of it and a tiny root at the other. The water and the warmth together have ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... dismay stole over the Treasure's face as, despite his great size, he appeared to shrivel and curl ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... imagination, die many deaths in one! I fancied myself brave; alas! I never fancied myself—burning! But, no more; since I have taken up my pen solely to wile away these last, brief, melancholy hours, in narrating those circumstances of my past life, which shall have tended to shrivel ere long, amidst diabolical agonies, the trembling hand that records them, like a parched scroll, and to scatter the ashes of this now vigorous ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... that is my comfort and intercessor. May his bones rot within him with my gold chain to sweet Saint Giles. May his tongue wither at the roots—ah, good Saint Giles, save me from the fire. May he be cursed in life and may the flesh shrivel on his bones and his soul be eternally damned with another candle and fifty gold pieces to the ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... if you think for a moment, that the people who influence you are people who believe in you. In an atmosphere of suspicion men shrivel up; but in that atmosphere they expand, and ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... it— Whether they weld you, for instance, a snaffle With side-bars never a brute can baffle; Or a lock that's a puzzle of wards within wards; Or, if your colt's fore foot inclines to curve inwards, Horseshoes they hammer which turn on a swivel And won't allow the hoof to shrivel. {370} Then they cast bells like the shell of the winkle That keep a stout heart in the ram with their tinkle; But the sand—they pinch and pound it like otters; Commend me to gypsy glass-makers and potters! Glasses ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... old woman, one of those women who, after a robust middle age, seem gradually to shrivel to the figure of what they were in their youth, but with no charm of girlish lines remaining. Her face was wrinkled like a russet apple in February, and it had the colorings of that grateful fruit. She sat on the stone slab which ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... Harvest from devouring blight, The Smut's dark poison, and the Mildew white; Deep-rooted Mould, and Ergot's horn uncouth, And break the Canker's desolating tooth. 515 First in one point the festering wound confin'd Mines unperceived beneath the shrivel'd rin'd; Then climbs the branches with increasing strength, Spreads as they spread, and lengthens with their length; —Thus the slight wound ingraved on glass unneal'd 520 Runs in white lines along the lucid field; Crack follows crack, to laws elastic just, And the frail fabric ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... but twice before—and he said up-and-down, as serious as anything—'Yes, I do, Molly!' And he does make the beautifullest chinquapin whistles! They go on whistling after they are dry. You see, the trouble with the whistles other people make for me, is that they shrivel all up by next day, and there isn't a bit ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... grave to wreak punishment on the guilty. I was dead—I could never have killed the man who had once been my friend. And he also was dead—the same murderess had slain us both—and SHE lived! Ha! that was wrong—she must now die—but in such torture that her very soul shall shrink and shrivel under it into a devil's flame for the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli |
