"Smallness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the nature of old English masques, and consisted of songs and spoken dialogues in addition to dances; the term ballet, it need hardly be explained, being derived from the Italian ballata, the parent of our own ballad. At first the French Opera or Academy suffered from the smallness of its troop; vocalists could be obtained from the church choirs, but for the ballet it was hard to find recruits; and sometimes young boys were pressed into the service, and constrained to personate nymphs, dryads, and shepherdesses—"danseurs," ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... in the Hyaena is the disproportionate smallness of his hind quarters; besides which, the vertebrae of his neck very often become stiffened, in consequence of the strain put upon them by the powerful muscles of that part, and of the jaws. So firm is the ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... gracious and affable to his servants and courtiers; and being of a majestic figure, expert in all military exercises, and in the main well proportioned in his limbs, notwithstanding the great length and the smallness of his legs, he was as well qualified to captivate the populace by his exterior appearance, as to gain the approbation of men of sense by his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... traversed by our line, with the exception of the barren desolate region between Anadyrsk and Bering Strait, which our chief proposed to leave for the present unexplored. Taking into consideration our circumstances and the smallness of our force, this plan was probably the best which could be devised, but it made it necessary for the Major and me to travel throughout the whole winter without a single companion except our native teamsters. As I did not speak Russian, it would be next to impossible for me to do this ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... tarried quite long enough, for the present, within the cabinet of Engravings. Let us return: ascend about a dozen more steps; and enter the LIBRARY OF MANUSCRIPTS. As before, you are struck with the smallness of the first room; which leads, however, to a second of much larger dimensions—then to a third, of a boudoir character; afterwards to a fourth and fifth, rather straitened—and sixthly, and lastly, to one of a noble length and elevation of ceiling—worthy in all respects of the glorious treasures ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... rapid decay and dismemberment of that great colonial empire with which Albuquerque had enriched his country, and which even amidst its ruins has left ineffaceable traces upon India. With Michelet we may cite the distance and dispersion of the various factories, the smallness of the population of Portugal, but little suited to the wide extension of her establishments, the love of brigandage, and the exactions of a bad government, but beyond all, that indomitable national pride which forbade any mingling of the victors ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... not the smallness of daily endeavour, Let the great meaning ennoble it ever, Droop not o'er efforts expended in vain, Work, as believing, that labour is gain." Queen Isabel, &c. ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spinal cord remains of an undecreasing girth, almost equal to that of the brain. Under all these circumstances, would it be unreasonable to survey and map out the whale's spine phrenologically? For, viewed in this light, the wonderful comparative smallness of his brain proper is more than compensated by the wonderful comparative magnitude of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... permanently valuable,) but his attempts, and very imperfectly successful ones, to open an intercourse with the world." We are speaking here of small things, it must be remembered—of little attempts, little sketches, a little world. But everything is relative, and this smallness of scale must not render less apparent the interesting character of Hawthorne's efforts. As for the Twice-Told Tales themselves, they are an old story now; every one knows them a little, and those who admire them particularly have read them a great ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... Anne Lee's lifetime of fifteen thousand pounds of tobacco or the equivalent in current money[1]. Mrs. Lee died in 1761 and thereafter Washington owned the estate absolutely. That it was by no means so valuable at that time as its size would indicate is shown by the smallness of the, rent he paid, never more than four hundred sixty-five dollars a year. Many eighty-acre farms rent for that much to-day and even ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... groomed and watered our horses, and the stable guard had been set, and we had all an hour or so's leisure to stroll about in the cool darkness before sleeping in the barns, we had a sudden lesson in the smallness of the world, for what should come up the village street but that monstrous Barrel, and we could see by its movements that it was still ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... by the quiet, careful dress of an English lady, made a strange pendant to this shabby, foreign-looking, eager, and gesticulating man, who withal had an ineffaceable jauntiness of air, perhaps due to the bushy curls of his grizzled hair, the smallness of his hands and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... gentleman, the same as you and me. He was easy and romping in his ways; a man about six foot, with a kind of rubber-tire movement. Yes, he was a little man about five foot five, or five foot eleven. He was what you would call a medium tall man of average smallness. Henry had quit college once, and the Muscogee jail three times—the last-named institution on account of introducing and selling whisky in the territories. Henry Horsecollar never let any cigar stores come up and stand ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... Macdonald, who was one of the Royal Commissioners. Sir Alexander urged that Torridon was a young and inexperienced man, and not likely to be dangerous to the Government, on account of the distance and comparative smallness of his wild Highland estate however, it is said that he added - "Torridon is a great favourite with the ladies, and if you "hang Torridon" it is certain that half the ladies of the country will "hang themselves."" This reasoning is said to have prevailed and it is certain ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... said Leonardo Donato, "and there is one fault. It limits his power to achieve; it increases his absolutism. It is near-sightedness—smallness of vision." ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... looked into the cabin and seen the remains uh that cow-critter, there was language it wasn't polite to overhear. She said a lot uh things about you, Andy. One thing they couldn't seem to get over, and that was the smallness uh the blamed shack. Them fourteen or fifteen rooms ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... now in a temporary jail in what is left of the town. He was caught stealing a gold watch. A shot was fired at him but he was not wounded. The only thing that saved him from lynching was the smallness of the crowd. His sentence will be the heaviest that can ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... inherent defects,—if those peculiarities may be called defects, which adapt it to its proper functions and do not diminish its sexual attractiveness. Woman's figure having its centre of gravity low, its breadth at the hip great, and, from the smallness of her feet, its base narrow, her natural movement in a costume which does not conceal the action of the hip and knee-joints is unavoidably awkward, though none the less attractive to the eye of the other sex. [Footnote: For instance, the movements of ballet-dancers, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... a dream be about than this? It is small, if you will; but when you begin to think of things rightly, the ideas of smallness and largeness pass away. The making of this pyramid was in reality just as wonderful as the dream I have been telling you, and just as incomprehensible. It was not, I suppose, as swift, but quite as grand things are done as swiftly. When Neith makes ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... notes with a pencil in a small book which lay in her lap. The splendid thoughts appealed to her powerfully; her face glowed with pleasure. She lived in the noble past; she was a Greek with the old Greeks; she forgot the nineteenth century, with its smallness, its money worries— above all, she ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... world. Perfectly beautiful he did not call her, though her face was as near that rarity as any he had known. He would only have called a woman beautiful who was tall, and she was almost petite; but that was because he himself was over-tall, and her smallness seemed to be properly classed with those who were pretty, not the handsome or the beautiful. But there was something in her face that haunted him—a wistful, appealing delicacy, which yet was associated with an instant readiness of intellect, with a perspicuous judgment and a gift ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Vicksburg. I remember, Colonel, that, despite its smallness, it is one of the great river towns of ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... she lifted the lantern from its nail and held it high, Richard Brooks was aware that this was the same girl whom he had glimpsed from the train. He had noted then her slenderness of outline, the grace and freedom of her pose; at closer range he saw her delicate smallness; the bloom on her cheek; the dusky softness of her hair; the length of her lashes; the sapphire deeps of her eyes. Yet it was not these charms which arrested his attention; it was, rather, a certain swift thought of her as superior ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... the dwarfish and diminutive, ought to be considered. Littleness, merely as such, has nothing contrary to the idea of beauty. The humming-bird, both in shape and coloring, yields to none of the winged species, of which it is the least; and perhaps his beauty is enhanced by his smallness. But there are animals, which, when they are extremely small, are rarely (if ever) beautiful. There is a dwarfish size of men and women, which is almost constantly so gross and massive in comparison ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... while any whole expenses, thither and back, and while I retrained there, did not exceed twenty-five pounds, about a shilling for each vote. Only look at the contrast, and no one will be surprised at the apparent smallness of the number which voted for me. I believe almost every man who voted for me voted also for Sir Samuel Romilly; but his partizans evinced full as great an hostility to me as the myrmidons of the White Lion Club did. Every vote was urged ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... difficult tasks are usually the most delightful ones. If we may rely upon the testimony of history, men are brave, truthful, and magnanimous, not in proportion to their wealth, but in proportion to their smallness of means. And the best are often the poorest,—always supposing that they have sufficient to meet their temporal wants. A divine has said that God has created poverty, but He has not created misery. And there is certainly a great difference between the two. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... little milk and water during the rest of the day. In the early morning, the special worm medicine is given, and over and over again I have known the worm to be brought away completely after many previous failures. When the smallness of the joints shows that the greater part of the worm has been thrown off, and that little more than the head remains, it is necessary to have recourse to the unpleasant proceeding of mixing the evacuations with water, and then straining them through muslin, in order that the doctor ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... some sort. Among the instructors and professors of the higher educational establishments, the helping of students seems to be thought of as a matter of course,—so much a matter of course that we might suspect a new "tyranny of custom," especially in view of the smallness of official salaries. But no tyranny of custom would explain the pleasure of sacrifice and the strange persistence of feudal idealism which are revealed by some extraordinary facts. For example: A certain University professor is known to have supported and educated a large number ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... glow of the fire he looked uncommonly sardonic and wild, with his long beard, bald head, flowing hair, shaggy brows, and little cunning eyes, which seemed in their smallness to share in his grin, and yet did not; and though to be sure he was some one to talk to and to make plans with for our escape, yet I felt that if he were to fall into a stupor again it would not be my hands that should chafe ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... Tom the letters which had come to him by the night's mail. There was a long one from his sister in Nagasaki, which had been written with a good deal of ill-disguised reproach. She complained of the smallness of the income of her share in her father's estate, and said that she had been assured by American friends that the smaller mills were starting up everywhere, and beginning to do well again. Since so much of their money was invested in the factory, she ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... have said that, owing to the smallness of the house-party, luncheon was served in the breakfast-room. The dining-room at Selwoode is very rarely used, because Margaret declares its size makes a meal there equivalent to ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... that out of your head. We have not loved one another for twenty years for a trumpery title to come between us now! And you need not fear being too well off for the position. The agent, Hailes, has been continually apologising to me for the smallness of the means. He says either we must have no house in London, or else let Northmoor. He cannot tell me yet exactly what income we shall have, but the farms don't let well, and there is ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the threshold and looking about her, as if she stood poised on the edge of an adventure. Her smallness, and the delicious, exploring air of her melted Jim's heart and made ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... Reindeer. Sir Howard Douglas, the chief authority on the subject, attempted in vain to explain British reverses by the deterioration of British gunnery. His analysis showed only that American gunnery was extraordinarily good. Of all vessels, the sloop-of-war—on account of its smallness, its quick motion, and its more accurate armament of thirty-two-pound carronades—offered the best test of relative gunnery, and Sir Howard Douglas in commenting upon the destruction of the Peacock and Avon ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... smallness of the half second of arc, thus triumphantly though only approximately measured. It is the angle subtended by twenty-six feet at a distance of 2,000 miles. If a telescope planted at New York could be directed to a house in England, and be then turned so as to set its cross-wire first ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... to be a politic one, for Anjou was at the time the all but accepted suitor of Queen Elizabeth, and it was thought that the choice would unite both powers in defence of Holland. The duke, however, speedily proved his incapacity. Irritated at the smallness of the authority granted him, and the independent attitude of the great towns, he attempted to capture them by force. He was successful in several places; but at Antwerp, where the French thought to repeat ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... the smallness of these periodic oscillations, Laplace next succeeded in determining the absolute dimensions of the orbits. What is the distance of the sun from the earth? No scientific question has occupied the attention of mankind in a greater ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... The trees are nearly always composed of clusters of their proper leaves relieved on a black or dark ground, thus (fig. 20).[31] And observe carefully, with respect to the complete drawing of the leaves on this tree, and the smallness of their number, the real distinction between noble conventionalism and false conventionalism. You will often hear modern architects defending their monstrous ornamentation on the ground that it is "conventional," and that architectural ornament ought to be conventionalized. Remember, when ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... abundance of flowers and fruit is all that can be desired. There is naturally some tendency to coarseness, especially in the fruit. The price of labour makes it difficult to keep large gardens in good order. For this reason few people keep large gardens. Another thing that accounts for the smallness of the gardens attached to middle and working-class houses, which are often no more than patches, is the speculation in land. The smaller the portions into which the speculator cuts up his building sections, the more he gets for them. I myself on one occasion bought an eight-acre section of land ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... from a standing tree, with an instrument such as I have described, which can never, by any possibility be brought to take an edge! I have frequently examined the trees from which spears have been thus excised, and the smallness of the chips testified to the length of the tedious operation; indeed, it would be more correct to say the segment had been bruised out than excised. Having so far achieved his task, there is still a great deal before the black can boast of a complete spear, for the bar is several inches in diameter, ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... England the Moravians had only twenty congregations, in Ireland only six, and that the total number of members was only four thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven. The question is sometimes asked to-day: How is it that the Moravian Church is so small? For that smallness more reasons than one may be given; but one reason was certainly the singular policy expounded ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... the feast so sat they there. And Matholch and Bendigeid Vran began to discourse; and, behold, it seemed to Bendigeid Vran, while they talked, that Matholch was not so cheerful as he had been before. And he thought that the chieftain might be sad because of the smallness of the atonement which he had for the wrong that had been done him. "O man," said Bendigeid Vran, "thou dost not discourse to-night so cheerfully as thou wast wont. And if it be because of the smallness of the atonement, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... to mar his enjoyment—without the most infinitesimal cloud to overshadow the brightness of his horizon. Let him do this, and surely he will laugh in utter bitterness of soul when he sets down the sum of his felicity, and discovers the pitiful smallness of the amount. He will have enjoyed himself for a week or ten days in thirty years, perhaps. In thirty years of dull December, and blustering March, and showery April, and dark November weather, there may have been seven or eight ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... perhaps, more regardless of risk to human life than the people of any other country in the world. Scarcely a day passes without fresh evidences of the truth of this proposition. The river, as well as the sea-going steamers, are generally built with reference to speed and lightness, coupled with smallness of draft of water, and hence, in case of touching the ground, or of violent storms, it is found that if one portion of the frame gives way, the breaking up of the entire structure follows with a rapidity that is but too well calculated to show the slight manner ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... to men in spite of her smallness and leanness and incisiveness of manner. She was called mighty smart and dry, which was the shop synonym for witty, and her favors, possibly because she never granted them, were accounted valuable. Abby Atkins had more admirers ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Beyond these are blue undulations of varying tone, and then another bosky-looking spot, which you learn to be about the same amount of manorial umbrage belonging to Lord Some-One-Else. And to right and left of these, in shaded stretches, lie other estates of equal consequence. It was therefore not the smallness but the vastness of the country that struck me, and I was not at all in the mood of a certain American who once, in my hearing, burst out laughing at an English answer to my inquiry as to whether my interlocutor often saw Mr. B——. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... cast, I will come; I can no longer resist your influence; it grows stronger every day, and now it makes me a murderess, for the shock will kill him. And yet I am tired of the sameness and smallness of my life; my mind is too big to be ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... be forced into wars, whether we will or not, I should suppose it very imprudent to suffer our credit to be annihilated, for so small a sum as fifty-one thousand guilders. The injury will be greater, too, in proportion to the smallness of the sum; for they will ask, "How can a people be trusted for large sums, who break their faith for such small ones?" You know best what effect it will have on the minds of the money lenders of that country, should we fail in this payment. You know best, also, whether it is practicable ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... Norman building than St Etienne, but its simple, semi-circular arches and round-headed windows contrast strangely with the huge pontifical canopy of draped velvet that is suspended above the altar, and very effectually blocks the view of the Norman apse beyond. The smallness of the windows throughout the building subdues the light within, and thus gives St Trinite a somewhat different character to St Etienne. The capitals of the piers of the arcade are carved with strange-looking monkeys and other designs, and there are chevron mouldings conspicuous ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... changes of which were interpreted in those credulous days according to the ideas or the habits of individuals. Suddenly she turned her eyes to the two arched windows at the end of the room; but the smallness of their panes and the multiplicity of the leaden lines did not allow her to see the sky and judge if the world were coming to an end, as certain monks, eager for donations, affirmed. She might easily have believed in such ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... accident it was, but never had I come so nearly into the presence of the men who founded England. The isolation of the hill, the absence of clamour and false noise and everything modern, the smallness of the village, the solidity and amplitude of the homes and their security, all recalled ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... and to confound both architect and builder after the fashion possible for the experienced and accomplished house-keeper. She usually exacted the support of her husband, with a pertinacity the greater for the smallness of the point at issue; and David Marshall, wearied and borne down with more important, more vital affairs, wished daily that the new house had ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... him, the men rose up and smartly bent their bows for practice, while the knight was greatly astonished at the smallness of the their targets. A wand was set up, far down the glade, and thereon was balanced a garland of roses. Whosoever failed to speed his shaft through the garland, without knocking it off the wand, was to submit to a buffet from the hand of ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... of March 1723, the day previously fixed upon for the commencement of hostilities, fires were lighted up on the mountains of Copaipo, Coquimbo, Quillota, Rancagua, Maule, and Itata. But either owing to the smallness of their number, their apprehension of the issue of the war, or their long habitude of submission, the native Chilese in the Spanish provinces remained quiet, and this vast project of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... seeking out the sheep from among the goats. Of course I was a sheep, and my governess and the head gardener goats, so that the results could not fail to be in every way satisfactory. But looking up at the slope and remembering my visions, I laughed at the smallness of the field I had supposed ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... age: but even the most determined of democrats is not averse to a good descent; and Hamilton, who was a democrat in no sense, had one of the noblest ancestries in Europe, though himself of American birth. His family was of Scotland, a country which, the smallness of its population considered, has produced more able and useful men than any other. The Hamiltons of Scotland, and we may add of France, were one of the noblest of patrician houses, and they had a great part in the stormy history of their country. Walter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... rudely hewn, and fitting together with little neatness; the naked beams and rafters, at the sides of the room and overhead, bear the original marks of the builder's broad-axe, with no evidence of an attempt to smooth off the job. Again we have to reconcile ourselves to the smallness of the space enclosed by these illustrious walls,—a circumstance more difficult to accept, as regards places that we have heard, read, thought, and dreamed much about, than any other disenchanting particular of a mistaken ideal. A few paces—perhaps seven or eight—take us from ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in and out among the trees, there were a hundred or more of them yelling and shrieking and hurling their sharp-pointed spears towards us. A hundred opposed to three were fearful odds. Probably they were not aware of the smallness of our number, or they might have made a rush at our camp, and knocked us all over with their waddies. Every moment we expected that they would do so. Should one of us be killed or wounded so as to be unable to fire, the other two must inevitably ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... pretty little boy with much favor. If the earth were not to crumble into nothingness after all, this child would be a real treasure trove; and when Dada begged him to find a corner for Papias in his house, though he hinted at the smallness of his earnings and the limited space at his command, he yielded, if reluctantly, to her entreaties, on her offering him her gold ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... squaresail was carried when off the wind is seen lowered with its foot-ropes and tackle. The mainsail is of course loose-footed, and the tack is seen well triced up. Two things especially strike us. First, the smallness of the yard to which the head of the gaff-topsail is laced; and secondly, the great size of the headsail. She has obviously stowed her working jib and foresail and set her balloon jib. When running before a breeze such a craft could set not merely all plain sail, but her squaresail, square-topsail ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... to reach the liquid, owing to the smallness of the pail, he could easily lick the spile which conveyed the sap from the tree, and this Mokwa did with evident relish. His tongue sought out every crevice and even greedily lapped the tree about the gash; then, growing impatient at the slowness with which the wonderful fluid appeared, ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... had long since decided, was one of those men who, having nothing of worth to offer the world, did their utmost to tear down and humiliate anyone who had. And his smallness of soul and intellect were shown by the sort of tricks he was continually pulling, thinking ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... dreams I distressed myself by visualising the scenes of the life I dreaded—the Meat Market, the dusty shadows of the gymnasium, the sombre reticence of the great hall. All that my lost tranquillity had given me was a keener sense of my own being; my smallness, my ugliness, my helplessness in the face of the great cruel world. Before I had sometimes been able to dull my emotions in unpleasant circumstances and thus achieve a dogged calm; now I was horribly conscious of my physical sensations, and, above all, of that deadly sinking in my ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... In lambkin and lancet, the final syllables (-kin and -et) have the same power. They both express the idea of smallness or diminutiveness. These words are but two out of a multitude, the one (lamb) being of Saxon, the other (lance) of Norman origin. The same is the case with the superadded syllables: -kin being Saxon; -et Norman. Now to add a Saxon termination to a Norman ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... and afterwards at Halle. Here he secured his doctorate in his twenty-sixth year, and in his academic dissertation (November 28th, 1759), the Theoria generationis, expounded the new theory of a real development on a basis of epigenesis. This treatise is, in spite of its smallness and its obscure phraseology, one of the most valuable in the whole range of biological literature. It is equally distinguished for the mass of new and careful observations it contains, and the far-reaching and pregnant ideas ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... we showed our clothes, and came home smirking with satisfaction. We had been pointed out everywhere for Americans, which spoke volumes for our clothes and the smallness of our feet. ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... with easy familiarity, and rejoiced in Carrie's proclivities and successes. Each evening he arrived promptly to dinner, and found the little dining-room a most inviting spectacle. In a way, the smallness of the room added to its luxury. It looked full and replete. The white-covered table was arrayed with pretty dishes and lighted with a four-armed candelabra, each light of which was topped with a red shade. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... sleep until the operations of an intellect, perpetually roused and never crippled, carried the universal civilization to its height. Nature herself set the boundaries of the river and the mountain to the confines of the several states—the smallness of each concentrated power into a focus—the number of all heightened emulation to a fever. The Greek cities had therefore, above all other nations, the advantage of a perpetual collision of mind—a perpetual intercourse with numerous neighbours, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her while making his puppets, only she knew as well as he. Truly, he had put his heart into them, so that they were like living beings,—and so small that their very smallness made them a marvel. Being a lover, he had put inside each breast a little heart, and, for the luck of the thing, had christened them with a drop of his own blood, and a drop of Grendel's; so each heart had in it one little drop of blood. Now he was to ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... and yet there was nothing thin or attenuated about her, and the epithet "fragile" could not have been applied to her with half the justice of that very opposite word, "willowy." Her face was infantile in the smallness of the features, in their perfect round, and in the expression of helpless placidity which seemed to lie upon it. But those features were yet classical in outline, and the mouth, especially, was very sweet and budding. ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... delightful appreciation of climax. As one walks up a spacious avenue, passing through gate after gate, each more magnificent than the last, one is being prepared by this cumulative splendor for the tomb itself. One feels everywhere the dignity of space. There is no smallness, no crowding. One feels the greatness of the people that has done these things: a race that looks at life and death with a vision as broad as the ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... herself to this man did not seriously occur to me. His face was like the face of thousands of successful men whom we see daily in the great marts of the world. His forehead was broad but low, his eyes inclined to smallness and set closely together, his brows shaggy and overhanging: his cheeks were heavy, and the fleshy formation of his mouth and chin denoted both cruelty and sensuality. He was a wealthy man: such men ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... that which is, Democritus, as against the Eleatics, maintained that this was not a unity, some one immovable, unchangeable existence, but an innumerable number of atoms, invisible by reason of their smallness, which career through empty space (that which is not), and by their union bring objects into being, by their separation bring these to destruction. The action of these atoms on each other depended on the manner in which they were brought into contact; but in any case ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... the culprits, so she made up for their deficiency, saying: "Go upstairs at once, you naughty boys, and take off these pads." The naughty boys ascended, with a strangely combined feeling of joy and smallness, and, when the knapsacks were removed, Coristine sank into a chair laughing. "O Lord, Wilks," he said, "she called ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... hide his misery from Mary Jane, because they'd only been tokened a fortnight, his heart, in truth, was long since gone to Cora. As for her, she stood in perplexity because she liked her close lover less and less and saw his smallness of vision and lust for the pence with growing hatred and clearness; while, worse still, she couldn't but see that 'twas all bunkum about Nicholas caring a straw for ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... this, that the enemy when wearied by the long continuance of the battle, went out of the action, and others with fresh strength came in their place; none of which things could be done by our men, owing to the smallness of their number; and not only was permission not given to the wearied [Roman] to retire from the fight, but not even to the wounded [was liberty granted] to quit the post where he had been ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... themselves did not know the smallness of the Northern force that had taken shelter on the hill. That hardening of the resistance which Harry had felt more than once had been exemplified to the full that deadly morning. Buford and Reynolds had shown the penetration and resolution of ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... full in the moonlight, and Dick saw her very clearly. She was thin, small and elderly, clothed in a gray riding suit, and with a sort of small gray turban on her head. But despite her smallness and thinness and years there was nothing insignificant in her appearance. As she stood there looking at them, she showed a pair of the brightest and most intelligent eyes that Dick had ever seen. Her small, pointed chin had the firmness of steel, and figure, manner and appearance ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the darkness steal softly down upon the landscape stretched out like patchwork below. Then with the night and the absence of all human sounds had come that sweet and mystical sense of loneliness which had so often brought him peace at a time when the smallness of the day's events and the tyranny of his home life had filled him with bitterness. It was here that courage had come to him to plan out his emancipation, here that he had fed his brain with sweet but forbidden fruits. ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... rule, which he hath engraved to admiration, for goodness and smallness of work: it cost me 14s. the doing. This day, for a wager before the King, my Lords of Castlehaven and Arran, (a son of my Lord of Ormond's) they two alone did run down and kill a stoute bucke ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... disciples should feed the crowd must have appeared to them absurd, but it was meant to bring out the clear recognition of the smallness of their supply. Therein lie great lessons. Commands are given and apparent duties laid on us, in order that we may find out how impotent we are to do them. It can never be our duty to do what we cannot do, but it is often our duty to attempt tasks to which we are conspicuously ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... retirement of Superintendent Byrnes. There was not one of us all who had known him long who did not regret it, though I, for one, had to own the necessity of it; for Byrnes stood for the old days that were bad. But, chained as he was in the meanness and smallness of it all, he was yet cast in a different mould. Compared with his successor, he was a giant every way. Byrnes was a "big policeman." We shall not soon have another like him, and that may be both ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... fight me," Judge Custis remarked. "I have tried to be a peaceable man and Christian magistrate, albeit a poor hypocrite in some, things, but I am pushed too far. My wife's smallness is worse than insanity and wickedness put together. Between her and this money-broking fiend, and my neglected child entrapped into such a marriage, by God! I will clean my old duelling arms, and appeal to injustice itself ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... of the Diary, he might feel that what he left behind him was indeed himself. There is perhaps no other instance so remarkable of the desire of man for publicity and an enduring name. The greatness of his life was open, yet he longed to communicate its smallness also; and, while contemporaries bowed before him, he must buttonhole posterity with the news that his periwig was once alive with nits. But this thought, although I cannot doubt he had it, was neither his first nor his deepest; it did not color one word that he wrote; the Diary, for as long as he ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... are the most dangerous. This is due to the fact of the closeness of the brain and the large amount of infection in such a wound, and for this reason treatment should be immediately given. But smaller wounds should also be treated for the smallness of the wound furnishes no sure criterion as to the future outcome of the disease. All possible infections should be regarded as dangerous when considering the advisability of taking the Pasteur Treatment. The small wound has usually a longer period of incubation, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... defence; and in the end there was nothing for it but for Conflans to take his whole fleet to the Morbihan transports. Hawke was upon him at once, and the disastrous day of Quiberon was the result. The Dunkirk division alone got free, but the smallness of its size, which permitted it to evade the watch, also prevented its doing any harm. Its escort, after landing its handful of troops in Ireland, was entirely destroyed; and so again the attempt of the French to invade ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... us; the smallest will not be rejected by Him. For it is the motive, not the gift, which our Lord regards. The poor widow's mite was more acceptable to Him than the ostentatious and lavish donations of the wealthy. Yet the smallness, the seeming worthlessness, of our means is often pleaded as an excuse for withholding them altogether. Because men can do so little, they do nothing. It was the servant who had received only one talent that wrapped his lord's money in a napkin, and buried it in useless, unprofitable obscurity. ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... Nina, why not Laura? She was small and she was pretty and she was pathetic, and he liked women to be so. Why was it that with all her feminine smallness and prettiness and pathos he had never cared ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... gazing before her with blind eyes. Sir John she had dismissed already from her mind; she hated him, that was enough; for whatever Seraphina hated or contemned fell instantly to Lilliputian smallness, and was thenceforward steadily ignored in thought. And now she had matter for concern indeed. Her interview with Otto, which she had never yet forgiven him, began to appear before her in a very different light. He had come to her, still thrilling under recent insult, and not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... woman I was escorting aft. Also I was awkward. It seemed to me that I was realizing for the first time what a delicate, fragile creature a woman is; and as I caught her arm to help her down the companion stairs, I was startled by its smallness and softness. Indeed, she was a slender, delicate woman as women go, but to me she was so ethereally slender and delicate that I was quite prepared for her arm to crumble in my grasp. All this, in frankness, to show my first impression, after ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... husband rejoiced in the smallness of their friendly circle, and shrank from any unnecessary ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... his most humble duty to your Majesty, humbly acquaints your Majesty that your Majesty's Ministers, taking into consideration the smallness of the force with which the campaign in China was commenced this year, and the advanced period of the season at which the reinforcements would arrive (which reinforcements would not so raise the strength of the Army as to afford any reasonable expectation that its operations will produce ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... detestable traffic is the smallness and often the unseaworthiness of the vessels in which it was carried on. Few such picayune craft now venture outside the landlocked waters of Long Island Sound, or beyond the capes of the Delaware and Chesapeake. In the early days of the eighteenth ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... oratory, scooped by Guidobaldo II. from the thickness of the wall, a cast of Raphael's skull, which will be studied with interest and veneration. It has the fineness of modelling combined with shapeliness of form and smallness of scale which is said to have characterised Mozart ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... west. Many times were they chased by the Malay proas, which infested the islands, but the swiftness of their little peroqua was their security; indeed the chase was, generally speaking, abandoned, as soon as the smallness of the vessel was made out by the pirates, who expected that little or no ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... inland attraction of Brighton is still the Pavilion, which is indeed the town's symbol. On passing through its very numerous and fantastic rooms one is struck by their incredible smallness. Sidney Smith's jest (if it were his; I find Wilberforce, the Abolitionist, saying something similar) is still unimproved: "One would think that St. Paul's Cathedral had come to Brighton and pupped." Cobbett ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... opportunity of adding the present to the number: and although this re-impression may, on first glance, appear something like a violation of contract with the public, yet, when the length of time which has elapsed, and the smallness of the price of the preceding impression, be considered, there does not appear to be any very serious obstacle to the present republication; the more so, as the number of copies is limited ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and grumbled—or pretended to grumble—about their tucker, and then he'd make a roughly pathetic speech, with many references to his age, and the hardness of his work, and the smallness of his wages, and the inconsiderateness of the men. Then the joker of the shed would sympathize with the cook with his tongue and one side of his ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... that he thought the city magistrates ought to have been proceeded against by parliament for their conduct. On the other hand, the city and the people of Middlesex were offended by the conduct of the opposition, and the smallness of the minority that voted against the address, and they passed strong resolutions, expressing their discontent. The blame was chiefly imputed to the Rockingham party; and the Rev. Mr. Home—better known at a later date by the name of Home Tooke—who had begun ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... came, a half a thousand years before the Nazarene, he stepped, with me, thus into timelessness. The stone beside us waxes old, the carven stone that says: "On this spot once Confucius stood and felt the smallness of the world below." The stone grows old: Eternity is not for stones. But I shall go down from this airy place, this swift white peace, this stinging exultation. And time will close about me, and my soul stir to the rhythm of the daily round. Yet, having known, life will not press ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... hour after nine; but the Princess did not appear till it was finished; then we walked in the garden, or drove about in cabriolets, till it was time to dress; dined at three, which, though properly proportioned to the smallness of company to avoid ostentation, lasted a vast While, as the Princess eats and talks a great deal; then again into the garden till past seven, when we came in, drank tea and coffee, and played at pharaoh till ten, when the Princess retired, and we went to supper, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... in no wise on mere corporeal altitude. Men were measured in his country (Rome), he said, from the eyebrow upwards. And though Rome is not exactly the place, of all others, where one might expect to find such an estimate of human value prevailing,— unless, indeed, smallness of that which a man has above his brow be deemed the desirable thing,—it was undeniable that little Signor Ercole carried a mass of forehead which might have been the share of a much ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... that no man could on his journey through life well have been less eagerly designated or apostrophised. If there are persons as to whom the "Mr." never comes up at all, so there are those as to whom it never subsides; but some of them all keep it by the greatness and others, oddly enough, by the smallness of their importance. The subject of my present reference, as I think of him, nevertheless—by which I mean in spite of his place in the latter group—greatly helps my documentation; he must have been of so excellent and consistent ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... to have conceived a most unmerited dislike for the girl. Sally knew nothing of Miss Woodhull's dislike for Admiral Seldon because he had presumed to question her policy, nor could a girl of Sally's sweet nature possibly understand the smallness of one which would take out upon a defenceless young girl the resentment which she harbored toward her older relative. Nevertheless, that was precisely the situation, and Miss Stetson and Miss Bayliss were ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... consequent failure to appreciate the momentous influence exerted upon the course of the Revolutionary War by this naval campaign, in which Pellew bore so conspicuous a part. It has never been understood in America, where the smallness of the immediate scale has withdrawn attention from the greatness of the ultimate issue, in gaining time for the preparations which resulted in the admittedly decisive victories about Saratoga. "If we could have begun our expedition four weeks earlier," ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... them and the ravine which conducted to the pass. It was but the barest possible glimpse they got of that shabby tail; but it told a tale which they perfectly understood, for they flew back in the utmost haste to warn their comrades, who, knowing the smallness of the party thus sent against them, from the largeness of the party that had shammed returning to the fort, resolved upon ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... lie in tents, there being only two clapboard houses built, and three sawed houses framed. Our crane, our battery of cannon, and magazine are finished. This is all that we have been able to do, by reason of the smallness of our number, of which many have been sick, and others unused to labor; though, I thank God, they are now pretty well, and we have not lost ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... sight induce the belief of a much greater population than it actually contains. This is attributable to two circumstances, the largeness of the leases, which in most instances possess sufficient space for a garden, and the smallness of the houses erected in them, which in general do not exceed one story. From these two causes it happens, that this town does not contain above seven thousand souls, whereas one that covered the same extent of ground in this country would possess a population of at least twenty thousand. ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... index of refraction of the liquid. On the other hand, owing to the smallness of eq. 12 as ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... effects of the atrophy are noted in the smallness of the organ, in its becoming whiter in colour than normal, and ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... To feel one's smallness and realize it, one need only go and stand beside the marble cherubs that support the holy-water basins against the first pillar. They look small, if not graceful; but they are of heroic size, and the bowls are as ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... there was one vote polled for the first Abolitionist presidential ticket. The man who gave it did not try to hide his responsibility—in fact, he seemed rather proud of his aloneness—but he was mercilessly guyed on account of the smallness of his party. His rejoinder was that he thought that he and God, who was, he believed, with him, made a pretty ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... that will arrest the attention of some in reading this report is the smallness of the figures. It does not appear to-day that the corporation was much of a financial affair, for there are thousands of persons in our land now who could easily sustain such an institution and pocket its yearly losses; but we must bear ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... what is known as the 'West Side' of the town. Here the brothers grew up, and, when Orville was still a boy in his teens, he started a printing business, which, as Griffith Brewer remarks, was only limited by the smallness of his machine and small quantity of type at his disposal. This machine was in such a state that pieces of string and wood were incorporated in it by way of repair, but on it Orville managed to print a boys' paper which ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... was the smallness of his studio. If he had only had the old garret of the Quai de Bourbon, or even the huge dining-room of Bennecourt! But what could he do in that oblong strip of space, that kind of passage, which the landlord of the ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Smallness of stature, disappointment in his ambition for preferment, and a natural narrowness of soul, had turned Colonel Landcraft into a military martinet of the most pronounced character. He was the grandfather of colonels in the service, rank won in the old Indian days. That he was not ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... their first attempt, which succeeded so far as to their getting into the house; but they found nothing there but a few clothes of his brother and sister, which they took away. But Garraway bid them not be discouraged at the smallness of the booty, for his father's house was as well furnished as most men's, and their next attack should be upon that. To this they agreed, and plundered it also, taking away some spoons, tankards, salts and several other ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... himself half round. Simultaneously two reports rang out. They seemed to meet in one deafening peal, which was exaggerated by the smallness of the room. Then all ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... Monte Cavallo. The action of the human figure appeared to him so majestic, that it seemed to throw, as it were, a visible kind of awe into the very atmosphere, and over all the surrounding buildings. But the smallness of the horse struck him as exceedingly preposterous. He had often examined it before the idea occurred to him that it was probably reduced according to some unknown principle of antient art; and in this notion ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... made, was in one great measure the cause of its unexpected success. The remarkable speed with which the insurgents marched, the singularly good discipline which they preserved, the union and unanimity which for some time animated their councils, were all in a considerable degree produced by the smallness of their numbers. Notwithstanding the discomfiture of Charles Edward, the nonjurors of the period long continued to nurse unlawful schemes, and to drink treasonable toasts, until age stole upon them. Another generation arose, who did not share the sentiments which they cherished; ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... its hardiness in growing at low temperatures, its depth of root penetration, the availability of the seed, the smallness of the seed so that the weight required for the acre is not large, is to be favored for a cover crop. The objections are two: The fact that it does not seem to grow well under some conditions; second, that when a growth is made it is coarse and ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... I proceed to examine these elegant abodes. The contents fill me with joy: they fulfil my anticipations to the letter. The great, the very great majority of the cocoons turn out to be males; here and there, in the bigger cells, a few rare females appear. The smallness of the space has almost done away with the sixty-eight Snail-shells colonized. But, of this total number, I must use only those series which received an entire laying and were occupied by the same Osmia from the beginning to the end of the egg-season. Here are a few examples, taken ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... opinion that the chance of getting money should be preferred, but Vatsyayana says that money has only a limited importance, while a disaster that is once averted may never occur again. Here, however, the choice should be guided by the greatness or smallness of ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... posterior portion of the third convolution on the left side, the island of Reil, and the operculum were very small, corresponding to the inability to learn to speak. The author connects the slight mobility with the smallness of the parietal and frontal ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... swarms with birds as if they had been strewed on purpose; yet an hundred times as many are to be seen hovering all around. Some of these are black and white, as large as jays, and having beaks like crows, which lie always on the sea, as they cannot fly to any height on account of the smallness of their wings, which are not larger than the half of ones hand; yet they fly with wonderful swiftness close to the water. We named these birds Aporath, and found them very fat. In less than half an hour we filled two boats with them; so that, besides what we eat fresh, each ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... stars has not yet been ascertained by sufficient observation; Dr. Blagden thinks their situation is lower down in the atmosphere than that of fireballs, which he conjectures from their swift apparent motion, and ascribes their smallness to the more minute division of the electric matter of which they are supposed to consist, owing to the greater resistance of the denser medium through which they pass, than that in which the fire-balls exist. Mr. Brydone observed that the shooting stars appeared ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... of the female sex, it is necessary first to consider the work of children, and then the nature of the work itself. From the beginning of manufacturing industry, children have been employed in mills, at first almost exclusively by reason of the smallness of the machines, which were later enlarged. Even children from the workhouses were employed in multitudes, being rented out for a number of years to the manufacturers as apprentices. They were lodged, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... clear and delicate with darker hair. The great difficulty was my hands and feet; but the different shape of a boy's shoes made my feet pass; and I crumpled my hands up and kept them out of sight as much as possible. But they are not of a degenerated smallness," she added, looking at them critically; "it is more their shape. However, when I dressed myself and put on that long ulster, I saw the disguise would pass and felt pretty safe. But isn't it surprising the difference dress makes? I should hardly ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Grande. They have been out from three to six months, and are here for water, bad though it be, and fresh provisions. Their inducements to visit this port, are the goodness of the harbor, and the smallness of the port charges. No consular fee has been paid until now, when, an agent being appointed, each vessel pays him a perquisite of ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... say, with reference to the difficulties of this moment, begotten upon a cloud of fiction), could not be an image of a Nation like that of Spain, or an adequate instrument of their power for their ends. The Assembly, from the smallness of its numbers, must have wanted breadth of wing to extend itself and brood over Spain with a quickening touch of warmth every where. If also, as hath been mentioned, there was a want of experience to determine the judgment in choice of persons; this same smallness of numbers ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... and startling. Some of the poet's biographers have shed tears over the ten pounds that was all Milton ever received for his greatest work; others, magnanimously renouncing the world on his behalf, have rejoiced in the smallness of the sum paid him for a priceless work. Lament and heroics are both out of place. London was a small town, and it may well be doubted whether any modern provincial town of the same size would buy up in eighteen months thirteen hundred copies of a poem so serious and difficult and novel as Paradise ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... be told when supper was ready, and on looking round the room she perceived her portmanteau, which the lay sister had not unstrapped. She would have to unstrap it herself. She remembered that she had brought very few things with her, and yet she was surprised at the smallness of her luggage. For she usually took half-a-dozen dresses with her, now she had only brought one change, a grey alpaca. She thought she might have left her dressing-case behind, a plain brush and comb would have been all she needed. But at the last moment, she had felt that ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... threatened the envoy with condign punishment for daring to give such a message to the commander-in-chief at his headquarters in the midst of his army. Let him and his men forthwith lay down their arms. Dazed by the demand, and seeing only the victorious chief and not the smallness of his detachment, 4,000 Austrians surrendered to 1,200 French, or rather to the address and audacity ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... few miles distance, had crossed our trail, for I had led my party as near to the hacienda as I dared; and, having concealed ourselves in a dense chaparral, we were waiting for night, it being my intention to attack in the darkness, when the smallness of my force could not be easily discovered. Scenting danger at once, the hunters returned by a circuitous route to the hacienda, and warned its occupants. As a natural consequence, when we made our assault some hours later, they were fully prepared ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... broad valley so splendid. And Mr. Cave perceived that the buildings, with other peculiarities, had no doors, but that the great circular windows, which opened freely, gave the creatures egress and entrance. They would alight upon their tentacles, fold their wings to a smallness almost rod-like, and hop into the interior. But among them was a multitude of smaller-winged creatures, like great dragon-flies and moths and flying beetles, and across the greensward brilliantly-coloured gigantic ground-beetles crawled lazily ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... have been proposed. The ones recommended by the older surgeons had all one great fault; they were much too small, and were many of them straight, and thus liable to displacement. The smallness of their bore was their greatest objection, and Mr. Liston conferred a great benefit on surgery by his insisting upon the introduction of tubes with a larger bore, and with a proper curve, so as thoroughly to enter the trachea. The tube ought to ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... of Malta and Naples, where I got an Orient steamer which brought me to Plymouth. It was in sailing through the Straits of Messina on my way to Naples that I met with one of those strange—but by no means rare—coincidences that prove the smallness of the world, or, at least, of that part of it with which any one man is acquainted. I was sitting on the upper deck of the steamer, gazing at Etna, as its snow-shrouded peak was revealed in the brilliant moonlight, when a chance fellow-traveller began to talk about the coincidences ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... Tostig prognosticated delays, that little suited his fiery impatience. He accepted the offer of some two or three ships, which William put at his disposal, under pretence to reconnoitre the Northumbrian coasts, and there attempt a rising in his own favour. But his discontent was increased by the smallness of the aid afforded him; for William, ever suspicious, distrusted both his faith and his power. Tostig, with all his vices, was a poor dissimulator, and his sullen spirit betrayed itself when he took leave of ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... where there is no place for love-making, for discovering and testing each other's hidden beings, ran off together in the scanted parties of the ambitious poor. Walter was extravagant financially as he was mentally, but he had many debts, some conscience, and a smallness of salary. She was pleased by the smallest diversions, however, and found luxury in a bowl of chop-suey. He took her to an Italian restaurant and pointed out supposititious artists. They had gallery seats for a Maude ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... felt his weight and again only a slack line. This fish, too, ran right to my feet, then in a boiling splash sheered away. But he could not go far. I reeled him back and led him to the canoe. He was small, and the smallness of him was such a surprise in contrast to what his fight had led ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... foreigners: in this we are reminded of Jesus' parable of the good Samaritan. The foreign sailors cry, in their perplexity, to their gods, and end by acknowledging the God of Israel; the people of Nineveh repent at the prophet's preaching. All this forms a splendid foil to the smallness and obstinacy of Jonah. With his mean views of God, he would not only exclude the heathen from the divine mercy, but rejoice in their destruction. In this the prophet is typical of later Judaism, with its longing for the annihilation of the nations ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... transepts), the architectural masterpieces of the fifteenth century are all of them (excepting, naturally, Brunelleschi's dome) very small buildings: the Sacristies of S. Lorenzo and S. Spirito, the chapel of the Pazzi, and the late, but exquisite, small church of the Carceri at Prato. The smallness of these places is fortunate, because it leaves no doubt that the sense of spaciousness—of our being, as it were, enclosed with a great part of world and sky around us—is an artistic illusion got by co-ordination of detail, greatness ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... take that promise to Abraham—'Lift up your eyes and behold the stars. So shall thy seed be as numberless as the stars. Go to the seashore and look at the sand, and behold the smallness of the particles thereof'—I am giving you the gist of the Lord's words, you understand—'and then realise that your seed shall be as numberless as those sands.' Now think for a minute how many particles ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... varies; it is oval in 4 men and 2 women, but owing to the general moderate prominence of the cheek-bones and the smallness of the chin, it becomes pentagonal (3 men) or even lozenge-shaped or triangular (2 men); 1 woman has a broad face and 1 man a somewhat square, while 2 men have long faces. Alveolar prognathism is noted in 1 case and superciliary ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... incompleteness, and suggest completeness by their own incompleteness. The new moon with its ragged edge not more surely prophesies its completed silver round, than do the experiences of the Christian life here, in their greatness and in their smallness, declare that there come a time and an order of things in which what was thwarted tendency shall be accomplished result. The tender green spikelet, pushing up through the brown clods, does not more surely prophesy the waving yellow ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... smallness of the secretary's accomplishment for the past year. Except for the editing of the annual report—which is much a matter of cutting out superfluous words—and the effort to get speakers for this convention, he has attempted ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... everything," said the old man. "No, no! Would you believe it," he continued after this interruption, "the smallness of my means to do the work I now desired to do brought back the thought of Mongenod. 'If it were not for Mongenod,' I kept saying to myself, 'I could do so much more. If a dishonest man had not deprived me of fifteen hundred francs a year I could save this or that poor ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... burr-oak tree, would be reasonably secure against the missives of an Indian, and, using his own fatal instrument of death, under a sense of personal security, he would become a formidable opponent to dislodge. Nor was the smallness of the work any objection to its security. A single well- armed man might suffice to defend twenty-five feet of palisades, when he would have been insufficient to make good his position with twice the extent. Then le Bourdon had cut ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... to recall to the recollection of those around me, the circumstances under which the project of undertaking an overland journey to Port Essington was formed. The smallness of your party, and the scantiness of its equipment, the length and unknown character of the country proposed to be traversed, induced many to regard the scheme as one characterised by rashness, and the means employed as wholly inadequate towards carrying ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... the force with which the blood, in being rarefied, passes from the heart towards the extremities of the arteries, causes certain of its parts to remain in the members at which they arrive, and there occupy the place of some others expelled by them; and that according to the situation, shape, or smallness of the pores with which they meet, some rather than others flow into certain parts, in the same way that some sieves are observed to act, which, by being variously perforated, serve to separate different species of grain? And, in the ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... less perfectly dried mica, did not get so good a result as to smallness of residual charge ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... solemn Covenant devotedness? Could resolutions to prosecute this be embodied so well as in a solemn Covenant engagement with God? In this manner might there not be made arrangements regarding missions, more solemn than has heretofore been attempted? To many causes may the comparative smallness of success that has attended these be attributed. But it is little less than certain, that it is on account of the want of that resolute heroic Christian spirit which Covenanting calls forth and embraces, that our missionaries are not even now diffused over all the earth, and our nation is ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... replied Howland heartily, for his relationship toward the governor and his beautiful wife was rather that of a younger brother than of a retainer; and although the smallness of his fortune had induced him to accept the patronage of the older and wealthier man, it was much as a lad of noble lineage was content a few years before this to become first the page and then the squire of a ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... new. The little parish church is of the very far past, having lost its Cathedral rank over six hundred years ago to Sainte-Marie in Grasse, a town scarcely younger than its own. It is the type of the church of this coast, with its unpretentious smallness, its strength, and its disfiguring restorations; and it is, especially in comparison with Vence and Grasse, of small architectural interest. The facade, and the double archway which connects the church and the tower, are ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... proportions at once disappointed Harry's preconceived notions as to the smallness and leanness of Frenchmen, rose from the table at which he ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... Bantam, the Big Man was to the other men of the country. And if they were surprised at his bigness, he was astonished at their smallness. For he came from a time when all were as big as he. A hundred and a hundred years before he had hunted with his companions, and he was then called, not Big Man, but ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum
... places—man and woman together in the golden light, in the breathing space before the cannon should begin again—Richmond was growing used to that. All life was now in public. For the most part a clear altruism swayed the place and time, and in the glow smallness of comment or of thought was drowned. Certainly, it mattered not to Cleave and Judith that it was the Capitol Square, and that people ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... patient and quiet; not a groan or complaint escaped them, though I saw some faces twisted into strange contortions with the agony of their wounds. I commenced distributing my oranges right and left, but soon realized the smallness of my basket and the largeness of the demand, and sadly passed by all but the worst cases. In the third car that we entered we found the Colonel, Lieutenant-Colonel, and Adjutant of the Twenty-ninth Ohio, all severely wounded. We stopped and talked ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... stones worn smooth by the action of water. There was little sand, though from the deck of the U-33 the beach had appeared to be all sand, and I saw no evidences of mollusca or crustacea such as are common to all beaches I have previously seen. I attribute this to the fact of the smallness of the beach, the enormous depth of surrounding water and the great distance at which Caprona lies from her ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... morning I set out for Bammakoo, at which place I arrived about five o'clock in the afternoon. I had heard Bammakoo much talked of as a great market for salt, and I felt rather disappointed to find it only a middling town, not quite so large as Maraboo; however, the smallness of its size is more than compensated by the riches of its inhabitants; for, when the Moors bring their salt through Kaarta or Bambarra, they constantly rest a few days at this place; and the Negro merchants here, who are well acquainted with the value of salt ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... given at the back of a music-hall, which has the same entrance, and which is only separated from the concert-room by a small passage, so that the roaring choruses of a danse du venire may mingle with an adagio of Beethoven's or a scene from the Tetralogy. Worse than this, the smallness of the place into which these concerts have been crammed has been a serious obstacle in the way of making them popular. Nevertheless, in the promenade and galleries of the Nouveau Theatre, in later ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... prudence; and thus prepared he set forth to oppose Hannibal, not with intention to fight him, but with the purpose of wearing out and wasting the vigor of his arms by lapse of time, of meeting his want of resources by superior means, by large numbers the smallness of his forces. With this design, he always encamped on the highest grounds, where the enemy's horse could have no access to him. Still he kept pace with them; when they marched he followed them, when they encamped he did the same, but at such a distance as not to be compelled to an engagement, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough |
