"Diminutive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are more injurious than the larger variety, because their diminutive size escapes the gardener's eye. A good way to keep them under is to make small holes, about an inch deep, and about the diameter of the little finger, round the plants which they infest. Into these holes the slugs will retreat during the day, and they may be killed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... shrank together like elastic, and broke ranks again to swerve over the stretching waste. From this visioned pantomime presently came a sound, a tiny shot. The figures were too far for discerning which fired it. It evidently did no harm, and was repeated at once. A babel of diminutive explosions followed, while the horsemen galloped on in unexpected circles. Soon, for no visible reason, the dots ran together, bunching compactly. The shooting stopped, the dust rose thick again from the crowded hoofs, cloaking the group, ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... the diminutive of plata, silver, to which it appears very similar; platina being a ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... who are not among the public speakers, are Mrs. Spofford, the treasurer, wife of the proprietor of the Riggs House, and Miss Ellen H. Sheldon, secretary of the Association. To these ladies is due much of the success of the convention. Mrs. Sheldon is of diminutive stature, with gray hair, and Mrs. Spofford is of large and queenly figure, with white hair. Her magnificent presence is ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... itself. Though its vocabulary is limited in matters of science, philosophy, religion, and the like, Lowland Scots is very rich in homely terms and in humorous and tender expressions. For love, or for celebrating the effects of whisky, English is immeasurably inferior. The free use of the diminutive termination in ie or y—a termination capable of expressing endearment, familiarity, ridicule, and contempt as well as mere smallness—not only has considerable effect in emotional shading, but contributes to the liquidness of the verse ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... the diminutive object before she took the box. The finger grip had been fashioned out of a dollar cut clean across bearing two dates engraved upon it. The first, it flashed upon her, was the one on which she had given the worn-out man that very coin, while the other had evidently ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... sealskin and silk, a "Gainsborough" crowning her false "bang." I always think of Max O'Rell's clever saying, when I see her: "The sweat of the American husband crystallizes into diamond ear-rings for the American woman." My janitress sports a diminutive pair of those jewels and has hopes of larger ones! Instead of "doing" the bachelor's rooms in the building as her husband's helpmeet, she "does" her spouse, and a char- woman works for her. She is one of the drops in the tide that ebbs and flows on Twenty-third ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... resolved to perform the voyage in a vessel so small, and so unlike what had ever appeared in Portugal, that it should not fail to excite astonishment, how any man could undertake so long and perilous a navigation, in such a frail and diminutive bottom. ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... their behalf and to honor their patron saints. Their usual compositions were the Madonna enthroned with the infant Jesus in her arms, surrounded by holy personages or angels, with the portraits of those who ordered the paintings, in general of diminutive size to express humility, and kneeling in adoration with clasped hands and upraised eyes. Unless the characteristics of the master-hand are unmistakable in this class of works, they are to be ranked as of the schools of the great men ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... aged beggars. Often at posting-houses and other halting places, these miserable creatures would appear to her the only realities of the day; and many a time, when the money she had brought to give them was all given away, she would sit with her folded hands, thoughtfully looking after some diminutive girl leading her grey father, as if the sight reminded her of something in the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... General Maury, for whom I brought a letter of introduction from General Johnston. He is a very gentlemanlike and intelligent but diminutive Virginian, and had only just ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... drawing-room, here Colonel Berknowles had drunk a glass of mulled wine on that black morning over a hundred-and-thirty years ago when he went out with Councillor Kinsella and shot him through the lungs by the Round House on the Arranakilty Road. The diminutive Tom Moore had sung his songs here "put standing on the table" by the other guests, and the great Dan had held forth and the wind had dashed the ivy against the windows just as it did to-night with fist-fulls of rain from the Slieve Bloom Mountains. Byrne had ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... ditch made by the spring as it won its way out of the heart of the knoll; or rather it was a green hallway, overtopped with a frieze of mesquite, leading in privately to the source of the stream. Janet, as she entered the house-like cosiness of this diminutive valley, felt very much as if she had just stepped in out of the universe. On a prairie there is such an insistent stare of space, so great a lack of stopping-place for the mind, that this little piece of outdoors, with the sun shining in at its eastern end, was a veritable snug-harbor in an ocean ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... being hung a little above the ground there seemed to be neither doors nor windows. She had no doubt (though really I cannot think why) that the moment had come in which to use the nut which had been given her. She opened it, and out came a diminutive hall porter at whose belt hung a tiny chain, at the end of which was a golden key half as long as the smallest ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... layers being more than three inches thick. He adds, "It discovers in the masonry a combination of science and art which can only be referred to a higher stage of civilization and refinement than is discoverable in the work of Mexicans or Pueblos of the present day. Indeed, so beautifully diminutive and true are the details of the structure as to cause it at a little distance to have all the appearance of a magnificent ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... bed, to sleep upon! How came they to be furnished with such a luxury? Why, this season the Doctor had hired more than the usual number of pickers. The outbuilding given them to sleep in was thus too small to accommodate all, so two were taken into the house, and a diminutive closet, generally used by the family as a bath-room, was turned into a bed-room for the lucky couple. Now for a description of the bed. Over the bath was placed an ironing-board, and upon this a mattress quite as narrow, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... however, the conditions are very dissimilar. In the first place the machine owing to its diminutive size as compared with the airship, offers a small and inconspicuous target. Then there is its high independent speed, which is far beyond that of the airship. Furthermore its mobility is greater. It can wheel, turn sharply to the right or to the left, and pursue ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... business scuttling your own ship. Now as I am in a way a practical person, which is, I take it, a diminutive state of hard-headedness, any detraction against hard-headedness must appear as leveled against myself. Gimlet in hand, deep down amidships, it would look as if I were squatted and set on ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... descriptive powers were remarkable, and he could blend pathos with argument in a manner unusual. He was a warm friend of Mr. Lincoln, and one of the most characteristic stories ever told of Mr. Lincoln is in connection with Governor Stephens' diminutive appearance and great care for his shattered health. On one occasion before the war he took off three overcoats, one after the other, in the presence of Mr. Lincoln, who rose, and walking around him, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... loose end a little shake, and casts it skilfully over his shoulder, so that it falls across his back, and, hanging there, displays the bright lining. He pauses to watch the result of an infantile accident. The baby picks itself up and brushes the dust from its diminutive frock with all the earnestness of early youth. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... 73-79. He, too, comes from the Low German tradition. (9) "Bloedel" is Bleda, the brother of Attila, with whom he reigned conjointly from A.D. 433 to 445. In our poem the name appears frequently with the diminutive ending, as "Bloedelin". (10) "Werbel and Swemmel", who doubtless owe their introduction to some minstrel, enjoy special favor and are intrusted with the important mission of inviting the Burgundians to Etzel's court, an honor ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... even there, that down to about 1815 such a thing was not known, the drinking-vessels at dinner being capacious pewter mugs, each table being furnished with two. We were at one time a good deal incommoded by the diminutive size of the milk-pitchers, which were all the while empty and gone for more. A waiter mentioned, for our patience, that, when these were used up, a larger size would be provided. 'O, if that's the case, the remedy is easy.' Accordingly the hint was passed through the room, the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... never fall in love with the persons they are expected to, but invariably go off on an unknown tangent of their own, in obedience to the same law of Nature, perhaps, which causes an unusually tall girl to lose her heart to a very diminutive—though generally ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... great beaver overcoat and a huge beaver cap that concealed all of his face but his eyes, the tip of his nose, and the frozen end of a beard which stuck out between the laps of his turned-up collar like a horn. For all the world he looked like a diminutive drum-major, and Philip rose speechless, his pipe still in his mouth, as his strange visitor closed the ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... Mr. and Mrs. Applegate and their very diminutive daughter—whom somebody had fondly nicknamed "Puss"—and turned to follow the crowd. A short time later they set foot for the first time on the soil ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... tympanidis rogum inlatus est. This passage has been the occasion of as many different opinions concerning both the reading and the sense as any passage in the whole treatise. Tympanum is used for a timbrel or drum, tympanidia a diminutive of it. Lambinus says tympana "were sticks with which the tyrant used to beat the condemned." P. ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... each step, and tapping her shining boots with the riding crop. Her own horse she found at the hitching rack, and beside it Donnegan was on his chestnut horse. It was a tall horse, and he looked more diminutive than ever before, pitched so high ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... productions which were sprinkled in the commentaries of his "best editions." In the pride of boyish learning, Vivian had limited his library to Classics, and the proud leaders of the later schools did not consequently grace his diminutive bookcase. In this dilemma he flew to his father, and confessed by his request that his favourites were ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... living for some time after I was christened, I got the Dutch appellation of my maternal grandfather, for my share of the family nomenclature, which happened to be Cornelius—Corny was consequently the diminutive by which I was known to all the whites of my acquaintance, for the first sixteen or eighteen years of my life, and to my parents as long as they lived. Corny Littlepage is not a bad name, in itself, and I trust they who do me the favour to read this manuscript, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... his associates, which he hears every hour, yet his memory is good in other respects. One says he is THOMAS PAINE, author of the 'Age of Reason,' a work he has never read; another calls himself General WASHINGTON; and one old lady of diminutive size calls herself General SCOTT, and is never so good-natured as when thus addressed. One is always in court attending a trial, and wondering and asking when the court is to rise. Another has to eat up the building, drink dry the canal, and swallow the Little Falls village, and ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... with hoarse reverence. He saw the sunlight of a cliff-surrounded diminutive Garden of Eden. He saw a vale of flowering grass, of palms and live oaks, saw patches of lilies so huge as to transcend belief, and dizzying clumps of tree cactus almost as ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... Those diminutive arts and petty trickeries of feigned resistance, with which our "angels without wings" strive to delay the surrender of the maiden-citadels of their hearts, are but vexatious obstacles to his legitimate triumph. These, the veteran wooer attempts to carry by storm ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the mountains and hillsides was in Mr. Fortune's time distinguished as "Hill tea," while both large and diminutive plantations on the lowlands or the plains were all called "tea gardens," a term which is now applied by the English to the extensive plantations of ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... In contrast to this diminutive race we have discovered traces of a gigantic race, still in existence. Three of these remarkable beings inhabit this locality, where they occupy high positions as proprietors of the leading hostelries of the place. ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... distinction is not clear. As all poems were intended to be sung, the poet was also a composer; the biography of Jaufre Rudel, for instance, says that this troubadour "made many poems with good tunes but poor [24] words." The tune known as son (diminutive sonnet) was as much the property of a troubadour as his poem, for it implied and would only suit a special form of stanza; hence if another poet borrowed it, acknowledgment was generally made. Dante, in his De Vulgari Eloquentia, informs us concerning the structure ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... all European monarchs, since the murder of Gustavus, he was the most hostile. An army under Montesquieu occupied Savoy and Nice without resistance, and the people readily adopted the new system. A week later Custine seized the left bank of the Rhine, where diminutive secular and ecclesiastical territories, without cohesion, were an easy prey. The Declaration of Rights, said Gouverneur Morris, proved quite as effectual as the trumpets of Joshua. Mentz fell, October ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... one of the turnkey's rooms in the new gaol is to be seen an article of harness, which at first creates surprise to the mind of the beholder, who considers what animal of the brute creation exists of so diminutive a size as to admit of its use. On inquiry, it will be found to be a bridle, perfect in head-band, throat-lash, etc., for a human being. There is attached to this bridle a round piece of cross wood, of almost ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... meet a lone Washoe Indian; he is riding a diminutive, scraggy-looking mustang. One of his legs is muffled up in a red blanket, and in one hand he carries a rudely-invented crutch. "How will you trade horses?" I banteringly ask as we meet in the road; and I dismount for an interview, to find out what kind of Indians these ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... snarling like a tiger at an angel who has pulled a soul out of his claws, is equally well conceived; we know nothing like its ferocity except Rembrandt's sketches of wounded wild beasts. The angels we think generally disappointing; they are for the most part diminutive in size, and the crossing of the extremities of the two wings that cover the feet, gives them a coleopterous, cockchafer look, which is not a little undignified; the colors of their plumes are somewhat coarse and dark—one is covered with silky hair, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... vol. i. xxxi. 1. 1, where the dwarfs and pigmies who came to the court of the king, in the period of the Ptolemies, to serve in his household, are mentioned. Various races of diminutive stature, which have since been driven down to the upper basin of the Congo, formerly extended further northward, and dwelt between Darfur and the marshes of Bahr-el-Ghazal. As to the Danga, cf. what has been said on p. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... level prairie. Here Glenn paused to determine what course he should take. The sun shone brightly on the interminable expanse before him, and not a breeze ruffled the long dry grass around, nor disturbed the few sear leaves that yet clung to the diminutive clusters of bushes scattered at long intervals over the prairie. It was a delightful scene. From the high position of our hero, he could distinguish objects miles distant on the plain; and if the landscape was not enlivened by ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... Patrick—if I thought it might pass as Patrick! Patrick has possibilities. The diminutive is Pat, and that's not ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... but were covered with beads and brass ornaments, even the women having only a few fibres hanging like tails before and behind. Their hair was dressed in the most fantastic fashion. They also carried diminutive stools, on which ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... nine years old, diminutive and pale. Her long, silky brown hair, which was as straight as an Indian's, like mother's, and which she tore out when angry, usually covered her face, and her wild eyes looked wilder still peeping through it. She was ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... permitted to enjoy our own interests, and, to a great extent, seek our own happiness; and if we barely obey the suggestions of natural sympathy, and manifest common generosity, it is enough. They would bring down this exalted standard to our own diminutive stature, so that we can measure ourselves by it without inconvenience. But all such efforts are high-handed rebellion, and will prove utterly vain. God has placed it on a pedestal high as the eternal throne, ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... of the ground are made, so that unhealthy positions may be avoided. The troops, being placed, immediately proceed to clear the sites of their respective encampments, and wagons are set to work to bring in logs with which huts may be constructed. In about a week thousands of diminutive log houses arise, roofed with the shelter tents of the soldiers, or, when the occupants have sufficient handicraft ability, with rough shingles. Shelters are erected, as far as possible, for the animals, generally ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... assistant with the Parisian accent has a little more bone than Miss Pupford, but is of the same trim orderly diminutive cast, and, from long contemplation, admiration, and imitation of Miss Pupford, has grown like her. Being entirely devoted to Miss Pupford, and having a pretty talent for pencil-drawing, she once made a portrait of that lady: which was so ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... play at loggats with them?] A loggat is a small log, or piece of wood; a diminutive from log. Hence loggats, as the name of an old game among the common people, and one of those forbidden by a statute of the 33rd of Henry VIII. A stake was fixed into the ground, and those who played ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... a drop of cognac! Get him some father!" The reluctant farmer procured a big bottle and a very diminutive glass known as the "petit verre," which held about a thimbleful. Paul would congratulate the good dame on her keen perception. At this period Vodry would generally ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... lies about ten miles distant from Caen, in a north-easterly direction, in a valley washed by the diminutive stream, the Meu, a little to the north of the road which leads to Bayeux. Of its "short and simple annals," few have come to the knowledge of the writer of this article; and for those few, he is wholly indebted to the kindness of M. de Gerville, who, last year, discovered at Mortain ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... which was readily granted. He was a stout, hearty, good-natured fellow, possessed of a rich Irish accent, and in the best of humor commenced to prepare his supper. Just about this time there came into camp another lone man, leading a diminutive donkey, not much larger than a good-sized sheep. The donkey, on halting, gave us a salute that simply silenced the ordinary mule. The two men got acquainted immediately, and by the time their supper was over they had struck a bargain to put their effects together by way of hitching ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... again by mechanical means, and he writes learnedly on the infallible signs of witchcraft. By mixing horse-dung with human semen he believed he was able to produce a medium from which, by chemical treatment in a retort, a diminutive human being, or homunculus, as he called it, could be produced. The spirits of the elements, the sylphs of the air, the gnomes of the earth, the salamanders of the fire, and the undines of the water, were to him real and undoubted existences ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... shirt-sleeves and wearing a diminutive apron to which clung a fluff of turkey feathers, came from ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... diverting to observe the self-importance of the skipper of any of these diminutive vessels. He would give himself all the airs of an admiral on a three-decker's poop; and no doubt, thought quite as much of himself. And why not? What could Caesar want more? Though his craft was none of the largest, it was subject to him; and though his crew might only ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... and the children went to live at the Marshalsea. Little Charles was placed under the roof—it cannot be called under the care—of a "reduced old lady," dwelling in Camden Town, who must have been a clever and prophetic old lady if she anticipated that her diminutive lodger would one day give her a kind of indirect unenviable immortality by making her figure, under the name of "Mrs. Pipchin," in "Dombey and Son." Here the boy seems to have been left almost entirely to his own devices. He spent his Sundays in the prison, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... her work to rest with tenderness upon the form of a little child, so small and still that you would not have noticed her presence but in following the lady's loving glance. She sat in a tiny rocking chair, nursing a little white rabbit on her lap. She was not a beautiful child—she was too diminutive and pale, with hazy blue eyes and faded yellow hair; yet her little face was so demure and sweet, so meek and loving, that it would haunt and soften you more than that of a beautiful child could. The child had been orphaned from her birth, and when but a few days old had been received ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... fixed upon a tiny purple figure that had just emerged from a side door in the gymnasium and was walking slowly across the big floor. Immediately afterward a door opened on the opposite side and a diminutive scarlet-clad boy ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... sense of success will give the pupil, will probably, in his own opinion, be thought well worthy the price. Neither his reason nor his will was in fault; all he wanted, was strength to break the diminutive chains of habit; chains which, it seems, have power to enfeeble their captives exactly in proportion to the length ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... Blunt. No, my little diminutive Mistress, my small Epitomy of Woman-kind, we can prattle when our Hands are in, but we are raw and bashful, young Beginners; for this is the first time we ever were in love: we are something aukard, or so, but we shall come on in time, and mend ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... withdrew, she kept the quilt entirely over her head, for her womanly spirit had not yet been stiffened to defiantly glare at man by those delicate touches—the pasting on of her front hair-piece; the tying on of her back switch to the diminutive stump of original tresses; the proper adjustment of her dental fixtures, her collar and tie and the various articles constituting the sub-structure necessary for their support. We cannot go into the details, because the plans and specifications are missing. Bridget ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... not the sole, or even the principal, is a subordinate, reason of our Lord's action. But it is also to be considered in the light of the woman's quick-witted retort, which drew out of it an inference which we cannot suppose that Christ did not intend. He uses a diminutive for 'dogs,' which shows that He is not thinking of the fierce, unclean animals, masterless and starving, that still haunt Eastern cities, and deserve their bad character, but of domestic pets, who live with the household, and are near the table. In fact, the woman ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... a baker's shop for a twopenny loaf, and conceiving it to be diminutive in size, remarked to the baker that he did not believe it was weight. "Never mind that," said the man of dough, "you will have the less to carry."—"True," replied the lad, and throwing three half-pence on the ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... certain fullness about the hips,) as if it was intended to be worn with a hoop. Her slender throat was encircled by a black riband, with a small locket attached to it; and upon the top of her head rested a diminutive lace cap. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ensued the discovery that of the said product of nature there remained little beyond the tail, while Sobakevitch, with an air as though at least HE had not eaten it, was engaged in plunging his fork into a much more diminutive piece of fish which happened to be resting on an adjacent platter. After his divorce from the sturgeon, Sobakevitch ate and drank no more, but sat frowning ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... in the negative he walked into the room where I was, and speedily by his appearance, removed any apprehensions I had felt as to my safety. Nothing could less resemble the tall port and sturdy bearing of a gendarme, than the diminutive and dwarfish individual before me. His height could scarcely have reached five feet, of which the head formed fully a fourth part; and even this was rendered in appearance still greater by a mass of loosely floating black hair that fell upon his neck ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... spider story is sent from California by the Rev. Dr. McCook, of honey-ant fame. He found a small cocoon of eggs and young spiders, which had no less than five other kinds of insects living in and about it. These intruders consisted of small red ants, a diminutive beetle, and a series formed by a minute chalcid, parasitic on a larger chalcid, which was parasitic on an ichneumon, which was parasitic on the spider. All were seeking to devour the eggs and spiderlings, yet the whole cocoonful, victims included, seemed ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... been a herbivorous marsupial. The whole assemblage appear, from the joint observations of Professor Owen and Dr. Falconer, to indicate a low grade of quadruped, probably of the marsupial type. They were, for the most part, diminutive, the two largest not much exceeding our common hedgehog and ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... opposite to it there is a very large breed of fowls, called ayam jago; of these I have seen a cock peck from off of a common dining table; when inclined to rest they sit on the first joint of the leg and are then taller than the ordinary fowls. It is singular if the same country produces likewise the diminutive breed that goes by the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... we had a very refreshing shower bath under a thundering cascade of water tumbling over the edge of a gorge. Near at hand, and conveniently so, too, for the priesthood, is a small shrine sacred to the Hindoo god Brahin, a diminutive edition of whom stands on a little pedestal, amidst braziers, lamps, figures with elephants' heads and human bodies, and other monstrosities. You may be certain there was a mendicant priest ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... his written style was powerful, his spoken style was contemptible. Painters have represented him as a kind of demi-god, with the stature of an athlete and the grace of an Apollo. But he seems to have been diminutive in stature; and there appears to be evidence to prove that there was that in his appearance which, at first sight, rather repelled than attracted an audience. He felt these defects keenly, and could not but wish sometimes that they were removed. But ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... is shaped like the letter T with an L to it. The upright beam connects it with Every Lane, and maintains a non-committal character, since its sides are blank walls; upon one side of the cross-beam are four houses, while a fifth occupies the diminutive L of the court, esconcing itself in a snug corner, as if ready to rush out at the cry of "All in! all in!" Gardens fill the unoccupied sides, toy-gardens, but large enough to raise all the flowers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... here, however, we must pause to note that energy and will could do much toward making even a pinnacle rock a naval base; for we see the gigantic fortress of Heligoland erected on what was little but a shoal; and we see the diminutive water areas of Malta and Gibraltar made to hold in safety the war-ships of the greatest ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... Husayn, little used except in Syria where it is a favourite name for Christians. The Muhit of Butrus Al-Bostni (s.v.) tells us that it also means a bird called Ab Hasan and supplies various Egyptian synonyms. In Mod. Arab. Grammar the form Fa''l is a diminutive as Hammd for Ahmad, 'Ammr for 'Amr. So the fem. form, Fa''lah, e.g. Khaddgah little Khadijah and Naffsahlittle Nafisah; Ar'rah little clitoris - whereas in Heb. it is an incrementative e.g. dabblah a large dablah (cake or lump of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... whose wives and daughters figure in the society columns as leaders in those useful callings of bridge whist and select receptions, the great and ignorant mob of pygmies who never had the capacity for a political idea bigger than their own diminutive measurement, the newspaper and magazine hacks who live on abuse of everybody who has a high ideal, all joined in the whoop and chase after Douglas of the fourth district, branded him as a fakir, an idiot, a senseless dreamer, an egotist, a demagogue, a party traitor, a knocker, ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... this evening. She and Teddy walked to their little hotel; to-morrow she would see her editor, and they would search for cheaper quarters. She would get the half-promised position or another; it mattered not which. She would board economically, or find diminutive quarters for housekeeping; be comfortable either way. If they kept house, some kindly old woman would be found to give Teddy bread and butter when he came in from school. And on hot summer Sundays she and Teddy ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... time gone two or three hundred yards from the village, and, behind them, at a brisk trot, seated on a diminutive ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... about, and exhibited signs of the most ecstatic delight. It was observed that in proportion to the gradations of the tones to the soft point, the feelings of the animal appeared to be increased. After performing actions, which an animal so diminutive would, at first sight, seem incapable of, the little creature, to the astonishment of the delighted spectators, suddenly ceased to move, fell down, and expired without evincing ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... antiquity in which the poet-painters of the Neo-Greek school delight to dwell, and come back to modern times. Passing through one of the central rooms, one is struck by the appearance of a great space of gilded wall hung with pictures considerable in number, but mostly quite diminutive in size. It needs no reference to the catalogue nor to the signature of these works to tell us the name of their author. If the singular talent which they display were not enough, the mise en scene would leave no doubt that this extraordinary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... a rear leg as she leaped back, wild to rollick, tucking her under one arm, administering three diminutive punishments on ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... the streets I saw many a familiar face. Mosher I saw. He had grown very fat, and was talking to a diminutive woman with heavy blond hair (she must have weighed about ninety-five pounds, I think). They ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... stupendous concourse was reached. Thousands of these taxis and similar vehicles were parked along its broad flanks, while literal swarms of diminutive individuals ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... much impression on the New York. Apart from the serious nature of the accident, it made an irresistibly comic picture to see the huge vessel drifting down the dock with a snorting tug at its heels, for all the world like a small boy dragging a diminutive puppy down the road with its teeth locked on a piece of rope, its feet splayed out, its head and body shaking from side to side in the effort to get every ounce of its weight used to the best advantage. At first all appearance showed that the sterns of the two vessels would collide; but from ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... Emmet is a very old variation of Emma, and sometimes spelt Emmot; Sens is a corruption of Sancha, naturalised among us in the thirteenth century; and Collet or Colette, the diminutive of Nichola, a common and favourite ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... begins with an egg no bigger than a mustard seed, out of which comes a diminutive caterpillar, which is kept in a frame and fed upon mulberry leaves. When the caterpillars are full grown, they climb upon twigs placed for them and begin to spin or make the cocoon. The silk comes from two little orifices in the head in the ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... mill pond of his consciousness. He would have said that he "had his traps set for an idea and was watching them." Generally he was watching his traps with a look of dreamy contemplation. He, too, wore no coat or waistcoat. His calico shirt was decorated with diminutive roses in pink ink. His ready tied necktie was very red and fastened on his collar button with an elastic loop. A nugget of free gold which, he loved to explain, had come from the Rocky Mountains and ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... fine, thanks. Say, did you get your letter?" said the diminutive postman, Who always talked very fast and tried to crowd as many sentences as he could ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... teacups and a plate of cake stood on the table, the remnants of the early tea she and Lucy had taken a little while before. Presently a light step sounded in the lobby, and Lucy came in dressed for walking. Five years make a great change; for she had grown from a slight, diminutive girl, to a tall, lithe, graceful young lady, just on the verge ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... on the schooner Rose of Milton, Capt. Hamilton, cruising on Lakes Ontario and Erie. In one trip to the town of Erie, Pennsylvania, for a cargo of coal, while lying at the dock, a diminutive negro man, with a white beard, came on board the vessel, and inquiried of me if this was a British vessel. On being informed that it was, he desired to be secreted, stating that he was a runaway slave, and that his pursuers were on his track. I at once secreted ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... moment he pointed to a diminutive figure standing at the end of the long table, and engaged in ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... trusted nobody. But since he had no intention of arresting Pee-wee and since the diminutive captive seemed rather angered than frightened, he released his hold. By a series of wriggles and contortions, Pee-wee adjusted his clothing and settled his neck in his stretched neckband. "Why don't—why—why ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... lofty tapering point, while the sheet is secured to the lower after-corner of the sail. Though many of the smaller dhows have only one mast, that big fellow has two, with a sail of the same shape as the first, but more diminutive. The larger sail is of preposterous proportions, and it seems wonderful that she can carry it without being capsized. It appears to be formed of a strong soft cotton canvas, of extreme whiteness. Those vessels don't tack, but when beating to windward wear by putting ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... be thus situated, especially when a cool breeze blows the mosquitoes and other insects off the water, and relieves you for a time from their incessant attacks. Martin Rattler found it pleasant as he thus lay on his back with his diminutive pet marmoset monkey seated on his breast quietly picking the kernel out of a nut. And Barney O'Flannagan found it pleasant, as he lay extended in the bow of the canoe with his head leaning over the edge gazing abstractedly at his own ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... which spend their entire lives on the stems, sucking the juices through their little beaks, just as the aphids moor themselves to the tender rose-twigs, might be mistaken for thorns during one of their protective masquerades. Again they look like diminutive flocks of fowl, their heads ever pointing in one direction, no matter how the vine may twist and turn - always toward the top of the branch, that they may the better siphon the sap down their tiny throats. Toward the end of summer the females, which have ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... was towed astern, as we had not expected so much sea with a north wind, but for the first time we found how perfectly this diminutive boat was adapted for towing, and after this trial she was never again stowed in the cabin. The bluff bow above, and the keelless, round, smooth bottom below, enabled the dingey to top the sharpest wave, and I often forgot my steering while ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... comes back to me, the General Winfield Scott who lived so much in our eyes then. The oddity may well even at that hour have been present to me of its taking so towering a person to produce such small "drawing-cards"; it was as if some mighty bird had laid diminutive eggs. Mr. Coe, of a truth, laid his all over the place, and though they were not of more than handy size—very small boys could set them up in state on very small desks—they had doubtless a great range of ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... a minor revolution of Indians occurred, which resulted in a quaint species of naval engagement on Lake Titicaca, with the native balsas, or rafts, posing as diminutive battleships. In 1661 there was another outbreak. This was organized by Antonio Gallado, who succeeded in gaining possession of the town of La Paz, in which neighbourhood the Spanish authority became almost ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... prettily. Her tail is as much to her, both as ornament and to express emotions, as a fan to any flirtatious Spanish senora. One always thinks of these dainty feathered creatures as females. It would seem quite natural to call the wagtail "lady-bird," if that name had not been registered by a diminutive podgy ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... such diligence, and made them so true, so beautiful, and so natural, that they appeared to all who beheld them to be real; and he counterfeited little cameos and other engraved stones and jewels in such a manner, that there was nothing more faithfully imitated or more diminutive to be seen. Among his little figures there are seen some, as in his imitations of cameos and other stones, that are no larger than little ants, and yet all the limbs and all the muscles can be perceived so clearly that one who has not seen them could scarcely believe ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... jacket, on which are sketched in bold brush work every species of venomous insect. On his left shoulder is a scorpion, while centipedes, beetles, and other forms of poisonous insect life cover his back and chest. To his right shoulder is stitched a diminutive pair of red-and-green trousers. The yellow coat is his protection from stings and bites, the tiny trousers from measles, and longevity is secured by a heavy silver padlock, which hangs from his neck by ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... not more than forty-seven inches wide. The cars are quite diminutive, and do not carry more than ten or twelve people. We can ride the length of the road, about two ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... are hardly worthy of the name; in the chief street, by way of an apology for a pavement, there are here and there some huge white slabs of rough-hewn limestone, in consequence of which even carts drive round it instead of through it. In the very middle of an astoundingly dirty square rises a diminutive yellowish edifice with black holes in it, and in these holes sit men in big caps making a pretence of buying and selling. In this place there is an extraordinarily high striped post sticking up into the air, and near the post, in the interests of public order, by command of the authorities, ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... would want. Followed a time of giddy glory—one crowded hour of glorious life—when I figured about the deck with attendant shemales in the character of the local celebrity, was introduced to the least unpresentable of the ruffians on board, dogged about the deck by a diminutive Hebrew with a Kodak, the click of which kept time to my progress like a pair of castanets, and filled up in the Captain's room on iced champagne at 8.30 of God's morning. The Captain in question, Cap. Morse, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her diminutive rocker to the stove and settled back against its gay cretonne cushions—a vivid bird of Paradise flamed just where her ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... The diminutive Chief drew aside and Dr. Bird's two hundred pounds of bone and muscle crashed against the door. The lock gave and the Doctor barely saved himself from sprawling headlong on the hall floor. A woman's scream rang out, and the Doctor swore ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... night at Pamplin's Station. In the evening George Dunn stole a couple of the meanest, most diminutive, runty little hams you ever saw. I helped him eat them, and am willing to bear a fair share of the blame; but a country that can produce such hams needs reconstruction. On the 16th we reached Farmville. The next day we camped eight miles from Burksville. At ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... attention was lost in the irritation and bitterness produced by his recent glimpse of Miss Noemie's iniquitous vitality. But at the end of a quarter of an hour, dropping his eyes, he perceived a small pug-dog squatted upon the path near his feet—a diminutive but very perfect specimen of its interesting species. The pug was sniffing at the fashionable world, as it passed him, with his little black muzzle, and was kept from extending his investigation by a large blue ribbon attached to his collar with an enormous rosette ...
— The American • Henry James
... nausea that the thought of food inspired in me, was hunger. I commenced to be sensible of a shameless appetite again; a ravenous lust of food, which grew steadily worse and worse. It gnawed unmercifully in my breast; carrying on a silent, mysterious work in there. It was as if a score of diminutive gnome-like insects set their heads on one side and gnawed for a little, then laid their heads on the other side and gnawed a little more, then lay quite still for a moment's space, and then began afresh, boring noiselessly in, and without ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... forgotten that diminutive of my guest's classical name. It rather pleased me, and I repeated it gently after her, "Phroso, Phroso," and I'm afraid I eyed the little foot ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... just how do you suppose we are going to get this in the pie?" replied Alice, lifting from its position behind the bed a box so huge that the pie itself seemed almost diminutive ...
— Grandfather's Love Pie • Miriam Gaines
... slipped into a pair of bauchles—that is, the under part of auld boots cut from the legs. As to his face, lo, and behold! the moon shining in the Nor-west—yea, the sun blazing in his glory—had not a more crimson aspect than Reuben. Like the pig-eyed Chinese folk on tea-cups, his peepers were diminutive and twinkling; but his nose made up for them—and that it did—being portly in all its dimensions broad and long, as to colour, liker a radish than any other production in nature. In short, he was as bonny a figure as ever man of woman born clapped eye on; and ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... the window, in a cage hung with yellow gauze. Poppy's mandoline in an easy chair by itself. Poppy's hat on the grand piano, tumbling head over heels among a litter of coffee cups. On the tea-table a pair of shoes that could have belonged to nobody but Poppy, they were so diminutive. In the waste paper basket a bouquet that must have been Poppy's too, it was so enormous. And on the table in the window a Japanese flower-bowl that served as a handy receptacle for cigarette ash and spent vestas. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Revolutions of stability, with Revolutions which consolidated and married the liberties and the interests of the two nations forever,—could he see the fountain of British liberty itself in servitude to France? Could he see with patience a Prince of Orange expelled, as a sort of diminutive despot, with every kind of contumely, from the country which that family of deliverers had so often rescued from slavery, and obliged to live in exile in another country, which owes its liberty to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... The diminutive Echo of those days (October 13 and 14, '85) followed suit of the Pall Mall Gazette and caught lightly the sounds as they fell from the non-melliferous lips of the charmer who failed to charm wisely. The precious article begins by informing me that ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... with thoughts of his own freedom that he had quite forgotten the money which he believed the boys had found. Now it came back to him with redoubled force. Long years of a roving, reckless life had prepared him for almost every emergency. Taking from his pocket a small folding lantern and a diminutive spirit-lamp, he soon got ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... Africans assert with considerable confidence, which is corroborated, that the Hel Shual have a tail half a cubit long; that they inhabit a district in the Desert at an immense distance south-east of Marocco; that the Hel El Killeb[148] 200 are in a similar direction; that the latter are diminutive, being about two or three cubits[149] in height; that they exclaim bak, bak, bak, and that they have a few articulate sounds, which they mutually understand among themselves; that they are extremely swift of foot, and run as fast as horses. The Arimaspi of Herodotus ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... from an outer chamber, grated by the iron door of a cell where chance prisoners were sometimes locked, and hung with gilded stars, and firemen's banners, a young figure diminutive, and of pale ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... fumbled in her side pocket and produced a diminutive ivory case. She withdrew a card and handed it to Tallente, with a glance at his ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Lake, the course is west through five diminutive lakes, and across a series of sandy ridges to a small shallow lake, which is the source of Babewendigash River. Between this lake and Seal Lake intervene a high range of mountains—the highest seen on the journey to Lake Michikamau—rising fully one thousand feet above the level of Seal ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... mother's going had left in his heart. He had sympathized with her microscopic cut fingers, he had smiled into her glowing, damp little face when she stuttered to him long tales of bad doggies and big 'ticks; he had brought her "jacks" and paper-dolls and hair ribbons; he loved the diminutive femininity of the creature; she was all a woman, even at three. Alix he proudly called his "boy"; Alix used hair ribbons to tie up her dogs, and demanded hip boots and an air rifle and got them, too, and used them, but when he took Alix in his arms she was apt to bump his nose violently ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... hinder part of the skull. Altogether this man appeared so different from the rest, that for some time he was supposed to belong to a different class of people, but I afterwards often observed the same configuration of head combined with dark coloured skin and diminutive stature.) ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... went on, these extremely modest dimensions were slightly exceeded, he was an unusually short man. His massive head and broad shoulders gave him when he sate the appearance of greater size, and when he rose to his feet the diminutive stature caused a feeling of surprise. Sydney Smith declared that when Lord John first contested Devonshire the burly electors were disappointed by the exiguity of their candidate, but were satisfied when it was explained to them that he had once been much larger, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... a foot in height. His diminutive body seemed to have been fitted into a badly worn skin that was two sizes too large for him, and the scalp of his forehead moved about like an ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... in light colors which would be simply ridiculous on a person of larger proportions. So a lady of majestic appearance should never wear white, but will be seen to the best advantage in black or dark tints. A lady of diminutive stature is dressed in bad taste when she appears in a garment with large figures, plaids or stripes. Neither should a lady of large proportions be seen in similar garments, because, united with her size, they give her a "loud" ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... asked Danny Griswold, who had been prancing the deck like a diminutive admiral, stopping now and blowing a cloud of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... India vary in size and importance from powerful principalities like the Nizam's State of Hyderabad, with an area of 82,000 miles—nearly equal to that of England and Wales and Scotland—- and a population of over 11 millions, down to diminutive chiefships, smaller than the holdings of a great English landlord. Distributed throughout the whole length and breadth of the peninsula, they display the same extraordinary variety of races and creeds and castes and languages and customs and traditions as ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... goddess befriended me. And many an old jar, packed away in the midst of rubbish in dark recesses now valueless, do I look upon as nevertheless so much gold—its now despised contents one day to disperse themselves upon kings and nobles, in the senate and the theatres. I need not tell you what this diminutive bottle might have been had for, before the Kalends. Yet, by Hercules, should I have sold it even then for less? for should I not have divined its fortune? The wheel is ever turning, turning. But, most excellent Piso, men of ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... THE YOUNGER. This distinguished bibliographer, rather than bookseller, lives hard by—in the Rue Git-Le-Coeur. He lives with his father, who superintends the business of the shop. The Rue Git-Le-Coeur is a sorry street—very diminutive, and a sort of cropt copy—to what it should have been, or what it might have been. However, there lives JACQ. CH. BRUNET, FILS: a writer, who will be known to the latest times in the bibliographical world. He will be also thanked as well as known; for his Manuel du Libraire ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... corners, and often they are garnished with a sheaf of wooden crosses, like children's swords; or, in their default, some hollow old tree with a saint roosting in it, is similarly decorated, or a pole with a very diminutive saint enshrined aloft in a sort of sacred pigeon-house. Not that we are deficient in such decoration in the town here, for, over at the church yonder, outside the building, is a scenic representation of the Crucifixion, built up with old bricks and stones, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... was unpromising. At birth he was puny and diminutive in a remarkable degree. Weems, in his peculiar fashion, writes, "I have it from good authority, that this great soldier, at his birth, was not larger than a New England lobster, and might easily enough have been put into a quart pot." It was ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... higher they arrived at a small open place near the top of the knob. In its midst was a diminutive log cabin, consisting of only one room. Turner stopped his horses in front of the cabin, dismounted, and requested the girls to do the same. He unbarred the door, and the three entered. By means of flint, steel, tinder, and burnt rags Turner made ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... Society, he felt, he must have, and upon his choice now depended his future fortunes. It was whilst this necessity was pressing on his brain that one morning, when lolling in all the indolence of ignorance allied to wealth, he was surprised at the appearance of a diminutive spaniel, admitted by his porter, who, dressed in a rich scarlet livery, bore a letter in his belt, which he presented with a certain fawning grace to our hero, and hastily departed. This was the first epistle that worthy had ever held in his own ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... the time factor cannot enter into an explanation of this illusion; but the experiments of which I have just spoken seem to point plainly to a very intimate relation between this illusion and the illusions in our judgments of time. We have here presented on a diminutive scale the illusions which we see in our daily experience in comparing past with present stretches of time. It is a well-known psychological experience that a filled time appears short in passing, but long in retrospect, while an empty time appears long in passing, but short in retrospect. ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... boil my little potatoes, [MY LITTLE POTATOES.—Thady does not mean by this expression that his potatoes were less than other people's, or less than the usual size. LITTLE is here used only as an Italian diminutive, expressive of fondness.] and put up my bed there, and every post-day I looked in the newspaper, but no news of my master in the House; he never spoke good or bad, but, as the butler wrote down word to my son Jason, was very ill-used by the Government about a place that was promised him and ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... were frightful idols, as represented in the Upsala temple, and the small statues carried by the Scandinavian sailors on their expeditions and set in the place of honor on board their ships, were but diminutive copies of the hideous originals. It is known, moreover, that Odin had existed as a leader of some of their migrations, so that their idolatry resolved ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... should be of booming guns and dying soldiers! The cow-shed contained seven corpses, scarcely yet cold, lying upon their backs, in a row, and fast losing all resemblance to man. The farthest removed, seemed to be a diminutive boy, and I thought if he had a mother, that she might sometime like to speak with me. When I took their names, I thought what terrible agencies I was fulfilling. Beyond my record, falsely spelled, perhaps, they would have no history. And people ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... effect bettered by many signs of recent refitting. An impression of paint, varnish, and carpentry was in the air; a gaudy new burgee fluttered aloft; there seemed to be a new rope or two, especially round the diminutive mizzen-mast, which itself looked altogether new. But all this only emphasized the general plainness, reminding one of a respectable woman of the working-classes trying to dress above her station, and soon likely to ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers |
