"Lean" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hessian march. "You will own, my son, that your tenderness for the women and children was somewhat sentimental. I already see you, in my mind's eye, with your shirt sleeves tucked up, killing the lean cow, and, with your old conscientiousness, administering mouthfuls to the famished household—you in the middle—fifty gaping mouths around you. Be sure that you prepare a dozen birch rods; in a few hours the screams of the hungry children will ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... the first principle of population" (in these forests) commenced; it was found that these wilds, bleak and barren as they were, might be occupied to some advantage in breeding young and depasturing lean "cattle, which were afterwards fattened in the lower domains. Vaccaries, or great upland pastures, were laid out for this purpose; booths or mansions erected upon them for the residence of herdsmen; and at ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... languid deck-passengers, sleeping on their bedding rolls. Very quiet it was ashore, so still and quiet that one could hear the bubbling, sucking noises of the large land-crabs, pattering over the black, oozy mud, or the sound of a lean pig scratching himself against the piles of a native hut in the village, that stood, mounted on stilts, at ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... seem to him like the work of a spiteful neighbor. Was it not possible that some four-footed creature had ravaged the crops? The cottager did not believe that it was. He was sure it was Tammuz. Neither knew that a lean black-haired peasant, lying along close to the limb of a great beech tree, had heard every word of the conversation and also witnessed the ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... brace himself up and lean backward against the air as he stared at me. "How about this here tide that's rushin' out through the Golden Gate?" he demanded, or bellowed, rather. "How fast is she ebbin'? What's the drift, eh? Listen to ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... and went closer to the bedside, and the old woman stretched out a lean and withered hand to her: "If I thought that that silly fellow wasn't behaving well ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... only in virtue of the forces which make the spheres revolve, or think by help of the meaning which presses upon us from the thought-woven world, through all the pores of sense. A true ethics, like a true psychology, or a true science of nature, must lean upon metaphysics, and it cannot pretend to start ab initio. We live in the Copernican age, which puts the individual in a system, in obedience to whose laws he finds his welfare. And this is simply the assertion ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... to gather breath, And now full clearly was it shown (What he before in part had seen) How gaunt was the poor Ass and lean, Yea wasted to a ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... mountains of old hats and caps; and leathery-faced old women—witches of Endor—dealing out horrible mixtures of quass (the national drink); and dirty, dingy-looking soldiers, belonging to the imperial service, peddling off old boots and cast-off shirts; and Zingalee gipsies, dark, lean, and wiry, offering strings of beads and armlets for sale with shrill cries; and so ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... hard masters, and the one who directed the laborers at the abbey had but too faithfully obeyed the orders of the Abbot. Poor Beiffror was brought back, lean, spiritless, and chafed with the harness of the vile cart that he had had to draw so long. He carried his head down, and trod heavily before Charlemagne; but when he heard the voice of Ogier he raised his head, he neighed, his eyes flashed, his former ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... others; but speaking generally, a period of good times means that all share more or less in them, and in a period of hard times all feel the stress to a greater or less degree. It surely ought not to be necessary to enter into any proof of this statement; the memory of the lean years which began in 1893 is still vivid, and we can contrast them with the conditions in this very year which is now closing. Disaster to great business enterprises can never have its effects limited to the men at the top. It spreads throughout, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... scene, with hotel and tropical palms against an unbelievable blue sky. Professor Emil Losch loomed on the screen; he was in swimming trunks, a small gray man who seemed hard as nails, his lean ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... Gubb did not join their laughter. He felt his face grow red. His lean hands folded and unfolded as he watched Farry Pierce disappear around the corner of the bank building. If any one felt like murdering old Gabe with a pea-shooter at that moment, Philo Gubb did. Shadow and trail Farry Pierce! The old skin-flint, ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... Portuguese language, from a huge speaking-trumpet, and our officer of the deck answered back in gibberish, according to a well-understood custom of the place. Sugar-loaf Mountain, on the south of the entrance, is very remarkable and well named; is almost conical, with a slight lean. The man-of-war anchorage is about five miles inside the heads, directly in front of the city of Rio Janeiro. Words will not describe the beauty of this perfect harbor, nor the delightful feeling after a long voyage of its fragrant airs, and the entire contrast between all things there ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... billmen of Snitterfield in the muster book of 1569. John Shakespeare of Rowington, who held land at Wroxall 22 Henry VIII., had a son Antonio, rather an unusual name. Tradition says the poet had an uncle or grand-uncle, Antonio. But we must beware of using tradition as a staff to lean upon. No Anthony appears in any family papers. An Antony Shaxspeare married Joane Whitrefe at Budbrook (in which parish is Hampton Corley), November 14, 1573; and in the Register we find: "Henrie Shackspere sonne of Shackspere and Joane his wife, baptized 24th March, 1575." "Elizabeth, daughter ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... Miriam, an American student, and resents the persecution of her by a mysterious man—a nominal "model" who thrusts his presence upon her at all inconvenient times. One night as he comes between Donatello and Miriam as they lean on the parapet crowning the Tarpeian Rock, the Italian throws him over the precipice and kills him. From that moment, although he is not accused of the deed, the joyous ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... a tone that thrilled with power, "this is Sunday. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday," he counted the days off on his lean, muscular fingers. "That's it, sure. Wednesday we send out a 'stage,' an' you're goin' to ship your gold-dust on it. You'll ship it to Spawn City. Meanwhiles you'll buy up all you feel like. Clean the camp out of 'dust,' an' ship it by ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... yesterday passed slowly away. This morning passed by,—the time of our stay in Brattleboro, and we neither saw nor heard anything of our Governor. We suppose he could not or would not help us. So as we go down to our trial we have no arm to lean upon among all men; but why dost thou complain, oh, my Soul? Seek thou that faith that will prove a buckler to thy breast, and gain for thee the protection of an arm mightier than ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... there go about even on other days naked and with ragged cloaks thrown over their lean shoulders. To-day they are feeding at ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... pains, would realize to my imagination,—its capacities; for certainly there is a life of the mind above the wants of the body, and independent of it. Often the body is warmed, but the imagination is torpid; the body is fat, but the imagination is lean and shrunk. But what avails all other wealth if this is wanting? "Imagination is the air of mind," in which it lives and breathes. All things are as I am. Where is the House of Change? The past is only so heroic ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... secret, bosky places, in the heart of the great common-lands, where the smooth, white stems and glossy foliage of the self-sown hollies spring up between the roots of the beech trees, where plovers cry, and stoat and weazel lurk and scamper, while the old poacher's lean, ill-favoured, rusty-coloured lurcher picks up a shrieking hare, and where wandering bands of gypsies—those lithe, onyx-eyed children of the magic East—still pitch their dirty, little, fungus-like tents around the camp-fire,—as the sunset died ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... gloomily. The political horizon was black and lowering, and Lodovico had lost the wife upon whose courage and presence of mind he had learnt to lean. He was suffering from gout himself, and was often unable to mount a horse. But he still found pleasure in his artistic dreams and in the vast schemes that filled his brain. Already he had seen many of his plans carried ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... hand. After a time, when we were left alone, He spoke again with calmer voice and said: "Captain, you oft have asked my history, And I as oft refused. There is no cause Why I should longer hold it from my friend Who reads the closing chapter. It may teach One soul to lean upon the arm of Christ— That hope and happiness find anchorage Only in heaven. While my lonesome life Saw death but dimly in the dull distance My lips were sealed to the unhappy tale; Under my pride ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... beamed with friendliest sympathy Sturm turned to go, took three hurried steps toward the door, and felt himself jerked back by a silken cord which, descending from nowhere, looped his lean neck between chin and Adam's apple. His cry of protest was the last articulate sound he uttered. And the last sounds he heard, as he lay with face hideously congested and empurpled, eyeballs starting from their deep sockets, and swollen tongue protruding, were words spoken ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... afternoon. The impression of that visit remained. Flint House, rising from the basalt summit of the headland like a granite vault, its windows coldly glistening down on the frothy green gloom of the Atlantic far beneath, the country trap and lean black horse at the flapping gate, the undertaker's man (dissolute parasite of austere Death) slinking out of the house, and Thalassa waiting at the open door for him to approach—all these things were ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... in the palings they had seen into the garden, and it made them all long to be there. Flowers of different kinds grew happily in the garden-beds. Some of them had sticks to lean against and some were trained ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... portrait of a pirate of the eighteenth century, with a drooping, red mustache and bristling beard. The reputation of this monster, however, was far less terrible than that of any of the other three, certainly far less than Garry Cochrane. This was a lean fellow with bright black eyes, glittering like a ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... blue cotton garment, not fastened or girdled at the waist, straw sandals, kept on by a thong passing between the great toe and the others, and if they wear any head- gear, it is only a wisp of blue cotton tied round the forehead. The one garment is only an apology for clothing, and displays lean concave chests and lean muscular limbs. The skin is very yellow, and often much tattooed with mythical beasts. The charge for sampans is fixed by tariff, so the traveller lands without having his temper ruffled ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... on the hard boards of a bed, and the grey man kindled a fire, and he threw logs of elder-wood on it, till they went near being smothered with the smoke. They saw a hag in the house then having three heads on her lean neck; and there was on the other side a man without a head, having one eye, and it in his breast. "Rise up, you that are in the house, and make music for the King of the Fianna," ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... He was lean and spare and above middle height. He wore a pair of horn spectacles through which peered a keen, uncompromising pair of eyes. He gave the impression of a stern man, but nevertheless ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... possible. And on the same account it is, that the other kinds of cattle are so dear, because many villages being pulled down, and all country labour being much neglected, there are none who make it their business to breed them. The rich do not breed cattle as they do sheep, but buy them lean, and at low prices; and after they have fattened them on their grounds, sell them again at high rates. And I do not think that all the inconveniences this will produce are yet observed; for as they sell the cattle dear, so if they are consumed faster than the breeding ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... attention. Beneath one of the largest of the trees, upon the grass, was a kind of low tent or booth, from the top of which a thin smoke was curling; beside it stood a couple of light carts, whilst two or three lean horses or ponies were cropping the herbage which was growing nigh. Wondering to whom this odd tent could belong, I advanced till I was close before it, when I found that it consisted of two tilts, like those of waggons, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... There was a fine dignity in his deep voice, and his body bristled with it, from his stiff and heavy shock of blonde hair parted carefully on the left side, to his high-heeled boots. The few light hairs that stood in lonely abandonment on his upper lip, the rest of his lean visage always well shorn, had no small part in the grand ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... earl, he was a changed man. He no longer sided with, but against, the people; sheltering himself from their clamours in the stronghold of privilege. Hence it was, that when he coalesced with others, he found no support on which he could lean with safety, and by which he could assist the monarch. His staff was but a reed on which, if he leant, it pierced his hand. This Chatham felt; and though he clung tenaciously to office, from the fear of displaying his weakness and incapacity, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... A lean and sharp-looking little man ambled his horse sometimes before, sometimes behind the carriage; but, though he was evidently accompanying these privileged women, no one had yet seen him speak to them. This silence, a proof ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... nor innocence the two fair children who were sailing their feather-boats yesterday in the quay-pools, as they have sailed them for three years past, and found no hurt; piety does not save the bed-ridden old dame, bed-ridden in the lean-to garret, who moans, "It is the Lord!" and dies. It is "the Lord" to her, though Baalzebub himself be the angel ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... immovable, and apparently lifeless, while others, who lie stretched out upon the ground, look like corpses. It may be easily imagined what a state one of these beings is in after a few months or years of immobility. He is extremely lean, his limbs are atrophied, his body is black with filth and dust, his hair is long and dishevelled, his beard is shaggy, his finger and toe nails have become genuine claws, and his aspect is frightful. This, however, is a character common ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... large, sleek-coated, well-fed-looking animals, that appear quite as intelligent as their riders, or as the native donkey-boys who follow behind and persuade them along. These donkeys are for hire on every street-corner, and all sorts and conditions of people, from an English soldier to a lean Arab, may be seen coming jollity-jolt along the streets on the hurricane-deck of a donkey, with a half-naked donkey-boy racing behind, belaboring him along. The population of Alexandria is essentially ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... I verily believe, one of the most wretched quarters I have ever seen,—houses that must have been sordid and hideous enough when new, that had gathered foulness with every year, and now seemed to lean and totter to their fall. 'I live up there,' said Black, pointing to the tiles, 'not in the front,—in the back. I am very quiet there. I won't ask you to come in now, but perhaps ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... two such ducks of ponies. There hardly seemed room for me beside her, and the springs seemed dreadfully down on her side. She generally sits in the middle when alone, Mr. Harrington told me afterwards. She noticed about the springs herself, and said, "Frederick, you must lean all your weight on the other side." We must have looked odd going along; I squashed in beside her with a poodle and Fanny at my feet, and poor Mr. Harrington clinging to one side like grim death, so as to try and get the balance more level. It seemed quite a long ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... length of a carnival year, Knew worse: but the wretch had his opening choice. For thee, by our law, no alternatives were: Thy fall was assured ere thou camest to a voice. He cancelled the ravaging Plague, With the roll of his fat off the cliff. Do thou with thy lean as the weapon of ink, Though they call thee an angler who fishes the vague And catches the not too pink, Attack one as murderous, knowing thy cause Is the cause of community. Iterate, Iterate, iterate, harp on the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to him, kissed the red mouth and looked down upon her with a glance that made his man's face as pitiful as any woman's as he let her lean there happy in the hope given at such cost. For a moment nothing stirred in the room but the soft whisper of the wind. For a moment Warwick's austere life looked hard to him, love seemed sweet, submission possible; for in all the world this ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... way back to the office, Filmer saw Bowers' lean figure across the street. He crooked a masterful finger. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... my side, and we prayed for each other and for Tanna. I then urged him to remain at the Mission House, but he replied, "O Missi, you do not know how near to death I am! I am just going, and will soon be with Jesus, and see my wife and children now. While a little strength is left, I will lean on Abraham's arm, and go down to the graves of my dear ones and fall asleep there, and Abraham will dig a quiet bed and lay me beside them. Farewell, Missi, I am very near death now; we will meet again in Jesus ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... it had been iron; through suburban villages, plum-caked with snow; under a leaden sky, in which the sun hung like a red-hot warming-pan; by pond after pond, where not only men and boys, but scores after scores of women and girls, were sliding, and roaring, and clapping their lean old sides with laughter, as they tumbled down, and their hobnailed shoes flew up in the air; the air frosty with a lilac haze, through which villas, and commons, and churches, and plantations glimmered. We drive up the hill, Bob and I; we make the last ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... go into the church. It was a wedding evidently, although the groom was a tall, lean, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... mean by 'went away?' Don't lean on that knee, that's where the rheumatism is—do you ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... she set out at a brisk, swinging stride which told its own tale of pulsing life and joyous energy. After half a dozen turns, she paused to lean over the rail which shuts off the carefully caged creatures of the steerage from ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... by that which never fails in woman, the love of your offspring, to teach them as they climb your knees or lean on your bosoms, the blessings of liberty. Swear them at the altar, as with their baptismal vows, to be true to their country, and never forsake her. I call upon you, young men, to remember whose sons you are—whose inheritance you possess. Life can never be too ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... green-flowered buckwheat gathers several together. The sunlight cannot reach the stream, which runs in shadow, deep down below the wheat-ears, over which butterflies wander. Forget-me-nots flower under the banks; grasses lean on the surface; willow-herbs, tall and stiff, stand up; but out from the tangled and interlaced fibres the water flows as clear as it rose by the hill. There is a culvert under the road, and on the opposite side ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... seems to hear as well as if he were awake, and every minute or two his eyes open and he takes a look round. I would rather have an Indian sentry than half a dozen white ones, unless it is in the open, where there is no tree to lean against, and a man must ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... were hungry valets of the same,—this man could hardly get the highways walked! And indeed had to keep his eyes well open, and always have covert within reach,—under pain of being torn to pieces, while he went about in the flesh, or rather in the bones, poor lean being. Changed times; within the Century last past! For indeed there was in that man what far transcends all dizenment, and temporary potency over valets, over legions, treasure-vaults and dim millions mostly blockhead: a spark of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... just couldn't go back without seeing you. I wanted to see a friendly face—to hear a friendly voice." She clasped her fingers tightly together: "Oh, you don't know how much you mean to me! I feel so alone—adrift—and I long so for some one to lean on, just for a little, until I get my bearings. It seems as though every atom of courage and confidence had oozed out of me. I don't believe that ever again in all my life I'll long for sympathy as I do this minute." She spoke slowly with breaths between, as though the ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... I lean upon my loggia's railing And view the vineyard's saffron sheen,— Its amber leaves in glory veiling The purpling grapes, that hang between Its long ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... and almost intentionally knocked over an easel with a semi-obscene drawing on it of a Sphynx with swelling breasts embracing a lean ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... acceptable Spanish families all about, affably conversing together, and freely admitting to their conversation the children, who so publicly abound in Spain, and the nurses who do nothing to prevent their publicity. There were already the typical fat Spanish mothers and lean fathers, with the slender daughters, who, in the tradition of Spanish good-breeding, kept their black eyes to themselves, or only lent them to the spectators in furtive glances. Both older and younger ladies ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... breeze," which frequently increases to a strong wind. My memory of California will always retain a vivid impression of this wind, and the effect of it upon the trees is evident from the fact that it has compelled most of them to lean toward the east, while one of the last sights I beheld in San Diego was a man chasing his hat. Nevertheless, acclimated Californians would no more complain of their daily breeze, however vigorous, than a man would ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... side road there suddenly trotted a piebald pony, drawing a low, basket phaeton, in which sat two prim, little, old ladies, a fat one and a lean one. Despite the difference in their avoirdupois the two old ladies showed themselves ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... chapel, and shut off from the court by carved cedar doors still often touched with old gilding and vermilion. There are always a few students praying in the chapel, while others sit in the doors of the upper rooms, their books on their knees, or lean over the carved galleries chatting with their companions who are washing their feet at the marble fountain in the court, preparatory ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... was despondent, as she reviewed the activities of the day, such was not the case with Persis Dale. In the Trotters' shabby cottage, exaltation reigned. Young Doctor Ballard, lean and boyish, looked ready to be congratulated on a good piece of work, though perfectly aware ha could never in this world, at least, collect his fee for medical attendance. Bartholomew's complacent self-importance almost straightened his bowed shoulders and redeemed the weakness of his ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... I am waiting for—shows himself. He is a lean old soldier of the Empire, with a white moustache, kept short and stiff like a nailbrush. He is still active, and if he has any disease he is in happy ignorance of it; nevertheless, he confides to me that it is in the legs that he begins to feel his seventy-two years. His face has a very startling ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... I must say it seems like a providence—your being here. With my temperament I always feel that there's nothing like a big strong man to lean on." ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... very good possibility, Captain, but they will not be men." The doctor seemed to pause and lean forward. "That rocket, Captain, is a test rocket. A test rocket ...
— Test Rocket! • Jack Douglas
... time all the other cabs had been seized. They walked to the Hotel de l'Epee, jostled by the crowd, Sophia and Chirac in front, and Gerald following with the valise, whose weight caused him to lean over to the right and his left arm to rise. The avenue was long, straight, and misty with a floating dust. Sophia had a vivid sense of the romantic. They saw towers and spires, and Chirac talked to her slowly and carefully of the cathedral and the famous ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... was laid on the table, whence it was not taken up during the session—its friends being afraid of a lean majority on its passage; for the alarm had already been taken by many of the members who otherwise would have favored it. From this time till the election in the succeeding autumn, the subject was much agitated in Massachusetts. The abolitionists again petitioned the Legislature ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... cloud of witnesses; and I began to look about me for a way to the back of the house. "Perhaps there'll be somebody in the garden," I thought. I found a way across the moat, scrambled over a wall smothered in brambles, and got into the garden. A few lean hydrangeas and geraniums pined in the flower-beds, and the ancient house looked down on them indifferently. Its garden side was plainer and severer than the other: the long granite front, with its few windows and steep roof, looked like a fortress-prison. I walked around the farther wing, went up ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... already opened and closed the door. I looked around my room, and I could have sobbed with mortification. The omnibus was lit inside as well as out, and I knew very well who was there. Already he was talking with the occupants. I saw a girl lean forward and listen to him. Then my worst fears were verified. I saw her descend, and they both stood for a moment by the side of the man who was tugging at one of the huge lamps. I closed my ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... insecurity of the Lancastrian usurper, largely because he was a usurper, is the clue to many things, some of which we should now call good, some bad, all of which we should probably call good or bad with the excessive facility with which we dismiss distant things. It led the Lancastrian House to lean on Parliament, which was the mixed matter we have already seen. It may have been in some ways good for the monarchy, to be checked and challenged by an institution which at least kept something of the old ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... 'kept on,' till it stopped, the disease retiring in despair from their determination to be well. Fat parties, who ought to have been dropsical, were not so at all—they grew fatter, and flourished like green bay trees; lean persons, threatening to go off in a decline, declining to do so, remained. Adventurous little boys, falling from the tops of high trees to the stony ground, sustained no injuries beyond the maternal chastisement and brandy-and-brown-paper of home; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... whose tender Green Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean— Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows From what once ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... without my host, a lean, wiry old fellow, a bit stiff about the knees. First of all he proudly showed me his soldier's book—three campaigns in Algeria. A crowd of smelly women pressed round us—luckily we had finished our meal—while with the help of a few knives and plates he explained exactly what a strategical ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... minute and fine as that of an engraver upon stone is slowly executed on my person; and their lean hands harrow and worry ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... And Reddie looked at Delaney. The manager's face was pale, intent, with a little smile. The player had eyes of fire, a lean, bulging jaw and the hands he reached for his bat clutched ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... a sudden. Come hither, Callimachus; thy father tells me thou art too poetical, boy: thou must not be so; thou must leave them, young novice, thou must; they are a sort of poor starved rascals, that are ever wrap'd up in foul linen; and can boast of nothing but a lean visage, peering out of a seam-rent suit, the very emblems of beggary. No, dost hear, turn lawyer, thou shalt be my solicitor.—- 'Tis right, ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... parental love of animals. Who does not know that even the smallest birds defend their young against every enemy with self -sacrificing courage, and that they bring food whilst they themselves often starve and grow lean? In human beings we can observe the various transformations of the self-same desire. For instance, sorrow or despair is experienced when it is impossible; anger, when it is hindered by others; joy, when it is fulfilled; fear, when it is threatened; ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... anxiously. "I have only just heard that there has been an accident.—Oh, Irene! you poor darling, you do look bad. Here, lean back, and let me arrange the cushions more comfortably. Oh, your poor face, how it must hurt you. Wouldn't it be more comfortable if I bathed it ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... "Like lean, hungry dogs, we must crouch beneath our master's table and snap eagerly at the crumbs that fall. If in our scramble for these crumbs we make too much noise, we are violently kicked and driven out of doors, where, in the sleet and snow, we ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... at the strange address; but the friar laid one lean hand on his arm, and, letting the staff slip back against his shoulder, felt Hilarius' face, not with the light and practised touch of the blind, but slowly ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... hung with the queer and lovely bric-a-brac of the sea. Presently a tiny girl came in as it seemed from nowhere, and said she would fetch her father. In a moment or two he came, a tall weathered Englishman of the sailor type, brown and lean, ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... order every man (woman, of course, included) will be his own legislator. In the state of ultimate and universal freedom to which we aspire, when the greatest of all tyrants, poverty, is slain and plenty sits on the throne which the lean monster has so long usurped—it may well be that there shall be no necessity for any law except that which the purified conscience of every individual man and woman will readily supply. Then will have come the true Golden Age, the millennium ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... exhibition of Arab horsemanship and of throwing the Jereed; but the sand was so deep that the horses could not show themselves to advantage. The empress, wearing a large leghorn hat and yellow veil, rode on a camel; and when an Italian in the crowd shouted to her roughly, "Lean back, or you will fall off, heels over head," the graceful dignity with which she smiled, and accepted the advice, won the hearts ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... lived and died there—natives) come here, now and then, and inquire about our world, and when they find out it is so little that a streak of lightning can flash clear around it in the eighth of a second, they have to lean up against something to laugh. Then they screw a glass into their eye and go to examining us, as if we were a curious kind of foreign bug, or something of that sort. One of them asked me how long our day was; and when I told him it was twelve hours long, as a general thing, he asked me ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... triply over-heated rooms, and much too energetic inhabitants, while the train went north to the lands where the snow lay. It came in one sweep—almost, it seemed, in one turn of the wheels—covering the winter-killed grass and turning the frozen ponds that looked so white under the shadow of lean trees into pools ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... the fable) A country mouse—right hospitable— Received a town mouse at his board, Just as a farmer might a lord. A frugal mouse upon the whole, Yet loved his friend, and had a soul; Know what was handsome, and would do 't. On just occasion coute qui coute. He brought him bacon nothing lean, Pudding that might have pleased a Dean; Cheese, such as men of Suffolk make, But wished it Stilton for his sake. Yet to his guest by no means sparing, He munched himself the rind and paring. Our courtier scarce could ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... soon as I had done lunch. My heart rose at sight of the large tent (which was yet so very little in comparison with the tents of the three-ring and two- platform circuses); the alluring and illusory sideshows of fat women and lean men; the horses tethered in the background and stamping under the fly-bites; the old, weather-beaten grand chariot, which looked like the ghost of the grand chariot which used to drag me captive in its triumph; and the canvas shelters where the cooks were already at work over their kettles on the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Johnson, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, because he had just been reading about the virtuous Douglass in the works of Sir Walter Scott. How wonderful then, in the light of a few years, that a fugitive slave from America, bearing one of the most powerful names in Scotland should lean against the pillars of the Free Church of Scotland, and meet and vanquish its brightest and ablest teachers (the friends of slavery, unfortunately), Doctors Cunningham ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... apples. Still, she wished she knew why Oscar did not come to dinner, and where he was, for her heart was beginning to yearn already over the wilful, noble, undisciplined boy. It had always been her dream to have a brother—a big strong brother to lean upon, and here was one whom she would ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... followed her to Amneran Heath, and across the heath, to where a cave was. This was a place of abominable repute. A lean hound came to meet them there in the twilight, lolling his tongue: but the notary's wife struck thrice with her wand, and the silent beast left them. And Dame Lisa passed silently into the cave, and her sister turned and went home ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... obnoxious practice prevails of maintaining a herd of swine to consume the entrails of the slaughtered animals, and a more fearsome and disgusting spectacle than a dozen lean, active hogs fighting over recently deposited entrails and wallowing up to their bellies in filth can hardly be imagined. Nor is this any fanciful picture. The writer has seen it over and over again, ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... and wearisomely teaches by example again and ever again, has always been an interesting act, in the various Provinces of Poland; not with the hope of getting fair or upright Judges, but Judges that will lean in the desirable direction. In a country overrun with endless lawsuits, debts, credits, feudal intricacies, claims, liabilities, how important to get Judges with the proper bias! And these once got, or lost till next term,—what is there to hope or to fear? ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... may we ever thus banish despair by such hopeful propositions. Lean on my arm, Flora; you are safe with me. Come, dearest, and taste the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... disaster, till we sought and found And slew the murderers of king Laius, Or drave them exiles from our land. Thou, then, Withhold not any word of augury Or other divination which thou knowest, But rescue Thebe, and thyself, and me, And purge the stain that issues from the dead. On thee we lean: and 'tis a noble thing To use what power ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... Mon ami!" she moaned over him, her hands folding over his lean cheeks, still brown in spite of the pallor ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... streaked rocks shelter afford to the cranes, plunged in sleep. The dew, blown on the t'ung tree by the well, doth wet the roosting rooks. Wrapped in a quilt, the maid comes the gold phoenix coverlet to spread. The girl, who on the rails did lean, on her return drops the kingfisher flowers! This quiet night his eyes in sleep he cannot close, as he doth long for wine. The smoke is stifled, and the fire restirred, when tea ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... like a cloud on the plain, Pouring on like the tide of a storm-driven main, And the lodge of the hunter to friend or to foe Offers rest, and unquestioned you come or you go. My plains of America! seas of wild lands!... I turn to you, lean to ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... life and spirit excellence. O! there is glory in the thought that now I stand absolved from all the chilling forms And falsities of life, that like frail reeds Pierce the blind palms of those that lean on them, And from the springs of my own being draw All strength, and hope, and joyance, all that makes Lone meditations sweet, and schools the heart For prophecy. In the o'erpeopled world We seem like ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... off and nodded to a little, lean man of ambiguous age, in a strained coat, who entered at this moment with a rapid lurching gait. He sat down immediately opposite them, under Lightmark's presentment, with which Rainham curiously compared him. And it struck him that there was something in that oddly repulsive ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... have been well received. What the fat professor knew all the boys in the Josephine, and most of those in the Young America, knew—that the cold, stiff, haughty, tyrannical, overbearing manner of the lean professor had made him exceedingly unpopular; that the students disliked him even to the degree of hating him; that if he had ever had any influence with them, he had lost it by his ridiculous sternness and stupid precision. Mr. Hamblin did not know ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... corridor back and across, to and fro, up and down, with the futile restlessness of a cat animal in a zoo, his feet clumping on the flagged flooring, and the watchful turnkey standing by, Uncle Tobe, having flattened his lean form in a niche behind the outer lattice, with an appraising eye would consider the shifting figure through a convenient cranny of the wattled metal strips. He took care to keep himself well back out of view, but since he stood in shadow ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... to them, and made them sing it seriously—not carelessly. As they stood round the piano, Titia and Atty one at each side, and Oliver creeping in to lean upon his step-mothers knee, there was a sweet grave look on all their faces, which made even the two eldest not unpretty children; for their hearts were in their faces—their once frightened, frozen, or bad and ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... economy which March preached and tried in vain to practise. Persuaded that her idol was no longer becomingly enshrined, she proceeded to make trouble between husband and wife, and they separated. Then followed a very lean time both for Mrs. Brackett and her daughter, until at last the former made such an outrageous proposal that Doll came to her senses. You will easily believe that this sort of subject offers no very favourable outlet for Mr. CAINE'S particular gifts, but the confidential style in which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... was sinking and the farm wagons on their way home from town came rattling by, covering him with dust and making him sneeze. When one of the farmers pulled up and offered to give him a lift, he clambered in willingly. The driver was a thin, grizzled old man with a long lean neck and a foolish sort of beard, like a goat's. "How fur ye goin'?" he asked, as he clucked to ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... at the opening of the Tumour, and to that End we caused to be applied without Delay, all over the Part a Dressing with the caustick Stone, leaving it there for some Hours, more or less, according to the Depth, Situation, Bulk of the Parts, and the Constitution fat or lean of the Patient; the Escarr being made, it must be opened by Incision, without any Delay, in order to examine the tumified Glands, to dissolve which, there ought to be apply'd Digestives, after they have been a little scarified; or they should ...
— A Succinct Account of the Plague at Marseilles - Its Symptoms and the Methods and Medicines Used for Curing It • Francois Chicoyneau
... could walk, if she might lean upon some one; but it would be better, her friends thought, if ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... himself up in his chair, nervously drawing in his shoulders. I looked quickly at the judge's desk and saw a man standing beside it and offering a paper. It glimmered faintly white as he held it up. I saw the judge lean over, stretching out his fine, plump hand to take it, and I heard him say: "Is ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... lean hawk-like face crept the assurance that belonged with the gay attire he wore. He dropped the revolver into his pocket, and smiled a ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... deformed; with a little belly; long misshapen legs; and feet very broad of flesh, without a hoof, all whole saving the great toe; a back bearing up like a molehill, a large and thin neck, with a little head, with a bunch of hard flesh which Nature hath given him in his breast to lean upon. This beast liveth hardly, and is contented with straw and stubble; but of strong force, being well able to ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... hit old Goliath square in the forehead this morning," I say to Prue, as I lean out, and bathe in the ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... re-taken the command, but he left it in Mr Brymer's hands till the day we sailed into harbour, when he once more took his place, and laughingly complimented Mr Denning upon the change which had taken place in him as well, though, poor fellow, he was so weak that he was glad to lean upon ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... more than a repetition of many previous ones. My friend and I having arranged ourselves comfortably in the dak-gharri as soon as it was announced ready to start, the long and marvelously lean Indian who was our driver signified to his team by the usual horse-language that we should be glad to go. The horse did not even agitate his left ear—a phenomenon which I associate with a horse in that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... Phoenician, the most noted banker in Memphis, came to the house of Ramses. He was a man in the full bloom of life, yellow, lean, but well built. He wore a blue tunic and over it a white robe of thin texture. He had immense hair of his own, confined by a gold circlet, and a great black beard, his own also. This rich growth looked imposing in comparison with the wigs ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... wheel. He has put the helm up, and soon the great ship, with swelling sails, breaks out of the current. He feels the change in an instant; the hands know it too. But the danger is not past. Leaving the wheel to another, he runs quickly forward to lean over the weather-rail. As he passes through the crowd on the fo'castle, the poor fellows cheer him ringingly. The fine old seaman doffs his cap and makes them a grand, ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... can make you die in bed He sof' as downs in pillow there On my bres' I'll lean my head Grieve my life sweetly there. In dis life of heaby load Let us share de weary traveler ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration |
