"Lean" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... helpful to his appreciation of the utility of the country's commercial and federal systems, while his elevation to the Presidency would be a mortal stab to the Jacobins, breeding invincible hatred and compelling him to lean on the Federalists, who had nothing to fear from his ambition, since it would be checked by his good sense, or from any scheme of usurpation that he ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... to the windows, and entirely over the little lean-to that had been erected at the time that little Danny had added his feeble wail to ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... avail For lamentations o'er his changed lot; Yet urged by some desire, he knew not what, Along a little path 'twixt hedges sweet, Drawn sword in hand, he dragged his faltering feet, For what then seemed to him a weary way, Whereon his steps he needs must often stay And lean upon the mighty well-worn sword That in those hands, grown old, for king or lord Had small respect in ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... half-way down, I looked up. The wall of the palace seemed now to lean over upon me, and now to draw back from me. Marguerite was ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... "How you must have suffered, my poor darling," she went on, her eyes filling with tears, her heart yearning over him. "And how ill you look, and I keep you standing here,—how thoughtless! Come to the bench here and sit down. Lean on me." ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... homeward stretch, but he has not given up all hope. His eyes look for those whom he has lost; he is loath to give up the search, loath to return alone to the home which the enemy has soiled with the lifeblood of his youngest child. He is changed in appearance, lean, and with hollow burning eyes he gazes at the clouds as if there he might find ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... heard and read of him, he had pictured him a tall, lean ascetic, a kind of Dante and Savonarola in one, a magnificent figure of protest and abjuration. This man who now came towards him was little, thin, indeed, but almost deformed, seeming to have one shoulder higher than the other, and to halt ever so slightly on one ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... attained. To wit, that he was no extortioner, no unjust man, no adulterer, nor even as this Publican, and for that he fasted twice a week, and paid tithes of all that he possessed. So that you see he pretendeth to a double foundation for his salvation, a moral and a ceremonial one; but both very lean, weak, and feeble: For the first of his foundations, what is it more, if all be true that he saith, but a being removed a few inches from the vilest men in their vilest actions, a very slender matter to build my confidence for ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and glad to do it," said Miss Slocum, frankly. "Your heart is all right, Lorena Jane; but a warm heart will not make people forget that you lean your elbow on the table and put your food into your mouth with your knife. Such things jar on other people just as Flap-Jacks and the dish-cloth jar on you. Don't you understand? But your desire to improve shows that you are a very ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... a picked band of warriors, there was not a man in it under six feet in height, and all were lean, but muscled powerfully and with great shoulders and chests. They had an intense pride in physical strength and prowess, such necessary qualities to them, and they would show the white prisoner, large as he was and strong as he looked, how much inferior he was to the chosen ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... war—especially to rely on himself, and to study his own way out of any troubles that he met. His fame went, too, to the other colonies, and the young Colonel of Militia was becoming known as a man on whose courage and faithfulness and sound good sense it would do for his country to lean in time of trial. ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... bear the barbarity of it; how can that unconscionable coachman talk so much bawdy to that lean horse? don't you see, friend, the streets are so villanously narrow, that there is not room in all Paris to turn a wheelbarrow? In the grandest city of the whole world, it would not have been amiss, if they had been left a thought wider; nay, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... a retired Colonel, who had married late in life, and now lived all the year round in the country; and Jimbo was the youngest child but one. The Colonel, lean in body as he was sincere in mind, an excellent soldier but a poor diplomatist, loved dogs, horses, guns and riding-whips. He also really understood them. His neighbours, had they been asked, would have called him hard-headed, and so far as a soft-hearted man may deserve the title, he probably ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... are much superior to any other letters almost in the volume—certainly to Mrs. Hemans's own. Isn't this so? And so you talk, you in England, of Prince Albert's 'folly,' do you really? Well, among the odd things we lean to in Italy is to an actual belief in the greatness and importance of the future exhibition. We have actually imagined it to be a noble idea, and you take me by surprise in speaking of the general distaste to it in England. Is it really possible? ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... ends of the pole being imbedded in the ground. Other smaller saplings were trimmed and laid across the slanting poles, and on them were piled layer after layer of fan-like palmetto leaves. In a short space of time they had completed a lean-to which would protect them from any storm they were likely to experience at this season of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... else Brazilian, writers, I strove to supply the deficiency with spare volumes of Gibbon. At the end of our march we were usually far ahead of the mule-train, and the rain was also usually falling. Accordingly we would sit about under trees, or under a shed or lean-to, if there was one, each solemnly reading a volume of Gibbon—and no better reading can be found. In my own case, as I had been having rather a steady course of Gibbon, I varied him now and then with a volume of Arsene ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... government than the representative one. I believe that the favourites of kings have been a superior race of men. Even a fool does not choose a fool for a favourite. He knows better than that: he must have something to lean against. But between the thinkers and the doers (if, indeed, we ought to make such a distinction), WHAT A NUMBER OF USEFUL LINKS THERE ARE IN A REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT on account of the much larger number of people admitted into some share of government. What general cultivation ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... elbow, Scott followed each inflection of the persuasive voice, his lean face glowing with appreciation at every point his idol scored. For the time being, awkwardness was lost and all self-consciousness. Why think about himself, when he could have the chance to watch Reed Opdyke and to listen to him? Scott's nature thrilled in answer to the alien ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... followed by good times, as our father Abraham knew; and when Joseph, Jacob's son, foresaw the seven lean years he counselled Pharaoh to store up corn in ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... free from cab duty Jarvis went to the Little Theatre to get a report from "The Vision." The secretary said Mr. Ames had asked to see him when he came in. He found him a lean student type of man, finished in manner, and pleasant ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... because an unhappy ant had scalded himself to death in her first cup. Afterward he would not let her "hurt her hands" by washing the dishes. When this was over, and the dusk was deepening, he went into the woods to the "lean-to" in which Lion was quartered, to see that the old horse was comfortable, but a minute later came crashing back through ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... smile when, among a number of German princesses presented to her, one was announced under the name of Cunegonde [Cunegonde was the mistress of Candide in Voltaire's novel of Candide.] Her Majesty added that, when she saw the princess take her seat, she imagined she saw her lean to one side. Assuredly the Empress had read the adventures of Candide and the daughter of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... weeping. I love to read the Books he delighted in, and to converse with the Persons whom he esteemed. I visit his Picture a hundred times a Day, and place myself over-against it whole Hours together. I pass a great part of my Time in the Walks where I used to lean upon his Arm, and recollect in my Mind the Discourses which have there passed between us: I look over the several Prospects and Points of View which we used to survey together, fix my Eye upon the Objects which he has made me take notice of, and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... one should drink beer, on the ice slide; buy a horse that is lean, a sword that is rusty; feed a horse at home, but a dog at ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... (except perhaps in the hottest part of the hottest season of the year) is an absurdity. It is here the art of spoiling good meat. The same art, indeed, in the South of France; where the climate is much warmer, and the flesh of the animal lean and insipid, is highly valuable; it is the art of making bad meat eatable." At the same time, he acknowledges the superior thrift and intelligence of the French cooks, and instances the frog and the horse. "The frog is considered in this country as a disgusting animal, altogether ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... point—to some of the difficulties and hindrances which I know are keeping not a few here to-day out of the enjoyment of the blessing. I know there are some here who are satisfied that this blessing is attainable, who are satisfied that God can thus keep them, as we have been singing, if they were to lean the whole weight of their need— their soul, and body, and spirit—upon Him, and trust Him. They believe He could, and they believe He would. They have come to perceive that it is not at all a question of human strength, ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... is the largest. Once, when Under Town was Seacombe, a lawyer lived here—hence the front passage. It has a cat-trodden front garden, in which only wall-flowers and some box edging have survived. Over the front door is a broken trellis-work porch. Masts and spars lean against the wall. The house is built of red brick, straight up and down like an overgrown doll's house, but the whole of the wall is weathered and toned by the southerly gales which blow down the Gut from the open sea. Those same winds see to ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... Podtyagin addresses a second-class passenger, a lean, scraggy-looking man, wrapped up in a fur coat and a rug and surrounded with pillows. ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... was at luncheon four carters came in—long-limbed, muscular Ayrshire Scots, with lean, intelligent faces. Four quarts of stout were ordered; they kept filling the tumbler with the other hand as they drank; and in less time than it takes me to write these words the four quarts were finished—another round was proposed, discussed, and negatived—and ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wak'st when others rest, Though rising thou prevent'st the sun, Though with lean care thou daily feast, Thy labour's lost, and thou undone; But God his child will feed and keep, And draw the ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... that there must be some misunderstanding if he had been represented to the Vice-Principal as connected with any so-called party in the place. "You don't mean to deny that there is a party, Mr. Reding," answered the College authority, "by that form of expression?" He was a lean, pale person, with a large hook-nose and spectacles; and seemed, though a liberal in creed, to be really a nursling of that early age when Anabaptists fed the fires of Smithfield. From his years, practised talent, and position, he was well able to browbeat an unhappy juvenile who incurred ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... the Count of Belin was taken prisoner by the King's forces, and had an opportunity of discovering the great qualities of Henry contrasted with the weakness of his enemies, the Duke of Mayenne perceived the inclinations of the count to lean secretly toward the King. Full of this suspicion, he did not hesitate a moment about depriving him of the government of so considerable a city as Paris, and, seeking for a man whose fidelity to himself and the League could be depended ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... when the loose sleeves fell open on her round and slender arms; and the bodice of the gown hung a little away from her stooping body, and was embroidered inside, as well as outside, with celandines, which made reflections on her white neck, as they will on a pure pool where they lean to watch their April loveliness. Her skin was as creamy as the petals of a burnet rose, and her eyes were the color of peat-smoke, and her hair was as soft as spun silk and fell in two great shining waves of the purest gold over her bosom as she bent above ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... a swift self-horror, an overwhelming conviction of his relapse into unutterable sin. He stopped and in a spiritual agony, forgetful of his surroundings, half lifted quivering arms to the dim sky: "O Christ, lean down from the throne ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... him joy of the fidelity of the picture he has painted," thought I. "What will he say when, instead of a pair of plump turtle doves, billing and cooing in a bower of roses, he finds a single lean cormorant, standing mateless and shelterless on poverty's bleak cliff? Oh, confound him! Let him come, and let him laugh at the contrast between rumour and fact. Were he the devil himself, instead of being ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... take it off. She did not even see him. She was hurrying forward to the steps, following a long, lean Arab, some dragoman, apparently, in resplendent pongee robes, who opened the door of a limousine for her. The next instant he slammed the door upon her, mounted the front seat, and ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... and passing a lean arm about me, "my good son, my brave boy! You will be kind to the little Princess. She loves you. There is no man so beloved as you in all the city of Thorn. Many would have loved her besides Otho. Ah, but I threw him out of the window ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... loved you a lot to bring you way out here and to stay here all these years to take care of you. I wonder where she'll go and what she'll do when Hugh and I get married. You're too old for a nurse now, Pete. Do you mind if I lean back against you that way? It's so comfortable. I'd be happier without Bella, ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... am sure, agree with me, that he is, without exception, the most splendid specimen of the animal man you ever became acquainted with. His name is Adam, and verily he looks as if he were in the garden of Eden before the fall. But his soul is as grand and as fine as his body. You will lean upon this man as you would on a faithful charger. His divan is charming; you will always find there the most intelligent people. You must learn to smoke. There is nothing that Besso cannot do; make him do everything you want; have no scruples; he will be gratified. Besides, he is one of ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... the Wolds, bordered by bright green grass and hedges that lean away from the direction of the prevailing wind, give wide views to bare horizons, or glimpses beyond vast stretches of waving corn, of distant country, blue and indistinct, and so different in character from the immediate surroundings as to suggest ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... hillside his glance strayed to the several five-story towers of the pawnshops. Celestial Uncles! Spurlock chuckled, and a bit of chestnut, going down the wrong way, set him to coughing violently. When the paroxysm passed, he was forced to lean against ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... loungers was still on the platform when the agent went to the little lean-to beside the station where he kept his horse, saddled and mounted it, and as they saw him ride forth a wicked gleam appeared ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... of the establishment to attend to it. The gate of the front yard had no more strain put upon its hinges. It fell into a stiff propriety of opening and shutting, at the touch of people who understood that a gate was made merely to pass through, not to lean upon. ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... smiling when they finally came for him. But he felt weaker than ever, and as they walked out into the glare of the street he was glad to lean upon Ginger's arm. The sheriff's van was drawn up to the curb. Two deputies helped him in. He turned for a last look at Ginger. Her pale little face was twisted, but she waved a gay farewell. In a far corner of the lumbering machine Fred could see ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... in tiers, were men, dwarfs, and even children fastened on brackets, carrying the hangings up to the roofs. This was an Assyrian custom, and was adopted by the Romans as a mode of disposing of their prisoners of war. Woltmann and Woermann appear to lean to the suggestion that permanent imitations of hangings were carried out in painted or encaustic tiles covering the masonry of Chaldean buildings at Nimroud and Khorsabad. The pale ones associated with low reliefs, and really resembling them, ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... are here and they await thee," said the angel. "Lean upon me, dear Mother, and I will ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... ran to lean over the edge of the roof, and saw the man walking rapidly through the air toward the ground. Soon he reached the street and disappeared through a glass doorway into one of the ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... them; once Tonker stepped heavily on a hard, dry stick, after which they both lay still for twenty minutes. And the sunset flared full of omens through the tree trunks, and night fell, and they came by fitful starlight, as Nuth had foreseen, to that lean, high house where the gnoles so ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... Art Epicurean and atheistic, holding the truth as something to be used or neglected at its pleasure, and of no more value than falsehood which is equally beautiful,—making Nature, indeed, something for weak men to lean on and for superstitious men to be enslaved by. This distinction is radical; it cuts the world of Art, as the equator does the earth, with an unswerving line, on one side or the other of which every work of Art ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... odd-looking fellow, tall and thin, with a lean face from which a pair of pale and near-sighted eyes peered forth from behind rubber-rimmed spectacles. His hair was almost black and was always in need of trimming, and his garments—he seldom wore trousers, coat and vest that matched—always seemed about to fall off him. ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... (it must have been her idiosyncrasy) put her tongue out at them, too. The taller of the two (he was in evening clothes under a light wide-open overcoat) with great presence of mind chucked her under the chin, giving me the view at the same time of a flash of white teeth in his dark, lean face. The other man was very different; fair, with smooth, ruddy cheeks and burly shoulders. He was wearing a grey suit, obviously bought ready-made, for it seemed too ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... intended meeting at Bristol was threatened, Newman, from sheer dislike to mob tyranny, came forward to take the chair; and through a tempest of shouts and rushes, and amid the stifling smell of burnt Cayenne pepper, sat in lean dignity, looking curiously out of place, but serene in vindication of a principle. [Footnote: See Vol. I, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... seemed a lean-to banked against the cliff wall, a slanting shed-wall of glassite fifty feet high and two hundred in length. Under it, for months Grantline's bores had dug into the cliff. Braced tunnels were here, penetrating back and downward into ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... the flames gained the ascendancy, the officers and soldiers around them prepared their wretched repast; it consisted of lean and bloody pieces of flesh torn from the horses that were knocked up, and at most a few spoonfuls of rye-flour mixed with snow-water. Next morning circular ranges of soldiers extended lifeless marked the bivouacs; and the ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... dew. Forgotten, her slow fat cows had passed on far ahead; for at her side, wooing her with drooping lashes while the earth was still flushed with the morn, strolled a young Indian fighter, swarthy, lean tall, wild. His long thigh boots of thin deer-hide, open at the hips, were ornamented with a scarlet fringe and rattled musically with the hoofs of fawns and the spurs of the wild turkey; his gray racoonskin cap was adorned with the wings of the ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... their appearance ended, for they were of all sizes and characters. Some were robust and muscular; some were lean and wiry; some were just entering on manhood, with the ruddy hue of health shining through the slime on their smooth faces; some were in the prime of life, pale from long working underground, but strong, and almost as hard as the iron with which they chiselled the rocks. Others were growing old, ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... of Barbara and her horse, stole up, and stood at a safe distance, with their noses dubiously stretched out, swishing their lean tails. And suddenly, far up, following their own music, two cuckoos flew across, seeking the thorn-trees out on the moor. While she was watching the arrowy birds, she caught sight of someone coming towards ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... lying upon the dirt floor of the lean-to attached to the one room of the cabin, felt a hand upon his shoulder and opened his eyes upon a shadowy figure, blocking up the starlight that came faintly ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... of the poop, with his lean, lanky body half bent over the rail, he was keeping one eye out to windward, whence he had just caught sight in time of the coming squall, looking down below the while at the hands in the waist jumping briskly to their ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... other aim than to get the tree down, without any of the subtle calculation as to its mode or direction of falling. This attribute, he thinks, has been ascribed to them from the circumstance that most trees growing near water-courses, either lean bodily toward the stream, or stretch their largest limbs in that direction, to benefit by the space, the light, and the air to be found there. The beaver, of course, attacks those trees which are nearest at hand, and on the banks of the stream or pond. He makes incisions round ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... oppression out, And lead a universal freedom on. And heaven wants souls—fresh and capacious souls; To taste its raptures, and expand, like flowers, Beneath the glory of its central sun. It wants fresh souls—not lean and shrivelled ones; It wants fresh souls, my brother, give it thine. If thou indeed wilt be what scholars should; If thou wilt be a hero, and wilt strive To help thy fellow and exalt thyself, Thy feet at last shall stand on jasper floors; Thy heart, at last, shall seem a thousand hearts— ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... muscles like iron bands—is beside the point. I have not looked upon all the blacksmiths in the world, and he may exist. But Uncle Abner can't pose for him. He weighs a hundred and twenty pounds without his hammer, is lean to scrawniness, and his arms are those of the boys you see at the track meet of Lincoln Grammar School Number Seven. The mutilated derby hat he now wore, a hat that had been weathered from plum colour to a poisonous green—a ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the mother-weasel reappeared. She did not rush him, now that her young one was safe. She approached more cautiously, and the cub had full opportunity to observe her lean, snakelike body, and her head, erect, eager, and snake-like itself. Her sharp, menacing cry sent the hair bristling along his back, and he snarled warningly at her. She came closer and closer. There was a leap, swifter than his unpractised sight, and the lean, ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... there was everything in my appearance to command respect, I went into the manager's room with confidence. Lean and brown and middle-aged, in a tweed coat and grey flannel trousers, which, though not new, were well cut, I felt that I looked like one accustomed to put in and take out sums from banks. There was no trying for effect, no effort, no tie-pin. The stick I carried was a plain ash. The pipe, which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. A. Russell, as military attache. The witnesses pay tribute to the skill and dash of the German flying officers and to the spirit of the flying battalions. The officers they found to be fine-drawn, lean, determined-looking youngsters, unlike the well-known heavy Teutonic type. Owing partly to the monotony of German regimental life there was great competition, they were told, to enter the flying service, eight hundred ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... tendency to fall back again from faith upon works. Ever as the life of religion weakens, ever as the strength of holy confidence decays, men betake themselves to some outward forms or efforts. When they cease to lean on the love of God, they begin to lean on sacraments and ceremonies, on opinions and doctrines, on feelings and experiences, on morality and works of duty. Ever, as the cold winter of worldliness and sin causes the stream ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... toward her husband. Then, her watery, almost colorless eyes searching, she began a survey of the big room, looking intently from one figure to another. On and on—finally to reach the spot where stood Robert Fairchild and Harry, and there they stopped. A lean finger, knotted by rheumatism, darkened by ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... pleasant bank beyond it. And soon I perceived that she was right, though not so much as afterwards; for the fairest of all things in a garden, and in summer-time most useful, is a brook of crystal water; where a man may come and meditate, and the flowers may lean and see themselves, and the rays of the sun are purified. Now partly with her own white hands, and partly with Gwenny's red ones, Lorna had made of this sunny spot a haven of beauty to dwell in. It was not only that colours lay in the harmony we would seek of them, neither was it ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... a moment, and brought up on the piazza. Here she sat, turning her head from side to side, like a lean and pensive parrot, and struggling to get ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... it is not porterage, but people to support, there still my tenet holds: the broader and more powerful the great man's shoulders, the more mouths I should assign to him to feed. But perhaps a weak soil, like a lean pack-horse, [10] grows stronger the more corn you pour into it. This I look to you to teach ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... labour, tend too often but "to evade and shuffle off real labour—the real labour of thinking." He has ever avoided giving particular directions. He has found students who have imagined they could make "prodigious progress under some particular eminent master." Such would lean on any but themselves. "After the Rudiments are past, very little of our art can be taught by others." A student ought to have a just and manly confidence in himself, "or rather in the persevering industry which he is resolved to possess." Raffaelle had done nothing, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... the slightest intention of starving these infants. To-morrow I go on a foraging expedition to the Mission commissariat department (there must be one somewhere), and then the fat years shall succeed the lean ones. ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... seen this sister before. The sister who waddled toward her was not the sister she had left in Wakefield years before. That sister was young and lean and a maid. Marriage and hard work and children had swaddled this sister in bundles of strange flesh and drawn the ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... known parallels or by experience, we do not so passively acquiesce in them; there is an exertion of confidence in depending upon them and assuring ourselves of their force. The inward energy of the reason has to be evoked, when she can no longer lean upon the outward prop of custom, but is thrown back upon herself and the intrinsic force of her premisses. Which reason, not leaning upon custom, is faith; she obtains the latter name when she depends entirely upon her own insight into certain grounds, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... exceedingly white and lean person. She has thick eyebrows, which meet rather dangerously over her nose, which is Grecian, and a small mouth with no lips—a sort of feeble pucker in the face as it were. Under her eyebrows are a pair of enormous eyes, which she is in the habit of turning constantly ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was well within sight of his cell he saw the lean, gaunt figure of the hermit-student standing inside the iron-barred gate; he was straining his eyes into the distance; he was looking ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... white palms! I will hear his steady, low, clear voice, that makes music in my ears and heaven in my heart! It is three months since he shook hands with me, but all time cannot remove the feeling from my fingers; and some day I can cling to his hand and lean my cheek against it,—and who dare dispute my right? He says he never loved any woman! I heard him tell his sister he had yet to meet the woman whom he could marry,—and, if truth lingers anywhere in this world ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... between,— A slight, thin veil; if you could see Past its gray folds, there she would be, Smiling and sweet, and she would lean And ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... gain as they might otherwise do; frugality may be out of fashion among the gentry, but if it comes to be so among tradesmen, we shall soon see that wealthy tradesmen will be hard to find; for they who will not save as well as gain, must expect to go out of trade as lean as they began. ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... the field scattering pine straw, and Beck was there too, harnessed in company with a very lean Texas pony. Her mother and Bud were in the same occupation, but Mollie, the old brown cow, drew ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... he was in khaki, but the contrast between the two officers was very striking. The one was lean and athletic in every line of his figure, with laughing grey eyes in a handsome face; the other, a stolid, fair-haired Fleming, whose square visage would have been rather colourless and commonplace but for the pleasant smile which showed ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... would have fallen if she hadn't caught his arm. Her strength astonished him: for all the lightness of his armor, it still lent him an over-all weight of some two hundred and ten pounds; and yet the shoulder which she provided for him to lean on did not give once all the way to his bedside. She had his pauldrons, breastplate, and arm-coverings off in no time flat. His cuisses, greaves, and sollerets followed. The last he remembered was lying there ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... in the agreement, and she knew not what to do. In a second letter a few days later from Harrow, where she lived for a while to be near her son at school, she wrote in answer to Trelawny, proposing Peacock as umpire, because, she writes, "he would not lean to the strongest side, which Jefferson, as a lawyer, is inclined, I think, to do." Oilier, she writes, devoutly wished she had read the agreement, as the clause ought ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... a surprising little experience, causing him to straighten up his lean yet shapely figure; while the burden of his years, and the long monotony of them, seemed strangely lifted off him. Then, with the air of courtly reserve—at once the joke and envy of the younger clerks, which had earned him the nickname of "the old Hidalgo"—he leaned forward and addressed ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... dollars in greenbacks which say that this little, lean, sorrel mare of Colonel Mosby's, can outrun any horse in ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... hardships of life in the deserts and steppes discourage obesity. The Koko-Nor Mongols of the high Tibetan plateau are of slight build, never fat.[1138] The Bedouin's physical ideal of a man is spare, sinewy, energetic and vigorous, "lean-sided and thin," as the Arab poet expresses it.[1139] The nomadic tribesmen throughout the Sahara, whether of Hamitic, Semitic or Negro race, show this type, and retain it even after several generations of settlement in the river valleys of the Sudan. The Bushmen, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Hercules, not easily recognized in his magician's attire, who was speaking thus, and it was Dick Sand whom he was addressing—Dick Sand, still feeble enough, to lean on Cousin Benedict, near whom Dingo ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... wandering life was difficult and undesirable. When Uncle Bart Cole had remarked that Mis' Grant had a little of everything in the way of baby-stock now,—black, red, an' yaller-haired, dark and light complected, fat an' lean, tall an' short, twins an' singles,—Jed Morrill had observed dryly: "Yes, Mis' Grant kind o' reminds me ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... her!" cried somebody aboard the destroyer, in a deep American voice full of the exultation of battle. The lean rifles swung, lowered. "Point one, lower." They were about to hear "Fire!" when the Stars and Stripes and sundry other signals burst from the deck of the ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... brown-withered wings of brake Like a burning lava-lake;— So, urged to fearful, faster flow By the awful gasp, "Hahk! hahk!" of the crow, Shall pass by many a haunted rood Of the nutty, odorous wood; Or, where the hemlocks lean and loom, Shall fill my heart with bitter gloom; Till, lured by light, reflected cloud, I burst aloft my watery shroud, And upward through the ether sail Far above the shrill wind's wail;— But, falling thence, my soul involve With the dust dead flowers dissolve; And, gliding out at last to sea, ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... horror, banished from her eyes by the mere intensity of her determination to convey the whole truth to him, did not return to them. She substituted her other hand for the one he held in order to shift her position a little and lean ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... look of pain in his eyes. He continued to lean against the mantel-shelf, his head slightly lowered, his unseeing gaze fixed on a remote scroll in the pattern of the carpet; then he said in a low tone: "I can only repeat again what I have said before—that I understand why you did what ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... all appearance, dropped the subject there. He lifted his lean brown forefinger and pointed again—this time to a house at a short distance from them. "That's a farmhouse, surely?" he said. "I'm thirsty after my roll down the hill. Do you think, Miss, they would give me a drink ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... came down the furrow, his lean, wiry figure silhouetted against the upper panorama of the valley; the neat rows of vegetables and the green riot of Venusian wheat, dotted with toiling men ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... employed, when a big scorpion crept out from a mass of bark; I laid my stick, which it bit severely, on its back, striking its sting into the wood before I crushed it to death. Having collected a sufficient amount of fuel to last for the night, we put up a lean-to, under which we could shelter ourselves from the night dew, though it would afford but a slight protection against any hungry animal which might venture near, as leopards and lions might occasionally do. We filled our saucepan with water, and made every preparation for the ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... those gentlemen to whom you are bowing, Hope?" Mrs. Dinks asked, as she saw her niece lean forward and ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... made it. Oh! many a pull hath my heart had with Satan for that blessed sixth of John. I did not now, as at other times, look principally for comfort, though, O how welcome would it have been unto me! But now a word, a word to lean a weary soul upon, that I might not sink for ever! 'it was that I ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... trade in the Orient as for any European nation, and assuredly easier than for Germany. We have had such years of material prosperity and progress as were never known in the history of any people, it is true; but every cycle of prosperity has been succeeded by lean years, and ever will be. When the inevitable over-production and lessened home consumption come, Eastern markets, though supplied at moderate profit, will be invaluable. We are building the Panama Canal, whose corollary must be a mercantile fleet ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... lassoing horn in front, high peak behind, immense wooden stirrups, with great leathern guards, silver or brass bosses, and coloured saddle-cloths. The saddles were the only element of the picturesque that these Hawaiian steeds possessed. They were sorry, lean, undersized beasts, looking in general as if the emergencies of life left them little time for eating or sleeping. They stood calmly in the broiling sun, heavy-headed and heavy-hearted, with flabby ears and pendulous lower lips, limp and rawboned, a doleful type of the "creation which groaneth ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... her cheeks fled from its old habitation, and crowded up into her nose, where, with a number of pimples, it stuck fast. Add to this a dirty, draggle-tailed chintz; long, matted hair, wandering into her eyes, and over her lean shoulders, which were once so snowy, and you have the picture of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... world is all run mad, The lean, the fat, the gay, the sad— All swear such pleasure they never had, Till they did ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... "All sorts of strange things were cast up by the storm, and the plovers were busy devouring everything they could find; always running, chasing each other, very quarrelsome, fighting all the time. They were in poor condition, so lean that the men did not shoot them after the first day, a fact which gives your correspondent great satisfaction. They are still there! My brother came from the Shoals yesterday, and says that the place is alive with them, ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... very rich, and have no legal heirs, may entertain themselves very much at the expense of hungry expectants and lean legacy-hunters. Who has not seen a poor dog standing on his hind legs, and bobbing up and down after a bone scarcely worth picking, with which some mischief-loving varlet has tantalized the poor ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... the hearts of all men stood still with fear, and our doctors could do nothing to stop its progress, this man, or angel, or saint, suddenly made his appearance in our streets. He came in great humility, seated in an ox-cart, and drawn by two lean oxen and a rope harness. Only think of that! Such a man in an OLD OX-CART, drawn by ROPE HARNESS! The thing itself was a miracle. He made no parade about what he could do, but only fixed up a plain pasteboard ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... loading themselves with such heavy and brittle mementos, for we had still a long journey before us. The wisdom of my warning was apparent later on, for on leaving Rome the alabaster towers had begun to lean so much that they could no longer stand up. A shelf full of leaning towers propped up one against another, looking as if they had just partaken of an issue of rum, was left in the hotel. We journeyed all night, some of the men sleeping on the seats, some on the floor, ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... to know any more about New York," Tavernake interrupted. "Lean back and close your eyes, smell the cinnamon trees, listen to that night bird calling every now and then across the ravine. There's blackness, if you like; there's depth. It's like a cloak of velvet to ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ill-concealed satisfaction in the wounds inflicted by their natural opponents upon each other. On this occasion, however, the tumult was a popular one, involving the interests of the citizens; and it is difficult to believe that the inclinations of the townsfolk would not rather lean towards the Queen, a woman of wealth and stately surroundings, likely to entertain princes and great personages and to fill Edinburgh with the splendour of a Court, than to the prelate, although his tastes also were magnificent, whose metropolis ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... master would not come, and that you would make up your mind to stop with me; you would lose nothing by the change, believe me. The hostler who has just quitted me came here eight months ago all in tatters, and as lean as a shotten herring, and now he has two very good suits of clothes, and is as fat as a dormouse; for you must know, my son, that in this house there are excellent vails to be got over and above ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... did nothing but lean back in his chair and stare at his son; then he said, "Walter do you mean to tell me that you received all this information pertaining to the ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter
... did the two stand up. We seized their hands and pulled them up on the wall. They were as rugged as lions in the open, burned as brown as Moros, their hair and beards long and ragged, and their powerful, lean bodies ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... growing louder and coming towards her, and in a little while she could hear grunting noises and the snapping of twigs. It was a drove of lean grisly wild swine. She turned about her, for a boar is an ill fellow to pass too closely, on account of the sideway slash of his tusks, and she made off slantingly through the trees. But the patter ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... he talked and listened, she could appreciate anew what Karl's eyes had meant to his personality. It almost broke her heart to see him lean forward and look in that half-eager, half-fretted way toward the man who was speaking, as though his blindness were a barrier between their minds, a barrier he instinctively ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell |
