"Lessening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and can have, but one object, viz., to diminish the proportion of the effort to the result. We have indeed no other means of judging of the success of an agriculturist or of the merits of his system, but by observing how far he has succeeded in lessening the one, while he increases the other; and as all the farmers in the world act upon this principle, we may say that all mankind are seeking, no doubt for their own advantage, to obtain at the lowest price, bread, or whatever other ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... unauthorised persons—in short, nothing at all that would have the slightest bearing on, or be of the slightest value in explaining, the present acute situation. Given a modicum of leisure for painstaking search among the pages and a lessening of tensity in the state of the popular excitement, I should undoubtedly have succeeded in finding that which I sought; but such was destined ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... head. As there was no talk of raising wages in proportion, this arrangement was equivalent to a cut of twelve cents per week and the girls rebelled and went out on strike to the number of twenty-five hundred. In all probability, however, it was not only the enforced lessening of their wages, but some of the many irritating conditions as well that always attend any plan of living-in, whether the employe be a mill girl, a department-store clerk or a domestic servant, that goaded the girls on, for ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... application of high heat, acetylene is injured by such treatment. It is partly converted, by high heat, into other compounds, thus lessening the actual quantity of the gas, wasting it and polluting the rest by the introduction of substances which do not belong there. These compounds remain in part with the gas, causing it to burn with a persistent ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... child, it must be that your grief for your wife's death has come back. Instead of lessening with time, your loneliness grows worse, and you absolutely must do what your father-in-law very wisely advised, ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... helpless with it in her hand. Her brain reeled; she tried to fight the madness off; but before Lapham came back the second morning, it had become, with lessening intervals of sanity and release, a demoniacal possession. She passed the night without sleep, without rest, in the frenzy of the cruellest of the passions, which covers with shame the unhappy soul it possesses, and murderously ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... consequence. Many a wretch who has done less mischief than "these utterers of forged tales, coiners of scandal and clippers of reputation," has had his liberty restricted. But a small and an annually lessening proportion of our population suffers from malaria, and yet all have the renown of an annual attack! In that case the writer ought to have had twenty-five attacks, and thousands of others, lusty and toneful fellows, forty and forty-five attacks. With as much claim ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... sun for 4 days, and shaken from time to time. It is then strained and given in doses of 4-5 glassfuls a day, at the same time with refreshing and emollient drinks, and prolonged tepid baths. At first this preparation exerts a purgative action, but later acts upon the urinary organs, rapidly lessening the suppurative process in urethritis. The bark may also be associated with wine or beer, in the proportion of 30 grains to the liter, the dose being 2-4 small cupfuls a day and Dr. Grosourdy employs the extract of the bark in doses aggregating 0.20-0.25 gram a day, gradually ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... to the matter of lessening the burden of taxes. The amount of taxation now levied may be taken in round numbers at L17,000,000, nine millions of which are appropriated to the payment of interest on the national debt, and eight millions to the ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... you personally?" said Theydon, racking his wits for some means of lessening the girl's foreboding without tickling the ears of the other people in the compartment by suggesting that she might have been brought from her home by some cruel ruse ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... Marguerite could not understand her father, and her father could not understand either his daughter or George. Never could they understand! He alone understood. And his understanding gave him a melancholy, hopeless feeling of superiority, without at all lessening the strange conviction of guilt. He had got himself gripped by destiny. Destiny had captured all three of them. But not the fourth. The charwoman possessed the mysterious power to defy destiny. Perhaps the power lay in her simplicity.... ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... exercise, he crept back into his recess to await the possibility of some cessation of the storm. Busied with anxious thoughts, he failed to notice the gradual lessening of the snow-flakes and the lull in the wind beyond the rocks. It was only when the moon shone out clearly once more that he perceived that the storm ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... belief changed, and the necessity for free speech was laid upon him, he ceased to disguise his real feelings and became even too out-spoken, the tendency strengthening year by year, and doing much to diminish his popularity, though his qualities were too sterling to allow any lessening of real honor and respect. But he was still the courtier, and untitled as he was, prestige enough came with him to make his marriage to "a gentlewoman whose Extract and Estate were Considerable," a very easy matter, and ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... went along for a month,—Mrs. Eppingwell striving to withhold the man from the Greek dancer's blandishments against the time of Flossie's coming; Flossie lessening the miles each day on the dreary trail; Freda pitting her strength against the model-woman; the model-woman straining every nerve to land the prize; and the man moving through it all like a flying shuttle, very proud of ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... heaps on the breast of the reckless offender. What was the most grievous of all, his power to shake off this dead weight was diminished in precisely the same proportion as the burthen was increased, the moral force of every man lessening in a very just ratio to the magnitude of his delinquencies. Bitterly did this deep offender struggle with his conscience, and little did his half-unsexed wife know how to console or aid him. Jack had been superficially instructed ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... of the prevention of pregnancy by chemical, mechanical, or other artificial means, is being widely advocated as a sure method of lessening poverty and of increasing the physical and mental health of the nation. It is, therefore, advisable to examine these claims and the grounds on which they are based. The following investigation will prove that the propaganda throughout Western Europe and ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... may have put in, and give them so much the better chance. There is no revised Bible; there is only a revised version. Readers sometimes feel disturbed at what they consider the changes made in the Bible. The fact is, the revision which deserves the name is lessening the changes in the Bible; it is giving us the Bible as it actually was and taking from us elements which were not part of it. One can sympathize with the eloquent Dr. Storrs, who declared, in an address in ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... west to the blare of the sunset. Blue Mountains tumbled away in lessening ranges—beyond was Craterville, and he must go there today. That was the world to him just then. And something new passed through Terry. The world was below him; it lay at his feet with its hopes and its battles. And he was strong for the test. He ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... that he had passed through every phase of indignation, jealousy, and consuming fear that can assail a young and undisciplined lover, he nevertheless watched for the incoming train with a rapture undimmed by disturbing reflections. The mere fact that every moment the distance was lessening between him and Eleanor, that within the hour he should see her, hear her, feel the clasp of her hand, was sufficient to send his spirits soaring into sunny spaces of confidence far above ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... exclusively to the acquisition of wealth, above all, too much confined in our political feelings to local and state objects. The war has renewed the national feelings and character which the Revolution had given, and which were daily lessening. The people are now more American. They feel and act more as a nation. And I hope that the permanency of the Union is thereby ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... Zeke intently from its red eyes. But it did not growl. It was plain that the bull-terrier was thinking deeply, and that Zeke was the center around which thought revolved. But, if the dog did not growl, its mistress showed no lessening of hostility. She explained succinctly to the ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... your pulling up the sluices of universal stupidity?' My suggestion, however, is intended to benefit them by clearing away the rubbish, and inducing a clearer and deeper stream for the turning of their mills. At the same time I confess that the lessening of Paterfamilias's difficulties is my main object. What I would open his eyes to is the fact that a calling, of the advantages of which he has no knowledge, does present itself to clever Jack, which will cost him nothing but ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... bed of the sea. Deltas form at the mouths of rivers by this action; the basin of the ocean is gradually elevated, and, in addition, islands and archipelagos are raised from its bed. The surface of the sea is for the present lessening under the influence of these causes, but the time must come, unless it be prevented by some catastrophe, when the ocean must in its turn encroach upon the land, when the plains and valleys shall become bays and gulfs, or even unite in continuous ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the medical testimony against alcohol, and also the one on "The Growth and Power of Appetite." They will see that it is impossible for a man to use alcoholic drinks regularly without laying the foundation for both physical and mental diseases, and, at the same time, lessening his power to make the best of himself in his life-work; while beyond this lies the awful risk of acquiring an appetite which may enslave, degrade and ruin him, body and soul, as it is degrading and ruining its tens ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... also more general and less buckrammed out with abstracts of particular works.[4] There appeared to me to be more than one reason for this, all such reasons being independent of, though by no means ignoring, the mechanical pressure of ever-lessening space. In the first place, a very much larger number of readers may be presumed to be more or less familiar with the subjects of discussion, thus not only making elaborate "statement of case" and production of supporting evidence unnecessary, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... between banks are drawn closer, gold movements will tend to decrease, seem hardly to be borne out by the figures of the table given above. Banks here and banks abroad are working together in a way unknown ten or even five years ago, but as yet there are no signs of any lessening in the inward or outward movement of specie. More liberal granting of international credits, increased international loaning operations, far from putting an end to the physical movement of gold in large quantities,—these are influences tending to ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher
... time the Plantagenct and le Temeraire were little more than a mile apart, each minute lessening this distance. The latter ship was struggling along, her bows plunging into the seas to the hawse-holes, while the former had a swift, easy motion through the troughs, and along the summits of the waves, her flattened sails aiding in steadying ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... passionate ways in her serene presence, and loosened his grasp of his wife, and she ran away; ran into her mother's empty room, as to a solitary place, and there burst into that sobbing, miserable crying which we instinctively know is too surely lessening the length of our days on earth to be ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... illustration, would be extremely difficult. The more probable result of the long-continued destruction of the more brightly-coloured females, supposing the equal form of transmission to prevail, would be the lessening or annihilation of the bright colours of the males, owing to their continual crossing with the duller females. It would be tedious to follow out all the other possible results; but I may remind the reader that if sexually-limited variations in brightness occurred in the females, even ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... 'Death is that by which the world is assailed. Decrepitude encompasses it. Those irresistible things that come and go away are the nights (that are continually lessening the period of human life). When I know that Death tarries for none (but approaches steadily towards every creature), how can I pass my time without covering myself with the garb of knowledge?[514] When each succeeding night passing away lessens the allotted period of one's existence, the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... against the luxurious padding of the Burnside carriage, resting and drinking in the refreshing sense of coolness caused more by the motion than by a greatly lowered temperature, for the evening was very warm. Presently, however, as they left the city and turned out upon a country road, the lessening heat and freer stirring of the air became ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... persons. It must be noticed, that all punishments were to be executed by a civil officer, a sort of public executioner, that they might be considered as punishments by the state. Thus he kept up discipline on the plantations, without lessening authority on the one hand, and without invading the liberty ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... acting Pasha has made the Tuaricks a present of some burnouses. This, whilst lessening perhaps the comparative value of what we have given, at any rate lays the chief under some obligations to the Turks, and assists in making up a good round sum in payment for the trouble of coming all the way from Ghat ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... lessening of the heat told of coming evening. A little water arrived and was distributed in small potions. Mac was conscious that those who came periodically to the hollow to do for the wounded all that lay in their power were performing fine actions of self-sacrifice. ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... so he put off his helm and drank of the stream and washed his face and his hands therein, and then did on his helm again and turned back again toward the wood, feeling very strong and merry; and he looked out seaward and saw the Ship of the Isle of Ransom lessening fast; for a little land wind had arisen and they had spread their sails to it; and he laid down on the grass till the four folk of the country came out of the wood again, after they had been gone somewhat less than an hour, but the Sea- eagle was not with them: and Hallblithe rose up and turned ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... thunderbolt racked the heavens, and as it boomed away in lessening power Madeline reflected with surprise upon Stewart's answer. Something in his face had made her ask him what she considered a foolish question. His reply amazed her. She loved a storm. Why should he fear it—he, with whom she could ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... the stream begins to flow, although its way may lead through basins and down steep descents. The successive profiles to which it reduces its bed are illustrated in Figure 51. As the gradient, or rate of descent of its bed, is lowered, the velocity of the river is decreased until its lessening energy is wholly consumed in carrying its load and it can no longer erode its bed. The river is now AT GRADE, and its capacity is just equal to its load. If now its load is increased the stream deposits, and thus builds up, or AGGRADES, its bed. On the other hand, if its load is diminished it ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... of quarrel. Still it is perfect happiness compared with that I then held. In the former case, there are certain circumstances that favour the chances of safety. You know that you are en profile to your antagonist—thus lessening the danger of being hit. Judging by yourself, you feel assured that the aim taken will be quick and unsteady, and the shot a random one. You are conscious of possessing the capability of motion—that whether you may feel inclined to give way to it or not, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... had therefore another evening by ourselves. I asked Johnson, whether a man's[1320] being forward to make himself known to eminent people, and seeing as much of life, and getting as much information as he could in every way, was not yet lessening himself by his forwardness. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; a man always makes himself greater as ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... for the men of Abi were a multitude, and the royal guard but very few. Slowly, an ever-lessening band, they were pressed back, first to the walls of the old temple of Sekhet, and then within its outer court. Now all who were left of them, not fifty men under the command of Mermes, strove to hold the gate. ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... exciting process. Thus it is found that as measured by the increase in strength of the hand grip under the stimulation of the respective colors, red has particularly exciting qualities, but the other colors have an analogous effect, lessening, however, with the descent from red to violet. The pleasure in bright red, or yellow, for instance, may thus well be the feeling-tone arising in the purely physiological effect of the color. If red works ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... the hands of man. It may indeed be questioned whether the increased strength over matter thus given to man compensates for the ill effects of forcing people to work in crowds; of destroying small and pampering large capitalists, of lessening the distribution of wealth even by the very means which increases ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... of port, freighted with mother love and religious blessings. To anxious eyes that watched their departure, their white sails, lessening in the distance, wafted back messages of hope and assurance. At the dawn of another day the last speck had disappeared, and the blue waves of the Mediterranean rolled tranquilly, as if jealously guarding the secrets ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... I had no doubts. It seemed at the moment that my father had acted wisely in leaving his Iowa farm in order to claim his share of Uncle Sam's rapidly-lessening unclaimed land. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... an increase in hours, a deterioration of labor conditions mean wholesale moral as well as economic degeneration, and the needless sacrifice of human lives and human happiness, while a rise of wages, a lessening of hours, a bettering of conditions, mean an intellectual, moral and social uplift of millions of American men and women. There are employers to-day who, like the great coal operators, speak as though they were lords of these ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... again. The peal died away in a series of lessening tinkles, but there was no other ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... artificial atmosphere of the stage the true sentiment of life vanished at once. He still loved the wife, but detested the singer. She realized it, and as one nurses an invalid, watched the sad mania. At first she thought of lessening her success, of making a sparing use and not giving the full power of her voice and talent; but her resolutions like those of her husband could not withstand the glare of the footlights. Her talent, almost unconsciously, overstepped ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... feeling. Let him go straining his eyes examining every dark spot in a circumference many long miles in extent. Let him gallop a couple of miles in this direction and the other, and discover that he has only been lessening the distance between himself and a group of cabbage-trees; let him feel the word "bullock" eating itself in indelible characters into his heart, and he will refrain from mercy to working bullocks as long as he lives. But as ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... Steinways made rapid progress. The tide of California gold was flowing in, and every day some one was getting rich enough to treat his family to a new piano. It was the Messrs. Steinway who chiefly supplied the new demand, without lessening by one instrument a month the business of older houses. Various improvements in the framing and mechanism of the piano have been invented and introduced by them; and, while some members of the family have superintended ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... again the girl mechanically clutched the suit-case, as presenting the most difficult item in the problem of transportation, and this time the shriek was not an idle formality. The train slowed down; the uneasy sleepers behind the green-striped curtains stirred restlessly with the lessening motion of their uncouth cradle. The porter came to help her, with the chastened mien of one whose hopes of largess are small, the lady with the barnacles called after her redundant farewells, and a moment later Miss Carmichael was ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... a single instant to shift his glance. I had forgotten that, and in that short interval when I focused my camera the lion had seen I meant him no harm, or feared him, and he had risen. Even then in desperate lessening ambition for a great picture I attempted to take one, still keeping my ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... love and confidence in heaven were strong in the bosoms of young Marion and his Louisa, yet could they not suppress the workings of nature, which would indulge her sorrows when looking back on the lessening shores; they beheld dwindled to a point and trembling in the misty sky, that glorious land, at once their own cradle and ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... lessening his gait, Drake turned half round in his saddle and pointed his revolver. Saunders heard the click of the hammer as it was cocked. Drake's demoniacal face in the white light had the greenish luster of a corpse—a corpse waking to life and grim purpose. "Fall back or I'll kill you!" he swore from ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... them, when I learned the advantages that might arise from it. At first I yoked myself to the plough, and Mrs Reichardt held it: this proved such hard and awkward work, that I kept projecting all sorts of plans for lessening the labour—the best was that of yoking our calves, and making them pull instead of myself. This was more easily thought of than done. The animals did not prove very apt pupils, but in course of time, with a good deal of patience, and some manoeuvring, I ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... no civil magistrate could be found under whose directions they might act; and they could be considered only as having a tendency to keep the inhabitants in some degree of awe, and even this was every day lessening; and the affronts the troops received were such that there was no avoiding quarrels and slaughter." Still he hesitated substantially to retract his word; for now a request from him, he knew, was equivalent to an order; and before he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... lessening the awe of the judgments of God, and the reverence to his providence, which ought always to be on our minds on such occasions as these. Doubtless the visitation itself is a stroke from Heaven upon a city, or country, ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... his shoulders, shouted to Lavrushka to follow with the things, and—now slipping in the mud, now splashing right through it—set off with Ilyin in the lessening rain and the darkness that was occasionally ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... diameter by 380 feet yearly would just suffice to cover the present rate of emission, and would for ages remain imperceptible with our means of observation, since, after the lapse of 6,000 years, the lessening of angular size would scarcely amount to one second.[1158] But the process, though not terminated, is strictly a terminable one. In less than five million years, the sun will have contracted to half its present bulk. In seven million more, it will be as dense ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... embarrassment of manner, revealed it. Encouraged by this air, even while he was secretly vexed by it, and perfectly unable to do justice to the dignity of mind which gave something of majesty rather than humiliation to misfortune, Crauford resolved to repeat his visit, and by intervals, gradually lessening, renewed it, till acquaintance seemed, though little tinctured, at least on Glendower's side, by friendship, to assume the semblance of intimacy. It was true, however, that he had something to struggle against in Glendower's manner, which certainly grew colder in proportion ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... can take into account must be all of a very plain and intelligible character. It would not do to recognize anything like a graduated scale of responsibility. A very bad training in youth would be in a certain limited sense regarded as lessening the guilt of any wrong thing done; and you may remember, accordingly, how that magnanimous monarch, Charles II., urged to the Scotch lords, in extenuation of the wrong things he had done, that his father had given him a very bad education. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... possible at that moment, Elizabeth could have slipped quickly behind the binder and passed outside the ring the charging animals were making, but as it was, she simply ran blindly back once more to another and more dangerous point inside their lessening orbit. One more such run and both mother ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... followed his adversary's movement with a corresponding turn of his own body, keeping the rhinoceros still full in front of him. The movements of the two animals gradually quickened, but it presently became apparent to the onlookers that the rhinoceros was slowly lessening the distance between himself and his enemy. Then suddenly, with a furious squeal, the rhinoceros dashed straight in, with lowered head, aiming for the elephant's chest, between his fore legs. The thud, as the two bodies ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... perilous haste, eager to catch one glimpse of you from the top: the stones rolled from under my feet, the ivy branches I grasped gave way, the child clung round my neck in terror, and almost strangled me; at last I gained the summit. I saw you like a speck on a white track, lessening every moment. The blast blew so strong I could not stand. I sat down on the narrow ledge; I hushed the scared infant in my lap: you turned an angle of the road: I bent forward to take a last look; the wall crumbled; I was shaken; the child rolled from ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... October, 1882) and by Mr. Harrison (The Contemporary Review for October, 1883). Doubtless they have committed plenty of follies, and are still capable of stupid tyrannies that only succeed in handicapping labor, in alienating capital, and in checking productivity—that is, in lessening the sum total of divisible wealth. Such actions are inevitable in the early stages of combination on the part of uneducated men, feeling a new sense of power, and striking blindly out in angry retaliation for ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... himself devoutly and bowing his head as he joined the long, never-ending procession: like a phantom vision it swept through the mists—each dark figure bearing its torch—as if it were the soul of him above his head, casting a ghostly reflection, in lessening rays, down through the blackness—gliding in air across the water, over the arch of the bridge which was all but invisible in the darkness—and down through the narrow rio to the Church of the Sant'Apostolli—the weird ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... life that carries me From where thy true heart dwells, Waves of my thoughts and memories turn to thee With lessening farewells; ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... to relieve Mr. Collins's mind as to his work. Happily he recovered sufficiently to make an end to his own story without any help; but the true friendship and kindness which suggested the offer were none the less appreciated, and may, very likely, by lessening his anxiety, have helped to restore his health. At the end of October in this year, Charles Dickens, accompanied by his daughter and sister-in-law, went to reside for a couple of months in Paris, taking an apartment in the Rue du ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... moment stayed the fairy there: He kissed the beach and breathed a prayer; Then spread his wings of gilded blue, And on to the elfin court he flew. As ever ye saw a bubble rise, And shine with a thousand changing dyes, Till, lessening far, through ether driven, It mingles with the hues of heaven; As, at the glimpse of morning pale, The lance-fly spreads his silken sail And gleams with bleedings soft and bright Till lost in the shades of fading night; So rose from earth ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... George sent two or three times a day to enquire of the health of his countryman, as he was pleased to call him, and gave him many other tokens how greatly he was in his favour; but all the civilities he received were not capable of lessening the anguish of his mind, which kept his body so weak, that tho' youth and an excellent constitution threw off the fever in a short time, yet he was unable to quit his chamber in near three weeks, and when he did, appeared so wan and so dejected, that he ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... believed that the invention of many beneficent forms of mechanical power would in time, if not in the very near future, supplant the use of animals as a motive power. The fact seems to be, however, that they merely augment man's resources and increase his opportunities without lessening his need ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... sent A winged messenger whose flight Thro' the clear, roseate element, She watched till lessening out of sight Far to the golden West it went, Wafting to him, her distant love, A missive in that language wrought Which flowers can speak when aptly wove, Each hue a ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... he should return to it covered with renown; that his name would become the boast and the glory of his native place; that his ashes would be religiously guarded as its most precious treasure; and that its lessening spire, on which his eyes were fixed with tearful contemplation, would one day become the beacon, towering amidst the gentle landscape, to guide the literary pilgrim of ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... trying to benefit their condition have been few, but the people themselves have spread the teachings they have received, and the seed has fallen on fertile ground. It is true there is yet much of the old superstition of the past, but it has had its day and is gradually lessening its hold on ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... side of this question, let us show how these things affect one's success in life by sapping the energies, weakening the nature, lowering one's standards, blurring one's ideals, discouraging one's ambition, and lessening ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Splendid" (1898) and "Gillian the Dreamer" (1899) and "The Children of Tempest" (1903) he reveals an intimacy with Highland life such as informs the writing of no other novelist of our day. Of recent years Mr. Munro has wandered farther afield than his native Argyll, and, I feel, to the lessening of the beauty of his writing. In the Isle of Man, T.E. Brown had been striving for years to put into his stories in verse the fast-decaying Celtic life of his country, but even with his example and with all that has been done since the Renaissance began, in the preservation of Manx folk-lore ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... left in India only two years before. To this they answered, thinking he meant it as a reflection on his predecessor, "That the men were the same, but the governor was changed; and that this was the fruit of lessening their pay, to enable him to give gratuities to those who knew better how to beg favours than to deserve them." De Sousa retired to the ships for the night, but landed next day, when he utterly destroyed the city and surrounding country with fire and sword, and made all the woods be cut ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... sometimes entertained, and the question is sometimes asked, May not adherence to this principle of helpfulness and service become mere sentimentalism? or still more, may it not be the means of lessening another's sense of self-dependence, and thus may it not at times do more harm than good? In reply let it be said: If the love which impels it be a selfish love, or a weak sentimental ism, or an effort at show, or devoid of good common ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... the lessening cordiality of her hostess's manner, Katharine hid her feeling behind an added flippancy, as she tossed her palms outward, in a manner wholly natural to herself, but which the house-mistress again fancied an affectation, ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... it was in vain to urge the stratagem any further, and he retired from the presence of the shepherdess in silence. If he had been able to distract her ingenuous mind between contending duties, he had not however succeeded in his principal object, that of undermining her virtue, and lessening her attachment to her parents and her lover. If Imogen were perplexed and confounded, Roderic was scarcely more happy. He looked back upon the scene with mortification and astonishment. It was difficult ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... water monster—they know none else. And now, as I say, they bellow like beasts, each man ravenously eager to be among the number chosen to earn a few cash.[D] The arrangement at last is made, and the discordant hubbub, instead of lessening, grows more and more deafening. It is a miserable, desperate, wholly panic-stricken crowd that then harnesses up with their great hooks joined to a rough waist-belt, with which they connect themselves to ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... sounds are heard no more, The springs are silent in the sun; The rivers, by the blackened shore, With lessening current run; The realm our tribes are crushed to get May be a ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... really hold. But such baseness of soul is too far from him. Without for a moment imposing on Julie, such dissimulation would only have been a new torment to her. The good faith, the frankness, the union of heart, that console for so many troubles, would have been eclipsed between them. Was it by lessening his wife's esteem for him that he could reassure her? Instead of using any disguise, he tells her sincerely what he thinks, but he says it in so simple ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... straightforward, quiet wife, had been for several years gradually coming to the opinion she had just expressed, and the death of her eldest son had affected her deeply. The merchant, finding that he was not very good at consolation, soon changed the conversation; giving up the hope of lessening the mother's grief, or of bringing her to what he considered more rational views of the ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... hour with thee!—When sun is set, O, what can teach me to forget The thankless labours of the day; The hopes, the wishes, flung away: The increasing wants, and lessening gains, The master's pride, who scorns my pains?— One ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... state at this moment; from one end of the kingdom to the other there is a general collapse of industry. Those Members of this House not intimately acquainted with the trade and commerce of the country do not fully comprehend our position as to the diminution of employment and the lessening of wages. An increase in the cost of living is finding its way to the homes and hearts of a vast number of ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... passed. The many societies of Earth began to merge into a single superstate. But the pressure to conform, instead of lessening, grew more intense. The need was dictated by the continued explosive increase in population, and the many problems of unification across national and ethnic lines. Differences in opinion could be deadly; too many groups now had access ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... order. This, however, soon must, as in fact it soon did, pass away with the delusion that gave it birth. The habit of obedience to written law, inculcated by generations of respect for actual government able to enforce its authority, will persist for a long time, with an ever lessening power upon the imagination of the people; but there comes a time when the tradition is forgotten and the delusion exhausted. When men perceive that nothing is restraining them but their consent to be restrained, then at last there is ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... hard, trying to get his breath back. The hail was still pelting down, showing no signs of lessening. About five feet away, one of the dark gaps in the cliff showed wide and menacing, but at least, Bart thought, the hail couldn't come in there. He stooped and got hold of Ringg again. A pain like ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... he makes good poetry of it; and the poet of the Nibelungenlied is more than justified in this respect. By curtailing the beginning, cutting off the coda above mentioned altogether, and lessening the part and interest of Brynhild, he has lifted Kriemhild to a higher, a more thoroughly expounded, and a more poetical position, and has made her one of the greatest heroines of epic, if not the greatest in ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... observe in all of them neglect and imperfection,—all the trade-tricks which an unscrupulous jerry-builder then, as now, could be guilty of, in order to keep down the net cost and satisfy the natural parsimony of his patrons without lessening his own profits.* Where, however, the master-mason has not been hampered by being forced to work hastily or cheaply, he displays his conscientiousness, and the choice of materials, the regularity of the courses, and the homogeneousness ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... again dark. Pale outlines were fused in vague mist, and the gloom of infinite space closed about the vessel. The wall of night—that circular occlusion, that interior of a cylinder the diameter of which was lessening minute by minute—enveloped the Matutina, and, with the sinister deliberation of an encroaching iceberg, was drawing in dangerously. In the zenith nothing—a lid of fog closing down. It was as if the hooker were at the bottom of the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... brink of the water and examined it, but here it was still too deep for them to attempt its crossing. Then, directed by the shouts and motions of the Kaffir Tom and Mr. Dove, they proceeded up stream for several hundred yards, till they came to a rapid where the lessening flood ran thinly over a ridge of rock, and after investigation, proceeded to try its passage hand in hand. It proved difficult but not dangerous, for when they came near to the further side where ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... careful reading of the MS. suggests that, either the sun is traveling on an orbit of great eccentricity, or else that it was approaching the green star on a lessening orbit. And at this moment, I conceive it to be finally torn directly from its oblique course, by the gravitational ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... affectionate terms, thanked both houses for the repeated proofs they had given of their zealous attachment and loyalty to his person and government. He enumerated the salutary measures they had taken for lessening the national debt, and augmenting the public credit, extending navigation and commerce, reforming the morals of the people, and improving the regulations of civil economy. He concluded with declaring, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... government is 'deconcentrated,' that is, the country is divided into districts (which may or may not be coincident with the areas of local self-government), in each of which there is a delegation of the central authority, doing its work, and thereby lessening the pressure upon the departmental offices in Berlin. Something like this deconcentration is found in the educational organization of France, and also in the office of the Prefect, but it is far more elaborate, and the machinery much more complex, in Prussia. Thirdly the comparative ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... that had fallen, and the lessening shouts of the pursuers, told them that they had won, and ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... are inserted; they are rods of iron forged at the top something like a narrow shallow spoon. The bark from the trunk comes off in huge semi-cylinders almost large enough for a canoe. But that from the branches is best. You may mark how at the base the bark is two inches thick, lessening to a few lines on the topmost boughs. If it sticks a little, hammer it with the iron: it peels with a peculiar sound, and the juicy sap glistens white between. It is this that, drying in the sun, gives the barked tree its colour: in time the wood bleaches ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience. In a republic, the foundation of public order is the ever lessening habit of submission inherited from ancestors who, being truly governed, submitted because they had to. There are as many kinds of republics as there are graduations between the despotism whence they came and the anarchy whither ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Love's little spell, Hate's little strife, And then—farewell! How brief is life! Hope's lessening light With dreams is ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... least one-fourth of the estate; otherwise, one-half. The father always retained the right to disinherit, for certain reasons, in law. With this diminution of his rights over property went also a lessening of his powers over the bodies of his children. Diocletian forbade the selling of children, Constantine decreed that the father who exposed his new-born child should lose the patria potestas, and Valentinian punished such action with death. Among the ancient Gauls, in spite of the father's ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... certain of Jack's recovery. This good man used to exhibit as much moral elation at the prospect of a cure as an orthodox believer at that of a new convert: it was one more body gained from the Devil. He assured Lizzie that the change of scene and climate had already begun to tell: the fever was lessening, the worst symptoms disappearing. He answered Lizzie's reiterated desire to do something by directions to keep the house ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... supplies screened or otherwise covered so that flies can gain no access to them. This applies not only to homes but also to stores, restaurants, milk shops, and the like. Screening, of course, will have no effect in decreasing the number of flies, but at least it has the virtue of lessening the danger of ...
— The House Fly and How to Suppress It - U. S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 1408 • L. O. Howard and F. C. Bishopp
... wains, The thrasher humming from the farm near by, The prattling cricket's intermittent cry, The locust's rattle from the sultry lanes; Or in the shadow of some oaken spray, To watch, as through a mist of light and dreams, The far-off hay-fields, where the dusty teams Drive round and round the lessening squares of hay, And hear upon the wind, now loud, now low, With drowsy cadence half a summer's day, The clatter of the reapers ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... no seduction, almost very likely there is no stream, certainly very likely the height is penetrated, certainly certainly the target is cleaned. Come to sit, come to refuse, come to surround, come slowly and age is not lessening. The time which showed that was when there was no eclipse. All the time that resenting was removal all that time there was breadth. No breath is shadowed, no breath is paintaking and yet certainly what could be ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... smallest possible place in our calculations, by a careful avoidance of every condition which may place our crops at the mercy of that most uncertain of all things—the weather; and especially should this be the case, when the very means for lessening the element of chance in our calculations are the best means for increasing our crops, even in the ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... beautifully blended and mingled, is used for the tops of tables. Wooden ships are often "copper-bottomed"; that is, sheets of copper are nailed to that part of the hull which is under water in order to prevent barnacles from making their homes on it, and so lessening the ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... strangers had been gradually lessening the distance between the doctor and themselves, ever since Screw had left the room. The last words were barely out of his mouth, before they both sprang upon him, and pinioned ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... The rain was lessening. It fell on their heads more lightly; the wind was like soft wet kisses on their backs, as they tramped through Merrow, and up the lane ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... off for a week to find out if there were any thrills in surf-riding, and he had become wedded to it. He had been at it every day for a month and could not yet see any symptoms of the fascination lessening on him. ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... are connected, and by which they are introduced into the mind. And FIRST, it is certain by experience that when we look at a near OBJECT with both eyes, according as it approaches or recedes from us, we alter the disposition of our eyes, by lessening or widening the interval between the PUPILS. This disposition or turn of the eyes is attended with a sensation, which seems to me to be that which in this case brings the IDEA of greater or lesser distance into ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... state that, during the present winter, I have traversed the plains from the Red River to the Rocky Mountains without seeing even one solitary animal upon 1200 miles of prairie. The Indian is not slow to attribute this lessening of his principal food to the presence of the white and half-breed settlers, whose active competition for pemmican (valuable as supplying the transport service of the Hudson Bay Company) has led to this all but ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... propagate stones:" meaning that the mineralogist cannot circulate his treasures without injuring himself, but the botanist can multiply his specimens at will and add to the pleasures of others without lessening his own. ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... burst of cheers from the crowds, who now saw that the little line of scarlet-coated men was marching out of the filmy, grey cloud and lessening the distance ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... that the removal of the troops was in the Slowest order, insomuch that eleven days were spent in carrying the two Regiments to Castle Island, which had before landed in the Town in less than forty eight hours; yet in all this time, while the number of the Troops was daily lessening, not the least disorder was made by the inhabitants, tho' filled with a just indignation and horror at the blood of their fellow Citizens, so inhumanely spilt! And since their removal the Common Soldiers, have frequently and even daily come up to the Town for necessary provisions, ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... method of ship-building was common all along the northern coast of Europe for ages.[20] Nor were these coracles only used for coasting. As time went on, the Britons boldly struck straight across from Cornwall to the Continent, and both the Seine and the Loire became inlets for tin into Gaul, thus lessening the long land journey—not less than thirty days—which was required, as Polybius tells us, to convey it from the Straits of Dover to the Rhone. (This journey, it may be noted, was made not in wagons, as through ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... the Count, as he watched the fast lessening sails. "No, there is no treasure on this island save one, and that would be valueless ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... disease was decidedly increased; as cough, headache, and emaciation; and being of a scrofulous diathesis, was lessening my prospect ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... Mrs. Woodbourne, to tell her some horrible stories of hydrophobia; and Elizabeth, in hopes of lessening the impression such stories were likely to make on Mrs. Woodbourne's mind, listened also, sometimes not very courteously correcting evident exaggerations, and at others contradicting certain statements. At last, just as the subject, ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge |
