"Shrink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knows that I am belied. O father! dear, honoured father! do not look so sternly upon me. I have thought at times that you could read my heart with that searching gaze. Oh, read it now! It is bared for your inspection. I do not shrink from the investigation. Do not pronounce me guilty until you have sifted the matter thoroughly. Innocence is stronger than guilt. I never took the money. I know nothing about ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie
... information which he had obtained from William Roper, saw her and came out to her. He thought that she shrank a little at the sight of him, but assured himself that it must be fancy; surely there could be no reason why she should shrink from him. ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... corruption and oppression, succeed in averting a struggle to which no rational friend of liberty or of law can look forward without great apprehensions. There are those who will be contented with nothing but demolition; and there are those who shrink from all repair. There are innovators who long for a President and a National Convention; and there are bigots who, while cities larger and richer than the capitals of many great kingdoms are calling out for representatives to watch over their interests, select some hackneyed jobber in boroughs, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... into the flare of lanterns, a tall, slim, dark-faced youth, wearing dark sombrero, blouse and trousers. I collared him before any of the others could move, and I held the gun close enough to make him shrink. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... but speak a little quickly to her, she started and fixed two terrified eyes on him. She went less often to her friend Margaret Van Eyck, and was ill at her ease when there. Instead of meeting her warm old friend's caresses, she used to receive them passive and trembling, and sometimes almost shrink from them. But the most extraordinary thing was, she never would go outside her own house in daylight. When she went to Tergou it was after dusk, and she returned before daybreak. She would not even go to matins. At last Peter, unobservant as he was, noticed it, and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Having seen him conveyed to my bed, and leaving him in charge of my valet, I hastened towards the residence of the physician to the embassy. In doing this, I had to cross the Rue St Honore. But there my course was stopped. I shrink from alluding to those horrid scenes and times. The scene which there met my eyes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... others, which need not be separately learned. This thought took complete possession of me, and all at once I felt the ground beneath my feet. A ray of light had fallen upon the terrific giant dictionaries, and they began to shrink rapidly ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 5 • Various
... I feel myself placed in circumstances of great difficulty, and also of peculiar delicacy. The discharge, however, of a public duty, which devolves upon me as leading law officer of the Crown, forces me into a course which I cannot avoid, unless I should shrink from promoting and accomplishing the ends of public justice. In my position, and in the discharge of my solemn duties here to-day, I can recognize no man's rank, no man's wealth, nor the prestige of any man's name. So long as he stands at that bar, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... prospect the courage of youth sometimes flags. We are still serving our apprenticeship to life; we are new to the business, a kind of faint-heartedness overpowers us, and leaves us in an almost dazed condition of mind. We feel that we are helpless aliens in a strange country. At all ages we shrink back involuntarily from the unknown. And a young man is very much like the soldier who will walk up to the cannon's mouth, and is put to flight by a ghost. He hesitates among the maxims of the world. The rules of attack and of self-defence are alike unknown ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... Mary did not shrink from this ruffian's kiss; nor did she reply when poor old Jacob, who sat sobbing in a corner, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... do! I do think of her!" said the young man, in a voice of impassioned grief. "God bless her! God forever bless her! But not even for her dear sake must I shrink from duty. I honor her too much to live to offer her the dishonored hand of a craven. Tell her this, and tell her that my last earthly thought was hers. We shall meet ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... hills and lay the level plain of endless sand; so minute that, save with a powerful lens, you would never imagine the dust on your fingers to be more than dust. The thoughts of man are like these: each to him seems great in his day, but the ages roll, and they shrink till they become triturated dust, and you might, as it were, put a thousand on your thumb-nail. They are not shapeless dust for all that; they are organic, and they build and weld and grow together, till in the passage of time they will make a new earth and ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... affectionate action which I ask of you, the action of a brother kissing his sister. That's what you shrink from, Philippe." ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... the last the consideration of that possible outcoming of the war which is looked upon with most dread, both at the South and the North; from which both sections almost equally shrink as the possible issue; but which, nevertheless, may be forced on them by the logic of events, and that, too, at an earlier day than has been indicated by the expectations of either. While we write, the startling announcement is made from St. Louis that Major-General Fremont has been forced, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... I commend to you my brother: he is at ——, with Mr. Morton. If you can serve him, my mother's soul will watch over you as a guardian angel. As for me, I ask no help from any one: I go into the world and will carve out my own way. So much do I shrink from the thought of charity from others, that I do not believe I could bless you as I do now if your kindness to me did not close with the stone upon my mother's ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... slender white neck between the palms of his great hairy hands and caressed it. She did not shrink from his touch. ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... mournful sacrifice, the poor woman did not shrink from covering herself, even in the presence of the man she loved, with ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... slightly raised, a large, coarse visage peered under it, and the hoarse voice enquired mockingly: "How fares my bird? We will let a little light into its cage, if it will promise to sing no more. What says my hooded crow?" and a titanic and convulsive hug followed, causing her to shrink with pain, and revolt in disgust and horror; feelings which changed to mortal apprehension, when the same lascivious looking ruffian bade his now sole male companion ride on before. The latter made no answer, but dashed up ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... all kinds of visions round the grave of this young man, who, if he has now any feeling of the earth, must shrink with shame and disgust from the touch of the hand that could have written that impious sentence. These he classifies under names, the greater number as new we believe to poetry as strange to common ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... still, to follow the thought honestly, even at seven and sixty years my Lord had greater grace and charm than many a man not half his age. And with that new youth and tenderness in his eyes no woman could shrink from him, at least. And still it could not be true, for Fate herself had driven him to ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Tulliver had on her visiting costume. Maggie was frowning, and twisting her shoulders, that she might, if possible, shrink away from the prickliest of tuckers; while her mother was saying, "Don't, Maggie, my dear—don't look so ugly!" Tom's cheeks were looking very red against his best blue suit, in the pockets of which he ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous
... She seemed to shrink back into her veil. "Yes," she said, at length, "I will." Then, fearing she had been ungracious, she added: ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... Scraps, halting. "We will passical the classical and preserve what joy we have left. I haven't any nerves, thank goodness, but your music makes my cotton shrink." ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... efficient in the discharge of its duties; that the new law had conferred on them important rights, and corresponding duties necessarily devolved upon them; that I hoped and believed they would not shrink when so many influences were calling on them for noble and worthy action; that if they failed us now, the cause of equal rights would suffer at their hands, not only in our territory, but in every land where its advocates ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... accession allows Vietnam to take advantage of the phase-out of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, which eliminated quotas on textiles and clothing for WTO partners on 1 January 2005. Agriculture's share of economic output has continued to shrink, from about 25% in 2000 to less than 20% in 2007. Deep poverty, defined as a percent of the population living under $1 per day, has declined significantly and is now smaller than that of China, India, and the Philippines. Vietnam is working to create jobs to meet the challenge of a ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... 6. Passed some sea-weed and something that looked like the trunk of an old tree, but no birds; beginning to be afraid islands not there. To-day it was said to the captain, in the hearing of all, that some of the men would not shrink, when a man was dead, from using the flesh, though they would not kill. Horrible! God give us all full use of our reason, and spare us from such things! 'From plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he wanted to. She was the betrothed of James. In one month they were to be married! Dark and frowning were the clouds that gathered in their blackness over the mind of George, as he mused on what had been and what was to be. Should he tell her all? It was his duty. Should he shrink from the ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... an unruly set of boys, and I do not suppose the teacher was a hard man, though he led the life of an executioner, and seldom passed a day without inflicting pain that a fiend might shrink from giving. My boy lived in an anguish of fear lest somehow he should come under that rod of his; but he was rather fond of the teacher, and so were all the boys. The teacher took a real interest in their studies, and if he whipped them well, he taught ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... pistol from his pocket, and held it to my head. I lifted not my hand to turn aside the weapon. I did not shudder at the spectacle, or shrink from his approaching hand. With fingers clasped together, and eyes fixed upon the floor, I waited till his fury was exhausted. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... not, if Truth have yet Her seal on Fancy's promise set; If even a glimpse my eyes behold Of that imagined age of gold;— Alas, not yet one gleaming trace![1] Never did youth, who loved a face As sketched by some fond pencil's skill, And made by fancy lovelier still, Shrink back with more of sad surprise, When the live model met his eyes, Than I have felt, in sorrow felt, To find a dream on which I've dwelt From boyhood's hour, thus fade and flee At touch ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... evil, so that the evil unavoidably bulks large in your eyes; but if we were capable of laying before you all the good that is done, felt and said by the thousands of our true-hearted men-of-the-line, the evil that is mingled with them would shrink into comparative insignificance. ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... the old gray tower, The spectral owl doth dwell; Dull, hated, despised in the sunshine hour, But at dusk he's abroad and well! Not a bird of the forest e'er mates with him; All mock him outright by day; But at night, when the woods grow still and dim, The boldest will shrink away! ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... his throat awkwardly. He was feeling embarrassed at the unpleasantness of the duty which he had to perform, but it was a duty, and he did not intend to shrink from performing it. Ever since, gazing appreciatively through the drawing-room windows at the charming scene outside, he had caught sight of the unforgettable form of Billie, seated in her chair with the sketching-block on her knee, ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... his eyes, the darkness of the thicket, the dance on the mountain-top, the scenes by lonely shores, in green vineyards, by rocks and desert places, passed before him: a world before which the human soul seemed to shrink back and shudder. Villiers whirled over the remaining pages; he had seen enough, but the picture on the last leaf caught his eye, as he almost ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... hours were more, sometimes they were less, but always my energy was apt to slacken with the slackening of the day. I never found inspiration in the midnight oil and oceans of coffee. I have always wanted my solid eight hours of sleep, and would not shrink from nine or ten if they fitted in with a worker's life. Youth often gave me the courage I have not now to take up work again—a promised article, necessary reading, making notes, copying—at night. But youth never induced ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... in this case she did not shrink. Whatever difference there might be between her and Mrs. Wade there was not that difference. They met as one honourable woman meets another. Lady O'Gara was glad that ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... steel together; heaven to help, One man shall break, even on their own flood's verge, That iron bulk of battle; but thine eye That sees it now swell higher than sand or shore Haply shall see not when thine host shall shrink. ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... you have read is an imbecile embryo?'—'Your importunity, Mr. Trevor, and my desire to do you service have extorted an opinion from me. I must not shrink from the truth: in confirmation of what I have already said, I must add, that your composition is strong in language, but weak in argument.'—'Ha! Much declamation, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Union, but wittingly or unwittingly struck at the very foundations of society. His anxiety did not make him violent, as was the case with lesser men, but it convinced him of the necessity of strong measures, and he was not a man to shrink from vigorous action. He was quite prepared to do all that could be done to maintain the authority of the government, which he considered equivalent to the protection of society, and for this reason he approved of the Alien and ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... the gaoler's two servants entered, hauling in a tall man very genteelly dressed. As soon as Mr. Thornhill perceived the prisoner and Mr. Jenkinson, he seemed to shrink backward with terror, for this was the man whom he had put upon ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... get used to his utter oblivion of people's feelings, to the ferocious contempt with which he would look at those who got on his nerves, and make half-audible comments, just as he had commented on her own father when he and Count Rosek passed them, by the Schiller statue. She would visibly shrink at those remarks, though they were sometimes so excruciatingly funny that she had to laugh, and feel dreadful immediately after. She saw that he resented her shrinking; it seemed to excite him to run amuck the more. But she ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... should instruct the boys in this subject, and the mother or mistress the girls. Parents will then be able more easily to abandon their old and absurd prejudices, which they preserve, not so much because they attach any great importance to them, but because they shrink from the difficulty of explaining themselves to their children. We often see mothers, who would never have touched on the question with a child still ignorant of sexual matters, abandon the reserve hitherto observed in their language in the presence of ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... given. This means to "level" whatever piece of scenery it is. "Tie it off" is the way they direct that the lines be made fast to the pin-rail. In rainy or damp weather the ropes get longer; in dry they shrink; then it is necessary to "trim the drops," letting out the lines and tying them over before the performance. This is done under the direction of the master mechanic or stage carpenter. Often there is a counterweight or bag attached to the lines above the fly-gallery to help ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... love, to conceal an example, fraught with so much instruction, brought out into full display? In the exhibition here made, the inexperienced, in future, may learn a memorable lesson, and be taught to shrink from opium, as they would from a scorpion; which, before it destroys, invariably expels peace from the mind, and excites the worst species of conflict, that of setting a man at ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... your thoughtful courtesy and for this distinguished mark of your favor. Being well aware of my defects both as a thinker and a speaker, I shrink from such emergencies as this, but having known him so long and having been in a professional way associated with so many of his labors and his triumphs, I should fail in duty if I were not at least to try to ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... a nation, and which ranks in moral dignity and dramatic interest with the greatest scenes in history. When did a subject ever use a manlier freedom with his Sovereign? When did mere titular kingship more plainly shrink into insignificance in presence of the moral majesty vested in the spirit of a true man? No writer can afford to describe the scene in other words ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... not hurt you. No! to you I've made myself worse than the devil. Well, there is one who won't shrink from my company! By God! she's relentless. Oh, damn it! It's unutterably too much for flesh and blood to bear, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... than all promises. The Vienna Government is unable to give us anything we ask for. Our nation can never expect to get its liberty from those who at all times regarded it only as a subject of ruthless exploitations; and who even in the last moment do not shrink from any means to humiliate, starve and wipe out our nation and by cruel oppression to hurt us in our most sacred feelings. Our nation has nothing in common with those who are responsible for the horrors of this war. Therefore ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... should stab the man who was about to murder her father, I have no idea that she would like to look at the man she had stabbed. "O Jupiter, no blood!" is apt to be the instinct, I suspect, even in very villainous feminine natures, and those who are and those who are not cowards alike shrink from sights ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... writer will grudge a guinea for calm, unbought, unsuspected justice bestowed upon his brain-child. Let all those members of the tribunal, deciding by ballot, (here in an assembly where all are good, great, and honest, I shrink not from that word of evil omen,) judge, as far as possible, together and not separately, of all kinds of literature: I would not have poets sentencing all the poetry, historians all the history, novelists all the novels, and theologists all ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... questions to which I never have an answer. I have not had the courage to look myself through and through—to form a really bold and honest resolution. I am pusillanimous, I am a coward. I shrink from pain, I want to suffer as little as possible, I prefer to temporise, to hang back, to resort to subterfuges, to wilfully blind myself instead of courageously facing the risks of a ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... to heaven. But when they think of actually dying, they feel as if to go into the next world was to be turned out into the dark night, into an unknown land, away from house and home, and all they have known and loved; and so they shrink ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... through the Champs-Elysees, we paid a visit to Rastignac's hatter and tailor. Thanks to the 'Necklace,' my insignificant peace-footing was to end, and I made formidable preparations for a campaign. Henceforward I need not shrink from a contest with the spruce and fashionable young men who made Foedora's circle. I went home, locked myself in, and stood by my dormer window, outwardly calm enough, but in reality I bade a last good-bye to the roofs without. I began to live in the future, rehearsed my life drama, and discounted ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... his boy's frail body shrink, he saw a flush leap to his cheeks and fade, leaving them dead-white again. Then he looked into his son's eyes, and the hand with which he was groping for the cane stopped, poised in air. In those eyes there was something that no man could thrash. Scorn, anguish, pride, the knowledge ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... this is that, without a redistribution of seats, this is barely conceivable; and that, were it to take place, the Reichstag would promptly be dissolved for new elections on a narrower franchise. Bismarck himself contemplated this course, and his successors would not shrink from it. ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... quiet complacency, though, which passes for peace, and is like the remarkably clear red-and-white complexion which indicates disease. It will be noticed that the sufferers from this complacent spirit of so-called peace shrink from openness of any sort, from others or to others. They will put a disagreeable feeling out of sight with a rapidity which would seem to come from sheer fright lest they should see and acknowledge themselves in their true guise. Or they will acknowledge ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... that a cork may be inserted without breaking it. This flanging may be done in several ways. In any case the first operation is to cut the tube to a square end, and then heat this end so that the extreme sixteenth or eighth of an inch of it is soft and begins to shrink. The tube is of course rotated during this heating, which should take place in a flame of slightly greater diameter than the tube, if possible. The flange is now produced by expanding this softened part with some suitable tool. ...
— Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing • Francis C. Frary
... overflow the deep and solid skulls of my countrymen," said Wilkin Flammock. "Our Flemish courage is like our Flanders horses—the one needs the spur, and the other must have a taste of the winepot; but, credit me, father, they are of an enduring generation, and will not shrink in the washing.—But indeed, if I were to give the knaves a cup more than enough, it were not altogether amiss, since they are like to have a ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... they used to shrink before the eyes of the master, and appear afraid to meet him. They would go out of their way to avoid him, and never were willing to talk with him. They never liked to have him visit their houses; they looked on him as a spy, and always expected ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... encountering such gigantic obstacles by calling them insuperable. Many a commander had possessed the necessary supplies, tools, and rugged soldiers, but lacked the grit and resolution of Bonaparte, who did not shrink from mere difficulties, however great, but out of his very need made and mastered ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... had been in it a firm look, a calmness of strength. But now, at his last words, the strength seemed to shrink. It dwindled, it faded out of her, leaving her not collapsed, but cowering, like a woman who crouches down in a ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... shrink from realizing to myself what Nurse Bundle must have suffered whilst I was learning to ride. The novel exercise, the stimulus of risk, that "put new life into me," were to her so many daily grounds for the sad probability of ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a humble estimate of oneself in comparison with others, or with the demands of some undertaking. Modesty has also the specific meaning of a sensitive shrinking from anything indelicate. Shyness is a tendency to shrink from observation; timidity, a distinct fear of criticism, error, or failure. Reserve is the holding oneself aloof from others, or holding back one's feelings from expression, or one's affairs from communication to ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... careful, my dear, of his proper pride as of my own.—Understand I have no desire to circumscribe either your or his liberty of action unduly. But this house, all it contains, the garden, the very trees I see from these windows, are so knitted into the fabric of my past life that I shrink—with a queer sense of homelessness—from any thought of their passing into the occupation of strangers.—Childish, pitifully weak-minded no doubt, and therefore the more natural that one should crave a voice, thus in the disposition ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... love," said Dagoucin, "and am so still, and shall continue so as long as I live. But I am in such fear lest the manifestation of this love should impair its perfection, that I shrink from declaring it even to her from whom I would fain have the like affection. I dare not even think of it lest my eyes should reveal it, for the more I keep my flame secret and hidden, the more does my pleasure increase at knowing that my ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... close, politely, for a minute, and then stiffen and shrink away again when the soft ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... and George, abashed for the moment, went up to her, and she did not at all shrink from him. Now that he had made the advance he was at a loss what to do. The only thing that both perfectly understood, was to ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... lost friends before because of this. I don't blame them. There are times when I feel hardly friendly to myself because of it. Such a power has a bit of divinity in it—whether of a good or an evil divinity who shall say? And we mortals all shrink from too close contact ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... incarnation of honesty; but I can find excuses for myself when I desire them, I hug my personal esteem too close, and a thousand to one I am too great a coward at heart to tell myself the naked truth. You, on the other hand, are vacillating and ill at your ease. You shrink from the hards of life which I steer happily through. But you have no delusions with yourself, and the odds are that when the time comes you may choose the "high that proved too high" and ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... already endeared to the Prince and herself; and she found comfort in the counsels of that faithful minister and loyal man, who has left some slight record of her words. "She said she never shut her eyes to trials, but liked to look them in the face; she would never shrink from duty, but all was at present done mechanically; her highest ideas of purity and love were obtained from the Prince, and God could not be displeased with her love.... There was nothing morbid in her grief.... She said that the Prince always believed he was to die ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... with us at that moment, flung him out of our path with such goodwill that Master Lacy measured his length on the ground; and there we left him lying. Althea thanked Andrew warmly and cordially; but Andrew, who had been all glowing with just wrath at first, seemed to shrink into himself at ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... agony rang in his ears; and he saw himself afterward burying the bodies—partly eaten by the flames. Small icy drops broke out on his forehead. Though he was doing it for her, when it was done, Natalie could not but shrink from such a bloody wretch. It would part them forever. But it must ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Chinese coast it continues in uninterrupted succession of magnificent days, with hardly a break for three or four months; an invigorating breeze always blowing, the thermometer ranging between 50 deg. and 60 deg., a cloudless sky, the air perfectly dry, so that furniture and wood fittings shrink, and crack audibly. As rain does not fall during this favored season, the dust becomes objectionable; but that drawback does not extend to shipboard. The man must be unreasonable who doubts life being worth living ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... was a beautiful day, and it came to him that a beautiful day was a thing which nothing except death, sickness, or imprisonment could take from him—not even the ban of Canaan! Unforewarned, music sounded in his ears again; but he did not shrink from it now; this was not the circus band he had heard as he left the Square, but a melody like a far-away serenade at night, as of "the horns of elf-land faintly blowing"; and he closed his eyes with ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... in my mind—that we should prepare ourselves to do our duty. At whatever cost to our country or to ourselves, as individuals, this duty is laid upon us. It is the first, the immediate, the all-absorbing duty of every man, woman and child in Canada to make war. God help us not to shrink." ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... own pride. That you should see me disloyal to him in little things, such as this—" (she caught his hand again and caressed it with soft finger-tips) "—hurts me in my love for you, diminishes me, must diminish me in your eyes. I shrink from the thought that my disloyalty to him in this I do—" (she laid his hand against her cheek) "—gives you reason to pity him and ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... of expressing this opinion, and of admitting a candidate into the fraternity or of repulsing him from it, no Mason is permitted to shrink. In balloting on a petition, therefore, every member of the Lodge is expected to vote; nor can he be excused from the discharge of this important duty, except by the unanimous consent of his Brethren. All the members must, therefore, come up to the performance of this trust with firmness, ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... is as well that you all of you should hear my confession. Before I went to college, as a boy of eighteen, I was at a private tutor's and there, like Arthur, I became attached, or fancied I was attached, to a woman of a much lower degree and a greater age than my own. You shrink ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... poorly-dressed, grey- headed, awkward, amorphous—in short, a very strange-looking— little old man. At first glance it might have been thought that he was perpetually ashamed of something—that he had on his conscience something which always made him, as it were, bristle up and then shrink into himself. Such curious starts and grimaces did he indulge in that one was forced to conclude that he was scarcely in his right mind. On arriving, he would halt for a while by the window in the hall, as ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Les Deux Amis, this sketch should have borne the title of The Two Friends; but to take the name of this divine story would surely be a deed of violence, a profanation from which every true man of letters would shrink. The title ought to be borne alone and for ever by the fabulist's masterpiece, the revelation of his soul, and the record of his dreams; those three words were set once and for ever by the poet at the head of a page which is ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... soils, except pure sands, shrink, and occupy less space than when they are saturated with water. They shrink more or less, according to their composition, as will be seen by the following table of results obtained in ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak; They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... is clear, made up one of the finest spectacles of dramatic illumination that the stage has afforded. You saw the murderer's hideous exultation, and then, in an instant, as the single ray of red light from the setting sun streamed through the Gothic window and fell upon his evil head, you saw him shrink in abject fear, cowering in the shadow of his throne; and the dusky room was seemingly peopled with gliding spectres. That treatment was theatrical, but in no derogatory sense theatrical—for it comports with the great speech on conscience; not the ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... the eternal exception, then!" he answered, as they turned away. "It's not a creditable confession for a right-minded man: but I shrink from taking life, even in ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... which he saw men governed. That he should take the deepest interest in the goings-on of his time is part of his greatness; to suppose that he stopped at them, or that he subordinated to political objects or feelings all the other elements of his poem, is to shrink up that greatness into very narrow limits. Yet this has been done by men of mark and ability, by Italians, by men who read the Commedia in their own mother tongue. It has been maintained as a satisfactory account of it—maintained with great labor and pertinacious ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... was very warm and cosy sitting there, behind double casements, beside a glowing stove; but there had been times when, wrapped in costly furs and great sleigh-robes and generously fed, she had felt her flesh shrink from the cold of ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... hills will answer; Sigh, it is lost on the air; The echoes bound To a joyful sound, But shrink from ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... chosen to flatter. The quality we should prize is that rectitude which will shrink from no truth. Intimacies, which increase ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... the most admirable and the most skilfully drawn of Scott's women, is a daring contrast to the traditional heroine of romance. The "delicate distresses" of persecuted Emilies shrink into insignificance amid the tragedy and comedy of actual life portrayed in The Waverley Novels. The tyrannical marquises, vindictive stepmothers, dark-browed villains, scheming monks, chattering domestics and fierce banditti ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... drinking our blood. Nor, perhaps, without reason. We too would have done the same had the opportunity been afforded us. Since, however, the gods have thought proper to determine it otherwise, though I ought not to shrink from death, while I am free, while I am master of myself, I have it in my power, by a death not only honourable but mild, to escape the tortures and indignities which the enemy hope to inflict upon me. I will not see Appius Claudius ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... accusation which belittles the wisdom of age. The boys made it a point to humor him without taking him seriously. Honey pampered him and called him Poppy, while in Marian's chill courtesy, in her averted glances, Bud had read her dislike of Pop. He had seen her hand shrink away from contact with his hand when she set his coffee beside ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... foretelleth His death, and saith, "Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour: but for this cause came I" into the world "unto this hour"; as if He had said, My business is now not to shrink from My sufferings that are coming upon Me; for these are the things that are a great part of the conditions contracted in the covenant which stands between My Father and Me; therefore I shall not pray that this might be absolutely ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... distrust. She could not believe that he would wish her to marry William after he knew that she loved Paul; such a thought never crossed her mind. Yet, as she looked, a strange feeling of alarm which she did not comprehend swept over her, filling her with formless terror. Some instinct made her shrink, as if this wonderful string of pearls, which she had thought so beautiful a moment before, had turned into a cruel chain and was binding her fast. She did not know that many a weaker man has thus bound many a stronger woman with chains of gold and ropes of ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... the afternoon's experience opened a new world to her. It was the first time she had ever come in contact with the really poor and lowly of the earth, and she proved herself a true child of God in that she did not shrink from them because many of them were dirty and poorly clad. Before the first afternoon was over she had one baby in her arms and three others hanging about her chair with adoring glances. They could not talk in ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... they ran away in terror, leaving two hundred scythes in the field, which he seized. But a great calamity befel this Lion. He had an only son. When he first led the boy to the wars, he charged him never to shrink from the enemy, but to cut his way through the very midst. One day Guz Beg had ridden into the thick of the Russian soldiers, when suddenly a ball pierced his horse, and he was thrown headlong on the ground. There lay the Lion among the ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... our muscles. Those of the upper part of the body, you remember, spread out from the shoulder, in all directions, like a fan. Now if you hold the shoulder still, the muscles of the chest will shrink, the shoulders stoop, and the whole chest become ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... aware of his intention, he bent his lips close to her face, and whispered something, in swift sentences, that made her shrink from him with a sudden cry of mingled pain and dismay, and cover her ears with ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... distinction, Hell; and one final and absolute Heaven to men of every varying measure of goodness. Surely there is a great perplexity in this. No wonder if such beliefs lead men to dread the thought of death, of their own death, of the death of their friends. No mere physical repulsion makes us shrink, but rather the uncertainty and doubt ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... vanished suddenly from before him, and his own Veil that Blinds rose in darkening folds across his eyes. The Veil that Chokes swept across his mouth, and his turbulent voice was stilled. He began to shrink upward, to waver and fade, and presently he drifted helplessly into the great smoke dome and was swallowed ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... reigning beauties of the time, we shall endeavour to indulge the lovers of variety without sacrificing the fair fame of individuals, or attempting to make vice respectable. Pleasure is our pursuit, but we are accompanied up the flowery ascent by Contemplation and Reflection, two monitors that shrink back, like sensitive plants, as the thorns press upon them through the ambrosial beds of new-blown roses. In our record of the daughters of Pleasure, we shall only notice those who are distinguished as belles of ton—stars of the first magnitude in the hemisphere ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... would—Yes, it was all right! She was trying Nicky Viner's door now. It was unlocked, and as she opened it for the space of a crack, there showed a tiny chink of light, so faint and meager that it seemed to shrink timorously back again as though put to rout by the massed blackness—but it was enough to evidence the fact that Nicky Viner was at home. It was all simple enough now. Old Viner would undoubtedly make some exclamation at her sudden and stealthy entrance, but once she ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... and lamb have together lain down Spectators cry out, all in chorus; "The lamb doesn't shrink nor the lion frown— A miracle's ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... "I've known a many Jims. Some were good in their way, too." He seemed to shrink into himself suddenly—I can't explain it—but he seemed to shrink, like a cat crouched to spring, and his eyes burned and danced; they seemed to look right into me, horribly gleaming, till the whole man became, as it were, just two bright ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... their town to be the only one in the land which possessed such a work of art, and in order to prevent the maker from making another like it, they did not shrink from the vilest ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... were we to suffer a heavy defeat while France is without some great head to rally the nation and again show face to the Spaniards. At the same time, I may tell you at once, that in this matter I am heart and soul with Enghien. I consider that did we shrink from battle now, it would so encourage Spain and Austria that they would put such a force in the field as we could scarcely hope to oppose, while a victory would alter the whole position and show our enemies that French soldiers are equal ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... a call upon a good author, and in the pages of which he can gain neither honour nor renown, from which, as a matter of taste, he would shrink, under ordinary circumstances, from contributing to, that journal ought to be subjected to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... stranger, with energy, "when was I ever known to shrink from a duty? But 'judge not lest ye be judged,' and fancy not that it is given to mortal eyes to fathom the intentions of ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Government. As soon as a new crisis arises Mr. Wilson will, as usual, be in a fearful hurry and bring us to the brink of war. Whether such a crisis will be precipitated by the Sussex incident, and whether the President in that case will shrink from war at the last moment, it is difficult to foretell, as this question—like all others at the present moment—will be viewed exclusively from the standpoint of the ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... halted in front of that terrible silent line, while his men seemed to shrink somewhat as they, too, pulled up. Then he faced Thorleif as boldly as if he had the army of Wessex behind ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... across the school aisle. He divined the subject which she wished to discuss and dreaded the interview. The ethical side of the matter gave him no concern; but the same lack of stamina which caused him to shrink made it impossible for him ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... as was his own attitude towards the war to her. The effect of the war, in this result, was but to sunder them on a new dimension: whereas formerly he had learned not to join with her on subjects his feelings about which he had been taught to shrink from exposing before her, now the world contained but one subject; there was no choice and there was no upshot but clash of incompatibility. His feelings were daily forced to the ordeal; his ideas daily exasperated ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... "Well, that's what I shrink from, Bill. It's so horribly cold-blooded. Cayley may be capable of it, but I hate ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... they evidently distinguish, that the danger is greater when a man is armed with a gun. Every one has seen this, who in the spring of the year has walked under a rookery with a gun in his hand: the inhabitants of the trees rise on their wings, and scream to the unfledged young to shrink into their nests from the sight of the enemy. The vulgar observing this circumstance so uniformly to occur, assert ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... on the island; but they had killed two elk: these were valuable, as we are desirous of procuring the skins of that animal in order to cover the boat, as they are more strong and durable than those of the buffaloe, and do not shrink so much in drying. The party that went to the lower camp had one canoe and the baggage carried into the high plain to be ready in the morning, and then all who could make use of their feet had a dance on the green to the music of a violin. We have been unsuccessful in our attempt to catch ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... married, met him. Though she complained that she was slighted by the wrong of having a paramour put over her, yet, she said, it would be unworthy for her to hate him as an adulterer more than she loved him as a husband: nor would she so far shrink from her lord as to bring herself to hide in silence the guile which she knew was intended against him. For she had a son as a pledge of their marriage, and regard for him, if nothing else, must have ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... remembered that Norman Mann had once said: "If you ever do disappear I shall know where to look for you." Would he think of it now? Would he come for her? If he had only come last night, and would drive by now to Sorrento. He would be here soon if he had. Would she call him loudly or shrink down in the boat and hide her face in her hands till she knew he was a long way past? The rest of them would not know where to look for her. They did not know anything about Lisetta, and she had promised not to tell even the padrona. (Faithless Lisetta!) But ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... when He will. Or, to put away the two metaphors, and to come to the reality far greater than either of them, we can, whensoever we please, pass into the presence before which the splendours of an earthly monarch's court shrink into vulgarity, and attain to a real reception of the light that irradiates the true Holy Place, before which that which shone in the earthly shrine dwindles and darkens into a shadow. We may live with God, and in Him, and wrap a veil and 'privacy of glorious ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... done, steel jackets or sleeves would be put on, red-hot, and allowed to shrink. Then would come a winding of wire, to further strengthen the tube, and then more sleeves or jackets. In this way the gun would be ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... disentangle itself from the load which had been flung upon it—could not recover its healthiness of action amid the phantom sights and sounds which beset imagination. Again and again she must ask him for details—and shrink from the answers; must hide her eyes with the little moan that wrung his heart; and break out in ejaculations, as though of bewilderment, under a revelation ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... indulgent to me. But if to my own mind I inquire whether I should, at this time, be qualified to receive and derive any benefit from an opportunity which it may be in her power to procure for me, my own mind would shrink from the investigation. My heart is not conscious of an unworthy ambition; nor of a desire to establish either fame, honor, or fortune upon any other foundation than that of desert. But it is conscious, and the consideration is equally painful and humiliating, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... always finds the man, and by it we mean: that when a responsibility is toward there will be found some shoulder to bend for the yoke which all others shrink from. It is not always nor often the great ones of the earth who undertake these burdens—it is usually the good folk, that gentle hierarchy who swear allegiance to mournfulness and the under dog, as others dedicate ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... south and east, but slightly sloping to the westward. At its foot rolls the Paglia, one of those barren streams which swell in winter with the snows and rains of the Apennines, but which in summer-time shrink up, and leave bare beds of sand and pestilential canebrakes to stretch ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Roman father would have done. I acknowledge that I was hasty, that I proceeded to extremities without due reflection or examination. These admissions in the presence of your noble, self-sacrificing friends cost me dear, but, you observe that I do not shrink from them, notwithstanding the deep humiliation. I humbly ask your forgiveness and restore all I have taken from you. Again you are ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... regret the necessity for such labors; but no person who wishes the improvement of mankind, or is willing to aid the growth of the human intellect, in its high aspirations after truth, knowledge, and goodness, should shrink from a frank exposition of what he deems to be error, nor refuse his assistance, feeble tho it may be, in the ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... about herself? Her scruple might die—and if it should not, she was strong enough to hold it down, to keep her foot on its breast. Was her love so weak that it should shrink ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland |
