"Smallness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man did not seriously occur to me. His face was like the face of thousands of successful men whom we see daily in the great marts of the world. His forehead was broad but low, his eyes inclined to smallness and set closely together, his brows shaggy and overhanging: his cheeks were heavy, and the fleshy formation of his mouth and chin denoted both cruelty and sensuality. He was a wealthy man: such men are always rich. He had the reputation of holding an iron grip over everything he claimed, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... chains on his hands and feet. The house was finally abandoned, and advertised to be let or sold at an absurdly low price. The philosopher Athenodorus read the notice on his arrival in Athens, but the smallness of the sum asked aroused his suspicions. However, as soon as he heard the story he took the house. He had his bed placed in the front court, close to the main door, dismissed his slaves, and prepared to pass the night there, reading and writing, in order to ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... playing a wrong note or singing out of tune, she not only had no anxiety, for the thing's own sake, to have her accounts correct, but shrunk from every effort in that direction. Now I can perfectly understand her recoil from the whole affair, with her added dislike to the smallness of the thing required of her; but seeing she did begin with doing it after a fashion, it is not so easy to understand why, doing it, she should not make a consolation of doing it with absolute exactness. Not even her dread of her husband's ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... the port, pushed aside the curtain with his shoulders and looked out. The smallness of the opening made any hope of escape in that way impossible; nor could he expect to attract the attention of any one ashore. His view was limited to the east and north, a wide expanse of blue water, the ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... Brighton is still the Pavilion, which is indeed the town's symbol. On passing through its very numerous and fantastic rooms one is struck by their incredible smallness. Sidney Smith's jest (if it were his; I find Wilberforce, the Abolitionist, saying something similar) is still unimproved: "One would think that St. Paul's Cathedral had come to Brighton and pupped." Cobbett in his rough ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... fiction (we might say, with reference to the difficulties of this moment, begotten upon a cloud of fiction), could not be an image of a Nation like that of Spain, or an adequate instrument of their power for their ends. The Assembly, from the smallness of its numbers, must have wanted breadth of wing to extend itself and brood over Spain with a quickening touch of warmth every where. If also, as hath been mentioned, there was a want of experience to determine the judgment in choice of persons; this same smallness of numbers ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the natives reconciled themselves to the odd ways of the foreign settlers. The first thing that offended them was the exceeding smallness of the household bills. Three days out of the seven, indeed, both man and master dined on nothing else but the vegetables in the garden, and the fishes in the neighboring rill; when no trout could be caught they fried the minnows, (and certainly, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... solemn Covenant devotedness? Could resolutions to prosecute this be embodied so well as in a solemn Covenant engagement with God? In this manner might there not be made arrangements regarding missions, more solemn than has heretofore been attempted? To many causes may the comparative smallness of success that has attended these be attributed. But it is little less than certain, that it is on account of the want of that resolute heroic Christian spirit which Covenanting calls forth and embraces, that our missionaries are not even now diffused over all the earth, and our nation ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... reach of our sails than it swept us away by the back of the Isle of Wight, and, having in the night carried us by Christchurch and Peveral-point, brought us the next noon, Saturday, July 25, oft the island of Portland, so famous for the smallness and sweetness of its mutton, of which a leg seldom weighs four pounds. We would have bought a sheep, but our captain would not permit it; though he needed not have been in such a hurry, for presently the wind, I will not positively assert in resentment of his surliness, showed him ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... is oval in 4 men and 2 women, but owing to the general moderate prominence of the cheek-bones and the smallness of the chin, it becomes pentagonal (3 men) or even lozenge-shaped or triangular (2 men); 1 woman has a broad face and 1 man a somewhat square, while 2 men have long faces. Alveolar prognathism is noted in 1 case ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... the truthful old chronicler, Robert Knox, "are in great abundance in the woods, from the largeness of a cow to the smallness of a hare, for here is a creature in this land no bigger than the latter, though every part rightly resembleth a deer: it is called meminna, of a grey colour, with white spots and good meat."[1] The little creature which thus ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... of his presumed connection with the great novelist, he had no difficulty in disposing of, to an Edinburgh bookseller, for prices whose smallness alone should have excited suspicion, letters purporting to be in the handwriting of Sir Walter Scott. Emboldened by success, he embarked upon a wholesale manufacture of spurious letters bearing the signatures ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... he deserves. But custom requires that something should be said; it is a duty and a debt which we owe to ourselves and to mankind, not less than to his memory; and I hope his great soul, if it hath any knowledge of what is done here below, will not be offended at the smallness even ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... was persuaded that such a tent as he had asked for was beyond all possibility, was in great surprise at the prince's speedy return. He took the tent, but after he had admired its smallness, his amazement was so great that he could not recover himself when he had set it up in the great plain before-mentioned, and found it large enough to shelter an army twice as large as he could bring into the field. Regarding this excess in its dimension as what might ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... one's smallness and realize it, one need only go and stand beside the marble cherubs that support the holy-water basins against the first pillar. They look small, if not graceful; but they are of heroic size, and the bowls are as big as baths. Everything in the place is vast; ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... and joining issue with other inferior judges of character) has often succeeded in throwing a shade on their glorious actions and in casting a slur upon their reputation, like those little insects which from their number actually succeed, notwithstanding their smallness, in darkening the rays of the sun. What is worse, however, is, that when history has once been erroneously written, and a hero has been put forward in colors which are not real, the public actually becomes accessory to the deception practiced ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... house, so small that an Englishman would probably take it for a lodge of the great villa behind, whose garden trees at sunset cast their shadow over the cottage and its terrace on to the steep white road. But any of the country people could tell him that this, too, is Casa Signorile, spite of its smallness. It stands somewhat high above the road, a square, white house with a projecting roof, and with four green-shuttered windows overlooking the gay but narrow terrace. The beds under the windows would have fulfilled the fancy of that French poet who desired that in his garden one might, ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... and left me no power to determine whether he intended I should perish with famine, or linger out a long life in hopeless imprisonment. Whether the day was shut out by insuperable walls, or the darkness that surrounded me was owing to the night and to the smallness of those crannies through which daylight was to be ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... not conceal it from himself—Elizabeth appealed to him. Being built on a large scale himself, he had always been attracted by small women. There was a smallness, a daintiness, a liveliness about Elizabeth that was almost irresistible. She was so capable, so cheerful in spite of the fact that she was having a hard time. And then their minds seemed to blend so remarkably. There ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... it be said that (the passage does) not (refer to Brahman) on account of the smallness of the abode, and on account of the denotation of that (viz. minuteness of the being meditated on); we say no, because (Brahman) has thus to be meditated upon, and because (in the same passage) it is ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... The smallness of the boat rendered it necessary that I should open one of my portmanteaus, and take out a supply of clothes before it was sent away; while thus occupied, I found myself overlooked by two or three respectably-clad ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... either to cross the Balkans or to push forward operations against the uncaptured fortresses. Shumla and Silistria remained in the hands of their defenders, and the Russians, after suffering enormous losses in proportion to the smallness of their numbers, withdrew to Varna and the Danube, to resume the campaign in the spring of the following ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... developed some remarkable qualities and saltatory powers, which give it a lower kind of glory; and, compared with another parasite with which it shares the human species, it is almost a noble insect. Darwin has some remarks about the smallness of the brain of an ant, assuming that this insect possesses a very high intelligence, but I doubt very much that the ant, which moves in a groove, is mentally the superior of the unsocial flea. The last is certainly the most teachable; and if fleas were generally ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... threatened the envoy with condign punishment for daring to give such a message to the commander-in-chief at his headquarters in the midst of his army. Let him and his men forthwith lay down their arms. Dazed by the demand, and seeing only the victorious chief and not the smallness of his detachment, 4,000 Austrians surrendered to 1,200 French, or rather to the address and audacity of ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... laughed with those that laughed at him, his sisters saying: "Hail to the great Balzac!" On the part of his elders the bantering was intended to damp his exalted notions, which they regarded as ill-founded, judging him, as his Vendome professors, by the smallness of his Latin and Greek. His mother in particular had no faith in his prophecies nor yet in his occasional utterances of deeper things than his years warranted: "You certainly don't know what you are talking about," was her ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... trembling over the glittering surface which reflected them, the surrounding hills, and the death-like silence. I was both delighted and disappointed—delighted with the richness of the scenery, but disappointed at the smallness of the harbour. Can this little loch, imprisoned within natural ramparts of rocks, buried in the solitude of a forest, be the place which I hoped would become so famous, the great destiny of which has been prognosticated by ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... ants might have seemed to us more promising. Their smallness of size was not necessarily too much of a handicap. They could have made poison their weapon for the subjugation of rivals. And in these orderly insects there was obviously a capacity for labor, and co-operative labor at that, ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... hair, growing, as though drawn by a painter of the finest taste, around a well proportioned brow; her large, well opened eyes were of the same hue as her hair, and shone with a soft and piercing flame that rendered it impossible to gaze upon her steadily; the smallness, the shape, the turn of her mouth, and, the beauty of her teeth were incomparable; the position and the regular proportion of her nose added to her beauty such an air of dignity, as inspired a respect for her equal to the love that might be inspired by her beauty; ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Cumming, and the 2d Georgia Regiment, commanded by Colonel Holmes. The creek was comparatively straight by this bridge. He formed his regiments along the creek in more open order than was desirable on account of the smallness of his number. Subsequently the 50th Georgia, with scarcely 100 men, was placed under his command. Colonel Eubanks' battery was by order of General Longstreet placed in his rear. The enemy opened on his ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... hardiness in growing at low temperatures, its depth of root penetration, the availability of the seed, the smallness of the seed so that the weight required for the acre is not large, is to be favored for a cover crop. The objections are two: The fact that it does not seem to grow well under some conditions; second, that when a growth is made it is coarse and rangey, and the amount ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... heart was heavy, his soul sick within him. His home—so poor a home for him, and for all who called it by that sweet name—had never appeared a more miserable and homeless place. It was not the smallness nor the poverty of its furnishing which concerned him, but the human beings it sheltered, who lay a burden upon his heart. Liz was out of bed, crouching over the fire, with an old red shawl wrapped round her—a striking-looking figure in spite ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... his hotel, reflecting on the carelessness which had delivered him into the hands of an indefatigable imp of mischief. The upshot of his reflection was a resolve to press his wooing to an immediate conclusion. The next day and the day after, therefore, he redoubled his lamentations that the smallness of his means prevented him from going, as his natural honesty dictated, straight to Claire's father, and asking for her hand, and protested that he dare not risk the loss of her, which would work irreparable havoc in his life. It was only another step to suggest that, once they were married, ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... servant,—who at once acceded to our request to be permitted to see the house. We stepped from the porch immediately into the entrance-hall; and having the great Hall of Battle Abbey in my memory, and the ideal of a baronial hall in my mind, I was quite taken aback at the smallness and narrowness and lowness of this; which, however, is a very fine one, on its own little scale. In truth, it is not much more than a vestibule. The ceiling is carved; and every inch of the walls is covered with claymores, targets, and other ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Moors asserted he was left in the Indies for the sole purpose of removing the merchandize belonging to the Portuguese in the factory at Cochin to Cananor and Coulan, and not to defend him against the power of the zamorin; which he was even disposed to think were true, in consideration of the smallness of the fleet under his command. Pacheco felt indignant at the suspicion which the rajah entertained, and endeavoured to convince him that he had been imposed upon by the Moors out of enmity to the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... leaf-beetle found on Robinia pseudacacia. The chromosomes are comparatively few in number, 16 in the spermatogonia (figs. 58 and 59), and of immense size when one considers the smallness of the beetle. In some of the spermatogonial cysts many of the chromosomes are V-shaped as in figure 58, while in others all, with the exception of the small one, are rod-shaped as in figure 59, which looks like a hemipteran equatorial plate. ...
— Studies in Spermatogenesis - Part II • Nettie Maria Stevens
... admiration and respect followed, much parade and many speeches, mingled with witticisms over his size and her smallness. This lasted from five in the evening till after midnight, in rather mixed company. As time wore on, and the champagne continually flowed, many of the guests became boisterous and somewhat intrusive, and among ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... which is, Democritus, as against the Eleatics, maintained that this was not a unity, some one immovable, unchangeable existence, but an innumerable number of atoms, invisible by reason of their smallness, which career through empty space (that which is not), and by their union bring objects into being, by their separation bring these to destruction. The action of these atoms on each other depended on the ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... this inconvenience, divided his army, marching himself with one body to encounter the Volscians on their approach from without, and leaving Titus Lartius, one of the bravest Romans of his time, to command the other and continue the siege. Those within Corioli, despising now the smallness of their number, made a sally upon them, and prevailed at first, and pursued the Romans into their trenches. Here it was that Marcius, flying out with a slender company, and cutting those in pieces that first enraged him, obliged the other assailants to slacken ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Guidobaldo II. from the thickness of the wall, a cast of Raphael's skull, which will be studied with interest and veneration. It has the fineness of modelling combined with shapeliness of form and smallness of scale which is said to ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... that the buildings, with other peculiarities, had no doors, but that the great circular windows, which opened freely, gave the creatures egress and entrance. They would alight upon their tentacles, fold their wings to a smallness almost rod-like, and hop into the interior. But among them was a multitude of smaller-winged creatures, like great dragon-flies and moths and flying beetles, and across the greensward brilliantly-coloured gigantic ground-beetles crawled lazily to and ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... local signs of sexual perversity and excess. (Legludic, Notes et Observations de Medecine Legale, 1896, p. 95.) Matthews Duncan (Goulstonian Lectures on Sterility in Women, 1884, p. 97) was often struck by the smallness, and even imperfect development, of the external genitals of women who masturbate. Clara Barrus considers that there is no necessary connection between hypertrophy of the external female genital organs and masturbation, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of power. Through it all, behind it all, was man, governing and controlling, expressing himself, as of old, by his mastery over matter. It was colossal, stunning. White Fang was awed. Fear sat upon him. As in his cubhood he had been made to feel his smallness and puniness on the day he first came in from the Wild to the village of Grey Beaver, so now, in his full-grown stature and pride of strength, he was made to feel small and puny. And there were so many gods! He was made dizzy by the swarming of ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. But that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire. She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. So, striving to divert her thoughts, Emma determined now to see in this reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to please the eye, and she even smiled internally with disdainful pity when at the back ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... Richard Brooks was aware that this was the same girl whom he had glimpsed from the train. He had noted then her slenderness of outline, the grace and freedom of her pose; at closer range he saw her delicate smallness; the bloom on her cheek; the dusky softness of her hair; the length of her lashes; the sapphire deeps of her eyes. Yet it was not these charms which arrested his attention; it was, rather, a certain swift thought of her as superior to ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... of the smallness of human life, of human aims and efforts, of human emotions, was occupying the busy brain behind his reflective eyes. The scene before him, upon which he had so often looked, never failed to remind him of the greatness ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... francs at cards. I may very well lay out half that sum in making a man happy. I will begin the inquiries and researches necessary to obtain the documents of which you speak, and until they arrive I will give you five francs a day. If you are Colonel Chabert, you will pardon the smallness of the loan as it is coming from a young man who has his fortune ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... which we heard, from time to time, the noise of battle, when a mounted Varangian presented himself at the side of the Emperor's litter. The horse was covered with foam, and had obviously, from his trappings, the fineness of his limbs, and the smallness of his joints, been the charger of some chief of the desert, which had fallen by the chance of battle into the possession of the northern warrior. The broad axe which the Varangian bore was also stained with blood, and the paleness of death itself was upon ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... forests. Several times the remnants of these brave battalions, conceiving they were attacked, crawled to their arms. The next morning, when they again fell into their ranks, they were astonished at the smallness of ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... HARRY JOHNSTON has made his book as it were a continuation of Dombey and Son. Many of his characters are either the creations of Boz or their children and he contrives to carry on the interweaving of their lives to an unbelievable extent—even when the fullest allowance has been made for the smallness of the world. Florence Dombey and Walter Gay, as Mr. and Mrs. Gay-Dombey, actually survive well into the present book, while Sir HARRY JOHNSTON'S Eustace Morven, who tells us that he has reverted to the ancient spelling of his name, is the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... tale is sufficiently curious. About the year 1730, a French actor of equal talent and wealth, named Thevenard, in passing through the streets of Paris, observed upon a cobbler's stall, the shoe of a female, which struck him by the remarkable smallness of its size. After admiring it for some time, he returned to his house; but his thoughts reverted to the shoe with such intensity, that he reappeared at the stall the next day; but the cobbler could give ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... have cost twenty pounds a man; while any whole expenses, thither and back, and while I retrained there, did not exceed twenty-five pounds, about a shilling for each vote. Only look at the contrast, and no one will be surprised at the apparent smallness of the number which voted for me. I believe almost every man who voted for me voted also for Sir Samuel Romilly; but his partizans evinced full as great an hostility to me as the myrmidons of the White Lion Club did. Every vote was urged to poll plumpers for Romilly; and, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... gain'd her as many Lovers as had beheld her; for none saw her without languishing for her, or at least, but what were in very great Admiration of her. Every body talk'd of the young Atlante, and all the Noblemen, who had Sons (knowing the Smallness of her Fortune, and the Lustre of her Beauty) would send them, for fear of their being charm'd with her Beauty, either to some other part of the World, or exhorted them, by way of Precaution, to keep out of her Sight. Old Bellyaurd was one of those wise Parents; and timely Prevention, as he thought, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... were indeed able to exercise, through various lords, the most forcible sort of coercion upon whole populations of provinces; but the modern missions certainly enjoy advantages educational, financial, and legislative, much outweighing the doubtful value of the power to coerce; and the smallness of the results which they have achieved seems to require explanation. The explanation is not difficult. Needless attacks upon the ancestor-cult are necessarily attacks upon the constitution of society; and Japanese society instinctively resists these assaults upon its ethical ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... nearly as possible after that of my father, and had failed to teach to me even that thrift which is a part of the dot of every French girl from the Faubourg St. Germaine to the Boulevard St. Michel. But even in my ignorance the information of Nannette as to the smallness of our fortune gave ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... took his new state with easy familiarity, and rejoiced in Carrie's proclivities and successes. Each evening he arrived promptly to dinner, and found the little dining-room a most inviting spectacle. In a way, the smallness of the room added to its luxury. It looked full and replete. The white-covered table was arrayed with pretty dishes and lighted with a four-armed candelabra, each light of which was topped with a red shade. Between Carrie and the girl the steaks and chops came out all right, and canned goods did ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... of refraction of the liquid. On the other hand, owing to the smallness of eq. 12 as compared ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... that I have had it printed in small type, in order that the susceptibilities of readers who want to be amused and do not require to be instructed may not be wounded:—Procure a blank book, strongly bound, big or little, according to the largeness or smallness of your handwriting. Let the book have an index. It will be better if the paper of the book were ruled. When in the course of your reading you come on a passage which strikes you as worthy of being common-placed, copy it legibly in your commonplace-book. Say that ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... clothed like them in the coarse cloth of the country, made in the style common among the peasantry of Bergen; but the delicacy of his limbs, the smallness of his head, the easy elegance of his poise, and the natural gracefulness of his movements and attitudes, all seemed ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... seriously and anxiously if there was not a big factory of the firm's on the river, because it was self-evident he had not got anything like enough stuff to pay off my men with, and my agreement was to pay off on the Rembwe, hence my horror at the smallness of the firm's N'dorko store. "Besides," I said, "Mr. Glass (I knew the head Rembwe agent of Hatton and Cookson was a Mr. Glass), you have only got cloth and tobacco, and I have promised the Fans to pay off in whatever they choose, and I know for sure they want powder." "I am not ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... overlooked, with consequent failure to appreciate the momentous influence exerted upon the course of the Revolutionary War by this naval campaign, in which Pellew bore so conspicuous a part. It has never been understood in America, where the smallness of the immediate scale has withdrawn attention from the greatness of the ultimate issue, in gaining time for the preparations which resulted in the admittedly decisive victories about Saratoga. "If we could have begun our expedition ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... effects of the atrophy are noted in the smallness of the organ, in its becoming whiter in colour than normal, and ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... none of these inconveniences and who became every minute more sensible of the smallness of our numbers, far from surrendering, thought of nothing but protracting the fight till the arrival of some succors, which they said were very near; they sent forth great cries, and animated each other by our obstinacy. Though their defence was weak, ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... very well how many faults I have, and to deny them has never been my practice; but this is the honest and earnest truth, that no smallness of mind, or narrowness of feeling, or want of large or fine sentiments made me bolt my door when that girl was in the house. I simply refused, after seeing her once, to have any thing more to say to her; by no means because of my birth and breeding (which are things that can be most easily ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... case he is reproached with attaching. to sacrifice far too high a value. In the former case, in fine, the Deity and the representative of the Deity act with absolute caprice, confront men stiffly with commands of incredible smallness, and challenge them to opposition; in the latter, the conduct of Samuel is not (supposing it to have been the custom to devote enemies to destruction) unintelligible, nor his demeanour devoid of natural spirit; he appeals not to an irresponsible position, but to ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... himself. The complacency of Stevens, however, was too well grounded to be much disturbed by such an exhibition. Perhaps, indeed, he would have derived a malicious sort of satisfaction in making a presumptuous lad feel his inferiority. He had just that smallness of spirit which would find its triumph in the ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... analogies in their corresponding parts."[8] It is thus similarity in form and structure which determines the formation of the main groups. Within each group the parts differ only in degree, in largeness or smallness, softness and hardness, smoothness or roughness, and the like (loc. cit., i., 4, 644^b). These passages show that Aristotle had some conception of homology as distinct from analogy. He did not, ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... men in spite of her smallness and leanness and incisiveness of manner. She was called mighty smart and dry, which was the shop synonym for witty, and her favors, possibly because she never granted them, were accounted valuable. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the earth, life might still be possible. Even if we could suppose that a man would find suitable nutriment for his body and suitable air for his respiration, it seems very doubtful whether he would be able to live. Owing to the small size of Mars and the smallness of its mass in comparison with the earth, the intensity of the gravitation on the neighbouring planet would be different from the attraction on the surface of the earth. We have already alluded to the small gravitation on the moon, and in a lesser degree the same remarks will apply to Mars. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... of this detestable traffic is the smallness and often the unseaworthiness of the vessels in which it was carried on. Few such picayune craft now venture outside the landlocked waters of Long Island Sound, or beyond the capes of the Delaware and Chesapeake. In the early days of the eighteenth century hardy mariners put out in little ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... Immediately upon this remarkable statement came Henry's answer to her last appeal, in the guise of one hundred marks for information received, together with the refusal of the truce which Albany had repeatedly solicited.*** The smallness of the sum prompted Margaret to write a diplomatic letter to the Earl of Surrey, in which she declared that she had promised before the lords to be a good Scotswoman, and to agree to whatever was for the good of ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... out to him. He took it and pressed it warmly, looking at it, marveling at it, for the glove on it could not conceal its shapeliness or its smallness. He dropped it presently, and taking off his hat, bowed ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... too bewildered by all this detail to pay much attention to what he was saying about the smallness of the kettle's mouth; but I ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... advancement. There is some reason to believe that Lincoln, strange as it seems, was his successful rival in a love affair, but otherwise Douglas left Lincoln far behind. Buoyant, good-natured, never easily abashed, his maturity and savoir faire were accentuated by the smallness of his stature. His blue eyes and his dark, abundant hair heightened his physical charm of boyishness; his virile movements, his face, heavy-browed, round, and strong, and his well-formed, uncommonly large head gave him an aspect of intellectual power. He had a truly Napoleonic trick of ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... the diminution Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle; Nay, followed him till he had melted from The smallness of a gnat to air; and then Have turned mine ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... creature of the nicest sensibility, the scenes that must follow on our success tempted me as little as the chances of defeat. Twice we found women on board; and though I have seen towns sacked, and of late days in France some very horrid public tumults, there was something in the smallness of the numbers engaged, and the bleak dangerous sea-surroundings, that made these acts of piracy far the most revolting. I confess ingenuously I could never proceed unless I was three parts drunk; it was the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... such, has nothing contrary to the idea of beauty. The humming-bird, both in shape and coloring, yields to none of the winged species, of which it is the least; and perhaps his beauty is enhanced by his smallness. But there are animals, which, when they are extremely small, are rarely (if ever) beautiful. There is a dwarfish size of men and women, which is almost constantly so gross and massive in comparison of their height, that they present us with a very disagreeable ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... without being ourselves affected by the danger or the pain—this is the sublime. On the other hand, that is beautiful which inspires us with tenderness and affection without our desiring to possess it. Sublimity implies a certain greatness, beauty, a certain smallness. Delight in both is based on bodily phenomena. Terror moderated exercises a beneficent influence on the nerves by stimulating them and giving them tension; the gentle impression of beauty exerts a quieting effect ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... which they had seen in that country. In the course of their proceedings, Francisco de Mendoza was assassinated by Pedro Heredia, owing to which violent disputes had taken place among them, by which and the smallness of their force they had been rendered unable to proceed in conquering the country, so that at length they had come to the resolution of returning into Peru, that his majesty or the viceroy of that kingdom might nominate a new commander. They were likewise persuaded, when the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... receives life and immortality, and in the other is let go again, and has a reverse action during infinite ages. This new action is spontaneous, and is due to exquisite perfection of balance, to the vast size of the universe, and to the smallness of the pivot upon which it turns. All changes in the heaven affect the animal world, and this being the greatest of them, is most destructive to men and animals. At the beginning of the cycle before our own very few of them had survived; and on these a mighty change passed. For their life was reversed ...
— Statesman • Plato
... learn to be about the same amount of manorial umbrage belonging to Lord Some-One-Else. And to right and left of these, in shaded stretches, lie other estates of equal consequence. It was therefore not the smallness but the vastness of the country that struck me, and I was not at all in the mood of a certain American who once, in my hearing, burst out laughing at an English answer to my inquiry as to whether my interlocutor often saw Mr. B——. "Oh no," the answer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... fingers—a fore finger, a middle finger, a little finger—the sight equally recognizes all three fingers, but without number cannot further distinguish them. Or again, suppose two objects to be relatively great and small, these ideas of greatness and smallness are supplied not by the sense, but by the mind. And the perception of their contrast or relation quickens and sets in motion the mind, which is puzzled by the confused intimations of sense, and has recourse ...
— The Republic • Plato
... that," said William when Whimple apologised for the smallness of the amount. "It'll help some at home, and mebbe I ain't worth no two ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... of ground, and would at first sight induce the belief of a much greater population than it actually contains. This is attributable to two circumstances, the largeness of the leases, which in most instances possess sufficient space for a garden, and the smallness of the houses erected in them, which in general do not exceed one story. From these two causes it happens, that this town does not contain above seven thousand souls, whereas one that covered the same extent of ground in this country would possess a population of at least ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... reference to his poverty was a feature of Gourlay's talk now, when he spoke of money to his family. It excused the smallness of his doles, yet led them to believe that he was only joking—that he had plenty of money if he would only consent to shell it out. And that was what he wished them to believe. His pride would not allow him to confess, even to his nearest, that he was a failure in business, and hampered with financial ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... complete the great work of placing the new order of monks in all the convents, Edgar summoned a general council of the prelates and the heads of the religious orders. He here inveighed against the dissolute lives of the secular clergy; the smallness of their tonsure, which, it is probable, maintained no longer any resemblance to the crown of thorns; their negligence in attending the exercise of their function; their mixing with the laity in the pleasures of gaming, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... cannot be deprived of the least part of their property without their own consent. Upon this Principle of Law, the Liberty and Property of every Person who has the felicity to live under a British Government is founded. The question then ought not to be the smallness of the demand but the Lawfulness of it. For if it is against Law, the same Power which imposes one Pistole may impose ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... experiment I am afraid is to be regarded as a complete failure. Yet it could not well have been otherwise. It was never more than a mere military post, and the smallness of the party, almost always further lessened by sickness, was such that, even if judiciously managed, little more could be expected than that they should be employed merely in rendering their own condition more comfortable. And now after the settlement has been ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... cruel tongue," said the elder brother; and he pulled out the clear pebble, and turned its light on his brother; and behold, the man was lying; his soul was shrunk into the smallness of a pea, and his heart was a bag of little fears like scorpions, and love was dead in his bosom. And at that the elder brother cried out aloud, and turned the light of the pebble on the maid, and lo! she was but a mask of a woman, and withinsides she was quite dead, and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian. When, afterward, he had occasion to take off his shoes and stockings, I was struck with the smallness of his feet. He had worked a good deal as a lumberman, and appeared to identify himself with that class. He was the only one of the party who possessed an India-rubber jacket. The top strip or edge of his canoe was worn nearly through by friction on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... gaining to the northward more than to the west. Many times were they chased by the Malay proas, which infested the islands, but the swiftness of their little peroqua was their security; indeed the chase was, generally speaking, abandoned, as soon as the smallness of the vessel was made out by the pirates, who expected that little or no ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... nose; a loose-lipped mouth, and very little chin. He always looked as if consciously trying to keep himself together. He wore his shirt-collar unusually high, yet out of it far shot his long neck, notwithstanding the smallness of which, his words always seemed to come from a throat much too big for them. He had greatly the look of a hen, proud of her maternal experiences, and silent from conceit of what she could say if she would. So much ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... restrained explosions—a quarter-hour of wrath, a half-hour of tears and a half-day of almost incapacitating headache. She was ambitious and had rebelled at her limitations, especially as she grew to realize the smallness and emptiness of the home-life. She resented her sister's superior attitude, her officious poise, her college-education authority. But the damning defect was the remorseless grip of fear on mind, body and spirit. Through ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... but supped and passed that night with her. I made her all my own by the power of my love, and by buying her such things as she most needed, such as linen, dresses, etc. It cost me about a hundred louis, and in spite of the smallness of my means I thought I had made a good bargain. Agatha, whom I told of my good luck, was delighted to have ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... ability to preserve the steadiness of his position, standing as he did on the rough edge of a sharp rock, the sea washing above his knees, his eyes intent on the fish, very difficult to strike from the smallness of its size, presented to him in a narrow back. Though I pressed him to take the fish several times he constantly refused it ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... flushed. Curiously enough it never occurred to him to be grateful for this escape from a cannibal dinner-table. But his smallness was a constant sore to him, and he bitterly ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... only makes us think a great deal of our own merits, but it also makes us blind to the merits of others. We need only put this into words, to see its smallness, but it often happens. Some people's patriotism seems to consist in despising the French and Germans. No one values true patriotism more than I do, but I detest "insularity"—that insufferable feeling of superiority ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... with great reserve should any student announce ultimate results, or generalize upon the whole problem. For this period of classifying and analyzing the material, such study of limited populations as this should have value. The author makes no apology for the smallness of his field of study. Quaker Hill is not even a civil division. It is a fraction of a New York town. Therefore no statistical material of value is available. It is, moreover, not now an economic unit, though it still may be considered a sociological one. ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... red mullet, also a larger fish of the bass species; but there were only a few fishermen, who required an opposition to induce activity and moderate prices. Their nets were made of exceedingly fine twine, and the smallness of the mesh denoted a scarcity of ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... smiling a slow smile. "Glad to see you, old chap. I rather like your beard," he said with genial brusqueness; and nothing, perhaps, could better have summed up his faculty for forming independent judgments which Shelton found so admirable. He made no apology for the smallness of the dinner, which, consisting of eight courses and three wines, served by a butler and one footman, smacked of the same perfection as the furniture; in fact, he never apologised for anything, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... by the French Canadians, l'Oiseau Mouche, or the fly-bird. The name has two derivations; the first, from the smallness of the animal; the second, from the humming noise it makes with its wings. Its body is not ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... From the smallness of the harbor, Columbus gave it the name of El Retrete, or The Cabinet. He had been betrayed into this inconvenient and dangerous port by the misrepresentations of the seamen sent to examine it, who were always eager to come to anchor, and have ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... know what father's secret was, George! I can piece it together now, from little things that were meaningless when I was a kid. He invented the electro-microscope. You know that. The infinitely small fascinated him. I remember he once said that if we could see far enough down into smallness, we would come ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... some German soldiers moving forward through a criss-cross of trenches; I took them to be fresh men going in to relieve other men who had seen a period of service under fire. At first they suggested moles crawling through plow furrows; then, as they progressed onward, they shrank to the smallness of gray grub-worms, advancing one behind another. My eye strayed beyond them a fair distance and fell on a row of tiny scarlet dots, like cochineal bugs, showing minutely but clearly against the green-yellow face of a ridgy field well inside the forward ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... interruption of whose business by strike "might be catastrophic," the decision was forthwith held to apply also to two minor concerns;[457] and in a later case the Court stated specifically that "the smallness of the volume of commerce affected in any particular case" is not a material consideration.[458] Moreover, the doctrine of the Jones-Laughlin Case applies equally to "natural" products, to coal mined, to stone quarried, to fruit and ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... daily kindergarten practice. Is it not true that the laying of beans and lentils one inch apart on the tables, for instance, is an occupation which requires very delicate handling on account of the smallness of the object, its easy mobility, and the exactness required to place it precisely at the crossing-point of vertical and horizontal lines? Is it not true that such work requires considerable effort from the kindergartner to make it interesting to ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... comfortably back on the old bench and watch the quiet, almost childish determination of her features as she sought for a grip on the tiny protuberances of the thorns, the soft brownness of the few strands of hair which strayed from beneath the boyish cap, the healthy glow of her complexion, the smallness of the clear-skinned hands, the daintiness of the trim little figure. Much rather would he be silent with the picture than striving for answers to questions that in their very naiveness were an accusation. ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... parrot modestly, 'came out of the same book as the Hippogriff. We were on the same page. My wings entitled me to associate with him, of course, but I have sometimes thought they just put me in as a contrast. My smallness, his greatness; my red and green, ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... but the smallness of the steamer and the costumes and character of the passengers to prevent Rollo and Mr. George from supposing that they were steaming it from New York to Albany, up the North ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... whole year; the races have been going on for three days, and there have been a few balls; but as a general rule, the society may be said to be extremely stagnant. No dinner-parties are ever given—I imagine, on account of the smallness of the houses and the inefficiency of the servants; but every now and then there is an assembly ball arranged, in the same way, I believe, as at watering-places in England only, of course, on a much smaller scale. I have been at two or three of these, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... order to make me grow? At least the doors were open; I could go out and forsake myself! If a living power had caused me—and certainly I did not cause myself—then that living power knew all about me, knew every smallness that distressed me! Where should I find him? He could not be so far that the misery of one of his own children could not reach him! I turned my face into the grass, and prayed as I had never prayed before. I had always gone to church, ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... the horrible surroundings of the place. The builders of the tower had evidently intended that only they who should gain the top should have any of the joys of light and prospect. There, as we had noticed from below, were ranges of windows, albeit of mediaeval smallness, but elsewhere in the tower were only a very few narrow slits such as were habitual in places of mediaeval defence. A few of these only lit the chamber, and these so high up in the wall that from no part could the sky be seen through the thickness of the walls. ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... Lord Hurdly had left her an income of one thousand pounds. Her first realization of the smallness of this provision for her came from the rector's comment, which was spoken in a tone ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... new-lighted. All this is true of the best leg, and the best leg is the man's. That of the young child, in which the Italian schools of painting delighted, has neither movement nor supporting strength. In the case of the woman's figure it is the foot, with its extreme proportional smallness, that gives the precious instability, the spring and balance that are so organic. But man should no longer disguise the long lines, the strong forms, in those lengths of piping or tubing that are of all garments the most stupid. Inexpressive ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... her country was highly prosperous, could not delude the population into content and happiness. Above the surface and to the eye all was smiling and prosperous, but within was rottenness and misery. Under these circumstances the smallness of the above arrear is no proof of the fairness of the revenue. It rather shows that the collections were as much as the Begam's ingenuity could extract, and this balance being unrealizable, the demand was, by so much ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Ireland only six, and that the total number of members was only four thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven. The question is sometimes asked to-day: How is it that the Moravian Church is so small? For that smallness more reasons than one may be given; but one reason was certainly the singular policy ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... one in the caravans had any idea that the wapentake had come to take Gwynplaine. Hence the smallness of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... and while the prospectors were spiking the braces against it and giving their entire attention to it, they suddenly felt the cabin shake and heard the logs strain and give. They started back, to see the big bear struggling in the window. Only the smallness of the window had prevented the bear from getting in unnoticed, and surprising them while they were bracing the door. The window was so small that the bear in trying to get in had almost wedged fast. With hind paws on the ground, fore paws on the window-sill, and ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... for the enemy's camp, which was undefended, the whole army being within their tents at dinner. Dashing into their midst the English and Breton men-at-arms began to overthrow the tents and spear all that were in them. Not knowing the extent of the danger or the smallness of the attacking force, the French knights sprang up from table, mounted, and rode to ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... physical, if not moral, constitution, who never can amalgamate with the great body of our population. In every country, persons are to be found varying in their color, origin and character, from the native mass. But this anomaly creates no inquietude or apprehension, because the exotics, from the smallness of their number, are known to be utterly incapable of disturbing the general tranquillity. Here, on the contrary, the African part of our population bears so large a proportion to the residue of European origin, as to create the most lively apprehension, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... In lambkin and lancet, the final syllables (-kin and -et) have the same power. They both express the idea of smallness or diminutiveness. These words are but two out of a multitude, the one (lamb) being of Saxon, the other (lance) of Norman origin. The same is the case with the superadded syllables: -kin being Saxon; -et Norman. Now to add a Saxon termination to a Norman word, or vice vers[^a], is ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham |
