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Widen   Listen
verb
Widen  v. i.  To grow wide or wider; to enlarge; to spread; to extend. "Arches widen, and long aisles extend."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Widen" Quotes from Famous Books



... Benicia, where the Solano wharf projects, the Straits widen out into what bay-farers call the "Bight of Turner's Shipyard." I was in the shore-tide that swept under the Solano wharf and on into the bight. I knew of old the power of the suck which developed when the tide swung around the end of Dead Man's Island and drove ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London

... thee; Marlborough, desirous to widen the breach between Anne and William III, influenced her to write to her Father, 'supplicating his forgiveness, and professing repentance for ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... pre-existing channels it would be the first aim of our Labor Bureau to pour the labor supply of the country. And experience would probably enable us to widen, deepen and lengthen these channels in such a manner as would prove profitable to both employers and employed, as well as to the ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker

... solitary eye widen and dilate as it took in the man before him, the spare form, the keen, aquiline face with its black brows, white ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... Creame, and the whites of seven or eight Eggs and strain them together, and a little Rose-water, and as much Sugar as will sweeten it, then take a sticke as big as a childs Arme, cleave one end of it a crosse, and widen your peices with your finger, beat your Cream with this sticke, or else with a bundle of Reeds tyed together, and rowl between your hand standing upright in your Creame, now as the Snow ariseth take it up with a spoon in a Cullender that the thin may run out, and when you have sufficient ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."

... Flanders to their count, and so make them faithful to himself; he let them off two years' payment of a rent due to him of forty thousand livres of Paris per annum; he promised them the monopoly of exporting wools from France; he authorized the Brugesmen to widen the moats of their city, and even to repair its ramparts. The King of England's envoys met in most of the Flemish cities with a favor which was real, but intermingled with prudent reservations, and Count ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... occurs, as, for example, in the Bristol Channel, where there is a gradually rising bed with a converging channel, the velocity, and/or the amount of rise and fall of the derivative wave is increased to an enormous extent; in other places where the oceans widen out, the rise and/or velocity is diminished, and similarly where a narrow channel occurs between two pieces of land an increase in the velocity of the wave will take place, forming a race in ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams

... Swedish history, Swedish culture, Swedish art; and as, besides the many other things this congress has done for us, it has most specially taught us to love the Swedish women, we can express no better wish for our future conventions than that every new country which receives us may in the same way widen our hearts ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... off her hand sooner than have brought the girl to harm; but she loved to generalize. It amused her to see Harmony's eyes widen with horror at one of her radical beliefs. Nothing pleased her more than to pit her individualism against the girl's rigid and conventional morality, and down her by ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... history of the Klondike would have been written differently; for they would have seen that old-timer, no longer limping, running with his nose to the trail like a hound, following them. Also, they would have seen him trample and widen the turn to the fresh trail they had made to the west. And, finally, they would have seen him keep on the old dim ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... recommended by his majesty to the consideration of the house, was referred to the committee of supply, and produced the resolution of granting fifteen thousand pounds towards the rebuilding of London bridge. A bill was prepared, under the title of an act to improve, widen, and enlarge the passage over and through London bridge, enforcing the payment of the toll imposed upon loaded vessels, which had been found extremely burdensome to trade; but this incumbrance was prevented by another petition of several merchants, tradesmen, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... felt happy, and no cloud disturbed his serenity. He was going to a large and lively city, and both he and his wife would reap the advantages of that. There was quartered there a considerable body of troops of various branches of the service, and his intercourse would, in consequence, greatly widen, and so would that of his wife. His income would be much larger, and the social attractions offered in the new place,—such as diverse entertainments, concerts, a good theatre, and the opera,—would do much to restore that sense of contentment ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... through Captain Smith, the swindler, that application had been made by Philip for news of his brother, and having also learned before, from the same person, that Philip had been implicated in the sale of a horse, swindled, if not stolen, he saw every additional reason to widen the stream that flowed between the wolf and the lamb. The older Sidney grew, the better he comprehended and appreciated the motives of his protector—for he was brought up in a formal school of propriety and ethics, and his mind naturally revolted from all images of ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Mile, and the customary activity prevailed inside that flat-roofed cube of mud. Sounds of singing, shooting, dancing, and Mexican tunes on the concertina came out of the windows hand in hand, to widen and die among the hills. A limber, pretty boy, who might be nineteen, was dancing energetically, while a grave old gentleman, with tobacco running down his beard, pointed a pistol at the boy's heels, and shot a hole in the earth now and then to show that the weapon was really loaded. Everybody ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... lusty old gentleman scrambling among tangle. It is to be remembered that he came to engineering while yet it was in the egg and without a library, and that he saw the bounds of that profession widen daily. He saw iron ships, steamers, and the locomotive engine, introduced. He lived to travel from Glasgow to Edinburgh in the inside of a forenoon, and to remember that he himself had "often been twelve hours upon the journey, and his grandfather (Lillie) two days"! The profession was still ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... its dawn to the time of Velasquez, had been of a 'severely devotional character,' austere and formal; and although one man did not work a revolution by his independent example, he did something to humanize and widen art. In the rich city of Seville in 1599, Diego Rodriguez, de Silva y Velasquez,—and not, as he is incorrectly called, Diego Velasquez de Silva, was born, and, according to an Andalusian fashion, took his mother's name of Velasquez, while his father was of the Portuguese ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... me out with neither liking nor disliking nor any other emotion written upon his face; but when I had finished, as though he suddenly bethought himself, he smiled and held out his hand, white-man fashion. Now, when a man's lips widen I look into his eyes. The eyes of Opechancanough were as fathomless as a pool at midnight, and as devoid of mirth or friendliness as the staring orbs of the carven imps upon ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... letters one by one upon the table behind it, in two piles, one for his personal consideration, the other for Miss Mathewson's answering. Ellen, happily relaxing in a corner of the couch, her eyes watching the letter opening, saw her husband's eyes widen as he stooped to pick up a small blue paper which had fallen from the missive he had just slitted. As he unfolded the blue slip and glanced at it, an astonished whistle ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond

... a part of the bridge; they consist of three flights. Just below the end of the second, going down, the stone wall on the left terminates in an ornamental pilaster facing towards the Thames. At this point the lower steps widen: so that a person turning that angle of the wall, is necessarily unseen by any others on the stairs who chance to be above him, if only a step. The countryman looked hastily round, when he reached this point; and as there seemed no better place ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... work, listening anxiously in the direction of the corridor during the pauses of his boring and levering. The wall was only the length of a brick thick, and after the first stone had been broken out bit by bit, it cost but little labour to widen the hole enough to ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... his long years of labour. Now were to come repose, enjoyment, and the calm delights of which he had so often dreamed. But it so happened, that the current of thought and affection which had flowed on so long and steadily, was little disposed to widen into a placid lake. The retired merchant must yet have some occupation. His had been a life of purposes, and plans for their accomplishment: and he could not change the nature of this life. His heart was still the seat of desire, and his ...
— Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur

... flags that Banghurst had considered essential, black and limp in the breezeless dawn, and amidst all these things a great shape covered with tarpauling. A strange and terrible portent for humanity was that shape, a beginning that must surely spread and widen and change and dominate all the affairs of men, but to Filmer it is very doubtful whether it appeared in anything but a narrow and personal light. Several people heard him pacing in the small hours—for the vast place was packed with guests by a proprietor editor who, before all understood compression. ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... And now, out of the ghostly, shadowy memory, behold her stepping into the world again!—living, breathing, quickening with the fire of life undimmed in her. And he had seen the bright colour spreading to her eyes, and the dark eyes widen to his stare; he had seen the vivid blush, the forced smile, the nod, the voiceless parting of her stiffened lips. Then she was gone, leaving the whole world peopled with her living presence and the very sky ringing with the words her lips had never uttered, never would utter while sun ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... around them. Children from heathen families may be puffed up with an idea of superiority to their own people. Their taste may be cultivated so as to render disgust with heathen degradation stronger than the Christian desire to do them good. A foreign language, foreign dress, and foreign habits may widen the gulf that separates them from their people, till, what with an undue exaltation on the one hand and a suspicious jealousy on the other, usefulness is well nigh impossible. But here such tendencies have ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary

... in twilight left, Glory being over, came despondent thought That mocked men's eager act. From many a hill, As if the land complained to Heaven, they sent A towering shaft of murky incense high, Livid with black despair in lieu of praise. The green wood hissed at every beacon's edge That widen'd fear. The smell of pitchpots fled Far over the field, and tongues of fire leaped up, Ay, till all England woke, and ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... the first Atlantic cable was not laid; German unity had not been invented; Pius IX. reigned in the Pontifical States; Louis Napoleon was the idol of the French; President Lincoln had not been murdered,—is anything needed to widen the gulf which separates those times from these? The difference between the States of the world in 1865 and in 1885 is nearly as great as that which divided the Europe of 1789 from the ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... preparations for her journey, and the visit revived all her old interest in my work. She was pleased to find that I am doing practical money-making things like designing book-covers, etc., but she wants me to widen my ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston

... was the cold grave of the Beautiful," just as the realistic is now supposed to be. The romantic of that day and the real of this are in certain degree the same. Romanticism then sought, as realism seeks now, to widen the bounds of sympathy, to level every barrier against aesthetic freedom, to escape from the paralysis of tradition. It exhausted itself in this impulse; and it remained for realism to assert that fidelity to experience and probability ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... and clearly this is narrowing and baneful for them. If they were reassured on the practical side, speculative considerations of ideal perfection they might be brought to entertain, and their spiritual horizon would thus gradually widen. Sir Charles Adderley[37] says ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... of the Duc d'Orleans, Richelieu and the Queen-mother next laboured to widen the breach between Louis XIII and his wife; for which purpose they represented that she had taken an active part in the lately detected conspiracy, and was secretly intriguing with Spain against the interests of her royal husband; ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... meetings held throughout the State did much to widen Lincoln's reputation, particularly one held in June in Springfield. Twenty thousand people attended this meeting, delegations coming from every direction. It took fourteen teams to haul the delegation from Chicago, and they ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various

... correlation of ideas has taken their place. The flowers of rhetoric and poetry have lost their freshness and charm; and a technical language has begun to supersede and overgrow them. But the power of thinking tends to increase with age, and the experience of life to widen and deepen. The good is summed up under categories which are not summa genera, but heads or gradations of thought. The question of pleasure and the relation of bodily pleasures to mental, which is hardly treated of elsewhere in Plato, is here analysed with great subtlety. The ...
— Philebus • Plato

... find that it must contain synthetical propositions a priori. It is not merely the duty of metaphysics to dissect, and thereby analytically to illustrate the conceptions which we form a priori of things; but we seek to widen the range of our a priori knowledge. For this purpose, we must avail ourselves of such principles as add something to the original conception—something not identical with, nor contained in it, and ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... affair. One might just as well go about with a pencil writing up the thought-provoking phrase, whatever it is, on walls. The drama excites our sympathies intensely, but it seems to me it is far too objective a medium to widen them appreciably, and it is that widening, that increase in the range of understanding, at which I think civilisation is aiming. The case for biography, and more particularly autobiography, as against the novel, is, I admit, at the first ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... after his death—was not only impossible; but the person who could say it was possible, must be false and untrue to her. Her uncle could not have believed it himself: he had basely pretended to believe it, that he might widen the breach which he ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... dangerous and pernicious to the government and the people. It tends to aggravate the inequality of fortunes; to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer; to multiply nabobs and paupers, and to deepen and widen the gulf that separates Dives from Lazarus."—Thomas ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott

... lessons in how to sit down in them. They slashed them for tennis and skating. And street-car companies all over the country lowered the car steps to accommodate them. What's true for the hobble holds good for the hoop. Women will cease to single-foot and learn to undulate when they walk. They'll widen the car platforms. They'll sit on top the Fifth Avenue 'buses, and you'll never ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber

... upon a pit dug by the Roman potters in search of clay. He, however, began from the solid earth a strong pier of masonry, and above turned a short arch to the former foundation. He also slanted the new building more to the north-east than its predecessor, in order to widen the street south of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... by references to the contemporary drama that the plea of custom is not sufficient to explain Shakespeare's attitude to the lower classes, but if we widen our survey to the entire field of English letters in his day, we shall see that he was running counter to all the best traditions of our literature. From the time of Piers Plowman down, the peasant had stood high with the great writers of poetry ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... illusions; now know the extreme value of human life; reflect on this and strew human life with flowers; save every hour for the sunshine; let your labour be so ordered that in future times the loved ones may dwell longer with those who love them; open your minds; exalt your souls; widen the sympathies of your hearts; face the things that are now as you will face the reality of death; make joy real now to those you love, and help forward the joy of those yet to be born. Let these facts force the mind and the soul to the increase of thought, and the consequent ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies

... Newnham; but the young Scholar of Trinity had fought shy of the notion, and it was dropped at once. That, indeed, was the beginning of Lettice's isolation—the beginning of a kind of mental estrangement from her brother, which the lapse of time was to widen ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... soft-strewn snow Under the trees is dibbled thick with holes, And from the boughs the snow loads shuffle down; And, in fields sloping to the south, dark plots Of grass peep out amid surrounding snow, And widen, and the peasant's heart is glad— So through the world was heard a dripping noise Of all things weeping to bring Balder back; And there fell joy upon the Gods ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... when he explained one in essence by like in essence, and laid stress on the care with which 'the Fathers' had guarded its meaning. We may hope that Acacius had found out his belief at last. Still the connexion helped to widen the breach between Meletius and ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin

... would have left the island to widen his knowledge, earn experience in his craft, or follow a career in the army—he had been an expert gunner when he served in the artillery four years ago—and hammer out fame upon the anvils of fortune ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... a great river as it approaches the sea, we find that the alluvial plains usually widen and become lower. At length we attain a point where the flood waters cover the surface for so large a part of the year that the ground is swampy and untillable unless it is artificially and at great expense of labour won to agriculture in the manner in which this task has been effected in the lower ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... for France. You conquered for her, as well as for yourselves, and for the honor and the joy of it. Why not do the same here? Why not widen the scope of the fight? Don't go haggling over differences in politics and religion. These things are utterly futile. What does it matter whether your nation is the eldest daughter of the Church or the eldest daughter of Reason? The only thing that ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... institutions to serve the needs of our time. To give every American a stake in the promise and future of our country, we will bring the highest standards to our schools, and build an ownership society. We will widen the ownership of homes and businesses, retirement savings and health insurance—preparing our people for the challenges of life in a free society. By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... first dispositions which polluted the human mind in paradise, and their contaminating influence has descended upon the whole human race. From these two springs the torrent of corruption originated, and has never ceased to pursue its course and widen its channel through the successive ages of time. "When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... believe in Diogenes and his tub. Do you not think the good Lord has given us the telephone (that we may better reach that elbow-rub of brotherhood which is the highest of human ideals) and the railroad (that we may widen our human knowledge and sympathy)—and even the motor-car? (though, indeed, I have sometimes imagined that the motor-cars passing this way had a different origin!). He may have given these things to us too fast, ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... for the best. The damage done was seldom great beyond knocking the trenches about a bit and these were soon repaired. Having been put in charge of a digging party one morning in the rearward area whose duty it was to widen and deepen a communication trench, I saw a good opportunity while the work was going on of looking for souvenirs in the shape of Turkish shell caps. So getting out of the trench I commenced a search and continued for some time but without success, when ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous

... regard with a feeling of both hatred and alarm. Sarah, he knew, had little sympathy with him; but then he also knew that there existed less in common between her and Nelly. He thought, therefore, that his wisest plan would be to widen the breach of ill-feeling between them more and more, and thus to secure himself, if possible, of Sarah's co-operation and confidence, if not from affection or good feeling towards himself, at least from ill-will towards her ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... breach, which is already wide, and tends to widen, between the class which is hard at work making its fortune and the class which has either made its fortune or has got all it desires, which is the same thing as a fortune. There is a great deal of work which this latter would ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... circumstances worked together to widen the breach between the Calhoun and Van Buren elements and at the same time to bring the President definitely into the ranks of the New Yorker's supporters. One was the controversy over the social status of "Peggy" Eaton. Peggy was the daughter of a tavern keeper, William O'Neil, at whose hostelry ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... Philip-street, Bell-street, Spiceal-street, Park-street, and Moor-street, which not only incline to the centre above-mentioned, but all terminate with their narrow ends into the grand passage. These streets are narrow at the entrance, and widen as you proceed: the narrow ends were formed with the main street at first, and were not, at that time, intended for streets themselves. As the town increased, other blunders of the same kind were ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... being enticed away and depraved. One is lured by women, another by honors, a third by ambition or money, and they go over to that camp. No independent men, such as you or I, are left. What I say is widen the scope of our society, let the mot d'ordre be not virtue alone but independence and action ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... a reconciliation from your account of my uncle's visit to your mother, in order to set her against an almost friendless creature whom once he loved! But is it not my duty to try for it? Ought I to widen my error by obstinacy and resentment, because of their resentment; which must appear reasonable to them, as they suppose my flight premeditated; and as they are made to believe, that I am capable of triumphing in it, and over them, with the man they hate? When I ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... act of Charles could widen the breach which his reckless lawlessness had made between himself and his subjects. But there was one thing dearer to England than free speech in Parliament, than security for property, or even personal liberty; and that one thing was, in the phrase of the day, "the ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... but kindness is necessary to perception; love is not a hood, but an eye-water. If you meet a sectary or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines, but meet on what common ground remains,—if only that the sun shines and the rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it, the boundary mountains on which the eye had fastened have melted into air. If they set out to contend, Saint Paul will lie and Saint John will hate. What low, poor, paltry, hypocritical people an argument on religion will make of ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... of the Humboldt continued to widen after leaving Elko—the pastures and meadow lands, with occasional houses, were soon passed, and the rider pushed on to Palisade (Nevada), his next halting-place, thirty miles from Elko, and five hundred and seventy-six from San Francisco. For the last two hundred miles the road had ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... man-ape of Java, Pithecanthropus, is a strong argument that this was the region, or one of the regions, in which the development of man took place. However this be, we can be assured that primitive man was far more likely to widen his field of occupation through migration than any other animal, and may conjecture that he spread over Europe and Asia in the mild preglacial times, and perhaps even reached America, giving rise to the ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... with carmine. They measure about one inch across, and are usually solitary at the ends of branches, or else sway on slender peduncles from the axils. The upper leaves are narrow and bract-like; those lower down gradually widen as they approach ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... the Tiber in conformity with a scheme of his, and so spoiled the beauty of the Farnesina garden without effecting a too-difficult piece of engineering. The less passionate Murray says merely that "a large slice of this garden was cut off to widen the river for the Tiber embankment," and let us hope that it was no worse. I suppose we must have seen the villa in its glory when we went, in 1864, to see the Raphael frescos in the casino there, but in the touching melancholy of the wasted and neglected ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... I was, she did not flinch as I came; only her eyes seemed to widen upon me in wonder. And for all my desperate hurry I had time to see, first, that they were graver than other girls' eyes, and next ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... creeping in that old Jonas must know about that cave, and the purpose for which it was used; and then I seemed to understand my father's thoughtful manner, for it was as though this discovery was likely to widen the breach between them. ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn

... said so; and the next moment saw myself, the figure of a miserable renegade, bearing arms in the wrong camp. I was to look at pictures thenceforward, not with the eye of the artist, but the dealer; and I saw the stream widen that divided me ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... that Domini had felt when first she approached the parapet she felt more strangely, and she grasped, with physical and mental vision, not only the whole, but the innumerable parts of that which she looked on. She saw, fancifully, the circles widen in the pool of peace, but she saw also the things that had been hidden in the pool. The beauty of dimness, the beauty of clearness, joined hands. The one and the other were, with her, like sisters. She heard the voices from below, and surely also the voices of the stars that ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... Mr. Telford was engaged upon the tunnel at Harecastle, he was employed to improve and widen the Birmingham Canal, another of Brindley's works. Though the accommodation provided by it had been sufficient for the traffic when originally constructed, the expansion of the trade of Birmingham and the neighbourhood, accelerated ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... worship. And when we laugh, with human joy at human things, —then do we most sound great Oro's praise, and prove the merit of sweet Alma's love! Our love in Alma makes us glad, not sad. Ye speak of temples;—behold! 'tis by not building them, that we widen charity among us. The treasures which, in the islands round about, are lavished on a thousand fanes;—with these we every day relieve the Master's suffering disciples. In Mardi, Alma preached in open fields, —and must ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... interest Esther and Ada in some great schemes for doing good by wholesale, and how Esther modestly answered that they hardly felt equal to such great things, but that they hoped if they were careful to do all they could for those immediately about them their circle would gradually widen? This is the ideal way to do good. You help your neighbor simply without any pretense or self-consciousness. She helps her neighbor, and so on. There need be no break in the chain from lowest to highest. Mrs. Whitney has taught beautiful lessons of this kind in her stories, emphasizing the ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... have your own country, and wait in it, till you meet some fellow-countryman; but as you only want to be an ordinary woman, 'not too bright and good for human nature's daily food,' you will give far more pleasure to others, and widen and strengthen your own mind far more, by being able to join on easily to all you meet, than by pursuing some one abstruse study, whether it be mathematics ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby

... find that the stronger the imagination the less is it merely imaginary and the more is it in harmony with truth, so we see the more vigorous our individuality the more does it widen towards the universal. For the greatness of a personality is not in itself but in its content, which is universal, just as the depth of a lake is judged not by the size of its cavity but by the ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore

... them wherever I have hopes of their taking root and blossoming. To-morrow I will send him my subscription;(894) and I flatter myself you will not think it a breach of Sunday, nor will I make this long, that I may not widen that fracture. Good night! How calm and comfortable must your slumbers be on the pillow of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... outstripped all competitors. Tafnakhti was a chief of obscure origin, whose hereditary rights extended merely over the village of Nutirit and the outskirts of Sebennytos. One or two victories gained over his nearest neighbours encouraged him to widen the sphere of his operations. He first of all laid hands on those nomes of the Delta which extended to the west of the principal arm of the Nile, the Saite, Athribite, Libyan, and Memphite nomes; these he administered through officers under his own immediate control; then, leaving ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... the grey eyes widen in astonishment, and was conscious of a moment of overwhelming embarrassment; and then, slow and emphatic, his ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... exasperated that he could not avoid the discussions which his father, with a weak man's obstinacy, forced upon him. Some unhappy, baneful power seemed to drive Colonel Parsons to widen the rift, the existence of which caused him such exquisite pain; his natural kindliness was obscured by an uncontrollable irritation. One day ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... hard lines," said Austin; "but I think you would have done better to remain passive. It's natural that he should take this business rather seriously at first: but that would wear off in a short time. What you have done will only widen ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... for the good of both sides instead of the injury of either. The rivals agreed to keep out of each other's way as much as possible and even to help each other by an occasional exchange of singers. By this means it was purposed to widen the repertories of both companies, Mr. Damrosch providing the Metropolitan establishment with a Brnnhilde and an Isolde for Jean de Reszke's Siegmund, Siegfried, and Tristan, and the Metropolitan company lending him ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... damsel in attendance, and saw her eyes widen in amazement at the renewed order. She walked away suppressing a smile, and could be observed obviously retailing the incident to a companion behind the counter. It detracted woefully from the romance of the situation to be pointed out as a ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... have not the desired effect, and the woman's danger increases, let the surgeon use his instruments to dilate and widen the womb, for which purpose the woman must be placed on a chair, so that she may turn her buttocks as far from its back as possible, at the same time drawing up her legs as close as she can and spreading ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... mind; and loved, while busied in her household concerns, to sweeten the bitterer moments of life, by chanting the songs and ballads of her country, of which her store was great. The garden and nursery prospered so much, that he was induced to widen his views, and by the help of his kind landlord, the laird of Doonholm, and the more questionable aid of borrowed money, he entered upon a neighbouring farm, named Mount Oliphant, extending to an hundred acres. This was in 1765; but the land was hungry and sterile; the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... "The Jumps" after leaving London. This time she received us with polite coldness,—like perfect strangers,—but she was not insulting, only at times somewhat ungenerously sarcastic with me, who was not armed to parry her thrusts. I felt quite miserable, for I did not wish to widen the gap between her and her nephew, and on the other hand I did not see how our intercourse could be made more pleasant by any endeavors of mine, for I was ignorant of the art of ingratiating myself with persons whom I felt adverse to me, and I must avow that I had also a certain degree ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... generally, than in the pulpit or the class; or it may be just the other way. And you, my dear friend, may be (or may think yourself to be) somewhat strong where he is somewhat weak; an opportunity for many subtle temptations. The days and weeks go on; and if you let "the little rift" of criticism widen, and do not continually take it to your Lord to be examined and mended, other feelings—not born from above—may steal in between you and this good man, your elder and leader in Christ. Petty dislikes and impatience ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule

... to feel that only the poor mother cared. For Primrose was not old enough nor suspicious enough to imagine the hundred little ways Rachel found to blame Andrew and widen the breach ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... below them, Cried exulting from the caverns: "O ye sea-gulls! O my brothers! I have slain the sturgeon, Nahma; Make the rifts a little larger, With your claws the openings widen, Set me free from this dark prison, And henceforward and forever Men shall speak of your achievements, Calling you Kayoshk, the sea-gulls, Yes, Kayoshk, the ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow

... they needed, and so secure their salvation. The intention was, first, to bring to repentance, but that was a preparation for bringing to them full forgiveness and cleansing. And so we may fairly widen the thought into the far greater and nobler one which applies especially to the message of God in Jesus Christ, and say that the only design which God has in view, in the gospel of His Son, is the highest blessing—that is, the salvation—of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Emperor Go-Murakami differed radically in their counsels, but it was finally decided that every effort should be made to widen the rift in the Ashikaga lute, and the Court commissioned Tadayoshi to attack Takauji and recover Kyoto. Thus was presented the spectacle of a father (Takauji) fighting against his son (Tadafuyu), and a brother (Tadayoshi) fighting against a brother (Takauji). Tadayoshi was joined by many men of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... the Reasons you offer to show the Necessity of a publick & explicit Declaration of Independency. I cannot conceive what good Reason can be assignd against it. Will it widen the Breach? This would be a strange Question after we have raised Armies and fought Battles with the British Troops, set up an American Navy, permitted the Inhabitants of these Colonies to fit out armed Vessels to cruize on all Ships &c belonging to any of the Inhabitants of Great Britain declaring ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams

... supreme power to meet the crisis. The death of Julia in 54 and of Crassus in 53 had removed the two strongest influences for peace, and from 52 onwards the breach between Pompeius and Caesar began to widen. ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... impact of the internal combustion engine and wireless radio on land, sea, and air forces in the 1920s and 1930s. The size of this technological lead between ourselves and the rest of the world, especially in the base for new information products and services, should widen further in knowledge and in application. The "Silicon Valley" revolution is likely to continue increasing computer capacity on an almost annual basis. By the year 2005, computing power should be many fold times today's capacity-perhaps ultimately beginning to close in on the ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

... shelf scarcely four inches wide and a space of from twelve to fifteen feet to cross to reach the level of the crest. It was all I could do to cross this space, and there was no foundation to enable us to widen it so as to make a path for an animal. It was forlorn hope but we made the most of it. We unpacked the mule and getting all our ropes together, made a leading line of it. Then we loosened and threw down all the projecting points of rocks we could above the ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... carry the message quickly to the latter, which immediately respond by ordering contraction or expansion of involuntary muscles. So tears flow, we breathe freely again or we quake and tremble, our pupils widen or contract, the heart beats suffocatingly, or ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter

... them in luxury and pleasure. They, the Ptolemies, had employed their resources in erecting vast structures, or founding magnificent institutions at Alexandria, to add to the glory of the city, and to widen and extend their own fame. Cleopatra, on the other hand, as was, perhaps, naturally to be expected of a young, beautiful, and impulsive woman suddenly raised to so conspicuous a position, and to the possession of such unbounded ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott

... upgrowth[obs3]; accretion &c. 35; budding, gemmation[obs3]. overgrowth, overdistension[obs3]; hypertrophy, tympany[obs3]. bulb &c. (convexity) 250; plumper; superiority of size. [expansion of the universe] big bang; Hubble constant. V. become larger &c. (large &c. 192); expand, widen, enlarge, extend, grow, increase, incrassate[obs3], swell, gather; fill out; deploy, take open order, dilate, stretch, distend, spread; mantle, wax; grow up, spring up; bud, bourgeon[Fr], shoot, sprout, germinate, put forth, vegetate, pullulate, open, burst forth; gain flesh, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... widen. Through the storms and mists of passion and prejudice which blinded the eyes of Liberals and Conservatives fighting each other at Westminster, he looked to the ultimate union of all British subjects in an England conterminous with the sovereignty of the Crown. It was that England ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... thin paper such as cheques; but the same methods of examination will apply—holding the document to the light, or level with and horizontal to the eye. A very effective application of the latter test is to bend or curve the paper, making an arch. The bending has a tendency to stretch and widen the erased part, and if any smoothing substance such as starch or wax has been added to restore the gloss of the scraped portion, it will usually reveal itself by separating and coming away in dust or tiny flakes. This process ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn

... only in securing the election of many of them as trustees of schools, but especially in elevating the qualifications of men proposed as candidates for school-boards, and also in stimulating greater interest in the management of schools generally. The effect of these new experiences is to widen the influence and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... to allow the two figures to widen the distance between us as they traversed the path that curved away toward the chapel. I could still hear their voices, and see the lantern flash and disappear. I felt an impulse to turn back, or plunge into the woodland; but I was carried on uncontrollably. ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson

... sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We don't know what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if our petulant prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of us, for instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of our activity, relax the control and we ... yes, I assure you ... we should be begging to be under control again at once. I know that you will very likely be angry with me for that, and will begin shouting and stamping. Speak for ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... knew that he must note the high colour in her cheeks. And the colour had come not in response to his words but in quick answer to his look. A young giant of a man, he stood staring at her like some artless boy who at a bend in the road had stopped, breathless, to widen his eyes to the smile of a fairy fresh from ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... possession is about a foot and a half high, much branched, the stalks are round and smooth to the naked eye, green below, above purplish, the leaves are smooth, a deep bright green colour, alternate, standing on footstalks, which gradually widen into the leaves, somewhat ovate, and deeply toothed; the flowers grow in the alae of the leaves, forming a thin spike, they are sessile, of a pale violet colour, and have a peculiar smell which is rather unpleasant; at the side of each flower are two long narrow Bracteae; ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... about them knots of people were eagerly talking, all looking northward as though drawn by the same magnetic force. And as Smith and his companion raised their eyes, they saw in the northern sky an ugly crimson glare that seemed to widen and grow brighter even in the moment as they watched it. From far up Tremont Street, carried by the wind, came an odd murmur of confused noises, and nearer by the sharper sounds of clanging bells and the clatter of galloping horses' feet on the pavement. The crowds were hurrying ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... such a narrow, cowardly life is what we, fellow-handicraftsmen, aim at. I see this taken for granted continually, even by many who, to say truth, ought to know better, and I long to put the slur from off us; to make people understand that we, least of all men, wish to widen the gulf between the classes, nay, worse still, to make new classes of elevation, and new classes of degradation—new lords and new slaves; that we, least of all men, want to cultivate the 'plant called man' in different ways—here stingily, there wastefully: I ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... to the girl, and she turned her head, smiling, to Pierre. Then the smile went out, and even despite the mask, he saw her eyes widen. She stopped and slipped from the arm of Wilbur, and came step by step slowly toward him like one walking in her sleep. There, by the edge of the dancers, with the noise of the music and the shuffling feet to cover them, they met. The hands she held ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand

... Ruef's confession served to widen the breach between Class and Mass. He implicated many corporation heads and social leaders in a sorry tangle of wrongdoing. Other situations added fuel to the flame of economic war. The strike of the telephone girls had popular support, a sympathy much strengthened ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... of us, she will be as intellectual as the rest of us. She will have out her little taper and set the rivers of thought all ablaze, legging it over the land from stream to stream till all are fired. She will widen her sphere, forsooth, herself no wider than before. It is not enough that we have edified her a pedestal and perform impossible rites in celebration of her altitude and distinction. It does not suffice that with never a smile we assure her that she is the superior sex—a ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... sunk or burned at sea, which happened to not a few, or of capture and confiscation by the belligerents whose laws they defied. Erskine was followed by a new ambassador from England, Mr. Jackson. His mission, however, had no other result than to widen the breach between the two nations. A controversy almost immediately arose between the minister and Mr. Smith, the secretary of state,—or rather Mr. Madison himself, who, as he complained at a later period, did most of Smith's work as well as his own,—touching ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... knew it was out of regard for her that he had kept silent. But of what use was his discretion, since only that afternoon, misled by Harney's interest in the out-law colony, she had boasted to him of coming from the Mountain? Now every word that had been spoken showed her how such an origin must widen the distance between them. ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... that any animal form extensively used by such lovers of decoration as the ancient inhabitants of Central America would be found thus interwoven with decoration. These considerations will serve to widen our views upon the origin and development of especial devices. As it now stands we are absolutely certain that no race, no art, no motive or element in nature or in art can claim the exclusive origination of any one of the well known or standard conventional devices, and that ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... Dickens' qualities are to be found in "The Pickwick Papers," as they have come to be called for brevity's sake. But the assertion is misleading, if it be taken to mean that in the fifteen books of fiction which Dickens was to produce, he added nothing, failed to grow in his art or to widen and deepen in his hold upon life. So far is this from the truth, that one who only knows Charles Dickens in this first great book of fun, knows a phase of him, not the whole man: more, hardly knows ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton



Words linked to "Widen" :   dilate, extend, distend, stretch, flare, increase, modify, white out, let out, globalise, narrow, take in, alter, flare out, territorialise, vary, territorialize



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