"Diminishing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from Hudson Bay were fast diminishing and would soon be at an end. True, the Nor'westers offered for sale supplies of oats, barley, poultry, and the like, but their prices were high and the settlers had not the means of purchase. But there was other food. Myriads of buffalo roamed over the Great Plains. Herds of these animals often ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... tolerably warm, and the snow was diminishing in depth, though where it went to it was ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... efficiency the perfected social order will impose minute and unwelcome regulations upon individual life and effort, and that a degree of coercive control will be established which will end by making individuals mere cogs in the machine, diminishing their importance, curtailing their usefulness and initiative far more than is done by the great industrial corporations against which the working classes ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... governance, and the rule of law, while not necessarily focused on combating terrorism, contribute to the campaign by addressing underlying conditions that terrorists often seek to manipulate for their own advantage. Additionally, diminishing these conditions requires the United States, with its friends and allies, to win the "war of ideas," to support democratic values, and ...
— National Strategy for Combating Terrorism - February 2003 • United States
... before camping we saw a herd of nimba, or pallah; I had the good fortune to shoot one, which was a welcome addition to our fast diminishing store of dried meats, prepared in our camp on the Gombe. By the quantity of bois de vaches, we judged buffaloes were plentiful here, as well as elephant and rhinoceros. The feathered species were well represented by ibis, fish-eagles, pelicans, storks, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... farm-work and the pounding of hadi. There seems to be no trace of any such custom as the COUVADE, though the father observes, like the mother, certain tabus during the early months and years of the child's life, with diminishing strictness as the child grows older. The child also is hedged about with tabus. The general aim of all these tabus seems to be to establish and maintain about the child a certain atmosphere (or, as they say, a certain odour)[168] in which alone it can thrive. Neither father nor mother will eat ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... below the measure they have made of you, you will feel it in the fulness of time. She cannot but show you that she took you for a giant, and has had to come down a bit. You feel yourself strangely diminishing in those sweet mirrors, till at last they drop on you complacently level. But, oh beware, vain man, of ever waxing enamoured of that wonderful elongation of a male creature you saw reflected in her adoring upcast orbs! Beware of assisting to delude her! A woman who ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... there before this rude door, examining its blank surface with a sort of objective curiosity. At the same time she was listening to the sound of steps gradually diminishing down the five flights. She shook her head; "the ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... that the whole public revenue should be drawn from direct taxes upon the land. Walpole, on the other hand, saw in the growth of indirect taxation a means of winning over the country gentry to the new dynasty of the Revolution by freeing the land from all burdens whatever. He saw too a means of diminishing the loss suffered by the revenue from the Customs through smuggling and fraud. These losses were immense; that on tobacco alone amounted to a third of the whole duty. In 1733 therefore he introduced an Excise Bill, which met this evil by the establishment of bonded ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... extension. Indeed, if emancipation was the end to be desired, the dispersion of the negroes over a wider area among additional Territories, eventually to become States, and in climates unfavorable to slave-labor, instead of hindering, would have promoted this object by diminishing the difficulties in the way ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... course of years they could not stand it. But in times of war everybody is working at full strain, and therefore it is difficult to exaggerate the importance of suspending restrictions which have the effect of diminishing the output of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... walls, we had to listen to, read, and compare documents. Gnats of a ferocious kind, hatched by thousands in the hangings of this hothouse, flew around our perspiring heads. Their buzzing got the upper hand at intervals when the clerk's voice grew weary and, diminishing in volume, threatened to fade away ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Our stores are diminishing and cannot be replenished from without; ingenuity and labor must evoke them. We have a fine garden in growth, plenty of chickens, and hives of bees to furnish honey in lieu of sugar. A good deal of salt meat has ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... crumble accommodatingly, as would a clay pipe, the winning of a curio had—I mix the metaphor advisedly—merely involved participation in a football scrimmage. But since the ball had, as it were, begun to turn "rusty" the popularity of the game, so far from diminishing, increased. All day long its devotees "scrummed" and "shoved" for the coveted trophies. Quite a brisk trade was done in souvenirs, the smallest scrap of iron fetching a tickey (threepence), and so on in proportion to weight and size as far as half a sovereign. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Hemsley,—You are aware that Patrick Geddes proposes to exclude Natural Selection in the origination of thorns and spines, which he imputes to "diminishing vegetativeness" or "ebbing vitality of the species." It has occurred to me that insular floras should afford a test of the correctness of this view, since in the absence of mammalia the protection of spines ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... the praise of industry and system; but he never forgets that he is a Christian and a Frenchman. Wieland, in his delightful novels, makes indeed a very tolerable Pagan, but cherishes too many political prejudices, and refrains from diminishing the interest of his romances by painting sentiments in which no European of modern times can possibly sympathize. There is no book which shows the Greeks precisely as they were; they seem all written for children with the caution ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... all they had endured, they proceeded to Bagdad. That was the place they had fixed their thoughts upon, hoping to find Ganem, though they ought not to have fancied that he was in a city where the caliph resided; but they hoped, because they wished it; their affection for him increasing instead of diminishing, with their misfortunes. Their conversation was generally about him, and they inquired for him of all they met. But let us leave Jalib al Koolloob and her mother, and return ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... gatherings. In this way thousands of robust, able-bodied men, not only maintained themselves, but were enabled to live in the lap of luxury, for many years, without contributing, on their part, one farthing to the public treasury, but on the contrary diminishing, immensely, the population and the number of those engaged in cultivating the soil and in other useful labour. Was not this alone sufficient to explain the deplorable state of the economy of the Spanish ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... doors—the opposite extreme to the modern, the actual almost complete proscription of them; but it had fairly contributed to provoke this obsession of the presence encountered telescopically, as he might say, focused and studied in diminishing perspective and as by a rest ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... and although the driver remained on the highroad with my travelling companions, I soon recognised the spot indicated, by means of some relics of cypress branches, immortelles, and forget-me-nots scattered upon the earth. It will readily be understood that this sight, instead of diminishing my desire for information, increased it. I was feeling, then, more than ever dissatisfied at going away, knowing so little, when I saw a man of some five-and-forty to fifty years old, who was walking a little distance from the place where I myself was, and who, guessing the cause ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... road to excellence and ease; Faith learned presently the correspondence between the rudder and her hand, and in the course of a quarter of an hour could keep the north track with tolerable steadiness. The wind was fair for a straight run up the Mong. The river stretching north in a diminishing blue current (pretty broad however at Pattaquasset and for some miles up) shewed its low banks in the tenderest grading of colour; very softly brown in the distance, and near the eye opening into the delicate hues of the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... form a charge with the bayonet. They did not immediately fall back, but engaged in some irregular firing, when the American line pushed forward to the right flank of the Highlanders, who now realized that there was no prospect of support, and while their number was diminishing that of their foe was increasing. They first wavered, then began to retire, and finally to run. This is said to have been the first instance of a Highland regiment running from an enemy.[170] This repulse struck a panic into ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... fitted with a clumsy device for defending them against attack by ramming. Below the level of the oars, balks of timber were propped out from their sides at the water-line, and it was hoped that these barricades would break the full force of an enemy's "beak." But the invention had the drawback of diminishing the speed of the ship, and making quick turning more difficult, and thus it increased the very danger it ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... that in all probability, the vital energy of the protoplasm of the endothia is diminishing. Quality, flavor, or anything you please, is bound up with certain vitality, and that diminishes and finally will cease. That is the reason for the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... it regarded its own institution. Most of the Academies and Societies in Europe, and also those of America, conferred the rank of honorary member, upon foreigners eminent in knowledge, and made them, in fact, citizens of their literary or scientific republic, without affecting or anyways diminishing their rights of citizenship in their own country or in other societies: and why the Science of Government should not have the same advantage, or why the people of one nation should not, by their representatives, exercise the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... supposed to be, at least, more conversant with arithmetic than with any branch of school study, though we do know that 8 > 5, we do not see that 5 3 8, and so we try to cancel the offending -3 by diminishing the 8. But would not the other process be quite as rational? Physical life is only a simple balance of forces, the expenditure and nourishment corresponding exactly to demand and supply in the Science of Political Economy.[2] ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... morning the members of the Tribunal withdrew to the council-chamber. Since the commencement of the proceedings the crowd, far from diminishing, seemed each day to increase; this morning it was immense, and, though the sentence was not expected to be pronounced till a late hour, no one quitted the Court for fear of not being able to find a place when the Tribunal ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... economy; the frequent use of the rods as he raised himself on tiptoe to make his protest the more emphatic—split and frizzled them—the immersion of the tips in water would prevent this, and add to the severity of the castigation, while diminishing the expense. A policy wiser and less drastic has taken the place of corporal punishment in schools. But Mr. Kennedy was competent, faithful and impartial. I was not destined to remain long at school. At eight years of age two events occurred which gave direction ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... him, and she followed it a moment afterward with a sentence which had the effect of increasing, rather than diminishing, the obscurity in ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... but the accident happened some months before my time, and he, too, I believe, was going home; not perhaps quite so ill as myself—but still he was going home. I got round the turn more or less alive, though I was too sick to care whether I did or not, and, always with "Almayer's Folly" among my diminishing baggage, I arrived at that delectable capital, Boma, where, before the departure of the steamer which was to take me home, I had the time to wish myself dead over and over again with perfect sincerity. At that date there were in existence only ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting. But the harm which has been done by Claude and the Poussins is as nothing when compared to the mischief effected by Palladio, Scamozzi, and Sansovino. Claude and the Poussins were weak men, and have had no serious influence on the general mind. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... were now regularly receiving supplies and re-enforcements, and drilling daily, while all the necessaries of life were constantly diminishing with us. We were already out ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... years; and, as to the provision of food taken into it, he declared that there was no need of a supply for more than one day, since God could throw the animals into a deep sleep or otherwise miraculously make one day's supply sufficient; he also lessened the strain on faith still more by diminishing the number of animals taken into the ark—supporting his view upon Augustine's theory of the later development ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... and obtains only among the English and the Americans even now. In many parts of Europe and America, to say nothing of Asia and Africa, people still live as in the Middle Ages, and infant mortality is appalling. Those of us who pay most attention to sanitary laws live unhealthily, diminishing our powers to resist attack. I mention these facts, not as making a list of them, but to indicate the many causes through which we bring bereavement on ourselves, when the Will of God would naturally ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... "Thisbe's" two after-guns on the maindeck kept thundering away at them, fearfully diminishing their numbers. And thus the fight continued: they made, ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... neighbours appeared not to wish to cultivate them. It may be added that many of the women—the numbers are diminishing rapidly—were field-workers who had never been brought up to much domesticity. Far beyond the valley they had to go to earn money at hop-tying, haymaking, harvesting, potato-picking, swede-trimming, and at such work they came immediately, just as the men did, under ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... exhibit of eloquence. Trove announced the organization of a singing-school for Monday evening of the next week, and then suppressed emotion burst into noise. The Linley school-house had become as a fount of merry sound in the still night; then the loud chorus of the bells, diminishing as they went away, and breaking into streams of music and dying faint in ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... happened on other parts of the field during the 27th, and the full extent of the victory was still unknown. When daylight came it was evident that the Boers had evacuated the Eagle's Nest, and small parties of them could be seen retiring, while the tents of their laager under Bulwana were gradually diminishing. But even then few could believe that the relief of Ladysmith was ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... element, it is also its destructive element. In this respect social life is like the life of man. Nations live long only by moderating their vital energy. Teaching, or rather education, by religious bodies is the grand principle of life for nations, the only means of diminishing the sum of evil and increasing the sum of good in all society. Thought, the living principle of good and ill, can only be trained, quelled, and guided by religion. The only possible religion is Christianity ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... furnish 176 pounds of nitrogen, 33.08 pounds of phosphoric acid, and 203.8 pounds of potash. If this alfalfa were fed upon the farm, it would not only prove a cheap source of protein for feeding, but it would furnish fertility, as stated above, without seriously diminishing the supply of the same in the surface soil, since much of the fertilizing material produced would come from the air and subsoil. The manure thus made, if carefully saved and applied, would thus add materially to the fertility of the land. If, however, the alfalfa were sold, the mineral matter ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... practically serviceable development of the stone 'chassis,' chasing, or frame, for the glass. For instance, he attributes the use of the cusp or 'redent' in its more complex forms, to the necessity, or convenience, of diminishing the space of glass which the tracery grasps; and he attributes the reductions of the mouldings in the tracery bar under portions of one section, to the greater facility thus obtained by the architect in directing his workmen. The plan of a window once given, ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... there are those who are seeking to enlarge the participation of the people in government, and that group is growing. In every country there are those who are endeavouring to obstruct each step toward popular government, and that group is diminishing. In this country the tendency is constantly toward more popular government, and every effort which has for its object the bringing of the government into closer touch with the people ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... of his following Jehoiakim's evil ways, and his rebellion against Babylon. But behind the rash, ignorant young man, it sees God working, and traces all the insane bravado by which he was ruining his kingdom and himself to God's 'wrath,' not thereby diminishing Zedekiah's responsibility for his own acts, but declaring that his being 'given over to a reprobate mind' was the righteous ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... service, and as fast as men in the army are dismounted by the loss of their animals, they are sent to this depot. It is one of the most useful and best-arranged affairs connected with our service, and has greatly assisted in diminishing the expense attending the provision of animals, and in increasing the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and strong-limbed for his age; and as he gave his hand to his little bride, and walked with her under a canopy up to kneel at the High Altar, for the marriage blessing and the mass, they looked like a full-grown couple seen through a diminishing-glass. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... upon beach being effected at high water, it is clear, the ebb tide cannot deprive the land of what it has gained. Smaller lines are formed in moderate weather, to be swept away by heavy gales: hence it would appear, that the sea was diminishing the beach; but attention will show that the shingles of the lines so apparently swept away, are but accumulated elsewhere. How often has our observation of these changes realized the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... duties, by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of the state. Let the Government do this: the People will ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... law of diminishing returns, the first satisfactions of any want have infinite value. What does this mean but that they have religious value? The first drink of water to a famished man calls forth a fervent "Thank, God." The first book printed is a Bible. The first landing on American soil was ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... many a face remember'd well. Thus shallow more and more the blood became, So that at last it but imbru'd the feet; And there our passage lay athwart the foss. "As ever on this side the boiling wave Thou seest diminishing," the Centaur said, "So on the other, be thou well assur'd, It lower still and lower sinks its bed, Till in that part it reuniting join, Where 't is the lot of tyranny to mourn. There Heav'n's stern justice lays chastising hand On Attila, who was the scourge of earth, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... as to conceal every appearance of difficulty; and so soft and touching was the natural tone of her voice, that she rendered pathetic whatever she sang, in which she had leisure to unfold its whole volume. The art of conducting, sustaining, increasing, and diminishing her tones by minute degrees, acquired for her among professors the title of complete mistress of her art. In a canta-bile air, though the notes she added were few, she never lost a favorable opportunity of enriching the ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... for illumination and defining power. As we proceed we shall meet with proper objects for testing different telescopes. For the present, let the following list suffice. It is selected from Admiral Smyth's tests, obtained by diminishing the aperture of a 6-in. telescope having a focal length ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... still to be found strictly preserved in the private domains of the Emperor of Russia. Unless I am mistaken, there are only about five hundred of them left, and, in spite of all the efforts made to foster the breed, they are so rapidly diminishing in number that ere many years are past they will surely become extinct. In pre-Christian times they roamed all over Germany, and were, and still are, larger, fiercer, and much lighter ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... from Fate Line, ending toward Mount Mercury. If straight and well defined, there is little liability to constitutional diseases; when it does not extend to Head Line, steady mental labor cannot be performed; when it is broad and deep on Mount Mercury, diminishing as it enters the Life Line, death from heart disease is indicated; small lines cutting it denote sickness from biliousness. When joined to Heart Line, health and business are neglected for Love; if made up of short, fine ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... it, and—eternity of that moment!—felt it and heard it snap in two. Emily also heard it. He was conscious that at sound of the percussion she started forward and stared at him. But he did not look at her. Calmly, systematically, with gradually diminishing crackles, he reduced that scrut to powder, and washed the powder down with a sip of beer. While he dealt with the second scrut he talked to Jos about the Borough Council's proposal to erect an electric power-station on the site of the old gas-works down Hillport way. He was ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... of 1920 shows that hardly thirty per cent of the people are today engaged in agriculture, the basic industry of the United States, as compared with perhaps ninety per cent when the nation began. Yet American farmers, though constantly diminishing in proportion to the whole population, have always been, and still are, able to feed themselves and all their fellow Americans and a large part of the outside world as well. They bring forth also not merely foodstuffs, but vast quantities of raw material ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... much hard bargaining and economy fitted out himself and his escort, so that each man looked as though he were the owner of an escort of his own. Then, fretful at every added day that strained his fast-diminishing resources, he settled down to wait until the ship should ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... trials, that voyages might be protracted to the unusual length of three, or even four years, in unknown regions, and under every change and rigour of climate, not only without affecting the health, but even without diminishing the probability of life in the smallest degree. The method he pursued has been fully explained by himself in a paper which was read before the Royal Society in the year 1776;[2] and whatever improvements ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... in the suburbs of London certain strata of men which lie in circles of diminishing density around the great city, like debris around a volcano. London indeed erupts every evening between the hours of five and six, and throws out showers of tired men, who lie where they fall—or rather where their season ticket drops them—until morning, when they arise and crowd back ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... It is necessary in all oratory to read something between the lines. It is allowed to the speaker to produce effect by diminishing and exaggerating. I think we should detract something from the praises bestowed on Catiline's military virtues. The bigger Catiline could be made to appear, the greater would be the honor of having driven him out of ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... Jefferson Hogg. He had loved her devotedly since her arrival in England five years earlier, but till now she had been too constant to Williams's memory to accept him. Claire was still in Russia. Mary writes:—"I wrote to you last while I entertained the hope that my money cares were diminishing, but shabby as the best of these shabby people was, I am not to arrive at that best without due waiting and anxiety. Nor do I yet see the end of this worse than tedious uncertainty." Mary was to see Shelley's younger brother, who was just married, but she ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... in Normandy, he submitted to a course of medical treatment, in the hope of diminishing his excessive corpulency, and relieving the disagreeable and dangerous symptoms which attended it. While thus in his physician's hands, he was, of course, confined to his chamber. Philip, in ridicule, called it "being in the straw." He ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... huge heap of littleness! It is composed, as it were, of three courts, all open to the eye at once, and gradually diminishing till you come to the royal apartments, which on this side present but half a dozen windows and a balcony. This last is all that can be called a front, for the rest is only great wings. The hue of all this mass is ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... Kirkpatrick had one child, a daughter, who must be much about the same age as Molly. Of course she had very little, if any, property. But he himself had lived carefully, and had a few thousands well invested; besides which, his professional income was good, and increasing rather than diminishing every year. By the time he had arrived at this point in his consideration of the case, he was at the house of the next patient on his round, and he put away all thought of matrimony and Mrs. Kirkpatrick ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... filled the columns of the most largely circulated newspaper in Stockholm, and indeed in all Sweden. As is usually the case, Erik's sincerity, instead of diminishing his popularity, only increased it, on account of his modesty, and the romantic interest attached to his history. The press and the public seized upon it with avidity. These biographical details were soon translated into all languages, and made the tour ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... iron-handed man, who could not brook opposition, or endure any scheme that did not originate with himself. So when Mr. Marsden laid before him a project for diminishing the appalling misery and vice in which the utter neglect of Government left the female convicts, he acknowledged the letter, but did not act upon it. After waiting eighteen months for him to take some measure, the chaplain sent a statement of the condition of these poor creatures to the Colonial ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... was formed, New England had eight of the twenty-six Senators—nearly one-third of the body; now she has twelve of the seventy-two Senators—one-sixth of the body. Her power is diminishing in this body and will continue to diminish. When the Constitution was adopted, quite as great inequalities existed among the States as now. The illustrious statesmen who framed the Constitution knew and recognized that fact; they ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... assertion that it is the appearance of the Irish-Americans on the scene which has given the Irish question its present seriousness. The attempts of the Irish at physical resistance to English authority have been steadily diminishing in gravity during the present century—witness the descent from the rebellion of 1798 to Smith O'Brien's rebellion and the Fenian rising of 1867. On the other hand the power of the Irish to act as a disturbing agency in English politics has greatly increased, and the reason is ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... tomb, which is believed to be an authentic portrait. The figure occupies the central position in the higher storey, with three arched recesses on either side (the middle one in each case containing a window), diminishing in height outwards, in harmony with the lines of the roof. The ceiling within the porch is groined in four divisions; and the "priest's chamber" above it makes a convenient private room for the rector of the parish. This new porch bears its own date (1893), and the date of the foundation, seven ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... sincere affection; and the conversation was carried on in the Italian language, because she was a foreigner who had not as yet made great proficiency in the knowledge of the English tongue. Her understanding was such as, instead of diminishing, reinforced the prepossession which was inspired by her appearance; and if the sum-total of her charms could not melt the heart, it at least excited the appetite of Fathom to such a degree, that he gazed upon her with such violence of desire, as had never transported him before; ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... high, but is very symmetrical and impressive. In the preservation of its pyramidal purpose it is scarcely inferior to that most consummate work, the tower of St. Stephen's in Vienna. It is composed of three superimposed structures, gradually diminishing in solidity and massiveness from the square base to the high-springing octagonal spire, garlanded with thorny crowns. It is balanced at the south end of the facade by the pretty cupola and lantern of the Mozarabic Chapel, the work of ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... pebbles together," Audubon says, is often the only indication of the blackpoll's presence; but surely that tireless bird-student had heard its more characteristic notes, which, rapidly uttered, increasing in the middle of the strain and diminishing toward the end, suggest the shrill, wiry burn of some midsummer insect. After the opera-glass has searched him out we find him by no means an inconspicuous bird. A dainty little fellow, with a glossy black cap pulled over his eyes, he is almost hidden by the dense foliage on the trees ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... easily attained. Yes, certes, much more easily attained. He has not risen by climbing himself, but by pushing others down. He has grown great in his own estimation, not by blowing himself out, and risking the fate of Aesop's frog, but simply by the habitual use of a diminishing glass on everybody else. And I think altogether that his is a better, a safer, and a surer recipe than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Quicksilver, as he swallowed one after another, without apparently diminishing his cluster. "Pray, my good host, whence ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... annexation of Texas to the United States not as the conquest of a nation seeking to extend her dominions by arms and violence, but as the peaceful acquisition of a territory once her own, by adding another member to our confederation, with the consent of that member, thereby diminishing the chances of war and opening to them new and ever-increasing ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... boundary treaty with Ukraine remains unratified over unresolved financial claims, preventing demarcation and diminishing border security; boundaries with Latvia and Lithuania remain undemarcated despite European Union ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... blinds were not down. He opened the casement and stepped out upon the balcony. The green shade of his lamp screened its rays from the gloom without. Over the opposite square the moon hung, and to the right there stretched a long street, filled with a diminishing array of lamps, some single, some in clusters, among them an occasional blue or red one. From a corner came the notes of a piano-organ strumming out a stirring march of Rossini's. The shadowy black figures of pedestrians moved up, down, ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... We are all familiar with the diminished size of objects seen at a distance and realize that the apparent coming together of two parallel lines, as those of a railway track, is owing to the same cause. We know, too, that this diminishing must be shown in a picture or there is no sense of distance for the spectator. What is not so clear to us usually, is that there is as great a difference in color and the appearance of objects. The diminution of size is linear perspective and the change of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... hospital. The routine of duty had probably been obeyed, but there had been little sympathy and only the blundering care of men, entirely ignorant of the needs of the sick. The men were dying rapidly, and the number in the hospital fast diminishing, not by convalescence, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... mouths agape as the machine flew over the tree-tops, its light diminishing to a pin-point, its clamour sinking to the quiet hum of a bee, and then fading away altogether. In a minute ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... great gamester and thinks that he's a master of chance," said Talbot, "but as a matter of fact he always loses. See how fast his pile of money is diminishing. It will soon be gone, but he will find ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... charioteer, or a swordsman I'm as confident as a lion. As an Emperor I'm as cowardly as a jackal. It's the effect of the prophecies and auguries and oracles and such. They all hint at my impairing the prosperity of the Republic or diminishing the power of the Empire. It gallies me when I see two old bald heads wink at each other; ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... these desperate efforts, by taking a direction which led him from the bark. While there was the smallest appearance of success no difficulties, of whatever magnitude, could entirely extinguish hope; but when the dire conviction that he had been actually aiding, instead of diminishing the danger, pressed upon Sigismund, he abandoned his efforts. The most he endeavored or hoped to achieve, was to keep his own head and that of his companion above the fatal element, while he answered the cry of Maso with a shout ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... Benefit of Humour in Philosophers can always do more Philosophy. Assisted by a sense of humour: Witness the droll experiment Of this same scientific gent. For he, his frugal breakfast finishing, (The eggs and bacon fast diminishing) Noted how o'er his marmalade A Wasp was buzzing undismayed. General Reflection: We all are apt to be inhosp- Attitude of Man towards Itable to the humble Wasp— the Wasp. That Ishmael of domestic insects, The terror of the feminine sex! The Philosopher shares And our Philosopher, though ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... homage, and as he paused a moment in his honest toil, and stood erect, he unconsciously asserted the manhood that she had restored to him. She caught his attitude, and he became the subject of her sketch. Rude and simple though it was, it would ever recall to her a pleasant picture—the diminishing area of standing rye, golden in the afternoon sunshine, with light billows running over it before the breeze, Webb leading, with the strong, assured progress that would ever characterize his steps through life, and poor Lumley, who had been wronged by generations that had passed ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... "As a matter of fact and actual practise, Lutheran ministers in the United Synod do not invite others to occupy their pulpits indiscriminately; and although in some churches the custom of extending a general invitation at Communion still continues from earlier times, the practise is diminishing, and in most churches has passed away with the introduction of the Common Service. As to secret societies, there is not much agitation against them except in the Tennessee Synod, and a number of United Synod ministers are known to be members of such orders; but the ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... to reducing the deductions imposed on them for the purpose of that insurance"; and six per cent to be reserved for distribution for the benefit of marines, as follows: "two-thirds to the provident fund, with a view to diminishing the deductions on mariners' pay and to increasing the funds for assisting the victims of shipwreck and other accidents, or their families; one-third to the invalids' fund, with a view to granting subventions to the chambers of commerce or public institutions for the creation and support of sailors' ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon
... transient in their effects sink into oblivion. But even of those which have been far more significant, (since each future age will teem with fresh events equally significant, all claiming a part in the page of general history,) the importance will be perpetually diminishing in estimate, and still more in interest, from the intenser feeling with which each age will in turn regard the events which stand in immediate proximity to its own. As time rolls on, all of the past that can be spared will be gradually jostled out. Details will be lost; and then, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... more than ten years and in actual existence for about four years. During the period of development the revolutionists denounced the monarch in most extravagant terms and compared him to the devil. Their aim was to kill the mystic belief of the people in the Emperor; for only by diminishing the dignity of the monarch could the revolutionary cause make headway. And during and after the change all the official documents, school textbooks, press views and social gossip have always coupled the word monarch with reprobation. Thus for a long while this glorious image has been lying ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... combine; and an outrageous land monopoly, made possible by a bad system of taxation. We have seen, that this dense mass of needy humanity, constantly creates such a fierce competition, that rents must grow higher and wages must grow lower. We have seen, that the causes named, are steadily diminishing the wealth of rural sections, by transferring it to the great city. We have seen that this whole movement, which tends to transform the great majority of the independent citizens of a republic, into the financial slaves of an ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... Bourignon, a lady in France, who pretended to particular inspirations. She was born at Lisle, in 1616. At her birth, she was so deformed that it was debated some days in the family whether it was not proper to stifle her as a monster; but, her deformity diminishing, she was spared, and afterwards obtained such a degree of beauty, that she had her admirers. From her childhood to her old age she had an extraordinary turn of mind. She set up for a reformer, and published a great number of books, filled with very singular notions; the most remarkable of ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... over and over in his fingers, all the while gazing at the young man's diminishing back. He sighed. That would make him the happiest man in the world. He examined the carnelian band encircling the six-inches of evanescent happiness. "What do you think of that!" he murmured. "Same brand the old boy used to smoke. And if he pays ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... generations, with wooden buttons and protruding hinges proclaiming an ancient fashion; but the unique feature of the New North Church is its slave galleries. These two small galleries, between the roof and the choir loft, held for thirty years, in diminishing numbers, negroes and Indians. The last occupant was a black Lucretia, who, after being freed, was invited to sit downstairs with her master and mistress, which she did, and which she continued to do until her death, not ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... between shore and shore—for suddenly dark lanes of water open up, which widen while you watch—and soon, incredibly soon, the river has burst its bonds and is rushing freely once more between its banks, with only the ever-diminishing blocks of melting ice upon its surface to tell the story of its ...
— On Christmas Day In The Evening • Grace Louise Smith Richmond
... desire to see things as they are, natural and proper in an intelligent being, appears as the ground of it. There is a view in which all the love of our neighbor, the impulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it,— motives eminently such as are called social,—come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main and preeminent ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... lecture upon it by Michael Faraday, in which that illustrious philosopher, confirming Schonbein, stated that he had discovered ozone freely on the Brighton Downs, and had found the evidence of it diminishing as he approached Brighton, until it was lost altogether ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... or by force of imagination bring one motive into prominence, concentrating its attention on it and thus intensifying its power; that it has a corresponding power of resisting other motives, driving them into the background and thus gradually diminishing their force; that the will itself becomes stronger by exercise, as the desires do by indulgence. The conflict between the will and the desires, the reality of self-restraint and the power of Will to modify character, are among the most familiar facts of moral life. In the words of Burke, 'It ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... instance showing how exorbitant exactions defeat their own end by diminishing, and not raising, the available revenue, it should be noted that in 1853 an income tax of 7d. in the pound raised L200,000 more than did an income tax of 8d. in the pound at the date of the Royal Commission. Of the remedies which are suggested, the alteration of the Fiscal system, by making ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... that Roland proposed to Miss Verepoint. The passage of time and the strain of talking over the revue had to a certain extent moderated his original fervor. He had shaded off from a passionate devotion, through various diminishing tints of regard for her, into a sort of pale sunset glow of affection. His principal reason for proposing was that it seemed to him to be in the natural order of events. Her air towards him had become distinctly proprietorial. ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... thought would be most disagreeable to Sulla. But Sulla pretended to be pleased at this, and to view it as a proof that the people, by doing what they liked, were really indebted to him for their liberty; and for the purpose of diminishing his general unpopularity he managed the election of Lucius Cinna,[200] who was of the opposite faction, to the consulship, having first bound him by solemn imprecations and oaths to favour his measures. Cinna ascended the Capitol with ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... to know what this is all about!" he exclaimed after a time, as they saw a subdued glow, which lasted a minute or two. As the warning light was flashing more and more slowly and with diminishing intensity, the Violet was once more put upon her course. As she proceeded, however, the warnings of the liberation of intra-atomic energy grew stronger and stronger, and both men scanned their path intensely for a sight of the source of ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... with a healthy patient on a vegetable diet, chocolate and coffee increase the excretion of purins, diminishing the excretion of uric acid and apparently hindering the precipitation of uric acid in the organism. This diminution, however, was not due to retention of uric ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... government of the Marquis of Hertford, and his successor, Lord Townsend (appointed in 1768), the Patriot party contended on the ground of rendering the judges independent, diminishing the pension list, and modifying the law of Poynings, requiring heads of bills to be sent into England, and certified by both Privy Councils, before they could be passed upon by the legislature. The question of supply, and that of the duration of Parliament, being settled, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Common Law. Would it not rather weaken the right of primo-geniture, or any other old and universally-acknowledged right, should the legislature pass an act in favour of it? In my Letter to the People of Scotland, against diminishing the number of the Lords of Session, published in 1785, there is the following passage, which, as a concise, and I hope a fair and rational state of the matter, I presume to quote: 'The Juries of England are Judges of law ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... on board the Goshhawk had been at fever heat, but it was now diminishing rapidly, for she did not contain a man who was not well pleased to see the Portsmouth give the matter up. All signs of mutiny disappeared, of course, for there was no more duty of a military character to be required of the men. The bark was soon set free of her ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... neighbours. The former is composed of a species of trachyte; the latter of ashes and fragmental matter which have been blown out of their respective vents of eruption into the air, and piled up and around in a crateriform manner with sides of gradually diminishing slope outwards, thus giving rise to the characteristic volcanic curve. The two varieties here referred to, contrasting in form, composition, and colour of material, can be clearly recognised from the summit of ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... used, a teaspoonful or two, three times a day, after meals, in conjunction with plenty of outdoor exercise and the best of food. Where the hemorrhages occur in those having too much blood, the diet must be corrected by the use of vegetables and fruit, diminishing the amount of meat and pastries to a minimum. The amount of fibrin should also be increased by the use of ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... Saturn and his spectacular rings a wide berth and sped on, with ever-increasing velocity. Past the outer satellites, on and on, the good ship Forlorn Hope flew into the black-and-brilliant depths of interplanetary space. Saturn was an ever-diminishing disk beneath them: above them was Jupiter's thin crescent, growing ever larger and more bright, and the Monarch of the Solar System, remaining almost stationary day after day, increasing steadily in apparent diameter ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith |
