"Diminutive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... others were possible, because the mind was filled with merely tribal legends. What was called early civilization was only relatively splendid. There was unsurpassed poetry but no science, ample brawn but diminutive brain, much passion but little love. Out of the darkness of the past the stream of history, very narrow and shallow at first, has emerged and steadily expanded and deepened. Men are now equally intense but far clearer ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... who is making his life a part of a hundred or a thousand or a million lives, thus illimitably intensifying or multiplying his own, instead of living as you in what otherwise would be his own little, diminutive self, will find himself ascending higher and higher until he stands as one among the few, and will find a peace, a happiness, a satisfaction so rich and so beautiful, compared to which yours will be but a poor miserable something, ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... up-curving snout; the roll and lunge of the gait, like the motion of a vessel plunging forward before the wind; the rounded immensity of the trunk, and the huge bluntness of the posteriors; and all these features are combined with such masterly unity of conception and plastic vigor, that the diminutive model insensibly grows mighty beneath your gaze, until you realize the monster as if he stood stupendous and grim before you. In the first of the figures the bear has paused in his great stride to paw over and snuff at the horned head of a mountain sheep, half buried in the soil. The ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... the front door behind him he caught a look back in the room. Framed in the doorway stood a very small pickaninny, barely reaching to the knob. She was barefoot, in a blue calico dress, with her hair done in two kinky braids that stood out in front like diminutive horns. In her arms she held tightly clutched an old corn shock wrapped in a red rag. One hand grasped the doorpost. And she was watching him wide eyed ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... tart, and left it without a pang. But when the old man urged him, for the third time, to take that pernicious draught with his cheese, he angrily demanded a glass of beer. The old man toddled out of the room, and on his return he proffered to him a diminutive glass of white spirit, which he called usquebaugh. Phineas, happy to get a little whisky, said nothing more about the beer, and ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... the perjuries I suppose at which Jove laughs!' said Cicely getting up, and hastily rearranging her short curls with the help of various combs, before the only diminutive looking-glass the farm sitting-room provided. 'However, we shall see what happens. I have no doubt Miss Daisy has arranged the proposal scene for this very afternoon. We shall be in for the last act of ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... name) this is not the true account. The full history of the name is too long to give here, but the short account is this—"The old name was Prime Rolles—or primerole. Primerole is an abbreviation of Fr., primeverole: It., primaverola, diminutive of prima vera from flor di prima vera, the first spring flower. Primerole, as an outlandish unintelligible word, was soon familiarized into primerolles, and this into primrose."—DR. PRIOR. The name Primrose was not at first always applied to the flower, but was ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... in Dublin, on the 28th of May, 1779: he was a diminutive but precocious child, and was paraded by his father and mother, who were people in humble life, as a reciter of verse; and as an early rhymer also. His first poem was printed in a Dublin magazine, when he was fourteen years old. In 1794 he entered Trinity ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... of the country, the peasants, were not quite so free as when Rurik landed. They began to be known as moujik, a contemptuous diminutive of the word mouj or man, literally manikin. The merchants or gosti did not form a distinct class, but in larger cities, such as Novgorod and Kief, they had a voice in the administration. These cities had a vetche or municipal council which directed the city's business ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... of, and as Halicarnassus was fortunately absent for a few days, I prospected on the farm. A sunny little corner on a southern slope smiled up at me, and seemed to offer itself as a delightful situation for the diminutive garden which mine must be. The soil, too, seemed as fine and mellow as could be desired. I at once captured an Englishman from a neighboring plantation, hurried him into my corner, and bade him dig me and hoe me and plant me ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... the man. She was very small and slenderly made, with dark hair, luminous eyes, and ivory-white complexion, a sensitive nose and mouth, a wisp of nerves and passion. She carried her head high and, for so diminutive a person, appeared ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... its cause something of absolute and substantive existence without me, or is it not? Is its cause something of the very same nature, as the thing that gave me a similar sensation in a matter of comparatively a pigmy and diminutive extension? ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... shirt-sleeves and wearing a diminutive apron to which clung a fluff of turkey feathers, ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... higher and a trifle askew as he surveyed them. The reflected grandeur of past days was on him, and in comparison modernity seemed common-place. All these brilliant, dashing, elegant men and women of his youth were gone. He was the only human echo left of their greatness, and his diminutive person grew more erect as he realized his importance as a ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the south of Barbary, differ in several respects from their brethren in the north. They are rather diminutive in person, and besides the want of beard already noticed, have in general an effeminate tone of voice. They are, however, active and enterprising. They possess rather more of the social qualities than the other tribes; appear to be susceptible of strong attachments and friendships, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... talking, Aby," said a diminutive gentleman, with a Roman nose and generally antique visage; "you must do the best you can for yourself, and get your living in a respectable sort of vay. I can't do no more for you, so help ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Marry, but if I were a king, wouldn't I have a long gown of blue velvet, all o'er broidered of seed-pearl, and a cap of cramoisie [crimson velvet], with golden broidery! And a summer jack [the garment of which jacket is the diminutive] of samitelle would I have—let me see—green, I reckon, bound with gold ribbon; and fair winter hoods of miniver and ermine, and buttons of gold by the score. Who so bravely apparelled as ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... spray of finest, powdered quick-silver, and no sooner reached the little plain, than 'twas gathered into a tiny channel, by which it sped with great velocity to the middle of the plain, where it formed a diminutive lake, like the fishponds that townsfolk sometimes make in their gardens, when they have occasion for them. The lake was not so deep but that a man might stand therein with his breast above the water; ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... experience of the art of finding gold to enable a man to fix on a good site for commencing operations. There are of course instances of wonderful luck and unexpected success, but they are very much the exception, and form but a diminutive proportion of the fortune of any gold diggings. We hear of the man who has found a big nugget and made a fortune, but nothing of the thousands who don't find any big nuggets, and earn but ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... was reached. Thousands of these taxis and similar vehicles were parked along its broad flanks, while literal swarms of diminutive individuals circulated to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... diminutive windows at the throng of life in the unquiet streets as they halted for the passing of a camel laden with bricks and stones from a demolished building; the poor thing teetered precariously past under such a back-breaking ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... factor cannot enter into an explanation of this illusion; but the experiments of which I have just spoken seem to point plainly to a very intimate relation between this illusion and the illusions in our judgments of time. We have here presented on a diminutive scale the illusions which we see in our daily experience in comparing past with present stretches of time. It is a well-known psychological experience that a filled time appears short in passing, but long in retrospect, while an empty ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... his powers in vain over the details of another period, seeking unsuccessfully for any documents which might allude to the present conspiracy, to enable him to perceive its true meaning, and all that had been attempted against him, when a diminutive man, of an olive complexion, who stooped much, entered the cabinet with a measured step. This was a Secretary of State named Desnoyers. He ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... sitting right down on the banquette, as do the Choctaw squaws who sell bay and sassafras and life-everlasting, with a high, close board-fence shutting out of view the diminutive garden on the southern side. An ancient willow droops over the roof of round tiles, and partly hides the discolored stucco, which keeps dropping off into the garden as though the old cafe was stripping for the plunge ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... expressed by adding ben or ken or adin (a verb meaning to be above) for the comparative, and apuedi for the diminutive. Ubura, from the verb uburau to be before in time, and adiki, from adikin to be after in time, are also used for the same purpose. The superlative has to be expressed by a circumlocution; as tumaqua aditu ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... Chapters III and IV, openings of considerable size so located in the face of the outer wall as to unfit them for use as doorways, and others whose size is wholly inadequate, but which are still provided with the typical though diminutive single-paneled door. Many of these small openings, occurring most frequently in the back walls of house rows, have the jambs, lintels, etc., characteristic of the typical modern door. However, as ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... to me to have been built upon a design of Palladio, and might be converted into an elegant place of worship; but it is indifferently contrived for that sort of idolatry which is performed in it at present: the grandeur of the fane gives a diminutive effect to the little painted divinities that are adorned in it, and the company, on a ball-night, must look like an assembly of fantastic fairies, revelling by moonlight among the columns ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... of the admonition, suffered himself to be led by the child; and together they passed slowly out into the living room, through the kitchen, and thence into the diminutive rose garden, the pride ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... from the clutches of Austria in 1746 by means of a popular riot, during which the aristocracy considerately looked the other way, only to fall into an even more embarrassed and unheroic position vis-a-vis of so diminutive an opponent as Corsica. The whole story is a curious prototype of the nineteenth century imbroglio between Spain and Cuba. Of commonplaces about the palaces fruitful of verbiage in Addison and Gray, who says with perfect truth, "I should make you sick of marble were I to tell you how it is lavished ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... talking for twenty minutes." I was now presented to Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael, also old, also charming, in widow's dress no less in the bloom of age than Mrs. Gregory, but whiter and very diminutive. She shyly welcomed me to Kings Port. "Take him home with you, Julia. We pulled your bell three times, and it's too damp for you to be out. Don't forget," Mrs. Gregory said to me, "that you haven't told me a word about your Aunt Carola, and that I shall expect you to come and do it." She ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... in use to-day. It was an adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon 'wyrm,' meaning a dragon or snake; or from the Gothic 'waurms,' a serpent; or the Icelandic 'ormur,' or the German 'wurm.' We gather that it conveyed originally an idea of size and power, not as now in the diminutive of both these meanings. Here legendary history helps us. We have the well-known legend of the 'Worm Well' of Lambton Castle, and that of the 'Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh' near Bamborough. In both these legends the 'worm' was a monster of vast size and power—a veritable dragon ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... boxes and I must confess that, as my eye traveled along the rows of impassive faces and noted the perfect though diminutive features, the tiny ears, the bristling hair, the frowning eyebrows—so discordant with the placid expression and peacefully closed eyes—a chill of horror crept over me. The whole thing was so unreal, so unnatural, so suggestive ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... war-cry of 'nein, nein, nein,' sprang at him like a little tiger, and by the fierceness of her gestures and the volubility of her German jargon actually compelled him to retreat step by step until she had him outside the door, which she barred with her diminutive person. No one could help laughing at the discomfited giant and the mite of a child facing him so bravely, while she scolded at the ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Prefect of the Congregation should be called the "Red Pope," for how limitless were the powers of that man of conquest and domination, whose hands stretched from one to the other end of the earth. Allowing that the Cardinal Secretary held Europe, that diminutive portion of the globe, did not he, the Prefect, hold all the rest—the infinity of space, the distant countries as yet almost unknown? Besides, statistics showed that Rome's uncontested dominion was limited to 200 millions of Apostolic and Roman Catholics; whereas the schismatics ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... you dare!" screamed Rosette, drawing himself up to the fullest height his diminutive figure would allow. "You shall answer for your conduct before a court ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... diminutive frame cottage, surrounded by what might be called "a five acre lot," which was used, when used at all, for cattle exhibitions. It was, Mr. Dayton recorded, "the last stopping place for codgers, ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... to give you confidence," said he. Feeling in the breast pocket of his laced satin waistcoat, he drew forth a diminutive pistol—a delicate toy, with a pattern of silver foliated over the butt. "It is loaded," he explained, "and primed; though it cannot go off unless you pull back the trigger. At close quarters it can be pretty deadly. Do ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... and life. Beyond this Ch'ang Men was a street called Shih-li-chieh (Ten Li street); in this street a lane, the Jen Ch'ing lane (Humanity and Purity); and in this lane stood an old temple, which on account of its diminutive dimensions, was called, by general consent, the Gourd temple. Next door to this temple lived the family of a district official, Chen by surname, Fei by name, and Shih-yin by style. His wife, nee Feng, possessed a worthy ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Within the last three weeks he has already reached p. 94 of Vol. I, and here the weather, having suddenly become tropical, the Baron felt that his mighty brain "whirled, swam to a giddiness, and subsided." He has been stopped occasionally en route; he had come into view of "the diminutive marble cavalier of the infantile cerebellum." Then he retraced his steps, puzzled a bit, but after a "modest quencher" Swivellerian libation, he hit upon a luminous passage which warned him "in plain speech"—and whose is plainer than GEORGE MEREDITH's?—"that the Bacchus of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... this idea of the seat of magnetic influence, together with the construction of the compass-box, the division of the card into eight principal points, and each of these again subdivided into three, the manner of suspending the needle, and its diminutive size, seldom exceeding in length three quarters of an inch, are all of them strong presumptions of its being an original, and not a ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... wet season, a diminutive orchid, the roots, tuber, leaf, and flower of which may be easily covered by the glass of a lady's watch, springs upon exposed shoulders of the hills. So far it has not been recorded for any other part of Australia, or, indeed, the world. Science ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of a girl. 'Twas a year of grace indeed, for the little stranger happened to be none other than Anne Oldfield, whose elegance of manner, charm of voice and action and loveliness of face would in time make her the most delightful comedienne of her day. Perhaps she found no instant welcome, this diminutive maiden who came smiling into existence laden with a message from the sunshine; her father was richer in ancestry than guineas, and the arrival of another daughter may have seemed an honour hardly worth the bestowal.[A] But Thalia ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... but vastly comfortable parlor, very handsomely furnished, and altogether a luxurious place. It had a fireplace with an immense arch, the antique breadth of which extended almost from wall to wall of the room, though now fitted up in such a way that the modern coal-grate looked very diminutive in the midst. Gazing into this pleasant interior, it seemed to me, that, among these venerable surroundings, availing himself of whatever was good in former things, and eking out their imperfection with the results of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... look, therefore, for a large amount or variety of animal life in the Ecuadorian forests. Time was when colossal megatheroids, mastodons, and glyptodons browsed on the foliage of the Andes and the Amazon; but now the terrestrial mammals of this tropical region are few and diminutive. They are likewise old-fashioned, inferior in type as well as bulk to those of the eastern hemisphere, for America was a finished continent long before Europe. "It seems most probable (says Darwin) that the North ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... Gaining his diminutive cabin, Schwalbe by sheer force of habit consulted the aneroid. The mercury was falling rapidly. Since he last looked, barely two hours previously, it had dropped 764 to 734 millimetres, or an inch and two-tenths. That meant that the anti-cyclone was rapidly breaking up, and that a ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... (Clotho Durandi, LATR.), in memory of him who first called attention to this particular Spider. To enter on eternity under the safe-conduct of a diminutive animal which saves us from speedy oblivion under the mallows and rockets is no contemptible advantage. Most men disappear without leaving an echo to repeat their name; they lie buried in ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... pocket a diminutive vial, the smallest I had ever seen, in which were a number of little white granules, about the size of the head of a pin. A printed label was wound around the vial, and it bore the word "Arsenicum." It passed from hand to hand, and all ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... since, they never wished to change, as they had no children. That of course made a great difference. I never should have thought it possible for two human beings to have existed, much less been comfortable, in such a diminutive place. Another cottage I know contains but one room altogether, which is about eight feet square; it is inhabited by a solitary old woman, and looks like a toy-house. One or two such places as these may be found in most villages, but it does not by any ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... from which so large a plant was known to grow. There were, perhaps, smaller seeds, but the plants which sprung from them were not so great; and there were greater plants, but the seeds from which they sprung were not so small." Edersheim (i, p. 593) states that the diminutive size of the mustard seed was commonly used in comparison by the rabbis, "to indicate the smallest amount such as the least drop of blood, the least defilement, etc." The same author continues, in speaking of the grown plant: "Indeed, it looks no longer like a ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... Ic.3: Can this cockpit hold] Shakespeare probably calls the stage a cockpit, as the most diminutive enclosure present ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... different and superior qualities been combined in one woman. She had great personal beauty; her brow and eye were remarkable. Although small in stature, it is said of her as it was of Channing, he too being of diminutive size, that she made you think she was larger than she was. She had a look of command. The amount of will force and intelligent power in her small body was enough to direct the universe; yet she was modest ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... on the Big Sur River, one of the little boys called to his mother that there was a funny sort of a "big dog" out in the pasture. His mother paid no attention to it, but a diminutive pet black and tan started an assault on the animal in question. The lion and the dog disappeared in the brush. Presently the canine barking ceased and the small boy wondered what had become of his valiant ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... the men on horseback, so as to fit them for use against the Spanish cavalry, if we should go against Havana in December. We had, all of us, eyed the captured Spanish cavalry with particular interest. The men were small, and the horses, though well trained and well built, were diminutive ponies, very much smaller than cow ponies. We were certain that if we ever got a chance to try shock tactics against them they would go down like nine-pins, provided only that our men could be trained to charge in any kind of line, and ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... did not seem that the tug made much impression on the New York. Apart from the serious nature of the accident, it made an irresistibly comic picture to see the huge vessel drifting down the dock with a snorting tug at its heels, for all the world like a small boy dragging a diminutive puppy down the road with its teeth locked on a piece of rope, its feet splayed out, its head and body shaking from side to side in the effort to get every ounce of its weight used to the best advantage. At first all appearance showed that the sterns of the two vessels would collide; but ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... the diminutive of plata, silver, to which it appears very similar; platina being a ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... is his influence that almost all the other gods of the pantheon take on some of his character. Whenever and wherever possible, those phases of the god's nature are emphasized which point to the possession of power over enemies. The gods of the Assyrian pantheon impress one as diminutive Ashurs by the side of the big one, and in proportion as they approach nearer to the character of Ashur himself, is their hold upon ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... alone; Harry Smith, being a swarthy, dark-haired fellow, was "Blacksmith;" and I, Nathaniel Herrick, was dubbed the first day "Poet"—I, who had never made a line in my life— and later on, as I was rather diminutive, the "Gnat." ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... him at first with a derisive smile, and this diminutive figure, with his great head, on which a high, black felt hat just kept its position, seemed to amuse him excessively. All at once a thought struck him, and, like an arrow impelled from the bow, he dashed forward and ran after ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... and sensitive boy, began to cry; and his father, who had the pluck of a bull-terrier, wanted to interfere, in spite of his diminutive stature. I was also beside myself with indignation, and pulling off my coat and hat, which I gave to Lintot, made my way to the drayman, who was offering to fight any three men in the crowd, an offer that met with ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... night she was sitting in their diminutive parlour,— Hogarth at a table inscribing the association's names received by post that evening; and at last, bending low over her sewing, she said: "Richard, is it true you have been to ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... except by the soldiers. Down between the two ranks, which were formed facing each other, came the Sultan on a white steed—a beautiful Arabian—and having at his side his son, a boy about ten or twelve years old, who was riding a pony, a diminutive copy of his father's mount, the two attended by a numerous body-guard, dressed in gorgeous Oriental uniforms. As the procession passed our carriage, I, as pre-arranged, stood up and took off my hat, His Serene Highness promptly acknowledging ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... is by no means the largest of our herbs. On this point it is necessary to recall and keep in mind the fact that when a given plant is indigenous in a southern climate, the corresponding species or variety that may be found in more northerly latitudes is generally of a comparatively diminutive size. I have seen a mahogany-plant cultivated in a flower-pot, the best representative that could be obtained here of those forest patriarchs in tropical America which constitute the mahogany of commerce. ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... some inflated bladders in each end, so as to make the canoe a diminutive lifeboat, in case of an upset or of a hole ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... the woods and Sam's recital from the stump, the three friends emerged again upon the road, and a belated farmer driving home half asleep on the seat of his wagon caught their attention. With the skill of an Indian boy the diminutive Morris sprang upon the wagon and thrust a ten dollar bill into the farmer's hand. "Lead us, O man of the soil!" he shouted, "Lead us to a gilded palace of sin! Take us to a saloon! The life oil gets low ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... of St. Cuthbert's which was his home from his release to his death (unhappily demolished fifty years back), shows the humble character of his daily life. It was a small cottage, such as labourers now occupy, with three small rooms on the ground floor, and a garret with a diminutive dormer window under the high-pitched tiled roof. Behind stood an outbuilding which served as his workshop. We have a passing glimpse of this cottage home in the diary of Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary. One Mr. Bagford, ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... any return. Some of the younger women, though sun-burnt, were handsome; and many of them, from their fanciful dresses, resembled the cottagers as exhibited on the stage. The men, on the other hand, were a most ugly race of beings, diminutive in size, and with the features of an old baboon. Mr. Younge, indeed, in some degree accounted for this, by the information that the best men had been taken ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... cavern formed by overhanging blocks of granite. Deep river pools and deceitful morasses, over which the cotton grass flutters its white tassels, are thought to be the "gates" of their country, where they possess diminutive flocks and herds of their own. Malicious, yet hardly demoniacal, they are precisely Dryden's "spirits of a ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... get it, and commerce hums." Here the doctor was for a moment diverted by some objective impression; and without a word of excuse to the little man, he swung himself into his buggy, which stood waiting, and drove rapidly away; whilst the diminutive man, after a moment of weak indecision, shuffled off down the street. I later learned that these talks of Doctor Castleton's were, as regards the element of verity, thrown off as writers of fiction throw off ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... 8,000, or nearly one-sixth, belong to the first of the two classes, and of these nearly 2,000 are grasses. In cold and temperate climates the species of this most interesting and important family are comparatively diminutive in size. In our climate, for instance, the grasses are somewhat remarkable among vegetables for their humble stature, and their inconspicuous appearance; while in the warmer regions of the earth, the bamboos and canes, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... be broken open again by mechanical means, and he writes learnedly on the infallible signs of witchcraft. By mixing horse-dung with human semen he believed he was able to produce a medium from which, by chemical treatment in a retort, a diminutive human being, or homunculus, as he called it, could be produced. The spirits of the elements, the sylphs of the air, the gnomes of the earth, the salamanders of the fire, and the undines of the water, were to him real and ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... have been laid open by her," continued the diminutive priest. "Inert matter is engaged in warlike commotion and she hath brought fire down from the heavens to entertain her. She hath placed our land in such a state of defence that no invader can approach it; she hath brought from over the great black water the amazing 'pom-poms' ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... positions may be avoided. The troops, being placed, immediately proceed to clear the sites of their respective encampments, and wagons are set to work to bring in logs with which huts may be constructed. In about a week thousands of diminutive log houses arise, roofed with the shelter tents of the soldiers, or, when the occupants have sufficient handicraft ability, with rough shingles. Shelters are erected, as far as possible, for the animals, generally being nothing more than ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... overcome the jealousy of my otherwise gentle rat when it saw me petting a mouse, and it would watch for an opportunity to spring upon its diminutive rival and put a ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... Mars, as she has been called, in compliment to her talent, and with reference to her diminutive stature, held more than one engagement at the Varietes. She has been a great rambler, having acted in Germany, Holland, and Belgium, and visited England as manager of a French company. She married Carmouche, a writer of vaudevilles, has left the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... theologians."—Campbell's Rhet., p. 297. "As to those animals whose use is less common, or who on account of the places which they inhabit, fall less under our observation, as fishes and birds, or whom their diminutive size removes still further from our observation, we generally, in English, employ a single Noun to designate both Genders, Masculine and Feminine."—Fosdick's De Sacy, p. 67. "Adjectives may always be distinguished by their being the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... stored under the stone that had attracted Thor. And this booty still remained—a half-pint of ground-nuts piled carefully in a little hollow lined with moss. They were not really nuts. They were more like diminutive potatoes, about the size of cherries, and very much like potatoes in appearance. They were starchy and sweet, and fattening. Thor enjoyed them immensely, rumbling in that curious satisfied way deep down in his chest as he feasted. And then he ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... thing happened. Instead of running away, the boy took a step forward, and the man paused, scarcely believing his eyes. Another step forward, and yet another, came the diminutive figure, until almost within the aggressor's reach; then suddenly, quick as a cat, it veered, dropped upon all fours to the floor, and head first, scrambling like a rabbit, disappeared into the open mouth of ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... out to be a pure Muscular as we had stated. The class member's mistake came from the fact that the acrobat appeared taller than he really was. High platforms always give this illusion. Furthermore his partner in the act was of diminutive height and the acrobat looked tall ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... father of Dona Manuela, known by the affectionate diminutive, Manuelita, throughout the land, and loved and admired by all, even by her father's enemies, for her compassionate disposition. Perhaps she was the one being in the world for whom he, a widower and lonely man, cherished a great tenderness. It is ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... employ thou and thee, and add to these forms of endearment numerous suffixes. Human names, all animals, plants, metals, stones, trees—anything, in fact—can be used in the diminutive form. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... because our things aren't pretty?" she asked Lily, although she really could not conceive of anything more exquisite than the diminutive garments on ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... that ever came to the knowledge and love of Jesus was the old Chief Namakei. We came to live on his land, as it was near our diminutive harbor; and, upon the whole, he and his people were the most friendly, though his only brother, the Sacred Man of the tribe, on two occasions tried to shoot me. Namakei came a good deal about us at the Mission House, and helped us to acquire the language. He discovered ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... men. No one who looks upon the vast assemblage of stupendous human circumstances, from the first origin of man upon the earth, as merely the ordained antecedent of what, seen from the long procession of all the ages, figures in so diminutive a consummation as the Catholic Church, is likely to obtain a very effective hold of that broad sequence and many-linked chain of events, to which Bossuet gave a right name, but whose real meaning he never was even near seizing. His ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... bottle of good wine, which she fished out of her huge basket. Her protege, made tame by hunger, allowed himself to be treated like a child. First she gave him a very small sip of Burgundy, then a diminutive fragment of cake; and then another sip and another piece of cake—insisting on his eating very slowly. Being perfectly useless, I looked quietly on, and smiled to see the suhmissiveness with which this fine, handsome fellow allowed ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... over his brows and took two turns, of three feet long, up and down the room, lifting his legs up very high and setting them down very hard. This pause gave time for Gluck to collect his thoughts a little, and, seeing no great reason to view his diminutive visitor with dread, and feeling his curiosity overcome his amazement, he ventured on a question of ...
— The King of the Golden River - A Short Fairy Tale • John Ruskin.
... words of a contemporary, "this Anglo-Teutonic, castellated, gothized structure must be considered as an abortive production, at once illustrative of bad taste and defective judgment. From the small size of the windows and the diminutive proportion of its turrets, it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... A thin, undersized man in worn black clothes, and with a somber hat of soft black felt still upon his head, came into the room. His dark hair was tinged with gray, he walked with a pronounced stoop. In his shabby clothes, fitting loosely upon his diminutive body, he should have been an insignificant figure, but somehow or other he was nothing of the sort. His thin lips curved into a discontented droop. His cheeks were hollow and his eyes shone with the brightness of the ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... true that the buildings are of the most primitive, and the furnishings, too. The bureau drawers do stick, and there is only "curtained" closet room, and mirrors are few and diminutive, and orders for hot water have to be given ahead of time, but there is no discomfort, except bathing in the cold! The huge fire, lighted early every morning by one of the guides in each guest house, keeps the main part fairly warm but the temperature of one of ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... country. By birth the Leprechawn is of low descent, his father being an evil spirit and his mother a degenerate fairy; by nature he is a mischief-maker, the Puck of the Emerald Isle. He is of diminutive size, about three feet high, and is dressed in a little red jacket or roundabout, with red breeches buckled at the knee, gray or black stockings, and a hat, cocked in the style of a century ago, over a little, ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... propagation of their species. Their dimensions now undergo a monstrous change, more especially the queen; her abdomen augments by degrees, and increases to a prodigious size, when compared with her two first stages of existence; and the king, although greatly augmented, yet is diminutive compared to his enormous spouse, who sometimes exceeds three inches in length. She is in this state extremely prolific, and the matrix is almost perpetually yielding eggs, which are taken from her by her attendants, and are carried into the ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... they may be influenced by his own gestures or expression, irrespective of the sense of what he says. I believe, therefore, in the first place, that pulpits ought never to be highly decorated; the speaker is apt to look mean or diminutive if the pulpit is either on a very large scale or covered with splendid ornament, and if the interest of the sermon should flag the mind is instantly tempted to wander. I have observed that in almost all cathedrals, when the pulpits are peculiarly magnificent, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... was a loft between the cell occupied by May and the roof of the prison, a loft of such diminutive proportions that a man of average height could not stand upright in it. This loft had neither window nor skylight, and the gloom would have been intense, had not a few faint sun-rays struggled through ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... its head supported by angels, and with two monks holding open books, kneeling at its feet, lies on the upper slab; and underneath is a ghastly figure in a winding-sheet, supposed to represent the archbishop after death; the diminutive figures which originally filled the niches were destroyed by the Puritans, but have been to some extent replaced. The gaudy colours of the tomb enable one to form some idea of the appearance of the ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... took his boot in his hands and gave a slight twist to the heel. There was a little click, and a sort of double drawer shot out of the front of the sole. It contained two sheafs of bank notes and a number of diminutive articles, such as a gimlet, a ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... gloom, like diminutive goblins that beckon; Onward we stagger and gasp in the grip of this ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... deformed, to be one intemperate and unjust, filled with a multitude of desires, a prey to foolish hopes and vexed with idle fears; through its diminutive and avaricious nature the subject of envy; employed solely in thought of what is immoral and low, bound in the fetters of impure delights, living the life, whatever it may be, peculiar to the passion of body; and so totally merged in sensuality as to esteem the base pleasant, and ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... forgotten the money which he believed the boys had found. Now it came back to him with redoubled force. Long years of a roving, reckless life had prepared him for almost every emergency. Taking from his pocket a small folding lantern and a diminutive spirit-lamp, he soon got it in ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... come to Headquarters and be identified. He had an ugly looking revolver in his belt, but he submitted very tamely to his temporary arrest. I was taking him off to our Headquarters, where strange officers were often brought for purposes of identification, when a young Highland Captain of diminutive stature, but unbounded dignity, appeared on the scene with four patrol men. He told me that as he was patrolling the roads for the capture of spies, he would take over the custody of my victim. The Canadians were loath ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... school of Athens, which had stood nine hundred years. At that time just seven philosophers were teaching in that school, the shades of the ancient seven sages of Greece—a striking play of history, like the name of the last West-Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, or, in contemptuous diminutive, Augustulus, combining the names of the founder of the city and the founder of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... it came to pass, that this diminutive letter to Mr. Churchill should understand the business of introducing better than the Introduction itself; or why the Bishop did not take it into his head to send the former into the world some months before the latter; which ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... looking up I saw a young Gy, who might be sixteen years old, standing beside the magistrate and gazing at me with a very benignant countenance. She had not come to her full growth, and was scarcely taller than myself (viz., about feet 10 inches), and, thanks to that comparatively diminutive stature, I thought her the loveliest Gy I had hitherto seen. I suppose something in my eyes revealed that impression, for her countenance grew yet more benignant. "Taee tells me," she said, "that you have not yet learned to accustom ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... afterwards, the poor girl died of love and shame. Two ladies, rivals in fashionable life who tormented one another with a thousand little stings of womanish spite, were given to understand that each of their hearts was a nest of diminutive snakes, which did quite as much ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he was tired and would rather stay by the tent, so Nugget and Clay prepared their rods and went down the creek a short distance to a jutting point of rock. With a diminutive hook they caught a couple of minnows, which ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... Port Jackson are in person rather more diminutive and slighter made, especially about the thighs and legs, than the Europeans. It is doubtful whether their society contained a person of six feet high. The tallest I ever measured, reached five feet eleven inches, and men of his height were rarely seen. Baneelon, who towered above the majority of ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... means Grusha (another form for the diminutive of Agrippina, in Russian Agrafenya). The play ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... a sudden unexpected rush might have put them in possession of the battery. Now, however, nothing in the nature of a surprise could well occur, for by the destruction of the barrack we were enabled to obtain an uninterrupted view from the battery all over the diminutive islet upon which ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... to the more diminutive class of midshipmen—those under five feet high, and under seven ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... engaged in the gentle pastime of dragging sacks and branches along the roads; they made so much dust that it might easily have been caused by, say, a cavalry division going to water. Also, thousands of tiny tents sprang up round the bivouac areas, in front of which were equally diminutive soldiers in squads and companies, whose function it was to stand rigidly to attention all day long, and who treated the frequent bombing raids with utter contempt. A careful observer would have noticed a certain woodenness about them, but enemy airmen were profoundly ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... embodying the names of the affianced pair. Thus, for example, in the case of the present engagement of Richard Roe to Dorothy Doe it would be "unique" to have the first course at luncheon consist of a diminutive candy or paper-mache doe seated amorously upon a heart shaped order of a shad roe. The guests will at first be mystified, but soon cries of "Oh, how sweet!" will arise and congratulations are then in order. Great care should be taken, however, ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... piety and reverence for the modest virtues and simple manners of humble life with which they may be contemplated. A man must be very insensible who would not be touched with pleasure at the sight of the chapel of Buttermere, so strikingly expressing, by its diminutive size, how small must be the congregation there assembled, as it were, like one family; and proclaiming at the same time to the passenger, in connection with the surrounding mountains, the depth of that seclusion in which the people live, that has rendered necessary ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... sincerity. In all of these Stephens was proficient. His descriptive powers were remarkable, and he could blend pathos with argument in a manner unusual. He was a warm friend of Mr. Lincoln, and one of the most characteristic stories ever told of Mr. Lincoln is in connection with Governor Stephens' diminutive appearance and great care for his shattered health. On one occasion before the war he took off three overcoats, one after the other, in the presence of Mr. Lincoln, who rose, and walking around him, said, "I was afraid of Stephens, for I thought he might keep on ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... been shrewdly observed that Foote must have meant a diminutive, or POCKET edition.] I mentioned my doubts to Dr Johnson, who said, he would go two miles out of his way to see Lord Monboddo. I therefore sent Joseph forward, with the ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... ancient lament of Greece, was like that of the Persian Siamek, the Bithynian Hylas, and the Egyptian Maneros, Son of Menes or the Eternal. The elegy called Maneros was sung at Egyptian banquets, and an effigy enclosed within a diminutive Sarcophagus was handed round to remind the guests of their brief tenure of existence. The beautiful Memnon, also, perished in his prime; and Enoch, whose early death was lamented at Iconium, lived 365 years, the number of days of the solar year; a brief space ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Beersheba, the representatives of the public schools had assembled to box, fence, and perform gymnastic prodigies for fame and silver medals. The room was full of all sorts and sizes of them, heavy-weights looking ponderous and muscular, feather-weights diminutive but wiry, light-weights, middle-weights, fencers, and gymnasts in scores, some wearing the unmistakable air of the veteran, for whom Aldershot has no mysteries, others nervous, and wishing themselves ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... knuckle-bones of a sucking-pig, linked together like a chain in its belly. Apart from this it is boneless. Had Aristotle known this, Aristotle who records as a most remarkable phenomenon the fact that the fish known as the small sea-ass alone of all fishes has its diminutive heart placed in its stomach, he would assuredly have ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... Mary's Church were large and imposing, the presbytery was old and diminutive. Father Healy had bought the land and the house as it stood on a block beside the one for church and schools, and he had made no attempt to enlarge or ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... to a cessation of hostilities, which might have been followed by a definitive treaty of peace, but the daemon of discord again made its appearance in the tangible shape of a diminutive personage, who, hitherto silently occupying a snug out-of-the-way corner by the fireplace, had ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... clarions drew our eyes to the Place of the Constitution; and, indeed, I had forgotten to say, that that majestic square was filled with military, with exceedingly small firelocks, the men ludicrously young and diminutive for the most part, in a uniform at once cheap and tawdry,—like those supplied to the warriors at Astley's, or from still humbler theatrical wardrobes: indeed, the whole scene was just like that of a little theatre; the houses curiously ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... forced to quit Sweden by religious differences. The union of this canton to those of Uri and Unterwald, first suggested that more extended confederacy, so essential to the existence of these diminutive states. ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... was manifested by the most extraordinary daring throughout the entire and unequal contest; but his small force was compelled to surrender with the honors of war. The whole affair reflected credit upon his diminutive force, and upon the young hero who led them. His imprisonment was not without dangers that afforded opportunities of displaying his ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... into his hands; the same letter which had excited so much disturbance at Haworth Parsonage only twenty-four hours before. "Where did you get this?" said he,—as if he could not believe that the two young ladies dressed in black, of slight figures and diminutive stature, looking pleased yet agitated, could be the embodied Currer and Acton Bell, for whom curiosity had been hunting so eagerly in vain. An explanation ensued, and Mr. Smith at once began to ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... people are weak, pallid, diminutive, stunted," maltreated, "and, apparently, a class apart from other classes in the country. The rich and the great who possess equipages, enjoy the privilege of crushing them or of mutilating them in the streets. . . There is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine |
