"Shrink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... only curiosity, she knew, but her voice sounded oddly far off to herself, the room was hazy, her whole body seemed to shrink together. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... you took the first priestly vows; your life is therefore sacred. But you stand now reproved. This very day you will quit Egypt. Withdraw from the Gods! [Satni, with eyes on the ground, withdraws, the people shrink aside to let him pass, abusing him in whispers, shaking their fists, and some even striking him. He goes to the terrace down left where he stands, hiding his face on his arm] Ammon has spoken other words. [The people turn from Satni] All you who ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... Mademoiselle's room," concluded Marie, curtly. She looked round her and shrugged her shoulders with a grim laugh which made the Abbe shrink. They looked at each other in silence, the two participants in the secret of Gemosac; for Marie's husband, the third who had access to the chateau, did not count. He was a shambling, silent man, now working in the vineyard beneath ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... build up the solid chalk hills and lay the level plain of endless sand; so minute that, save with a powerful lens, you would never imagine the dust on your fingers to be more than dust. The thoughts of man are like these: each to him seems great in his day, but the ages roll, and they shrink till they become triturated dust, and you might, as it were, put a thousand on your thumb-nail. They are not shapeless dust for all that; they are organic, and they build and weld and grow together, till in the passage ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... remarked one old woman arrive with a couple of eggs, another with what was perhaps her pet fowl, to be sacrificed at the altar of hospitality—in fact, only one idea seemed to animate them, namely, hospitality, and it is touching to see how they shrink from the proffered reward made by the sportsman on leaving these kind though poor and ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... may not shrink from striking her down, at a favorable moment," she answered calmly. "It will be easier in France than in New York—they perhaps have the necessary preparations already made—they may be only hesitating—a warning from ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... moments thus he stood—then with a cry of horror he threw out his hand as though instinctively to ward off an attack. The four tentacles already protruded were quickly withdrawn, and the fearful creature, whatever it was, seemed to shrink back into the cranny. One last look upon the hairy heap of moving, writhing horror—upon those dreadful demon eyes, and this man, who had faced death again and again without shrinking, now felt it all he could do to ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... youth and beauty die. So be it, O my God, thou God of truth. Better than beauty and than youth Are saints and angels, a glad company: And Thou, O lord, our Rest and Ease, Are better far than these. Why should we shrink from our full harvest? why ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... puffed up at his victory, he said, "I who have been vanquished in the argument shall have a better night's rest than my victor." We can also test ourselves in regard to public speaking, if we are not timid and do not shrink from speaking when a large audience has unexpectedly been got together, nor dejected when we have only a small one to harangue to, and if we do not, when we have to speak to the people or before ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... token burneth. Wheresoe'er that mystic star Blazeth in the van of war, Back recoil before its ray Shield and banner, bow and spear, Maddened horses break away From the trembling charioteer. The fear of that stern king doth lie On all that live beneath the sky: All shrink before the mark of his despair, The seal of that great curse which he alone can bear. Blazing in pearls and diamonds' sheen. Tirzah, the young Ahirad's bride, Of humankind the destined queen, Sits by her great forefather's side. The jetty curls, the forehead high, The swan like neck, the eagle ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... said quickly as our glances met, "that I shall shrink from the peril of encounter. If it is best, you may trust me to do whatsoever may ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... conscience may be reserved for better things, but few men who know themselves will say that they have often felt them by vivid and actual experience; a sensation of shame, of reproach, of remorse, of sin (to use the word we instinctively shrink from because it expresses the meaning), is what the moral principle really and practically thrusts on most men. Conscience is the condemnation of ourselves; we expect a penalty. As the Greek proverb teaches, "where there is shame ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... strews with thick-branch'd pines the mountain dells: He stoops to earth; the crash is heard around; The depth of forest rolls the roar of sound. The beasts their cowering tails with trembling fold, And shrink and shudder at the gusty cold; Thick is the hairy coat, the shaggy skin, But that all-chilling breath shall pierce within. Not his rough hide can then the ox avail; The long-hair'd goat, defenceless, feels the gale: Yet vain the north wind's rushing strength to wound The ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... else in society, by a quiet but effectual discountenancing of the bad, and a helping hand for the good and the true. We have had no trouble from the presence of bad women at the polls. It has been said that the delicate and cultured women would shrink away, and the bold and indelicate come to the front in public affairs. This we feared; but nothing of the kind has happened. I do not believe that suffrage causes women to neglect their domestic affairs. Certainly, such has not been the case in ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... of food, though I could mention a dozen more, the villainy of mixing gypsum or chalk with flour among them. Fraud is practiced in the sale of articles of every sort: flannel, stockings, etc., are stretched, and shrink after the first washing; narrow cloth is sold as being from one and a half to three inches broader than it actually is; stoneware is so thinly glazed that the glazing is good for nothing, and cracks at once, and a hundred ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... preserve a man from the violence of guns and all manner of fire-weapons and engines; but it will do me no good, because I do not believe it. Nevertheless, I hope my staff of the cross shall this day play devilish pranks amongst them. By G—, whoever of our party shall offer to play the duck, and shrink when blows are a-dealing, I give myself to the devil, if I do not make a monk of him in my stead, and hamper him within my frock, which is a sovereign cure against cowardice. Did you never hear of my Lord Meurles his greyhound, which was not worth a straw in the fields? He put a frock ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... In the warm noon, we shrink away; And fast they follow, as we go Towards the setting day,— Till they shall fill the land, and we Are driven into the ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... his crown did rise, And force his fiends to shrink in theirs: his face Was triply-plated impudence: his eyes Were hell reflected in a double glass, Two comets staring in their bloody stream, Two beacons boiling ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... hygroscopic moisture necessary to saturate the cell walls is termed the "fibre saturation point." This amount has been found to be from 25 to 30 per cent of the dry wood weight. Unlike Eucalyptus globulus and certain oaks, the gums do not begin to shrink until the moisture content has been reduced to about 30 per cent of the dry wood weight. These woods are not subject to collapse, although their fibres become very ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... at his watch. "Make my excuses to your wife; I shall not see her again. It would be better: there's no reason why she should be reminded of anything unpleasant now. She's a good woman, Bertram, and I'm glad she didn't shrink from me. It would have been a natural thing, but I believe she was sorry and was anxious to make all the ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... question, Mr. Iglesias sat waiting, in the quaint irregularly shaped drawing-room of the old house in Holland Street, himself the centre of that peopled stillness, that alert tranquillity, which so strangely and sensibly filled it. Looking out of the low window, he could see the shadow of the houses shrink and the light broaden in the little garden below, as the sun travelled westward. Looking into the room itself, the many familiar objects and rich sober colours of it, quickened by a flickering of fire-light, were pleasant to his sense. The images which passed before ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... has already been decided upon. Optimists in the labor movement maintain that a repetition of the legal murder of 1887, that has caused shame and horror even in the ranks of the upper ten thousand, is impossible—that the authorities would shrink from such an outrage, such an awful crime. That which has happened in Colorado and Idaho warrants ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... object to the hard drill which they had to go through, and which occupied them from morning till night, for the colonel knew that on any day the regiment might receive orders to embark, and he wanted to get it in something like shape before setting sail. Jack did, however, shrink from the company in which he found himself. With a few exceptions the regiment was made up of wild and worthless fellows, of whom the various magistrates had been only too glad to clear their towns, and mingled with these were the sweepings of the ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... caused those near him to shrink back, and during the rest of the voyage he had peace from the clatter of ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... the Fourteenth Street windows and the piazza of the Isabella grapes. I see him there less vividly than his fellow-pedestrian only because he was afterwards to loom so much larger, whereas his companion, even while still present, was weakly to shrink and fade. At this late day only do I devise for that companion a possible history; the simple-minded Henry's annals on the other hand grew in interest as soon as they became interesting at all. This happened as soon as one took in the ground ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... of nuns was passing through it. Greta stood in the sacristy, faint, with a scared face, one hand at her breast, the other on the base of a crucifix that stood by the wall. When she saw that he had followed her, her first impulse was to shrink away; her second was to sink to her knees at his feet. She did neither. Conquering her faintness, but still quivering from head to foot, she turned upon him with a defiant look. "Why do you come here? I do not wish to speak with you. Let me ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... delicious warmth, such as you now feel again. Ah! that idea has brought a hideous one in its train. You think how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and narrow coffins through the drear winter of the grave, and cannot persuade your fancy that they neither shrink nor shiver when the snow is drifting over their little hillocks and the bitter blast howls against the door of the tomb. That gloomy thought will collect a gloomy multitude and throw its complexion over ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... Lectures on Anatomy had so fortified me, that I did not shrink from entering the Skitzton coach. It contained living limbs, loose or attached to skeletons in other respects bare, except that they were clothed with broadcloth garments, cut after the English fashion. One passenger only had a complete face of flesh, he had also one living hand; the other hand I ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... Ellen saw Bruce shrink in fear of his life; and despite her fury she was filled with disgust that he could imagine she would have his blood on her hands. Then she divined that Bruce saw more in the gathering storm in her father's eyes than he ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... fable, Les Deux Amis, this sketch should have borne the title of The Two Friends; but to take the name of this divine story would surely be a deed of violence, a profanation from which every true man of letters would shrink. The title ought to be borne alone and for ever by the fabulist's masterpiece, the revelation of his soul, and the record of his dreams; those three words were set once and for ever by the poet at the head of a page which is his by a sacred right of ownership; for it is a shrine before ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... of settlements, burnings and slaughter committed by the "Tories and Indians" during the whole war shrink into insignificance in regard to extent of territory, the number of inhabitants and towns, the extent of cultivated farms and gardens, when compared with General Sullivan's one vast sweep of ruin and misery, in ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... Ajax donned his bright armor of bronze, and came forth like the war-god Mars when he goeth to battle. The Achaians were glad, but the Trojans trembled; and even the brave Hector felt his heart beat quicker in his breast. But he would not shrink from the combat, seeing that he had himself challenged all the Achaians. And Ajax came on, bearing a mighty shield, like a tower, which Tychius, the cunning leather-worker, had made for him, of sevenfold hides of lusty bulls, ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... which the mind is moved to do that from which in cooler moments it would shrink with disgust. It chanced that Collins had retained the scalp so singularly found at the bottom of the river, by Corporal Nixon, and this circumstance at once ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... the work before us, but we shrink not from the task, for we know that when the bright Light of the Spirit, which is found as the centre of the Christian philosophy, is uncovered, there will be great rejoicing from the many who while believing in and realizing the value ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... fulness, the joy and the strength which come from the communion of man with God. That joy and that strength, in the measure in which we can attain to their realisation, are to be the goal of all our striving. Thus this Word has for us more than a merely negative teaching. Not only are we to shrink from that which destroys union with God. We must seek far more earnestly to make that union a greater and a deeper reality. This end we can achieve by making our prayers more deliberate acts of conscious communion with that ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... over the sovereignty of the existing states and empires of the world. Most people's ideas of the League fall between these extremes. They want the League to be something more than an ethical court, they want a League that will act, but on the other hand they shrink from any loss of "our independence." There seems to be a conflict here. There is a real need for many people to tidy up their ideas at this point. We cannot have our cake and eat it. If association is worth while, there must ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... shrink to the original five hundred, but there was no help for it. At half after ten he knocked on the panel of Jane's door and waited. He knocked again; still the summons was not answered. The third assault was emphatic. Ling Foo heard footsteps, but ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... in his sudden panic, who came to disaster. He had always been afraid of Wonota. She was a dead shot, and he believed that she would not shrink from killing him. ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... putting a hornet in a sluttish maid's shoe, which was credible, if scarcely meriting that elfish laughter which made his auditor shrink, but when he told of dancing over the mud banks with a lantern, like a Will-of-the-wisp, till he lured boats to get stranded, or horsemen to get stuck, in the hopeless mud, Anne never questioned the possibility, but listened with wide open eyes, and a restrained shudder, feeling as ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... steep hill. Look at them from whatever point you choose, there is still all that is heaviest, largest, strongest, at the summit, and all that is lightest, smallest, weakest, at the base. When you first see the Cheese-Wring, you instinctively shrink from walking under it. Beholding the tons on tons of stone balanced to a hair's breadth on the mere fragments beneath, you think that with a pole in your hand, with one push against the top rocks, you could hurl down the hill in an instant a pile ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... hung on the thin edge of his resolve. The slack gray face worked convulsively, the white lips moved, the hands were gripped close to his sides as though to run a race. His whole body seemed suddenly to shrink and ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... pure. I want the wife I have lost,—her smile, her voice, her little hands to touch me! Oh, Ume-ko, my wife, my wife!" If, as the abbot said, this phase of grief were bestial, were unworthy of the woman who had died for him, then why did not the listening soul of her shrink? He knew that it was not repelled, whatever the frenzy of his grief. Indeed, at such times of agony she leaned down closer, longing to comfort him. If it were given her to speak she would have cried, "My husband!" Wherever she might drift,—in the black ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... you so bound to misunderstand and misjudge me? I beg you not to ride by yourself, and you tell me I am 'dictating.' I go for months without hearing from you for fear of annoying you, and you accuse me of 'indifference.' I bring you a gift as a vassal might have done to his liege lady—and you shrink away from me in terror. I try to show you what manner of woman you really are, and you believe that I am displaying the same presumption which I have just condemned in my own brother. Are you so warped and embittered by one experience—a ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... as if to investigate matters, seeing which, Herb held his Winchester in readiness to fly to his shoulder at a moment's notice. But the moose evidently regarded the jack-lamp as a supernatural, terrible phenomenon. He shrank from it as man might shrink beneath a ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... goes away in ruins and smoke, and one cannot fabricate gold any more than soldiers. We no longer know how to count; we no longer know anything. A billion—a million millions—the word appears to me printed on the emptiness of things. It sprang yesterday out of war, and I shrink in dismay from ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... she faltered, with white lips. "It was all so horrible. You pointed to him, and your eyes when you looked at him seemed to shine as though they were on fire. I saw him shrink away, and the color leave ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... very much to be alone with her grief, but she felt somehow that to shrink from a meeting would be an evasion of the path of duty she had marked out for her feet to tread. If she were going to eliminate all thoughts of her love and her lover from her life, there was no ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... wrote a fairly pretty story on the sylphs of fire. But Undine's freakish playfulness and mischief as an elemental being, and her sweet patience when her soul is won, are quite original, and indeed we cannot help sharing, or at least understanding, Huldbrand's beginning to shrink from the unearthly creature to something of his own flesh and blood. He is altogether unworthy, and though in this tale there is far less of spiritual meaning than in Sintram, we cannot but see that Fouque's thought was that the grosser human nature is unable to appreciate ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... he, "are happy, and need not envy me, that walk thus among you, burdened with myself; nor do I, ye gentle beings, envy your felicity; for it is not the felicity of man. I have many distresses, from which ye are free; I fear pain, when I do not feel it; I sometimes shrink at evils recollected, and sometimes start at evils anticipated: surely the equity of providence has balanced peculiar ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... life; we are new to the business, a kind of faint-heartedness overpowers us, and leaves us in an almost dazed condition of mind. We feel that we are helpless aliens in a strange country. At all ages we shrink back involuntarily from the unknown. And a young man is very much like the soldier who will walk up to the cannon's mouth, and is put to flight by a ghost. He hesitates among the maxims of the world. The rules of attack ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... phenomena and occult powers of life which are prosecuted by the Society for Psychical Research, whose results are recorded in its published Proceedings. For those familiar with this record the legendary element in the Bible tends to shrink into smaller compass than many critics assign it. In the interest both of the Bible and of science it is regrettable that the results of these researches, though conducted by men of high eminence in the scientific world, still ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... surely as the dramatist who introduces on the stage of his flagging action a carriage that can be driven or a fountain that will flow. But the masters of strong imagination disdain such work, and those of deep sensibility shrink from it.[154] Only under conditions of personal weakness, presently to be noted, would Scott comply with the cravings of his lower audience in scenes of terror like the death of Front-de-Boeuf. But he never ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... hard to refuse you anything, Penelope," he said finally, standing in front of her chair. "You have had so little, and you deserve so much. I know you are right about this, and I shrink from hurting her as much as you do. But when I think of Felix and the course he has deliberately followed, it angers me so that I forget everything except the retribution he so richly deserves. But you are right and ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... articulated, thoroughly accomplished periods of the world that we regard with the pity or reverence due to age, so much as those imperfect, unformed, uncertain periods which seem to totter on the verge of non-existence, to shrink from the grasp of our feeble imagination, as they crawl out of, or retire into the womb of time, of which our utmost assurance is to doubt whether they ever were or not.' And then, as usual, he passes ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... by the nature of their lives, the grey character of even their most cheerful experiences and the poverty of their highest ambitions. Their aspirations, becoming speedily cowed by ill-requited toil and eternal hardship, quickly dwarf and shrink, until even the most sanguine seldom extend ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... her analysis, and that this flaw was the result of a fundamental misconception of his character. For she had forgotten that, conservative and apparently priggish as he was, he was before all things a romantic in temperament; and the true romantic will shrink from the ordinary risk while he accepts the extraordinary one. She had forgotten that men of Stephen's nature are incapable of small sacrifices, and yet at the same time capable of large ones; that, though ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... things Please us or pain, according to the thought We take of them. Some smile at their own death, Which most do shrink from, as beast of prey It kills to look upon. But you, who take Such pity of the deer, whence follows it You hunt more costly game?—the comely maid, To wit, that ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... ring, Condemned, forsaken for his sin. On earth they plunder'd, robbed and stole From month to month and year to year; There Franchise-stealers cracked with leers As Plebeians stung, groaned with might. Now one and all damn'd on this shoal Yuck addling brains and shriek with fear, Now all shrink at Hell's laughing seers As Remorse storms the ughly night. Here Pat McCarrens filch no vote, A Grady eats no mellow pea, A Murphy owns no City Hall, No Jeromes skew at dices' song. On Vellum gray their sins are wrote To murmurs of each sullen lee, Racked with the wand of death ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... and he had long been familiar, and it may be doubted whether he would not have preferred to accept those few last years of banishment, rather than have yielded one jot of his own relentless resolution, or given occasion to his enemies to boast that they had made him shrink before them. We may doubt the wisdom of his decision; we cannot refuse our homage to his ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... from him as he offered her a huge hunk of hot, raw meat. He was evidently much disturbed by her refusal to eat, and when, a moment later, he scampered away into the forest to return with fruit for her she was once more forced to alter her estimation of him. This time she did not shrink, but acknowledged his gift with a smile that, had she known it, was more than ample payment to the ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... living waters! Cried the prophets, do not shrink! God invites His sons and daughters: He that thirsteth come and drink. With this water God imparts Health and strength to sin-sick hearts. Why are ye then hesitating While the ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... of industry, integrity, and forethought, which are essential to the whole body as to its constituent members. And we may further say that the corresponding motives in the individual cannot be immoral. A desire of independence, the self-respect which makes a man shrink from accepting as a gift what he can win as a fair reward, the love of fairplay, which makes him use only honest means in the struggle, are qualities which can never lose their value, and which are not ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... although the evidence was so overwhelming. He took the letter from the desk and read it for the fourth time since receiving it, riveting his eyes long and intently upon the signature affixed. Of all the years he had known the Governor he had never known him to shrink or show cowardice in any form whatever, although he'd passed through such crises as would tend to test the mettle of any man, it matters not how brave. "Surely the situation must be terrible!" finally observed ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... shake and quake at it. The least sin that thou didst ever commit, though thou makest a light matter of it, is a greater evil than the pains of the damned in hell, setting aside their sins. All the torments in hell are not so great an evil as the least sin is; men begin to shrink at this, and loathe to go down to hell and be ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... not be allowed to dry before complete removal of foreign matter is effected. They are likely to shrink and crack, and subsequent additions of wash-water pass ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... that the night was dark and recognition next to impossible, this evidence was held conclusive to prove the crime, and nothing now remained but to condemn the culprit. The judge's words came slowly forth, making the stoutest there shrink back and let that arrow from the bow of death glance by and set its mark on him upon whose face the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... the cheerful confidence of the salaried man, and Thurston, who fought for his own interests, flung himself down on his trestle cot with all his clothes on. Neither the timber slide nor the bridge was quite finished, but because rivers in that region shrink at night when the frost checks the drainage from the feeding glaciers on the peaks above, the saw-miller had insisted on driving down his logs when there was less chance of their stranding on the shoals that cumbered the high-water channel. Thurston ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... face. I could learn nothing there. His words had left me partly unconvinced. Somehow I felt that the only time he had spoken the entire truth was when he had spoken of Felicia. Yet it was certainly true that I owed these people something, and I had no wish to shrink from paying ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... exhaust everything pertaining to sacred gifts and liturgic performances, in which, for the sake of lengthening the catalogue, they do not shrink from repetitions even, there is not any mention of incense-offerings, neither in Amos (iv. 4 seq., v. 21 seq.) nor in Isaiah (i. 11 seq.) nor in Micah (vi. 6 seq.). Shall we suppose that they all of them forget this subject by mere accident, or that they conspired to ignore it? If it had really ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... being! Though after-experience may rebuke the mortal's illusion, that mistook for a daughter of Heaven a creature of clay like himself, yet for a while the illusion has grandeur. Though it comes from the senses which shall later oppress and profane it, the senses at first shrink into shade, awed and hushed by the presence that charms them. All that is brightest and best in the man has soared up like long-dormant instincts of Heaven, to greet and to hallow what to him seems life's fairest dream of the heavenly! ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... disgrace to the architecture not of Paris only, but of all France. The interior arrangement of the sovereign court of justice outdoes our prisons in all that is most hideous. The writer describing our manners and customs would shrink from the necessity of depicting the squalid corridor of about a metre in width, in which the witnesses wait in the Superior Criminal Court. As to the stove which warms the court itself, it would disgrace a ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... but he could not do battle with a continent; and so he had either to take the only course which remained, and lower himself (as he considered it) to the level of the music-hall pariah, and mouth and mow to amuse the mob, or else accept the alternative which even the bravest of men might well shrink from ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... height of heroism to which an individual, like a people, can attain is to know how to face ridicule; better still, to know how to make oneself ridiculous and not to shrink from the ridicule. ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... to me—the situation I faced! I was a clergyman—and preaching a new crusade to the world. It was like being in a cage, with bars of red-hot metal. A hundred times I would go towards them—and a hundred times I would shrink back. But I had to grasp them in ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... you going away—Rose-leaf—Rose-leaf—are you sailing away from me on the smooth waters to the South? I put out my hand to you; but you are afraid of the hard hands of the Northern people, and you shrink from me. Do you think we would harm you, then, that you tremble so? The savage days are gone. Come—we will show you the beautiful islands in the summer-time; and you will take high courage, and become yourself a Macleod; and all the people will be proud to ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... relations with others were overshadowed by the great doubt, which was perhaps the heaviest burden he had to carry, as to whether one's individuality endured. The thought that it might not survive death, made him shrink back from establishing a closeness of emotional dependence on another, the loss of which would be intolerable. The natural flame of the heart seemed quenched and baffled by that cold thought. It was the same instinct that made ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... oft to think That, while from duty he would never shrink, It would be better far to leave his trade, Than the sad object of such sport be made. And to his father spoke to this effect— Not in ill humor, but with much respect. The father's counsel was, that he should stay. As soon the other ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... retain in conjunction with the political duties he was now urged to undertake. Although only in his fifty-seventh year, he was never one of those who feel younger than their age; nor did he minimise in his own mind the disability caused by his too frequent physical ailments, which inclined him to shrink from embarking upon fresh work the extent and nature of which could not be exactly foreseen. As to ambition, there are few men who ever were less moved by it, but he could not leave altogether out of consideration his firm conviction—which ultimately ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... a crooked garden," he said, at length, "is a combination from which all honest people should shrink. Those who frequent it must be, for the most part, crooked people. They were, for the most part, ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... have subjected to it, of which the histories are full. They will be obliged to place in the curacies those who solicit them the most urgently, importuning by means from which the more retiring and the more worthy shrink. They will expose their religious to danger even after they have well fulfilled the obligations of their ministries, in case that they are not to the liking of the ordinary—besides many other annoyances which will inevitably come ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... As they become dry, on inverting their upper end they discharge a viscid liquor from it, and they are pressed several times with oiled fingers to promote its flow. The dried pods, like the berries of pepper, change color under the drying operation, grow brown, wrinkled, soft, and shrink to one-fourth of their original size. In this state they are touched a second time with oil, but very sparingly, because with too much oil they would lose ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... anything be more so! How pure, how peaceful! See, Warham, how soft, how spirit-like, that light lies along the hill-side, and how distinct, yet how delicate, is the train which glides from it down the valley, even to the white dwellings at its bottom, from which it seems to shrink and tremble as if half conscious of intrusion. And yet the picture below is kindred with it. That, now, is a scene that I delight in—it is a constant picture in my mind. There is peace in that valley, if there be peace anywhere on earth. ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... brother Cistercian, a man of parts and knowledge, devoted to the service of the Catholic Church, and very capable not only to advise the Abbot on occasions of difficulty, but to make him sensible of his duty in case he should, from good-nature or timidity, be disposed to shrink from it. ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... told of one individual that he wants the organ of colour; and all the culture in the world can never supply that defect, and enable him to see colour at all, or to see it as it is seen by the rest of mankind. Another wants the organ of benevolence; and his case is equally hopeless. I shrink from considering the condition of the wretch, to whom nature has supplied the organs of theft and murder in full and ample proportions. The case ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... loosed lose lost lost mean meant meant pay paid paid prove proved proved read read read rid rid rid ride rode ridden ring rang rung rise rose risen run ran run say said said see saw seen set set set shake shook shaken shine shone shone show showed shown shrink shrank shrunk sing sang sung sit sat sat slink slunk slunk speak spoke spoken spend spent spent spit spit spit spat spat steal stole stolen swear swore sworn sweep swept swept swim swam swum take took taken tear tore torn throw threw thrown thrust thrust thrust tread ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... suppose that the magistrates would, at first, shrink from immediate personal contact with what they saw. At the least, for a time, they would stand in involuntary doubt; it may be, in more or less of horrified alarm. Certain it is, that an arquebuss was called for from below. And some add, that its report, followed by a fierce whiz, as of ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... that they had also differed as to what the herd would dress out, and invited my opinion. "Those beeves will dress off from forty-five to fifty per cent.," I replied. "The Texan being a gaunt animal does not shrink like a domestic beef. Take that 'Open A' herd straight through and they will dress from four fifty to six hundred pounds, or average better than five hundred all round. In three months, under favorable conditions, ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... benefits, accession allows Vietnam to take advantage of the phase-out of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, which eliminated quotas on textiles and clothing for WTO partners on 1 January 2005. Agriculture's share of economic output has continued to shrink, from about 25% in 2000 to less than 20% in 2007. Deep poverty, defined as a percent of the population living under $1 per day, has declined significantly and is now smaller than that of China, India, and the Philippines. Vietnam is working to create jobs to ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... at least as much as the other. For the substantial soundness of the general views winch I took of the French revolutionary thinkers at that time, I feel no apprehension; nor—some possible occasional phrases or sentences excepted and apart—do I see the smallest reason to shrink or to depart from any one of them. So far as one particular reference may serve to illustrate the tenour of the whole body of criticism, the following lines, which close my chapter on the "Encyclopaedia," will answer the purpose as well as any others, and I shall ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... which no scientist can excuse on the ground of poetical license. "The poetry of this excellent author," says Dana, "is good, but the facts nearly all errors—if literature allows of such an incongruity." Think of coral-animals as being referred to as shapeless worms that "writhe and shrink their tortuous bodies to grotesque dimensions"! These deep-sea builders manufacture or secrete from their own bodies the coral substance out of which the great reefs are built. It is a part of their life work and nature, as a flower produces its own colours and shapes; it is ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... is wound round a support which chiefly becomes thicker and stronger; I have seen, for instance, this part of a tendril of Bignonia aequinoctialis twice as thick and rigid as the free basal part. Tendrils which have caught nothing soon shrink and wither; but in some species of Bignonia they disarticulate and fall off ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... still in your power. I shall not conceal that the Commissioners of Her Majesty's customs set so high a price on the possession of the Water-Witch, as to embolden me to assume a responsibility from which I might, on any other occasion, shrink. Deliver the vessel, and I pledge you the honor of an officer that the crew shall land without question.—Leave her to us, with empty decks and a swept hold, if you will,—but, leave the swift ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... too," said Charles, "and it has influenced me a great deal. It has made me shrink back. But I now believe it to be like those hideous forms which in fairy tales beset good knights, when they would force their way into some enchanted palace. Recollect the words in Thalaba, 'The talisman is faith.' If I have good grounds for ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... the Frenchmen say. It is too late now to shrink back from any thing. If I can spare you, I will. If not, you must not be ashamed to ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... man or not, he is her lover if he dare tell her he loves her, and is heard with attention. Aware that the sentences were poison, she summoned her constitutional antagonism to the mad step proposed, so far nullifying the virus as to make her shrink from the madness. Even then her soul cried out to her husband, Who drives me to read? or rather, to brood upon what she read. The brooding ensued, was the thirst of her malady. The best antidote she could hit on was the writer's face. Yet it expressed him, his fire and his courage—gifts ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the 6th instant. I am sorry the militia are deserting,* because there is no greater support. If they were influenced by proper principles, and were impressed with a love of liberty and a dread of slavery, they would not shrink at difficulties. If we had a force sufficient to recover the country, their aid would not be wanted, and they cannot be well acquainted with their true interest to desert us, because they conceive our force unequal to the reduction of the country without their consent. ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... became perfectly livid; a lightning flash seemed to dart from his eyes. Fouquet felt that he was lost, but he as not one to shrink when the voice of honor spoke loudly within him. He bore the king's wrathful gaze; the latter swallowed his rage, and after a few moments' silence, said, "Are we going ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sea-slug. This is a disgusting species of mollusca, which grows to a large size, being commonly about a foot in length and three or four inches in diameter. The capture and preparation of these creatures is confined exclusively to the Chinese, who dry them in the sun until they shrink to the size of a large sausage and harden to the consistency of horn; they are then exported to China for making soups. No doubt they are more strengthening than agreeable; but I imagine that our common garden slug would be an excellent ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... seemed to shrink to half its size, and resembled a death's-head. He did not, however, fall on his knees, but raised his head for the last time: "I appeal to ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... sympathize with the political scruples of the non- jurors of Scotland. But any men who so possess the courage of their convictions as not to shrink from loss of goods and danger of life, and who accept the trials of martyrdom without posing as martyrs in personal comfort and security, deserve and will receive the veneration of all true-hearted and right-minded men. And in this matter, "let all history declare whether in any age ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... said because the delicate ever shrink from affixing a value to the time and services of others. Adrienne was afraid she might unintentionally deprive the other of a portion of her just gains. The woman understood by the timidity and undecided manner of ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... it, trying to light it with a match held about three inches from it. Finally, I lit it for her, and she seemed to see me for the first time. She looked at me, at once shiftily and sharply. Her eyes narrowed. Suspicion leaped into her face, and she seemed to shrink into herself like a tortoise into its shell. "Oo's 'e?" she ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... result of their labors; and, when they turned their horses towards the sandy plain before them, their hearts were elated, and a feeling of security against its terrors made them even gay and joyous. It is well the future is always hid from view; were it not, the heart would faint and shrink from its trials when called to endure them, and instead of bravely contending with them, it would be ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... recluse and student, he had great experiences with life. He was born among the higher ranks of society. He inherited an ample patrimony. He did not shrink from public affairs. He was intensely patriotic, like Michael Angelo; he gave himself up to the good of his country, like Savonarola. Florence was small, but it was important; it was already a capital, and a centre of industry. He represented its interests in various courts. He lived with ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... "Come here again to-morrow evening about sunset, and if I meet you in my snake-form, and wind myself round your body like a girdle, and kiss you three times, do not start or shrink back, or I shall again be overwhelmed by the waters of enchantment, and who knows for how ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... Lapps, in the end of April or beginning of May, from the west (i.e. from the fells), a wind so strong and at the same time so warm, that in quite a short time—six to ten hours—it breaks up the snow-masses, makes them shrink together, forces the mountain sides from their snow covering, and changes the snow which lies on the ice of the great fell lakes to water. I have myself been out on the fells making measurements on two occasions when this wind came. On one occasion I was on the Great Lule water ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... shepherds sore afraid? Why shrink they at the grand, the heavenly sight? "Fear not" (the angel says), nor be dismay'd, And o'er them sheds a ray of God-sent light. O matchless mercy! All-embracing love! The angel speaks and, gladly, men record:— "I bring ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... compared with which our immeasurable sidereal system dwindles to a point is a thought too overwhelming to be dwelt upon. Of late years the consciousness that without origin or cause infinite Space has ever existed and must ever exist, produces in me a feeling from which I shrink." ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... high-spirited, honest boy. Was it fair to Percy to keep a secret what would certainly shut the doors of Wildtree against him for ever? Was it fair to Mr Rimbolt to accept this new responsibility without a word? Was it fair to Raby, who would shrink from him with detestation, did ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... the advice and the example of M—-M—— would end in her ruin; I had insulted, in the most grievous manner, the delicacy of my mistress, and that before her very eyes, and after all this how could I ask a weak woman to do what a man, priding himself on his strength, would shrink from at tempting? I should have stood self-condemned, and have felt that it was my duty to remain the same to her, but flattering myself that I was overcoming mere prejudices, I was in fact that most degraded of slaves, he who uses his strength ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... what she expected to see; Dionysus, God of Wine. There was no reason for him to shrink from her, or try to hide. Just because he was walking along with seven beautiful girls, drinking about sixteen times the consumption of any normal right-thinking fish, and carousing like the most unprincipled of men, he didn't have to be ashamed ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... he walked on. Several times she essayed to emerge, and join him; but a sudden awe of him, a conviction of that saintly purity which would shrink from the guilty vows she was meditating to pour into his ear, a recollection of the ejaculation with which he had accosted her before hovering figure, when she haunted his footsteps on the banks of the Cart; these thoughts made her pause. He might again mistake her for ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... vengeance from the glance. And when the cannon-mouthings loud Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud, And gory sabres rise and fall Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall, Then shall thy meteor glances glow, And cowering foes shall shrink beneath Each gallant arm that strikes below That lovely ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... chuck? I'll not hurt you. No! to you I've made myself worse than the devil. Well, there is one who won't shrink from my company! By God! she's relentless. Oh, damn it! It's unutterably too much for flesh and blood ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... looked wonderingly at her. "I am Jeanne of Arc," she said simply. "She whom they call the Pucelle. Do you shrink from ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... And shed the luscious liquor on the ground; But seize his wand. Though he and his curst crew Fierce sign of battle make, and menace high, Or, like the sons of Vulcan, vomit smoke, Yet will they soon retire, if he but shrink. ELD. BRO. Thyrsis, lead on apace; I'll follow thee; And some good angel ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... he need now no longer practise those reserves in speaking to Sue of her father, which he had observed so painfully hitherto. Neither did she shrink from the fact they had to deal with. In the trust established between them, they spoke of it all openly, and if there was any difference in them concerning it, the difference was in his greater forbearance toward the unhappy man. They both spoke of his wrong-doing as if it ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... of Heaven be won; Then will Hell shrink away, As I have seen night's terrors shun The conquering steps of day. 'Tis my religion thus to love, My creed thus fixed to be; Not Death shall shake, nor Priestcraft break My ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... I quite shrink from the truth, which is that he sat there in two minds. Sometimes he looked longingly at his mother, and sometimes he looked longingly at the window. Certainly it would be pleasant to be her boy again, but on the other ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... had the courage to raise his head and watch her shrink with horror. It was only an instant. Then she was beside him again, and one arm around him, while she turned her head and glanced fearfully back at the lighted schoolhouse. ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... those by the hand whom we wish to help; that is to say, we must come down to their level, try to see with their eyes, and to think their thoughts, and let them feel that we do not think our purity too fine to come beside their filth, nor shrink from them With repugnance, however we may show disapproval and pity for their sin. Much work done by Christian people has no effect, nor ever will have, because it has peeping through it a poorly concealed 'I am holier than thou.' An ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... that calls, to draw nigh, and find out and know what Holiness is, or rather, find out and know Himself the Holy One. And if the first approach to Him fill us with shame and confusion, make us fear and shrink back, let us still listen to the Voice and the Call, 'Be holy, as I am holy.' 'Faithful is He which calleth, who also will do it.' All our fears and questions will be met by the Holy One who has revealed His Holiness, ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... way of being supported without your having the trouble to provide for them, or they for themselves? Do you not perceive that as soon as this golden rule of action is applied to yourselves that you involuntarily shrink from the test; as soon as your actions are weighed in this balance of the sanctuary that you are found wanting? Try yourselves by another of the Divine precepts, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Can we love a man as we love ourselves if we ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... apologetically, unless I happened to be in a flaming passion—and this was my habit, not from any respectable motive of consideration for the person rebuked, but partly because I am timid, and partly because I shrink from giving pain. This man said with perfect ease what I could not have said unless I had been wrought up to white heat. With all my dislike to him, I envied him: I envied his complete certainty; for although his language was harsh in the extreme, he was always sure of his ground, and the ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... difficulty to be encountered in legislating for a country circumstanced as Ireland was. The lands held by Government might be at once improved, but the case was different with respect to those that were the property of individuals. Still, he would not shrink from the necessity or duty of Government interfering even in the latter case; neither did he deny that while property had its owners and its rights, that such ownership and rights should not be allowed to interfere with the operations intended to develop the resources of the soil, and ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... looked at any object long enough to be able to write about it, one feature comes to assume an importance that sets it far above all others. To a writer who has looked long at a man, he may shrink to a cringing piece of weakness, or he may grow to a strong, self-centred power whose presence alone inspires serenest trust. Hawthorne, standing in St. Peter's, saw only the gorgeous coloring; proportions, immensity, and sacredness were as nothing to the harmonious brilliancy of this expanded "jewel ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... repeated. "I've known a many Jims. Some were good in their way, too." He seemed to shrink into himself suddenly—I can't explain it—but he seemed to shrink, like a cat crouched to spring, and his eyes burned and danced; they seemed to look right into me, horribly gleaming, till the whole ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... now so dark that it would have been easy to have avoided them altogether by making a short circuit, but that sort of perilous curiosity which often urges men to thrust themselves into the very situations from which they instinctively shrink, would not now permit her to turn from her purpose of penetrating those ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... voice! I have not felt myself a thing, Far from Thy presence driven, By flaming sword or waving wing Shut off from Thee and heaven. Must I the whirlwind reap because My fathers sowed the storm? Or shrink, because another sinned, Beneath Thy red, right arm? Oh much of this we dimly scan, And much is all unknown; But I will not take my curse from man— I turn to Thee alone! Oh bid my fainting spirit live, And what is dark reveal, And what is evil, oh forgive, And what is broken ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... swing bridge, or a canal made round it, the coasting vessels would be able to ship the produce of the lagoon provinces at the very foot of the fields in which they grow. The traffic would be very profitable, the waters would shrink, and the shallows along the shore might be turned into rice and sugar fields. A scheme of this kind was approved more than thirty years ago in Madrid, but it was never carried into execution. The sanding up of the river has, on the contrary, been increased by a quantity ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... writer uncharitable in these suppositions. The writer is only too well acquainted with the antecedents of the individual, to entertain much doubt that he would shrink from any such conduct, provided he thought that his temporal interest would be forwarded by it. The writer is aware of more than one instance in which he has passed off the literature of friendless young men for ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Sophie's knee, in a state of complete exhaustion. There she lay, panting heavily; and a clammy pallor gradually took the place of the deeply-stained flush. But the fit was over: by-and-by she sat up, sullenly shunning Sophie's touch, and appearing to shrink even at the sound of her voice. Finally, she rose inertly to her feet, attempting to moisten her dry lips, walked once or twice aimlessly to and fro across the room, and ended by sitting down again upon her stool, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... secrets of the patriots; and they retired in chagrin, and without granting absolution to either victim. The firing party made ready. Then it was, for the first time, that the spirit of this noble maiden seemed to shrink from the approach ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... shrink within herself, and crouched yet further from Sir Jocelyn as though his eyes had ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... them from above, press them outward, press them southward toward the sun once more; across the floes and round the icebergs, weeping tears of snow and sleet, while men hate their wild harsh voices, and shrink before their bitter breath. They know not that the cold bleak snow-storms, as they hurtle from the black north-east, bear back the ghosts of the soft air-mothers, as penitents, to their ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... characteristics of a mantle depend upon the fabric and upon the rare-earths used. It must not shrink unduly when burned, and the ash should remain porous. It has been found that a mantle in which thoria is used alone is a poor light-source, but that when a small amount of ceria is added the mantle glows brilliantly. ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... clouds, seemed to reach down and touch the very tops of the trees. The reddish soil of the fields grew dark under the continuous downpour; the roads, winding deep between the mudwalls and the fences of the orchards, were changed to rushing streams. The weeping orange-trees seemed to shrink and cringe under the deluge, as if in aggrieved protest at the sudden anger of that ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... in our knowledge of the disease, and we no longer regard it as incurable. We have learned that it is communicable from one person to another, but also that its communication can easily be prevented, so that there is no reason to shrink from association with tuberculous persons. We have learned, too, that consumption in one's progenitors, immediate or remote, hardly makes it even probable that he himself is doomed to suffer with it; the only tuberculous heredity that we now recognize is ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... ... that I were pushed by the law to the last limits of ignominy and despair. Whose love would sanctify my gaol to me? whose pity would shine upon me in the dock? whose prayers would accompany me to the gallows? Whose but yours? Yours!... And you would entreat me—me!—to do what you shrink from even in thought, what you would die ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Clothmaking; as the sorting together of Wools of seuerall natures, some of nature to shrink, some to hold out, which causeth cloth to ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... who, deaf to mad Ambition's call, Would shrink to hear th' obstreperous trump of fame; Supremely blest, if to their portion fall Health, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... islands. The pleasure is, I think, greater than it reasonably should be, considering that we had not much either of beauty or elegance to charm our imaginations, or of rude novelty to astonish. Let us, by all means, have another expedition. I shrink a little from our scheme of going up the Baltick[393]. I am sorry you have already been in Wales; for I wish to see it. Shall we go to Ireland, of which I have seen but little? We shall try to strike out a plan when we are ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... Scott—to all the principal luminaries of our literary heaven. He went all lengths with Mr. Swinburne in praising Byron's "sincerity and strength," but he qualified the praise: "Our soul had felt him like the thunder's roll," but "he taught us little." Devout Wordsworthian as he is, he does not shrink from saying that much of Wordsworth's work is "quite uninspired, flat and dull," and sets himself to the task of "relieving him from a great deal of the poetical baggage which now ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... hands, too, which he held clasped before him, were yellow, and possessed a curiously arresting quality. Pat imagined them clasped about her white throat, and her very soul seemed to shrink from the man who stood there looking at her with those ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... fearfully, for Angelo's forehead was on the earth. Clumps of grass, and sharp flint-dust stuck between his fists, which were thrust out stiff on either side of him. She heard him groan heavily. When he raised his face, it was white as madness. Her womanly nature did not shrink from caressing it with a touch of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were left by the Romans in possession of the island, were but feeble representatives of those who, under Caractacus and Boadicea, did not shrink from combat with the legions of Caesar. Uninured to arms, and accustomed to obedience, they looked for a fresh master, and sunk into servitude and serfdom, from which they never emerged. Yet under the Romans they had thriven and increased in material wealth; the island ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... and shrink to cross the narrow sea, And linger trembling on the brink and fear to ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... still and golden. The crispness of late fall had infused a wine into the air. The sky was a soft, blue-gray; the sand-hills were a dazzling yellow. Orde did not try to think; he merely faced the situation, staring it in the face until it should shrink to its true significance. ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... honors and successes all go to the one giant, and his assistants are seemingly obscure and unrecognized, hereafter and there honors will be evenly distributed, and then how will the great man's position shrink and shrivel! ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the silver creatures took the bait, And when they heaved and floundered on the rock, In beauteous misery, a sudden pat Some shaggy pup would deal, then back away, At distance eye them with sagacious doubt, And shrink half frighted from the ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... The mighty genius of immortal Rome Speaks in thy voice; thy soul breathes liberty. Caesar will shrink to hear the words thou utter'st, And shudder in the midst of all ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... and thence the bearers proceeded to the cathedral. These duties could not be very agreeable to portly, short-winded, well-fed dignitaries; and consequently the worthy canons were often inclined to shrink from the task. In the case of the funeral of Archbishop d'Aubigny, in 1719, they contented themselves with carrying him at once to his dormitory; but the prior and monks of St. Ouen instantly sued them before the parliament, and this tribunal decreed ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... feel her breath, the beauty and sweetness of those lips could no longer be resisted, and I touched them with mine. Having once tasted their sweetness and fragrance, it was impossible to keep from touching them again and again. She was not conscious—how could she be and not shrink from my caress? Yet there was a suspicion in my mind, and drawing back I gazed into her face once more. A strange new radiance had overspread it. Or was this only an illusive colour thrown on her skin by the red firelight? I shaded her face with my open hand, and saw that her pallor ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... been drifting, she asked herself contemptuously, that she and Chris, reasonable, right-thinking man and woman, could be reduced to this fearful and wretched position, could even consider—even name—what their sane senses must shrink from in utter horror! Norma was but twenty-two, but she knew that there was only one end ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... confidence in their Leader. What matter if they die in His service? He has told them what their work should be. He has bidden them visit the sick and comfort the sorrowing. What if there be danger in the work? Did He shrink from the Cross which was to end His work of love, and is it for His followers to do so? 'Though you go down into the pit,' He has said, 'I am there also'; and with His companionship one must be craven indeed to tremble. This is a noble opportunity for ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... forever outside the pale of her approbation any unfortunate who exhibited it. She preferred stupidity to common sense, when the former was allied with good form, and the latter only with plain kindliness. This was partly instinct and partly the result of cultivation. She would shrink, with uncontrollable disgust, from any of the lower classes with whom she came unavoidably in contact. A slight breach of the conventions earned her distrust of one of her own caste. As this personal idiosyncrasy fell in line with the de Laney pride, it was approved by ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... courage; and, with a firm step, he walked into the room and went to unfasten the shutters. If his hand trembled a little when he called to mind how supernaturally they had last been opened, it is not surprising. We are but mortal, and we shrink from contact with aught beyond this life. When the fastenings were removed and the shutters unfolded, a stream of light poured into the room so vivid as to dazzle his eyesight; strange to say, this very light of a brilliant ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... Aubrey! He would only be vexed to hear that you gave in, and were fickle to your undertaking. Indeed, if I were the volunteer, I should think it due to him, not to shrink as if I were ashamed of what he ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that Bingo had fallen by his hand. But, oddly enough, that fact did not sear his conscience. He had been accused of drowning Lester Parmalee, and the thought of that accusation now made him shrink and writhe. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... punishment has already visited me. Repulsed from every door where I seek employment, waiting patiently for the replies to my applications for advertised situations, which never come, the brand of the convict has indeed become the very mark of Cain, and I feel as if my fellowmen shrink from me as they pass. Fortunately I found at the post-office a few pounds sent to me from my brother, which, with slight additions, have enabled me to procure a mechanical leg, and to live till I have completed ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... very deep, ye'll think, Cam' delicately to the brink An' when the water gart me shrink Straucht took the rue, An' didna stoop my fill to drink - I own ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her dark blue eyes immediately under the bright stream of light. She did not cry; she did not shrink; calmly she looked up, never flinching, ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... thereto by word and deed. Write, then, to our lord the pope and to the Roman Church, and to the kings and princes of the West, and strengthen your written testimony by the authority of your seal. As for me, I shrink not from taking upon me a task for the salvation of my soul; and with the help of the Lord I am ready to go and seek out all of them, solicit them, show unto them the immensity of your troubles, and pray them all to hasten on the day of your relief.'" The patriarch eagerly accepted ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot |
