"Shrink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what you have; I shall not shrink, Nor budge for any man: only do you, Neighbour Palaemon, with your whole heart's skill- For it is no slight matter-play ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... are "clothed in soft raiment"! They shrink from the rough fustian, the labourer's cotton smock, the leather suit of George Fox. They are ultra-"finicky." They are afraid of the mire. They touch the sorrows of the world with a timid finger, not with the kindly, healing grasp ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... Upon this child—I saved her, must not leave Her life to chance; but point me out some nook Of safety, where she less may shrink ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... nodded pleasantly. "You needn't shrink; I shan't ask you to do anything vulgar, or even anything that, with your present prejudices, you might consider actively criminal. You can help me, you see, in your own profession as a journalist; and in other ways. And my enterprise is ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... its original form. Nine days later it was reproduced, having been taken to pieces and put together again by M. Castil-Blaze, and thus as Robin des Bois it ran for 357 nights. The reckless imagination that distinguishes the Shakespearian comedy and does not shrink before the introduction of a lion and a serpent into the forest of Arden, and the miraculous and instantaneous conversion of the wretch Oliver into a worthy suitor for Celia, needed to be toned down for acceptance ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... met. The plot which I was weaving against you, the storm which I was heaping up above your head, burst from me in threats and lightning glances. Still, I hesitated. My project had its terrible sides which made me shrink back. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... heart your dear cheek rested upon an instant later, fair Alice! Not for the first time in my life did I shrink and tremble at the realization of what duty imperatively required—not for the first time did I go through a harder battle than was ever fought with sword and cannon, and a battle with greater possibilities of danger ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... failed me In the fight, and my hope is departed: I speak what I know of; and note it, Ye nobles,—I tell ye no leasing. Lo, the raven is ready for carnage, But rare are the friends who should succour. Yet still let them scorn me and threaten, I shrink not, ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... difficulties; we are the worse, and Ireland none the better. It is idle to talk of municipal reform or popular Lords Lieutenant. The mild sway of a constitutional monarchy is not strong enough for a Roman Catholic population. The stern soul of a Republican would not shrink from sending half the misguided population and all the priests into exile, and planting in their place an industrious Protestant people. But you cannot do this, and you cannot convert the Irish, nor by other means make them fit to ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... manner of odds and ends and divers misshapen bundles. Having set down the candle, the highwayman drew a dingy blanket before the cave mouth and turned to scowl at me, eyeing my shrinking person over from dripping hat to sodden boots; and well might I shrink, for surely few waking eyes have beheld such a wild and terrifying vision as he presented, his battered face, his garments mired and torn, his hands hidden in ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... anything till I have absolutely re-educated myself? Am I, can I make myself, fit to write an account of half a century of the existence of one of the master-spirits of this world? It seems as if I had been very arrogant to dare to think it; yet will I not shrink back from what I have undertaken,—even by failure I shall ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... It may be said that they were easily pleased; for it is certain that neither of them had performed any very conspicuous action. They were highly civilized young Americans, born to an easy fortune and a tranquil destiny, and unfamiliar with the glitter of golden opportunities. If I did not shrink from disparaging the constitution of their native land for their own credit, I should say that it had never been very definitely proposed to these young gentlemen to distinguish themselves. On reaching manhood, they had each come into property sufficient to make violent ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... dare love the iconoclast would be one if we dared sufficiently, and in this work I surely was an image-breaker, for the old house was more than it seemed. To the careless passer, it was a gray, bald, doddering old structure that seemed trying to shrink into the ground, untenanted, unsightly, and forlorn. I know, having analyzed it, that it was an image of New England village life of the two centuries just gone, a life even the images of which are passing, ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... along the embankment the first effect was all against my uncle. He shrank—for a little while he continued to shrink—in perspective until he was only a very small shabby little man in a dirty back street, sending off a few hundred bottles of rubbish to foolish buyers. The great buildings on the right of us, the Inns and the School Board place—as it was then—Somerset ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... himself. "Just as a queen would speak to a serf. Ah, she don't want me to marry Laurence!" His coolness returned, and with it serious reflections. If he insisted on marrying, would not Bertha carry out her threats? Evidently; for he knew well that she was one of those women who shrink from nothing, whom no consideration could arrest. He guessed what she would do, from what she had said in a quarrel with him about Jenny. She had told him, "I will confess everything to Sauvresy, and we will be the ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... bow or lift the shield, If Bharat brave, and wise, and good, Himself has sought this sheltering wood? I sware my father's will to do, And if I now my brother slew What gain in kingship should I find, Despised and scorned by all mankind? Believe me, e'en as I would shrink From poisoned meat or deadly drink, No power or treasure would I win By fall of friend or kith or kin. Brother, believe the words I speak: For your dear sakes alone I seek Duty and pleasure, wealth ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... the speech to which Savinien replied with the intention of wounding the doctor in that which was dearest to him; and she succeeded, though the old man could hardly restrain a smile as he heard himself styled a "chevalier," amused to observe how the eagerness of a lover did not shrink from absurdity. ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... faint imprint of a woman's shoe on a clayey rock projecting midway of the chasm. It must have been the young girl's footprint made that morning, for the narrow toe was pointed in the direction she would go! Where SHE could pass should he shrink from going? Without further hesitation he twined his fingers around the roots above him, and half swung, half pulled himself along until he once more ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... swell and grow, these two strange, fettered hands, until they measured yards across, while the steel bands shrunk to the thinness of piano wire, cutting deeper and deeper into the flesh. Then the hands in turn began to shrink down and the cuffs to grow up into great, thick things as cumbersome as the couplings of a freight car. A voice that Mr. Trimm dimly recognized as his own was saying something about four million ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... shrink back into her veil. "Yes," she said, at length, "I will." Then, fearing she had been ungracious, she added: ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... hooting gathered sudden volume, and from an intermittent murmur, as of a remote sea, swelled in a moment into a roar of menace. And as a mob is capable of deeds from which the members who compose it would severally shrink, as nothing is so pitiless, nothing so unreasoning, so in the sound of its voice is a note that appals all but the hardiest. Soane was no coward. A year before he had been present at the siege of Bedford House by the Spitalfields weavers, where swords were ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... shrink from the trouble of transcribing the whole letter, if a complete copy were only to be found in the short-lived columns of a newspaper, as inserted in the Record of May 15, 1843, by Merle d'Aubigne; but the Dean has given a reference to the volume in which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... him there. But he did not stir and I could not do it. My hand dropped. "Cowards!" I cried, glancing bitterly from him to them—they had never failed me before. "Cowards!" I muttered, seeming to shrink into myself as I said the word. And I flung my ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... simply dove-tailed, instead of being lined with lead or copper; and in my first experiments I used them made in that way; but I soon discovered their inconvenience. If the water be not always kept at the same level, such of the dovetails as are left dry shrink, and, when more water is added, it escapes through the ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... was a chill fear at my heart, the fear that Aunt Jane and her band of treasure-seekers had already departed on their quest. In that case I foresaw that whatever narrow margin of faith my fellow-voyagers on the City of Quito had had in me would shrink to nothingness. I had been obliged to be so queer and clam-like about the whole extraordinary rendezvous—for how could I expose Aunt Jane's madness to the multitude?—that I felt it would take the actual bodily presence ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... intense interest of her tone, and if he did not shrink back, gave some involuntary gesture of ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... one to whom I can give my heart, I will then go my own way, and if Harry will take me I will marry him.' It will require a great deal of courage to say so; but you are doing so much to try and win me, that it would be hard indeed if I were to shrink from doing a little on ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... on most readers a profound impression of the misery of a guilty conscience and the retribution of crime. And the strength of this impression is one of the reasons why the tragedy is admired by readers who shrink from Othello and are made unhappy by Lear. But what Shakespeare perhaps felt even more deeply, when he wrote this play, was the incalculability of evil,—that in meddling with it human beings do they know not what. The soul, he seems to feel, is a thing ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... determination only manifested on occasions of deep and vital concern to the welfare of the republic. However languidly certain elements of American society may perform what they deem the drudgery of politics, they do not shrink from it when they hear warning of real danger. The alarm of the nation on the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was serious and startling. All ranks and occupations therefore joined with a new energy in the contest it provoked. Particularly ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Lord Garnon and I discussed this, oh, two years ago at the least. Really, I'm surprised that you seem to shrink from it, now. Of course, you're Venus-born, and customs there may be different, ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... first folio, "till famine cling thee," that he is indeed, as he says, "in the region of conjecture:" cling is purely A.-S., as he will find in Bosworth, "Clingan, to wither, pine, to cling or shrink up; marcescere." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... than the fair hostess herself, it was Randal Leslie. Something instinctively told him that this visit threatened interference with whatever might be his ultimate projects in regard to Riccabocca and Violante. But Randal Leslie was not one of those who shrink from an intellectual combat. On the contrary, he was too confident of his powers of intrigue not to take a delight in their exercise. He could not conceive that the indolent Harley could be a match for his own restless activity and dogged perseverance. But in a very few moments fear crept on him. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... upon was the character of Captain Beaufort. Do not shrink at the notion of his most intimate friend, or his sister Mrs. Edgeworth, or his nieces Fanny and Sophy, having seen this character. You need not: we all agree that it ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Cecilia, was to any decided and open act in his favor, stood in stupid wonder at her declaration. He could not conceive that a woman who had already ventured so much in secret in his behalf, and who had so often avowed her weakness, should shrink to declare it again at such a crisis, though the eyes of a universe were on her! He looked from one of the party to the other, and met in every face an expression of delicate reserve, except in those of the guardian of his mistress, ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... experiment shows that it does above the freezing point, the gas, if its pressure remained the same, would double its volume, if raised to a temperature of 32 491.64 523.64 degrees Fahrenheit, while under a diminution of temperature it would shrink and finally disappear at a temperature of 491.64 - 32 459.64 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. While undoubtedly some change in the law would take place before the lower temperature could be reached, there is no reason why the law may not be used within the ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... disagreement. "There may be much; that is why I am disturbed. You and I don't count, mother; we are expected to submit. It isn't that I don't like Alan; I shrink from him. He is cunning and knows how to wait. Sometimes ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... some personality which may be said in a certain manner to epitomize and symbolize the character of a race. "I and my nation are one": thus Poland's greatest poet, Adam Mickiewicz, sums up the devotion that will not shrink before the highest tests of sacrifice for a native country. "My name is Million, because I love millions and for millions suffer torment." If to this patriotism oblivious of self may be added an unstained moral integrity, the magnetism of an extraordinary personal ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... somewhat dismayed at my landlady's expressions, which seemed to be ominous of some approaching danger. I did not, however, choose to shrink back after having declared my resolution, and accordingly I boldly entered the house; and after narrowly escaping breaking my shins over a turf back and a salting tub, which stood on either side of the narrow exterior passage, I opened a crazy half-decayed door, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... is "a consuming fire"; and Asta, a type of the beneficent love which is possible only so long as it is exempt from "the law of change." Allmers, then, is self-conscious egoism, egoism which can now and then break its chains, look in its own visage, realise and shrink from itself; while Rita, until she has passed through the awful crisis which forms the matter of the play, is unconscious, reckless, and ruthless egoism, exigent and jealous, "holding to its rights," and incapable ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... will try to reconcile the conflicting interests and bring them into harmony with his own. But where great fundamental questions await decision, such as the actual enforcement of universal service or of the requirements on which readiness for war depends, he must not shrink from strong measures in order to create the forces which the State needs, or will need, in order to maintain ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... station. What a stroke of genius! a perambulating public assembling. This idea came to him from seeing a harpist make the trip from Havre to Honfleur, playing 'Il Bacio' all the time. Ah, one must look alive! The prefect does not shrink from any way of fighting us. Did he not spread through one of our most Catholic cantons the report that we were Voltairians, enemies to religion and devourers of priests? Fortunately, we have yet four Sundays before us, from now until the voting-day, and the patron ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... You thought I wouldn't follow you to England because I should shrink from facing my mother, perhaps, and my wife's relatives, and all the people who know what I've done. I don't shrink from meeting any one, and I'll ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... such earnest purpose of soul as makes words more solemn than oaths, to save Mary from becoming such as Esther? Should he shrink from the duties of life, into the cowardliness of death? Who would then guard Mary, with her love and her innocence? Would it not be a goodly thing to serve her, although she loved him not; to be her preserving ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... into the grave, my dear boy, but I do not shrink from that prospect, because the bitterness of death is taken away by my Saviour, who died for my sins, and rose again for my justification; and though this body returns to dust, I shall live again, and enter ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... appear to you. Instead of torturing yourself on account your sins, throw yourself into your Redeemer's arms. Trust in Him—in the righteousness of His life—in the atonement of His death. Do not shrink back, God is not angry with you; it is you who are angry with God. Listen to the Son of God, He became man to give you the assurance of Divine favour. He says to you, You are my sheep, you hear my voice; no man shall pluck you out of my hand.' Still Dr Martin could not understand ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... cleared his throat awkwardly. He was feeling embarrassed at the unpleasantness of the duty which he had to perform, but it was a duty, and he did not intend to shrink from performing it. Ever since, gazing appreciatively through the drawing-room windows at the charming scene outside, he had caught sight of the unforgettable form of Billie, seated in her chair with the sketching-block on her knee, he had realised that he could not go away in silence, ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... public, even between intimate lady friends, is a vulgar parade of affection, that a truly refined person will shrink from. ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... the most elaborate manufacture, encased his feet. Not a speck defiled their high polish; the very dust and mud which introduces itself cosily into the habiliments of your common, warm hearted men, seemed to shrink away chilled and repulsed by the immaculate coldness that clung like an atmosphere around the Mayor of New York. The nap of his hat lay shining and smooth as satin; so deeply and thoroughly was it brushed down into the stock, that ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... persons. And he wouldn't get intoxicated, which is a beastly way of amusin oneself, I must say. I like a little beer now and then, and when the teetotallers inform us, as they frekently do, that it is vile stuff, and that even the swine shrink from it, I say it only shows that the swine is a ass who don't know what's good; but to pour gin and brandy down one's throat as freely as though it were fresh milk, is the most idiotic way of goin' to the ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne
... great pleasure to me finding that to-day the Sakais no longer distrust civilization and some of them, especially the younger ones, do not refuse or shrink from work as they once did and neither do they oppose such an obstinate resistance to those innovations which I too had a part ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... soon come to a work, before which we find indeed no critical essay, but which disdains to shrink from the touchstone of the severest critic; and which certainly, as I remember to have heard you say, if it contains some of the worst, contains also some of the ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... knows he was alive? It sounds to me a bogus notion, got up to put the screw on you, by surprise. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go down to the shop tomorrow morning, see the woman, and extract the truth if possible, and I fully expect that the story will shrink up to nothing." ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Morgans bounded to their feet. They were not unused to sudden onslaughts, nor was either of them a man to shrink from a fight at short quarters, if it came to that, but blank astonishment overwhelmed both. De Spain, standing slightly sidewise, his coat lapels flapped wide open, his arms akimbo, and his hands on his hips, faced the three in an attitude of readiness only. He ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... paganism, that, indeed, he had frequently to fight the Druid and the magician with his own weapons, and therefore we must not be surprised if in some of these tales we find him somewhat of a magician himself. But he is invariably on the side of light, and the things of darkness and evil shrink from ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... come close to her now; in his eagerness he pressed against her, and, earnestness overcoming diffidence, he almost ventured to take her hand in his. She felt herself inwardly shrink from him with the repulsion that young wild animals feel at times for mere contact. But outwardly she did not betray it; pity for ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... religiously inclined, recalled that saying concerning the rich individual and the passage of a camel through a needle's eye. Possibly it had come home to Mrs. Errington upon her death-bed. Possibly, as her end drew near she had perceived herself tower to camel size, the entrance to Paradise shrink to the circumference which refuses to receive a thread manipulated by an unsteady hand. Yes, yes; they began to expand in unctuous conjecture that merged into deliberate assertion, when some one remarked that Mrs. Errington ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... knew; his evil swarthy face turned as green as the slime upon the crocodile's forehead; his powerful naked shoulders seemed to shrivel and shrink as though blood had ceased to flow through his veins. He put his two hands, clasped palm to palm, to his forehead in supplication, and begged that the ordeal might pass, that he might go by the bridge, or across the desert, or any way except by ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... She fumbled with 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
... notions—to swift assassination or to slow intrigue—last of all to self destruction should his aims miscarry. He would kill himself and cheat them after all. Many another in Petersburg had sacrificed his life rather than suffer those years of torture which discovery brought. He knew that he would not shrink even from the irrevocable if ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... the sickness. At which time Pericles also lost his sister, and the greatest part of his relations and friends, and those who had been most useful and serviceable to him in managing the affairs of state. However, he did not shrink or give in on these occasions, nor betray or lower his high spirit and even the greatness of his mind under all his misfortunes; he was not even so much as seen to weep or to mourn, or even attend the burial of his friends or relations, till at last he lost his only remaining son. Subdued ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... speak to her of love—I, the policeman, she the heiress?... How can I tell her that story which was told to you?... The story of damnable hate and passion, when I tried to strangle my own brother. I tell you she would shrink away in horror. She must shrink. Why did you speak to me about it at all! Your thoughts are folly and madness. I offer love to Meryl Pym?... My God! I have some decency—some pride left." And the pain and bitterness in his ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... one must not conceive of piles of boulders or heaps of fragments, but of a whole land of naked rock, with giant forms carved on it: cathedral-shaped buttes, towering hundreds or thousands of feet, cliffs that cannot be scaled, and canyon walls that shrink the river into insignificance, with vast, hollow domes and tall pinnacles and shafts set on the verge overhead; and all highly colored—buff, gray, red, brown, and chocolate—never lichened, never moss-covered, but ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... theater, and they like bread pudding, and they're happy. I wasn't. They treated me fine, and it was home, all right, but not my home. It was the same, but I was different. Eleven years away from anything makes it shrink, if you know what I mean. I guess maybe you do. I remember that I used to think that the Grand View Hotel was a regular little oriental palace that was almost too luxurious to be respectable, and that the traveling men who stopped there were gods, and just ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... my head's a mop; I'm vet as any think; Oh! shan't ve cotch a cold!" "Your tongue is glib enough!" his rib exclaim'd, and made him shrink, —For she was ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... touched her heart keenly to see her little Pearl, whom she was learning to fairly idolize, shrink from her. ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... Council at Jerusalem, and it was probably about this time that St. Peter paid to Antioch the visit of which we read in the Epistle to the Galatians[16], when his fear of "them which were of the circumcision," led him to shrink from continuing to eat and drink with the Gentiles, and drew down St. Paul's stern rebuke. [Sidenote: Separation of St. Paul and St. Barnabas.] The difference of opinion about St. Mark soon after separated the two Apostles, whose labours amongst the heathen ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... left him unmoved—he hanged the murderer Palatoff with his own hands. Yet in that operation someone saw him turn very pale and shrink back from his victim. Afterwards the reason was discovered. The condemned man had had the front of his rough shirt fastened with a safety-pin which had worked loose. The point had ripped a little gash in the inexperienced finger of ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... quick. It often seems a curious thing that I, Who in my ordinary clothes would hardly hurt a fly, Hold to the rigour of the law when I put on gown and wig, As if for mere humanity I didn't care a fig. For once I'm seated on the bench I do not shrink or flinch From the reddest laws of Draco, or ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... he said, "my position here is a new and difficult one, so difficult that did I not feel sure that you would help me to make it as easy as possible I should shrink from undertaking it. I am a very young man. I have grown up among you, and of you, and now in a strange way, due in a great measure to the kindness of your employers, and in a small degree to my own exertions to improve myself, I ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... was there to fear in a sleeping soldier anyhow? She knew who it was at a glance. She could, if she would, whisper his name. Indeed, she had been whispering it many a time, day and night, these last two weeks until—until certain things about him had come to her ears that made her shrink in spite of herself from this handsome, petted young soldier, this Adonis of her father's troop, Neil ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... often seen the sailor in action on board ship, and the gallant manner in which he had saved his officer's life during the fight at the house, had fully satisfied the young commander that the coxswain was not the man to shrink from his duty because it was dangerous. His reply ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... Luis Gonzalez de Comara, much against the desire of the said individual. To his entreaties and objections the first General of the Society made answer, on the 9th August 1552, that he was indeed edified by the humility which caused Father de Comara to shrink from a position which many envied; nevertheless, he was of the opinion that he should obey his Highness in this, as in other things, "for the honour of God our Lord." St. Ignatius went on to say that he need not occupy himself with any but good and pious objects, neither had he reason ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... happened: Nancy Ellen so appreciated herself in pink that the extreme care she used with that dress saved it from half the trips of a dirt-brown one to the wash board and the ironing table; while, marvel of marvels, it did not shrink, it did not fade, also it wore like buckskin. The result was that before the season had passed Kate was allowed to purchase a pale blue, which improved her appearance quite as much in proportion as pink had Nancy Ellen's; neither did the blue fade nor shrink nor require so much washing, for the ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... The quality of the tea depends upon the manner of cultivation, the character of the soil, the amount of moisture and sunshine and the age of the leaf at the time of picking. Young, tender leaves have the finest flavor, and bring the highest prices, but shrink enormously in curing, and many growers consider it more profitable to leave them until they are well matured. It requires about four pounds of fresh leaves to make one pound of dry leaves, and black tea and green tea are ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... to the belief, sirs, that wealth and poverty do not lie in a man's estate, but in men's souls. Even in private life how many scores of people have I seen, who, although they roll in wealth, yet deem themselves so poor, there is nothing they will shrink from, neither toil nor danger, in order to add a little to their store. (55) I have known two brothers, (56) heirs to equal fortunes, one of whom has enough, more than enough, to cover his expenditure; the other is in absolute indigence. And so ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... pulled up when he saw me? As I said, I cannot tell, for now he was standing in the characteristic wolf-way, half turned, head bent back, tail stretched out nearly horizontally. The tail sank, the whole beast seemed to shrink, and suddenly he slunk away with amazing agility. Poor fellow—he did not know that many a time I had fed some of his brothers in cruel winters. But he came to know me, as I knew him; for whenever he left me on later drives, very close to Bell's corner, after I had finished ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... minority of two; but persevered nevertheless, year after year, until the very same resolution, word for word, was unanimously adopted by another Republican convention! Of course, Judge Goddard will not be likely to shrink from giving his reasons hereafter, if the movement should propagate ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... 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 ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... just demands for a higher order of home falling on the ever more inadequate shoulders of the Average Woman, both Motherhood and the home are imperilled. We are horribly frightened when we see our poor Average Woman shrink from maternity, and [illegible] at housework. We preach at her and scold her and flatter her and woo her, and, if we could, we would force her back into her old place, child-bearer and burden-hearer, the helpless servant ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... power drove him to look through the keyhole. He would stand there a long time, covering his left eye with his hand as children do and peering with his right at the white wall of the corridor. But whenever a passer-by darkened his outlook, he would shrink back startled. If he had to go out to attend to his flowers, he opened the door slowly and silently and walked backward, fixing his eyes on Engelhardt's door, until he reached the steps. There he would turn quickly and hurry away, possessed by the fear that a hand would suddenly seize him ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... You must be prepared to have your character assailed, and your motives impugned in the public press. You may find that social pressure will be brought to bear on you. So it is a step from which most young men who have their careers to make would shrink." ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... might well shrink to tell a man what she must tell him, to go into explanations that were an offence to the purity of her mind. Yet, listening to her, looking at her, at the pale, proud young face, white as marble, Hugh Alston knew that he had never admired and reverenced her ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... though there are stakes of that kind some men would not shrink from. What are called "arms of precision" have had a great influence on modern politics. When there's no time for a plebiscite, there's ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... finds himself unable to pay the interest on the indebtedness. If the farm represents much invested capital, the net income of the farm becomes too meagre to pay even a moderate rate of interest on its cost value; therefore its selling value must shrink to the level of its reduced income. In this way a large share of the available assets of the small farmer, are swept away. The savings of years, are swallowed up and lost. Savings, that in the aggregate, amount to many millions of dollars. What has become of these values? They have been ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... surprise them. They grudge you should learn How the soft plains they look on, lean over And love (they pretend) —Cower beneath them, the flat sea-pine crouches, The wild fruit-trees bend; E'en the myrtle leaves curl, shrink and shut, All is silent and grave: 'Tis a sensual and timorous beauty. How ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... restitution to Aurora; but it meant also dissolution to the Grandissimes, for should their sold titles be pronounced bad, then the titles of other lands would be bad; many an asset among M. Grandissime's memoranda would shrink into nothing, and the meagre proceeds of the Grandissime estates, left to meet the strain without the aid of Aurora's accumulated fortune, would founder in a sea of liabilities; while should these titles, after being parted with, turn out good, his incensed kindred, shutting their ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... eyes of their superiors. On one side was wealth, rank, dignity, the weight of authority, the majority of numbers, the prestige of centuries; here too were the phantom legions of superstition and cowardice; and here were all the worthier influences so pre-eminently English, which lead wise men to shrink from change, and to cling to things established, so long as one stone of them remains upon another, This was the army of conservatism. Opposed to it were a little band of enthusiasts, armed only with truth and fearlessness; "weak things of the world," about ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... when some Angel, with a saving drink Of iced Nepenthe comes, I shall not shrink; But, having drunk of it, shall feel again As good and noble ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Bachelor • Helen Rowland
... never felt before, and she caught herself framing visions whose very vagueness of outline swelled before her like the shadows of a portent. At times, too, through these mists there flashed illuminations which startled her, and made her innocent heart shrink as if they were presentiments ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... doctrine in. But stay! "As the showers upon the grass" as well, says Moses. It will not do for the preacher to speak only gently; his words must come pattering about your heads like a driving April shower, when you will shrink from the rain and hide to get out of the way. The preacher must pour out on you a good strong shower ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... mountain beast on my hands and on my feet in pursuit? What new path shall I take in this direction or in that, desirous of seizing these murderous Trojan dames, who have utterly destroyed me; O ye impious, impious Phrygian daughters! Ah the accursed, in what corner do they shrink from me in flight? Would that thou, O sun, could'st heal, could'st heal these bleeding lids of my eyes, and remove this gloomy-darkness. Ah, hush, hush! I hear the carefully-concealed step of these women. Whither shall I direct my ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... was spying if she stayed to watch the interesting scene. If Richard had chosen a spot which he fancied entirely secluded from observation, it was undoubtedly wholly on the boy's own account. She could easily imagine how such a child as this one would shrink from observation in a public place, particularly when he was to try the dearly imagined but wholly unknown delight of fishing. It was plain that he was very shy, even with this kind friend, for it was only now and then that he replied in words ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... almost every time we came opposite a village, we kept on our way until we came to Murembwe Point, which, being a delta of a river of the same name, was well protected by a breadth of thorny jungle, spiky cane, and a thick growth of reed and papyrus, from which the boldest Mrundi might well shrink, especially if he called to mind that beyond this inhospitable swamp were the guns of the strangers his like had so rudely challenged. We drew our canoe ashore here, and, on a limited area of clean sand, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... dispelled any attraction that he had hitherto felt towards Socialistic theories. He saw that France required an upholder of order and of property. In his address to the nation announcing his candidature for the Presidency he declared that he would shrink from no sacrifice in defending society, so audaciously attacked; that he would devote himself without reserve to the maintenance of the Republic, and make it his pride to leave to his successor at the end of four years authority strengthened, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... modern Solons look With severe ungifted eyes, Wondering what thou seest to prize. Happy thou, whose skill can take Pleasure at each turn, and slake Thy thirst by every fountain's brink, Where less wise men would pause to shrink: Sometimes, 'mid stately avenues With Cowley thou, or Marvel's muse, Dost walk; or Gray, by Eton's towers; Or Pope, in Hampton's chesnut bowers; Or Walton, by his loved Lea stream: Or dost thou with our Milton ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... evil may puzzle us;—its use no Christian can deny. A sensual philosophy may shrink from it, in all its aspects, and retreat into a morbid skepticism or a timid submission. If we predicate mere happiness as "our being's end and aim," there is no explanation of evil. From this point of view, there is an ambiguity in nature,—a duality in ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... went Doubt, who was yclad In a discolour'd coat of strange disguise, That at his back a broad capuccio had, And sleeves dependant Albanese-wise; He lookt askew with his mistrustful eyes, And nicely trod, as thorns lay in his way, Or that the floor to shrink he did avise; And on a broken reed he still did stay His feeble steps, which shrunk ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... feeling that I had never heard the tune before. In his earnestness he came nearer and nearer, his contortions every moment becoming more extraordinary, his whistling more piercing; and I, by this time convulsed by awful, helpless laughter, could only shrink farther back in my seat and gasp ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... conclusion. Would those who would maintain that the "wisest and best" have rights superior to those of their neighbours, welcome a law which would enable any person demonstrably wiser or more virtuous than themselves to put them to death? I think that most of them have enough modesty (and humour) to shrink, as Huxley did, from such a proposition. But the alternative is the acceptance of Jefferson's doctrine that the fundamental rights of men are independent of adventitious differences, whether material or moral, and depend simply ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... snow In the warm noon, we shrink away; And fast they follow, as we go Toward the setting day— Till they shall fill the land, and we Are ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... the laws, enacted, concerning the punishment of Roman citizens? Not so—for never, in this city, have rebels against the commonwealth been suffered to retain the rights of Citizens or Romans! Dost thou shrink from the odium of posterity? If it be so, in truth, thou dost repay great gratitude unto the Roman people, who hath elevated thee, a man known by thine own actions only, commended by no ancestral glory, so rapidly, through all the grades of honor, to this most high authority of consul; ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... its firm abode In bare and desolated bosoms: mute[ma] The camel labours with the heaviest load, And the wolf dies in silence—not bestowed In vain should such example be; if they, Things of ignoble or of savage mood, Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay May temper it to bear,—it is but for ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... hills and the plains that Rome might have more possession. Meanwhile the maidens went in pairs to the springs to fetch water, or down to the river in small companies to wash the woollen clothes and dry them in the shade of the old wild trees, lest in the sun they should shrink and thicken; black-haired, black-eyed, dark-skinned maids, all of them, strong and light of foot, fit to be mothers of more soldiers, to slay more enemies, and bring back more spoil. Then, as in our own times, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... enough to bear; and now to be torn away from the home of my childhood, and from the friend that has always been a mother to me, and by a man, from whom every true, good instinct of my nature teaches me to shrink. I, who have always had full liberty in the house of my dear father, to be forced away against my will by this man, as if I were his slave!" exclaimed Clara, bursting into fresh tears of ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... happy that makes me, to be trusted by some one! Nobody seems to trust me here. My mother was never kind to me. Captain Van Dorn is kind, but too kind; I shrink from him." ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... 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, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... down-stairs, or going down alone. He took her lamp, held it so as to throw the best light on the stone steps, and followed her all the way to the supper-room. She went down, not easily hiding how much she was inclined to shrink and tremble; for the appearance of this traveller was particularly disagreeable to her. She had sat in her quiet corner before supper imagining what he would have been in the scenes and places within her experience, until he inspired her with an aversion that ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... to shrink from endearments. Donald was brown, thin, and weary-looking. His pistols were in his pockets, and his rifle slung by his side. He had just ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... And the bowl journey round his ample size? Or the debating merchants share the prey, And various limbs to various marts convey? Thro' his firm skull what steel its way can win? What forceful engine can subdue his skin? Fly far, and live; tempt not his matchless might: The bravest shrink to cowards in his sight; (40)The rashest dare not rouse him up: Who then Shall turn on me, among the sons of men? Am I a debtor? Hast thou ever heard Whence come the gifts that are on me conferr'd? My lavish fruit a thousand valleys fills, And mine the herds, that graze ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... silent all round. Both the news and the manner of the teller of it were imposing. Decided, clear, calm, sweet, Diana's grey eyes as well as her lips gave her testimony; they did not shrink from other eyes, nor droop in hesitation or difficulty; as little was there a line of daring or self-assertion about them. The dignity of the woman ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... steady hand, "you are the only soul on this island who doesn't fear me. That woman above yonder, curse her, shuddered away from me as I looked at her dying. But your hand is steady. You and old Ben Hornigold are the only ones who don't shrink back, hey, Carib? Is it love or hate?" he mused, as the man made no answer. "More," he cried, again lifting the glass which he ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... characteristics of modern social intercourse which makes men of a certain temper intensely anxious to avoid a sort of marriage which would, among other things, have the effect of committing them more deeply to this kind of intercourse. Such men shrink with affright from giving hostages to society for a more faithful compliance with its most dismal exactions. To them there is nothing more unendurable than the monotonous round of general hospitalities and ceremonials, ludicrously misnamed pleasure. A detestation ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... overcome by my own thoughts: I look upon the world, and see that it is fair and good; I look upon you, and I see all that I can venerate and adore. Life seems to me so sweet, and the earth so lovely; can you wonder, then, that I should shrink at the thought of death? Nay, interrupt me not, dear Albert; the thought must be borne and braved. I have not cherished, I have not yielded to it through my long-increasing illness; but there have been times when it has forced itself upon me, and now, now more palpably ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dreamed love might be. He was glad he had found it. He was glad of the cup it had put to his lips. He was the richer for her. He would be the richer for seeing her go. He hoped that the sorrow would never quite pass out of his heart, that the love would never shrink ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... it, and enjoyed telling it, because she thought it would depress and take the spirit out of me. She hoped, I'm sure, that it would make me shrink from Sir Lionel's society in shame and mortification; also she very likely fancied that I might consider myself an unfit bride for her nephew, whose attentions to me are extremely convenient for her; but she would prefer not to have them ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the eyes of every one. Sucking in thus the honey of love by imprinting in her thoughts his rare qualities, she began to surfeit with the contemplation of his virtuous conditions; but when she called to remembrance her present estate, and the hardness of her fortunes, desire began to shrink, and fancy to vail bonnet, that between a Chaos of confused thoughts she began to debate ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge |
