"Scantiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... footlights, a gown quite so daring as that which revealed the admirably turned person of the lady who named herself Liane. There was so little of it that, he reflected, its cost must have been something enormous. But in vain that scantiness of drapery: the white body rose splendidly out of its ineffective wrappings only to be overwhelmed by an incredible incrustation of jewellery: only here and there did bare hand's-breadths of flesh unadorned succeed in ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... and day on the battlements and ramparts, attended by a band of armed men, boiling over with anger and gnashing his teeth, because, often as he wished to sally forth, he was prevented from taking such a step by the scantiness of the force ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... this subject, I refer the reader to Mr Suessmilch's tables. The extracts that I have made are sufficient to shew the periodical, though irregular, returns of sickly seasons, and it seems highly probable that a scantiness of room and food was one of the principal ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... towards his waistcoat pocket, where he was accustomed to keep his snuff. The absence of any pocket at all in the usual direction, suddenly recalled to his recollection the fact that he had no waistcoat on; and this leading him to a contemplation of the extreme scantiness of his attire, he shut the door abruptly, and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... heard of Mr. Gladstone's prowess as a woodcutter, and to some it may even have been matter of surprise to see no scantiness of trees in the Park at Hawarden. It is true that he attacks trees with the same vigour as he attacks abuses in the body politic, {32b} but he attacks them on the same principle—they are blemishes and not ornaments. No one more scrupulously ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... life of aged parents should be added, or say sixty years more, making a total of at least one hundred and forty years since the immigration. Something might, it is true, be allowed for a sojourn at intermediate points: and the scantiness of the remarks is also to be remembered. But there remains to account for the considerable population which had grown up in the land from apparently one centre. If the original intruders were four hundred, for example, then in doubling every twenty years, they would ...
— Hochelagans and Mohawks • W. D. Lighthall
... abandon magic as a principle of faith and practice and to betake themselves to religion instead. When we reflect upon the multitude, the variety, and the complexity of the facts to be explained, and the scantiness of our information regarding them, we shall be ready to acknowledge that a full and satisfactory solution of so profound a problem is hardly to be hoped for, and that the most we can do in the present state of our knowledge is to hazard a more or less plausible conjecture. With ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the sort of amazement of the Orientals at the scantiness of the retinue with which an Englishman passes the Desert, for I was somewhat struck myself when I saw one of my countrymen making his way across the wilderness in this simple style. At first there was a mere moving speck on ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... are apt to forget the primary object of clothing, and to think of it too much as a means of adornment. This leads to excesses and follies such as tight waists, high-heeled shoes, to the ungainly crinoline or to indecent scantiness of skirts. Direct interference in these matters is badly tolerated, but much may be accomplished both by example and by cultivating a refined and artistic taste ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... goodness, or purity, of benevolence; or of fulness, emptiness, scantiness. There is no object or quality in the outside world I can say is goodness, or fulness. But I do see things in the external world through my ideas of goodness or fulness that correspond to these ideas. They have some of the qualities the ideas embrace; and so I point them out ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... reaching nearly to the feet. The sleeves were short, only just covering the shoulder. Down to the waist, the dress closely fitted the form, resembling, so far, a modern jersey; below this there was a slight expansion, but still the scantiness of the robe is very remarkable. It had no folds, and must have greatly interfered with the free play of the limbs, rendering rapid movements almost impossible. A belt or girdle confined it at the waist, which was always patterned, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... people with baskets between their legs and papers before their faces; and all showed by some peculiarity of air or dress the excess of heat which they had already borne, and to which they seemed to look forward, and gave by the scantiness of their number a vivid impression of the uncounted thousands within doors prolonging, before the day's terror began, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... which, from the peculiarity of their soil and situation, exclusively yield wine of a certain flavour, is sold of course at a price very far exceeding the cost of production. And this is owing to the greatness of the competition for such wine, compared with the scantiness of its supply; which confines the use of it to so small a number of persons, that they are able, and rather than go without it, willing, to give an excessively high price. But if the fertility of these lands were increased, so as very considerably to increase ...
— Nature and Progress of Rent • Thomas Malthus
... that comprise this volume[*], one, "The Wizard," a tale of victorious faith, first appeared some years ago as a Christmas Annual. Another, "Elissa," is an attempt, difficult enough owing to the scantiness of the material left to us by time, to recreate the life of the ancient Poenician Zimbabwe, whose ruins still stand in Rhodesia, and, with the addition of the necessary love story, to suggest circumstances such as might have brought about or accompanied its ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... with food, the usual tendency is towards an improper scantiness. Here, too, asceticism creeps out. Yet it is not obedience to the sensations, but disobedience to them which is the habitual cause of bodily evils. It is not the eating when hungry, but the eating in the absence ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... devolved either on committees of Congress or on boards consisting of several members. This unwieldy and expensive system had maintained itself against all the efforts of reason and public utility. But the scantiness of the national means at length prevailed over prejudice, and the several committees and boards yielded to a secretary for foreign affairs, a superintendent of finance, a secretary of war, and a secretary of marine. But so miserably defective was the organization ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... of Nature, especially, require time and culture before man can enjoy them. To rude races her processes bring only terror, which is very slowly outgrown. Humboldt has best exhibited the scantiness of finer natural perceptions in Greek and Roman literature, in spite of the grand oceanic anthology of Homer, and the delicate water-coloring of the Greek Anthology and of Horace. The Oriental and the Norse sacred books are full of fresh and beautiful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... throat, his long legs rolled up in a blanket, and stretched towards the feeble flame of the newly-lighted fire, he had a rather patchy air. Shelton, on the other hand, had lost his feeling of fatigue; the strangeness of the place was stimulating his brain; he kept stealing glances at the scantiness around; the room, the parson, the furniture, the very fire, all gave him the feeling caused by seeing legs that have outgrown their trousers. But there was something underlying that leanness of the landscape, something superior ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in petty artifices of parsimony, such as the practice of writing his compositions on the back of letters, as may be seen in the remaining copy of the Iliad, by which, perhaps, in five years five shillings were saved; or in a niggardly reception of his friends, and scantiness of entertainment, as, when he had two guests in his house, he would set at supper a single pint upon the table; and, having himself taken two small glasses, would retire, and say, "Gentlemen, I leave you to your wine." Yet he tells his friends, that "he has a heart for all, a house ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... we suffered most from, the hardship hardest to bear, was hunger. The scantiness of the rations was something fierce. We never got a square meal that winter. We were always hungry. Even when we were getting full rations the issue was one-quarter pound of bacon, or one-half pound of beef, and little over a pint of flour or cornmeal, ground with the cob on it, we used ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... hundred," said Richard, affecting the indifference of his companion, but feeling privately humbled by the scantiness ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... result is really astounding, when we consider the scantiness of the means. No pig's or sheep's pepsin can rival that of the worm. I have a bottle of pepsin that comes from the School of Chemistry at Montpellier. I lavishly powder some pieces of hard-boiled white of egg with the potent drug, just as I did with the eggs ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... ground which might so easily be converted into a city. Indeed, their arrival at the place at all seemed very like the crafty design of some persons who were minded to form a city. The aversion was not unnatural, since the majority of the soldiers had not left their homes on so long a voyage from scantiness or subsistence, but attracted by the fame of Cyrus's virtues; some of them bringing followers, while others had expended money on the expedition. And amongst them was a third set who had run away from fathers and mothers; while a different class had ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... 36 years. For dropsy of the belly and legs, and scantiness of urine, of several weeks standing, took three grains of the powder twice a day, and was quite restored in ten days. She took many ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... absence or scantiness of explicit or systematic information connected with the opening stages of such inquiries as the present, that the student is compelled to draw his own inferences from indirect or unwitting allusion; but so long ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... forlorn, little town; built, as is universally the case in these countries, with the streets running at right angles to each other, and having in the middle a large plaza or square, which, from its size, renders the scantiness of the population more evident. It possesses scarcely any trade; the exports being confined to a few hides and living cattle. The inhabitants are chiefly landowners, together with a few shopkeepers and the necessary tradesmen, such as blacksmiths and carpenters, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... practice in composition. We are not told what kind of reading pleased him, nor whether he was addicted to books; but he was a great admirer of Voltaire, with whom he had conversed in early life, and whose style, of its class, is perfect. He always deplored the scantiness of his classical attainments, and, particularly, his ignorance of the Greek tongue; and, so far as this volume teaches us, he would not appear to have been what it is customary to call a learned man. M. Colmache gives us ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Petracco did not long survive the death of this excellent woman. According to the judgment of our poet, his father was a man of strong character and understanding. Banished from his native country, and engaged in providing for his family, he was prevented by the scantiness of his fortune, and the cares of his situation, from rising to that eminence which he might have otherwise attained. But his admiration of Cicero, in an age when that author was universally neglected, was a proof of his ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... been made to the scantiness of the attire of the Paraguayan women at one period of the war. Some terrible facts are related in connection with this matter, showing the horrible desperation and sternness with which Lopez conducted his military operations, bringing untold woe on his own people ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... of Udaipur is a paradise for the artist—not a corner, not a creature which does not seem to cry aloud to be painted. The only difficulty in such embarras de richesses of subject and such scantiness of time, is to decide ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... goatherds, as they passed along the path. There I remained, sunk in contemplation, and reveling in remembrances, till the sun was almost dipping behind the snow-clad tops of Nivolex. I did not wish to cross the lake, or enter the town by daylight, as the homeliness of my dress, the scantiness of my purse, and the frugality of life to which I was constrained, in order to live some months near Julie, would have seemed strange to the inmates of the old doctor's house. They formed too great a contrast ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... This scantiness of dress became the subject of protest, of justification, of discussion in press, in public and in ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... operations of the Holy Spirit, appears to have met with still worse treatment. It would be to convey a very inadequate idea of the scantiness of the conceptions on this head, of the bulk of the Christian world, to affirm merely, that they are too little conscious of the inefficacy of their own unassisted endeavours after holiness of heart and life, and that they are not daily employed in humbly and diligently using the appointed ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... utmost danger, and most distressing uncertainty, exposed to the hostilities of the natives, the seditions of his men, and the suggestions of his own despair. He had, at length, sent a mere tantalizing message, by a man known to be one of his bitterest enemies, with a present of food, which, from its scantiness, seemed intended to ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... cheap paper; in spite of some painful efforts towards luxury in the way of photographs in frames and a clock with a pair of scissors hanging on the weight the furnishing of the room impressed him by its scantiness. Looking at the furniture, one might have supposed that Father Yakov had gone from house to house and collected it in bits; in one place they had given him a round three-legged table, in another a stool, in a third a chair with a back bent violently backwards; in a fourth ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... treating the same subject. The qualities of the epistolary style most frequently required, are ease and simplicity, an even flow of unlaboured diction, and an artless arrangement of obvious sentiments. But these directions are no sooner applied to use, than their scantiness and imperfection become evident. Letters are written to the great and to the mean, to the learned and the ignorant, at rest and in distress, in sport and in passion. Nothing can be more improper than ease and laxity of expression, when the importance of the subject impresses ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson |
