"Shrink from" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indeed essayed the canoe on the Pipestave Pond, but that was a mere ferry. This was real travel. He marvelled at the sensitiveness of the frail craft; the delicacy of its balance; its quick response to the paddle; the way it seemed to shrink from the rocks; and the unpleasantly suggestive bend-up of the ribs when the bottom grounded upon a log. It was a new world for him. Quonab taught him never to enter the canoe except when she was afloat; never to rise ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... little cries. They were completely feathered, though here and there one of the infantile hairs still stuck up between the plumage, the backs a golden green, and the throat and breast snowy white. They returned my gaze with wide, calm eyes, and did not shrink from the finger which gently stroked their backs. The home which had held them was almost a complete wreck, hardly more than a flattened platform, but they clung to it still, and I knew that I should miss the sight I longed ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... Vainly flares the old king's passion, Craving a sauce for his meat and mine. The summer has flown; winter has come: 15 Ah, that is the head of our troubles. Palsied are you and helpless am I; You shrink from a plunge in the water; Alas, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... he stood, balanced in the swing of perplexity, and doubting his own reason, Natabhrukuti looked at him fixedly, with concern and affection and curiosity in her eyes. And she said: Surely thou art ill. And why then dost thou shrink from me, as though I were a thing of terror: I, who ask for nothing but to tend thee all my life? For it was but now, as we spoke together in this wood, I looked up and saw thee suddenly close thy eyes. And as I watched thee, ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... wholly wanting. Among the vases and drinking vessels with which the Chaldaean tombs abound, while the majority are characterized by a certain rudeness both of shape and material, we occasionally meet with specimens of a higher character, which would not shrink from a comparison with the ordinary productions of Greek fictile art. A number of these are represented in the second figure [PLATE XIII., Fig 2], which exhibits several forms not hitherto published-some taken from drawings by Mr. Churchill, the artist who accompanied Mr. Loftus ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... coolly as in a dream, to the most novel responsibilities. One sits on court-martial, for instance, and decides on the life of a fellow-creature, without being asked any inconvenient questions as to previous knowledge of Blackstone; and after such an experience, shall one shrink from wrecking a steamer or two in the cause of the nation? So I placidly accepted my naval establishment, as if it were a new form of boat-club, and looked over the charts, balancing between one river and another, as if deciding whether to pull up or down Lake ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... quite two miles, but Fred did not mind that. The prize for which he was striving was too great for him to shrink from such ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... fluttering toward his mistress. As for her, she wore the same look of animation that I had seen in her face at our previous meeting. Although she did not bring her sketchbook with her, as at the bullfight, she did not shrink from the branding of the cattle, which took place under ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... unaccountably persist in setting on their own lives), impelled me, of necessity, to choose the alternative of felonious existence in preference to that of respectable death. Love and Honor bade me live to marry Alicia; and a sense of family duty made me shrink from occasioning a loss of three thousand pounds to my affectionate sister. Perish the far-fetched scruples which would break the heart of one lovely woman, and scatter to the winds ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... Virtue and modesty shrink from public gaze. Each looks alone to its innate sense, the gift of God, and to the sole approval of the great ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... good. Still it would not be as it was at first. It was because her hands were busy and her days full, that she was helped then. It would be different now. And more than that, she seems quite to shrink from the thought of it. We will wait a while, and all that ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... ours?—which he is, if we are Christ's; for Christ has conquered him. If he be ours, our servant, our minister, sent but to bring us into the presence of our Lord, then, indeed, his terrors, his merely natural terrors, the outside roughness of his aspect, are things which the merest child need not shrink from. Then disease and decay, however painful to living friends to look upon, have but little pain for him who is undergoing them. For it is not only amidst the tortures of actual martyrdom that Christians have been more than conquerors,—in common life, on the quiet or lonely sick bed, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... of her door. "I am not afraid to die," said she, "for what have I to bind me to life now that I can never visit the spot where repose the shattered fragments of my beloved Capitaine Guilbert? But to be burned, helpless, while rescue was cut off from me by a locked door! I shrink from so terrible a fate." Subtlety, she had discovered, was thrown away upon the obtuseness of Rust. She was compelled to be brutally plain, and so she drove into his thick head the tempting fact that nothing interposed during the hours of darkness between his eager hands ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... sacrifice of the God-Man—l'Homme-Dieu. These truths are explicitly stated by the Author in his former course of lectures—La Vie Eternelle,[1] in which, while discoursing eloquently on that eternal life which is the portion of the righteous, he does not shrink from declaring his belief in its awful counterpart, the eternal ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... husband inclining to the better part, and resolving to proceed no further. But she being a woman not easily shaken from her evil purpose, began to pour in at his ears words which infused a portion of her own spirit into his mind, assigning reason upon reason why he should not shrink from what he had undertaken, how easy the deed was; how soon it would be over; and how the action of one short night would give to all their nights and days to come sovereign sway and royalty! Then ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... looked at the brown hole in the earth where Amedee was to lie, and felt no horror. That, too, was beautiful, that simple doorway into forgetfulness. The heart, when it is too much alive, aches for that brown earth, and ecstasy has no fear of death. It is the old and the poor and the maimed who shrink from that brown hole; its wooers are found among the young, the passionate, the gallant-hearted. It was not until he had passed the graveyard that Emil realized where he was going. It was the hour for saying good-bye. It might be the last time that he would see her alone, and today he could leave ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... to Aldworth. Went in by Hallam's wish to the room where he lay. I dread and shrink from the sight of death, and wish to keep the recollection of the life I have known and loved undisturbed by its soulless image. But in this case I rejoice to have seen on that noble face the perfect peace which of late years was wanting—it was really "the rapture of repose." A volume of Shakespeare ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... "Do not shrink from me! Believe me, Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will be such a rapture to ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... months he became anxious to know what the enemies of the cross intended to do with him. His sentence was transportation and death, unless he conformed. To give up or shrink from his profession of Christ, by embracing the national forms and submitting his conscience to human laws, he dared not. He resolved to persevere even at the sacrifice of his life. To add to his distress, doubts and fears clouded his prospects of futurity; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... contempt should be committed. And he who says this in the Colloquies, adds that he hates fishes not otherwise than he does a serpent. Now, there are some so affected that fish is poison to them, just as there are found those who in like manner shrink from wine. If one who is thus affected with regard to fishes, should be forbidden to feed on flesh and milk-food, will he not be hardly treated? Is it possible that any man can desire him to be exposed to the pains of hell, if for the necessity of his body he should live on flesh? If ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... approach the Deity to ourselves—the more we can invest him with human attributes—the more we can connect him with the affairs and sympathies of earth, the greater will be his influence upon our conduct—the more fondly we shall contemplate his attributes, the more timidly we shall shrink from his vigilance, the more anxiously we shall strive for his approval. When Epicurus allowed the gods to exist, but imagined them wholly indifferent to the concerns of men, contemplating only their own happiness, and regardless alike of our virtues or our crimes;—with ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... military array. With my stoic and breviary I trust to do the work that is committed to me.11 Infirm as I am in body, the repose of my own home would have been more grateful to me than this dangerous mission; but I will not shrink from it at the bidding of my sovereign, and if, as is very probable, I may not be permitted again to see my native land, I shall, at least, be cheered by the consciousness of having done my best to serve its ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... picture of common size. The declining to put himself forward will, I fear, be thought like shrinking from his own reputation, which nobody has less need to do. The Duke may wish a large picture for a large price for furnishing a large apartment, and the artist should not shrink from it. I have written him my opinion. The feeling is no doubt an amiable, though a false one. He is modest in proportion to his talents. But what brother of the finer arts ever approached [excellence] so ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... emotion now prevailed. Several members clustered in remonstrance round the Captain, and several round Mr. Tiddypot; but, both were obdurate. Mr. Chib then presented himself amid tremendous cheering, and said, that not to shrink from the discharge of his painful duty, he must now move that both honourable gentlemen be taken into custody by the beadle, and conveyed to the nearest police-office, there to be held to bail. The union of parties still continuing, the motion was seconded by Mr. ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... 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
... friends of humanity who feel their souls shrink from any compromise with murder, but whose deep and abiding reverence for womanhood causes them to hesitate in giving their support to this crusade against Lynch Law, out of fear that they may encourage the miscreants ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... shall not do, you may be sure, Monsignor," replied the patriot politely. "I want such men. The enemy we fight sacrifices the flower of English youth to maintain its despotism; why should we shrink from sacrifice?" ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... guide our decision. 'Imagine the Tale of a Tub to be read by Bishop Butler and by Voltaire, who called Swift a Rabelais perfectionne. Can anyone doubt that the believer would be scandalized, and the scoffer find himself in a thoroughly congenial element? Would not any believer shrink from the use of such weapons, even though directed ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... scorning the opinion of the world, she walks forth conscious in her own integrity and virtue, though no stain may have sullied her conduct or name, though she may be innately amiable and good, yet every gentler female will shrink from such a character, and tremble lest they should become like her. Women are dependent beings; in Infinite Wisdom it was thus ordained, and why should we endeavour to be otherwise? When once we set up a standard for ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... shall ever know our secret. All I ask is that you will forgive me for my unfortunate precipitancy in destroying the means of saving you, which you had placed in my hands—that you will forgive me, and let me be your friend. It is so painful to see you shrink from ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... alter his appearance, for if this were done the soul on its return might not be able to find or recognise its body, and so the person would die. The Minangkabauers deem it highly improper to blacken or dirty the face of a sleeper, lest the absent soul should shrink from re-entering a body thus disfigured. Patani Malays fancy that if a person's face be painted while he sleeps, the soul which has gone out of him will not recognise him, and he will sleep on till his face is washed. In Bombay it is thought equivalent to murder to change the aspect of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... little affectionate action which I ask of you, the action of a brother kissing his sister. That's what you shrink from, Philippe." ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... now felt that their only hope of enjoying perfect religious liberty, and of establishing a church according to their own dearly- loved principles, lay in a voluntary exile. Their English prejudices made them shrink from continuing to dwell among the Dutch, who had hitherto given them a hospitable asylum; for they feared that, by frequent intermarriages, they should eventually lose their nationality; and they resolved to seek a new home, where they might found an English colony, and, while ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... was very warm and cosy sitting there, behind double casements, beside a glowing stove; but there had been times when, wrapped in costly furs and great sleigh-robes and generously fed, she had felt her flesh shrink from the cold ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... First Consul. An alliance with the Pope offered to Bonaparte the means of supplanting the popular organisation of the Constitutional Church by an imposing hierarchy, rigid in its orthodoxy and unquestioning in its devotion to himself. In return for the consecration of his own rule, Bonaparte did not shrink from inviting the Pope to an exercise of authority such as the Holy See had never even claimed in France. The whole of the existing French Bishops, both the exiled non-jurors and those of the Constitutional Church, were summoned to resign their Sees into the hands of the Pope; against ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... come, 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... some of them Wall Street plutes shrink from bein' made richer is painful, ain't it? But I don't see where I ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... at my place, and came on after me. A thirty miles' tramp or so it meant to overtake me, but he did not shrink from it. He wanted to think out things, and he liked foot-slogging on a big scale as a stimulus to thought. I was on a high ledge above the windings of the Sawi River when he found me a ledge with a great view of the Wedza hills. The sun was ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... 'Never, Macer, would I shrink from any trial to which the Lord in his wisdom might call me—that you know. But has not Probus uttered a truth, when he says, that we are not innocent, and never glorious, when we seek death? that he who seeks martyrdom is no martyr? Listen, Macer, to the wisdom of Probus and the noble Piso. Did ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... given to him? Have I been given to him? What if the Father will retain me for himself, as my heart sometimes suggests? I pray you, do not misinterpret this. Do not extract derision from my harmless words. I pour out my whole soul before you. Silence were otherwise preferable to me, but I need not shrink from a subject of which few know more than I do myself. What is the destiny of man, but to fill up the measure of his sufferings, and to drink his allotted cup of bitterness? And if that same cup proved bitter to the God of heaven, under a ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... waters, I feel so lost in space, such an infinitesimal atom, that the doctrine of the sparrow that falls seems a chimera, and a God inconceivable. I wonder if this is not so with others. I wonder if all of us do not shrink from this immensity and take refuge in our own hearts where alone we can hear the voice of God, and where, at any hour or in any scene, we can find an instant answer to all our doubts. There is but one spot on the ocean that leads me to a sort of a fanciful realization of a future ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... they argued, Frank holding back, partly because his shyness made him shrink from going into a strange place, and partly because, having been accustomed to spend his Sunday afternoons pretty much as he pleased, he did not like the idea of giving up his liberty. But Bert was too much in earnest to be put off. The suggestion of his father that he should try to ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... were the administrators of public justice, at that time, in New Orleans. The greater part were men, who, at some period of their lives, had been steeped chin-deep in infamy. Some were men of wealth and liberally educated. They were men who would shrink from giving an account of their early years. Several were verging upon three score years and ten. All the wealth they possessed had been plundered from another set of villains, whose misfortune was, a want of sagacity in escaping the rapacity of their ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... deaf. She would rather have cut the ring in two than it should be given to the hated child: but, on the other hand, she did not care to offend Laura Level, who possessed inconveniently independent opinions, and did not shrink from proclaiming them. Seizing the poker, she stirred the fire, and ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... sure, despite his infirmity, was now less certain. He had not slept since the night of Mercy's death. Determined never to encounter again the pains and terrors of sleep, he had walked through the long hours of the four succeeding nights. He knew what the result must be, and did not shrink from it. Once only he had thought of a quicker way to the sure goal that was before him. Then he had opened a cupboard, and looked long and intently at a bottle that he took from its shelf. But he had ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... round, and, observing a huge ungainly man with a cod-fishy expression of face, who seemed to shrink from notoriety, ordered him to step forward. The man did so with obvious trepidation, but he dared not refuse. The Captain fixed his eyes on him sternly, and, in a low growling voice, muttered in English: "Now, Benjy, give ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... desperation. But the circumstances of the Spaniards were desperate. Whichever way they turned, they were menaced by the most appalling dangers; and better was it bravely to confront the danger, than weakly to shrink from it, when there was no avenue for escape. To fly was now too late. Whither could they fly? At the first signal of retreat, the whole army of the Inca would be upon them. Their movements would be anticipated by a foe far better acquainted with the intricacies of the sierra than themselves; ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... religious instruction and to attend religious worship. Why, then, is this prerogative of punishment, so eminently paternal, to be withheld from a paternal government? It seems to us, also, to be the height of absurdity to employ civil disabilities for the propagation of an opinion, and then to shrink from employing other punishments for the same purpose. For nothing can be clearer than that, if you punish at all, you ought to punish enough. The pain caused by punishment is pure unmixed evil, and never ought to be inflicted, except for the sake of some good. It is mere foolish cruelty ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... part of your life. I decline to inspect it. I consider the publication or circulation of such a composition at any time as prejudicial to Ada's future happiness. For my own sake, I have no reason to shrink from publication; but, notwithstanding the injuries which I have suffered, I should ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... aim at nothing less than the complete effacement of the financial evils that necessarily followed a state of civil war. We must endeavor to apply the earliest remedy to the deranged state of the currency, and not shrink from devising a policy which, with-out being oppressive to the people, shall immediately begin to effect a reduction of the debt, and, if persisted in, discharge it fully within a definitely fixed number ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... forth the old because of the new.' Accept cheerfully the law of constant change under which God's love has set us. Do not let the pleasant bonds of habit tie down your hearts so tightly to the familiar possessions that you shrink from the introduction of fresh elements. Be sure that the new comes from the same loving hand which sent the old in its season, and that change is meant to be progress. Do not confine yourselves within ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... farewells down in what was known as "the village," for I saw him there kissing a collection of half-breed children, and giving Thomaso instructions to look after them and their mothers. Returning at length, he called to Inez, who remained upon the veranda, for she always seemed to shrink from her father after his visits to the village, to "keep a stiff upper lip" and not feel lonely, and commanded the ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... in them for that. They will, with the Marquis of Brandenburg, declare: "If I be asked whether with heart and lip I confess that faith which God has restored to us by Luther as His instrument, I have no scruple, nor have I a disposition to shrink from the name Lutheran. Thus understood, I am, and shall to my dying hour remain, a Lutheran." They will ever be able to distinguish between the man Luther, prone to error and sin like any other mortal, and the Luther who fought ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... 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 course in order that I may glut myself ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... being consumed by it. Fabius, he urged, thought too much of safety, and by his policy of waiting, Rome, already drooping under its burdens, would at the end of the war perish as well as Hannibal. He was, he said, like those timid surgeons who shrink from using decisive remedies, and who mistake the sinking strength of the patient for the abatement of disease. His first act was to take some important Samnite towns which had revolted. Here he found great stores ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... who ought to be, and there were always scarfs for the bearers. When one of the family was in trouble or sickness, all the rest went to visit the unfortunate member, usually at the same time, and did not shrink from uttering the most disagreeable truths that correct family feeling dictated; if the illness or trouble was the sufferer's own fault, it was not in the practice of the Dodson family to shrink from saying so. In short, there was in this family a peculiar tradition ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... cannot fail to be struck with the incongruity with which wealth and squalor are blended. Here a dainty restaurant is elbowed by a cheap American gargote, there a plate-glass window blazing with diamonds seems to shrink from a neighbouring emporium stocked with second-hand wearing apparel. Even the exclusive Zero Club with its bow window generally crowded with fashionable loungers, is contaminated by the proximity of a shabby drinking-bar, ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... allow me to shrink from my duty, and especially a duty like this, which belonged to light hands. And while I heartily wished the masts and yards, which added so much to the beauty of the ship, and of which I was so proud in ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... combined o'er all prevail, And weigh their Justice in a Golden Scale; [v] E'en then the boldest start from public sneers, Afraid of Shame, unknown to other fears, More darkly sin, by Satire kept in awe, And shrink from Ridicule, though not ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... in his mind from yea to nay on every question. Such as this type develop ideas of compensation and power and become cranks and fake prophets. Or else, and this we shall see again, they become imbued with a sense of inferiority, feel futile as against the red-blooded and shrink from others through pain. ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... take from me this carven ring of gold. On it is wrought: 'Be true to Rimenhild.' Wear it always on your finger, for my love's sake. The stone in it has such grace that never need you fear any wound nor shrink from any combat, if you do but wear this ring, and look steadfastly upon it, and think of me. And you, Athulf, you too, when you have proven your knighthood, shall have such another ring also. Sir Horn, may Heaven bless and keep you, and bring you ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... easily as possible, ordering us to fire altogether at their spars. I have since thought that this moderation proceeded from a species of principle that is common enough—a certain half-way code of right and wrong—which encouraged him to smuggle, but which caused him to shrink from taking human life. Your half-way rogues are the ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... Father 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 ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... that exactly; 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
... beard would just suit the foreground of a Nevada gully, might tell a strange tale. That handsome, statuesque countenance yonder, again, faultless but for the sinister gleam of its restless eyes—what can it be doing among these coarse, uncultivated men, not one of whom can tell why they should all shrink from it as they do? What a study for a pirate any artist might make out of this shaggy, black-haired giant, whose lion-like head is hanging over the side of his bunk! His weather-beaten face looks hard as a pine knot; but a child would run to him at once, recognizing, with its ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... The Vienna Government is unable to give us anything we ask for. Our nation can never expect to get its liberty from those who at all times regarded it only as a subject of ruthless exploitations; and who even in the last moment do not shrink from any means to humiliate, starve and wipe out our nation and by cruel oppression to hurt us in our most sacred feelings. Our nation has nothing in common with those who are responsible for the horrors of this war. Therefore there will ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... short, to use the energetic language of the Balm of Columbia advertisement, 'bring every generous thinking youth to that heavy sinking gloom which not even the loss of property can produce, but only the loss of hair, which brings on premature decay, causing many to shrink from being uncovered, and even to shun society, to avoid the jests and sneers of their acquaintances. The remainder of their lives is consequently spent ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... call on you Who lost their support from this tyrant's attacks, And he with his legions may soon fall upon you, If you now shrink from duty or show him your backs. Lend, lend a hand! Lend, lend a hand! Your own peace and safety ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... yourself a thing apart from the mass." And again, the same writer says: "Before you can attain knowledge you must have passed through all places, foul and clean alike. Therefore, remember that the soiled garment you shrink from touching may have been yours yesterday, may be yours tomorrow. And if you turn with horror from it when it is flung upon your shoulders, it will cling the more closely to you. The self-righteous man makes for himself a bed of mire. Abstain because it is right ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... kindness, and patience. But no contradiction is involved in the belief that her mind is endowed with force and ability on occasion to grasp the spokes of fortune's wheel, or produce works which need not shrink from public criticism. Deborah herself felt that it would have better become a man to fulfil the mission with which she was charged—that a cozy home had been a more seemly place for her than the camp upon Mount Tabor. She says: ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... under the dynasty of the Psamatiks, had risen to something of its early greatness, and had been especially wealthy and prosperous under the usurper Amasis.[14250] It was impossible to allow an independent and rival monarchy so close upon his borders, and equally impossible to shrink from an enterprise which had been carried to a successful issue both by Assyria and by Babylon. Persian prestige required the subjugation and absorption of a country which, though belonging geographically to Africa, was politically and commercially an integral part of that ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... wife, are there not people who would caress me as a white woman who would shrink from me in scorn if they knew I had one drop of negro blood in my veins? When mistaken for a white woman, I should hear things alleged against the race at which my blood would boil. No, Doctor, I am not willing to live under ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... with the spectacle of my dread contest with phantoms and shadowy enemies that oftentimes bade me 'sleep no more'—not even then did'st thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service of love, more than did Electra of old. For she too, though she was a Grecian woman, and the daughter of the king of men, yet wept sometimes, and hid her face in ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... 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 ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... aspect had filled her with terror, she felt an involuntary dread; and gladly would she have dissuaded him from accepting the office of ambassador—which she knew not he had so earnestly solicited—had she not been well aware that all such attempts would be useless. Rodolph was not a man to shrink from any service that was required of him for the public good; and least of all from any service that involved danger and difficulty. He, however, concealed from his anxious wife the fact that he had recognized in the Narragansett messenger a deadly ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... man woos a woman is a task pleasant enough. It is natural and beautiful; he is in his place then and she in hers; but who would not shrink from the hateful task of describing how ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... within my present limits to discuss the question fully. And what man of letters would not shrink from seeming to dispose dictatorially of the claims of two men who are, at any rate, such masters in letters as Dryden and Pope; two men of such admirable talent, both of them, and one of them, Dryden, a man, on all sides, of such energetic and genial ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... 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
... praying for mercy." "The whole congregation became more or less moved. The place became truly awful and glorious, and it seemed that the time had come when a decided effort must be made upon the kingdom of darkness, and that under such circumstances to shrink from the task and, through fear of producing a little temporary disorder, to refuse to go heartily into the work, would have been nothing short of down right spiritual murder." "At one time during the meeting it was found necessary to invite the mourners to withdraw from the church and remove ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... in. 'Not his sincerity in the beginning; but he must long since have ached to free himself. It is such a common thing for a man to commit himself to some pronounced position in public life and for very shame shrink from withdrawing. He would not realise what it meant. Now in the revolutionary societies of the Continent there is something that appeals to the imagination. A Nihilist, with Siberia or death before him, fighting against a damnable tyranny—the best might sacrifice everything for that. But English ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... clouds, black and red, begin to disappear; the toning of the veins condenses the skin, and thereby the ruddy arteries are uncovered, and a color that has life appears; the pimples, the hillocks, even have a brighter look as they slowly shrink from sight. Finally, the skin becomes of a plush-like texture, soft, condensed, and with tints that compare as the tints of flowers with the faded colors of the house-painter, or as the matchless tint and plush of the perfect ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... dislike for, conceive a dislike to, entertain a dislike for, take a dislike to, have an aversion to, have an aversion for; have no taste for, have no stomach for. shun, avoid &c. 623; eschew; withdraw from, shrink from, recoil from; not be able to bear, not be able to abide, not be able to endure; shrug the shoulders at, shudder at, turn up the nose at, look askance at; make a mouth, make a wry face, make a grimace; make faces. loathe, nauseate, abominate, detest, abhor; hate &c. 898; take amiss ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... without special permission from the pope, and I don't like to be "presented." If I can get permission without the humbug of putting on a black veil and receiving a blessing from Pius, I shall; but I shrink from the formality of presentation. I know thou'd say ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... only an acceptance, as a natural fact, of instincts and cravings and desires that women are taught to repress. If I find that I've gone swinging around an emotional circle and come back to the point, or the man, where I started, why should I shrink from that, or from admitting it—or from acting on it if it seemed good ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... slowly. 'Because, if I did, somebody as I passed might see my burning cheeks—cheeks flushed with shame at your insulting proposal—and might guess that you had asked me, and that I had refused you. And I should shrink from the disgrace of anyone's knowing that you had put such a humiliation upon me. You have been frank with me—after your kind, Lord Southminster; frank with the frankness of a low and purely commercial nature. I ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... of death seemed pronounced against all, who should attempt to penetrate the African continent, and yet were still some, daring spirits, who did not shrink from the undertaking. Captain Gray, of the Royal African corps, who had accompanied the last-mentioned expedition, under Major Peddie and Captain Campbell, undertook, in 1818, to perform a journey by Park's old route along the Gambia. He reached, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... he to 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 more bound together by shame than by all the ceremonies ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... are innocent,' said I, firmly, 'in the name and strength of innocence defend yourself! All that a woman holds dearest is at stake. If they drive you to this great extremity, do not shrink from the trial.' ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... was oddly blended with this. Among his topics of self-humiliation, sufficiently frequent, one was his excess of 'loquacity.' A very shy man, it is often remarked, may shrink from talking, but when he begins to talk he talks enormously. My father, at any rate, had a natural gift for conversation. He could pour out a stream of talk such as, to the best of my knowledge, I have never heard equalled. The gift was perhaps stimulated by accidents. The ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... symbols or religions. And in their operas they affected to study the judicial and social questions of the day: the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Citizen, elaborated by the metaphysicians of the Butte and the Palais-Bourbon. They did not shrink from bringing the question of divorce on to the platform together with the inquiry into the birth-rate and the separation of the Church and State. Among them were to be found lay symbolists and clerical symbolists. They introduced philosophic rag-pickers, sociological grisettes, prophetic ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... there and on the continent. At length they found their way to Syria. One day they saw an Eastern shepherd come down to a stream, and call his flock to cross. The sheep came down to the brink, and looked at the water; but they seemed to shrink from it, and he could not get them to respond to his call. He then took a little lamb, put it under one arm; he took another lamb and put it under the other arm, and thus passed into the stream. The old sheep no longer stood looking at the water: they plunged in after the shepherd; ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... foul, By the smoky town in its murky cowl; Foul and dank, foul and dank, By wharf and sewer and slimy bank; Darker and darker the farther I go, Baser and baser the richer I grow; Who dare sport with the sin-defiled? Shrink from me, turn from me, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... never shrink from personal danger, Mr. Brown," said the Duke, holding up his head, and putting on a courageous look. But the moment after, something seemed to strike him, and he added with a certain degree of hesitation, "But let me ask you, Mr. Brown, does my lord of Byerdale ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... continued Timokles, with trembling voice, "thinkest thou not that the God who so strengthened three women that they did not shrink from death for his sake, could strengthen me to ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... has appointed to fill that particular place: a woman's principal work in life is hardly left to her own choice; nor can she drop the domestic charges devolving on her as an individual, for the exercise of the most splendid talents that were ever bestowed. And yet she must not shrink from the extra responsibility implied by the very fact of her possessing such talents. She must not hide her gift in a napkin; it was meant for the use and service of others. In an humble and faithful spirit must she labour to do what is not impossible, or God would ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... matters—as you doubtless know, any man would find it hard to refuse a favour asked by such a suppliant. And now you must make up your own mind. I have shown you a path that may lead your family from a position of the most imminent peril. If you are the woman I take you for, you will not shrink from ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... to skin his enemies alive, it was because he himself lacked a skin. In this sense his Apologia is a triumph far beyond the ephemeral charge on which it was founded; in this sense he does indeed (to use his own expression) vanquish not his accuser but his judges. Many men would shrink from recording all their cold fits and hesitations and prolonged inconsistencies: I am sure it was the breath of life to Newman to confess them, now that he had done with them for ever. His Lectures on the Present ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... boy, comprehending what was required of him, drew back at sight of those cards as one might shrink from a thing unclean. ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... lead me to immortality," said the pope, with a faint smile. "The dead are all immortal. But think not so little of me as to suppose I would now timidly shrink from doing that which I have once recognized as right and necessary. Only there are necessities of a very painful and dreadful kind. Such a necessity is war. And is it not a war that I commence, and does it not involve the destruction ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... Humility and Repentance, as also Hope and Fear, bring more good than harm; hence, as we must sin, we had better sin in that direction. For, if all men who are a prey to emotion were all equally proud, they would shrink from nothing, and would fear nothing; how then could they be joined and linked together in bonds of union? The crowd plays the tyrant, when it is not in fear; hence we need not wonder that the prophets, who ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... after a regular application to the severer order of studies shall in some measure have retrieved the consequences of a very loose and indolent intellectual discipline, and shall have lessened a certain feeling of imbecility which always makes me shrink from attempting to gain the notice of men ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... the prophets 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 ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... as they tell when alone. They will fear your ridicule and suppress their humor and pathos: so thoroughly have they learned to distrust pale faces, that when they know that he who is present is a friend, they will still shrink from admitting him within the secret ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... found me conspicuous, an annoyance among people who shrink from the extraordinary. I ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... could it more truly be said, 'He took counsel ever of his courage—never of his fears.' With firm convictions upon pending vital issues, he did not shrink from the conflict. His antagonist he met in the open. In the words of Lord Brougham, 'His weapons were ever those of the ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... petition. All they ask is 'boldness' to speak a word which shall not be theirs, but God's. Fear would have prayed for protection; passion would have asked retribution on enemies. Christian courage and devotion only ask that they may not shrink from their duty, and that the word may be spoken, whatever becomes of the speakers. The world is powerless against men like that. Would the Church of to-day meet threats with like unanimity of desire for boldness in confession? If not, it must be because it has not the same firm hold of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... foolish nor very wise. All might be well if the king made himself the irresistible instrument of philosophy and justice, and wrought the reform. But his king was Lewis XV. D'Argenson saw so little that was worthy to be preserved that he did not shrink from sweeping judgments and abstract propositions. By his rationalism, and his indifference to the prejudice of custom and the claim of possession; by his maxim that every man may be presumed to understand ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... soon to become a Catholic; of him the Master expected great things. Besides these a journeyman printer, several artists, and even two members of Parliament came regularly. The object of these meetings was to acquaint such as are drawn to Christ, but who shrink from Catholicism, with what Catholicism really is, the vital and indestructible essence of the Catholic religion, and to show the purely human character of those different forms, which are what render it repugnant to many, but which are changeable, are changing, and ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... king's health, once more in the council-chamber, where it was proposed that we should read the riot act from the windows; and this awful duty, by the nature of my office as provost, it behoved me to perform. Nor did I shrink from it; for by this time my corruption was raised, and I was determined not to let the royal authority be set at nought in ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... ten months, and the female produces one or two calves at a birth. The bull is capable, it is said, of overthrowing an elephant, and generally more than a match even for the tiger, which usually declines the combat when not impelled by hunger. The Indian driver of a herd of tame buffaloes does not shrink from entering a tiger-frequented jungle, his cattle, with their massive horns, making short work of any tiger that may come in their way. Buffalo fights and fights between buffaloes and tigers were recognized Indian sports in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... untinged with horror. Clarence, nay, the whole of Fernando Po, was about to become so rackety and dissipated as to put Paris and Monte Carlo to the blush. Clarence was going to have a cafe; and what was going to go on in that cafe I shrink from reciting. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... and Hydras and Chimaeras dire," furnishing eloquent testimony to the feelings with which the unknown was regarded. The barren wastes of the Sea of Darkness awakened a shuddering dread like that with which children shrink from the gloom of a cellar. When we remember all these things, and consider how the intelligent purpose which urged the commanders onward was scarcely within the comprehension of their ignorant and refractory crews, we can begin to form some idea of the ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske |
