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More "Dwindle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the civilised world. In Christian times no race has maintained its faith with a more devoted courage, and it has encountered and survived persecutions before which the persecutions of other creeds dwindle almost into insignificance. M. Leroy-Beaulieu quotes the statement of the grand Rabbi Lehmann, that it is a clearly attested fact that in two months of the year 1096 twelve thousand Jews, whose names have been preserved, were massacred in the towns of the Rhine alone, because they refused ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... old, Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness and cold. For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end, And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, And with ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... translucent, symmetrical, enduring. The immediate practical outcome was disappointing, and the external history of the agitation is a record of failed experiments, spurious sciences, Utopian philosophies, and sects founded only to dwindle away or be reabsorbed into some form of {439} orthodoxy. In the eyes of the conservative, or the worldly-minded, or of the plain people who could not understand the enigmatic utterances of the reformers, the dangerous or ludicrous sides of transcendentalism ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... prophecy was not justified by events! Mrs Connor crawled about the house for another week, looking every day smaller and more fragile; and then a morning came when she could not rise from bed, and all other anxieties seemed to dwindle in significance when the illness took a serious turn, and her precious life itself ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... joy! Who can deny that I am fortunate? Who will doubt that I shall remain happy? Fortune would have a hard time if she undertook to shatter my happiness. Take this or that one from my treasured children; but when would the number of them dwindle to the sickly two of Latona? Away with your sacrifices! Take the laurel out of your hair. Go back to your homes and let me ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... sober; it will not, if thou be foolish and remiss. Men of great grace may grow consumptive in grace, and idleness may turn him that wears a plush jacket into rags. David was once a man of great grace, but his sin made the grace which he had so to shrink up and dwindle away as to make him cry out, O take not ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... am I saying?—Where am I going?—Am I that Delia that bad defiance to the art of men,—that saw with indifference the havock that my charms had made! With every opening morn I smiled. Each hour was sped with joy, and my heart was light and frolic. And shall I dwindle into a pensive, melancholy maid, the sacrifice of one that heeds me not, whose sighs no answering sighs encounter!—let it not be said. I have hitherto asserted the independence of my sex, I will continue to do so. Too amiable unknown, I give thee to the winds! Propitious ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... the same; if I was astonish'd at their Make, and at what other things I had observ'd, I was more so, when I saw one of the tallest, dwindle in the Twinkling of an Eye, to a Pigmy, fly into the Air without Wings, and carry off a Giant in each Hand by the Hair of ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... region, so rich in bird life of all kinds, in forest, marsh, and savanna, they are everywhere abundant—food is plentiful there; but when we go to higher elevations avd cold sterile deserts, where their companion families of the tropics dwindle away and disappear, the creepers are still present, for they are evidently able to exist where other kinds would starve. On the stony plateaus of the Andes, and on the most barren spots in Patagonia, where no other bird is seen, there are small species of Synallaxis, which, in their obscure colour ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... is father, twelve the children, and born to each other Maidens thirty, whose twain form is parted asunder, White to behold on the one side, black to behold on the other, All immortal in being, all doomed to dwindle and perish."[H] ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... when I tell you that thrift of time will repay you in after life with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual and moral stature beyond your ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Biography,[10] they are Archbishop Hamilton, Sir William Hamilton, Dr Robert Henry, Edward Henryson, J. Bonaventura Hepburn, Roger Hog, John Holybush, and Henry Home of Kames.... The gooseberries appear to dwindle as they ripen. I am afraid few will remain for you, but you will find a sufficient number where you are. I intend to walk to Dunkeld, and to take two days. Al. Smith may come a bit with us.... All my little stock of news is exhausted. Pray remember ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... interest I should have considered better if I had arranged her first appearance in some piece by Verdi or Donizetti, or indeed anything but LOHENGRIN. But enough of such stuff, although I am grieved to see Herr A., the tenor of the future (if well prepared), dwindle into thin air also. May heaven grant that Caspari will keep on, or that a decent tenor may come to you ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... of our great commercial and manufacturing cities and towns, whose population, without the infusion—and that continually—of the strong, substantial, and vigorous life blood of the country, would soon dwindle into insignificance and decrepitude. Why then should not this first, primitive, health-enjoying and life-sustaining class of our people be equally accommodated in all that gives to social and substantial ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... was inevitable that from that day our intimacy should dwindle into dissolution (though other causes anticipated this natural decay), but I no longer found masturbation a dry and wearisome formula. In my novitiate I was disheartened to find how long it took me to dissociate myself from the contemplative ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... I saw the commerce dwindle, High-bosomed, sturdy vessels take the main And leave us, with the morning in their faces, Never to come to any port again. Slowly an ominous and pregnant silence Grew deep upon the wharves where ships ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... "you speak as if you were still in the ranks. You have another sphere, my dear fellow; and you must learn to be more content with your lot. Governments pass, societies perish or dwindle; but we—we dominate all ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... child, died with the former. It was scarcely credible that a man should be so regardless of his own family, but the echo of the mystic, sublime discourses of the Greek porches, the faint but sacred trace of the march of vast armies, and the fall of nations, caused Leslie to dwindle into a mere speck in the creation. Of course she would be provided for somehow: marry, or make her own livelihood. Socrates did not plague himself much about the fate of Xantippe: Seneca wrote from his exile to console his mother, but the epistles were for the benefit of the world ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... these formulas abound in the loftiest nights of poetic imagery. This is especially true of the prayers used to win the love of a woman or to destroy the life of an enemy, in which we find such expressions as—"Now your soul fades away—your spirit shall grow less and dwindle away, never to reappear;" "Let her be completely veiled in loneliness—O Black Spider, may you hold her soul in your web, so that it may never get through the meshes;" and the final declaration ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... geography book assigned that distinction to Quebec and Montreal. Mr. Holt affirmed that the pre-eminence of these must dwindle before this young city at their feet, which could be captured by no coup-de-main in case of war, and was at the head of the natural land avenue to the great Lakes ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... fire began to dwindle and the shadows to encroach with a dominion of somberness over the room. It seemed to the figure in the bed as he struggled against rising tides of torpor and exhaustion that his own resolution was waning with the firelight and that the murk of death ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... father of Sindbad was taken to Almighty Allah, much wealth came to the possession of his son; but soon did it dwindle in boon companionship, for the city of Baghdad is sweet to the youthful. Then did Sindbad bethink him how he might restore his fortune, saying to himself: "Three things are better than other three; the day of death is better than the day of birth, a live dog is better ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... tall, strong man, of desperate character, fully resolved to carry out his dishonest purpose, and not likely to shrink from violence, to which he was probably only too well accustomed. From the old man he was not likely to obtain assistance, for already Paul's courage had begun to dwindle, and he regarded his ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... seemed to dilate, and her countenance underwent a marked and fearful change. All her beauty vanished, her eyes blazed, and terror sat on her wrinkled brow. The hag, on the contrary, crouched lower down, and seemed to dwindle less than her ordinary size. Writhing as from heavy blows, and with a mixture of malice and fear in her countenance, she cried, "Were I to speak, you would not thank me. Let ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Graces, what can it be? Is it the conservative power of sea fogs and coal smoke—the same cause that keeps the turf green, and makes the holly and ivy flourish? How comes it that our married ladies dwindle, fade, and grow thin—that their noses incline to sharpness, and their elbows to angularity, just at the time of life when their island sisters round out into a comfortable and becoming amplitude and fulness? If it is the fog and the sea ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... flames of heart-consuming care that rage in me for aye. The bug and flea do drink my blood, even as one drinks of wine, Poured by the hand of damask-lipped and slender-waisted may. The body of me, amongst the lice, is as an orphan's good, That in an unjust Cadi's hands doth dwindle and decay. My dwelling-place is in a tomb, three scanty cubits wide, Wherein in shackles and in bonds I languish night and day. My tears my wine are and my chains my music: my dessert Woeworthy thought and cares the ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... unexampled pride and prosperity, and it plunged shouting and singing into this war, confident of victories. It is still being fed with dwindling hopes of victory, no longer unstinted hopes, but still hopes—by a sort of political bread-card system. The hopes outlast the bread-and-butter, but they dwindle and dwindle. How is this parvenu people going to stand the cessation of hope, the realisation of the failure and fruitlessness of such efforts as no people on earth have ever made before? How are they going to behave when they realise fully ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... begins to feel that something must be done, and that quickly. Miss Beecher's book enlightened most people on this subject, and reform is already inaugurated. It is well that it is so, or the race would dwindle away before our very eyes. Listen to some serio-comic verse upon this subject, taken out of your Lecturer's portfolio. It is an address to America, dictated ...
— A Lecture on Physical Development, and its Relations to Mental and Spiritual Development, delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at their Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting, in Norwich, Conn • S.R. Calthrop
... carried on between the several savage tribes, leaving, occasionally, no vestige of once powerful nations and villages. Have we not seen in our day a once warlike and princely race—the Hurons— dwindle down, through successive decay, to what now remains ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... another set of people. There is nothing more miserable than to see a man, as his years go by, gripping harder and tighter at this poor, fleeting world that is slipping away from him; nothing sadder than to see how, as opportunities and capacities for the enjoyment of life dwindle, and dwindle, and dwindle, people become almost fierce in the desire to keep it. Why, you can see on the face of many an old man and woman a hungry discontent, that has not come from the mere wrinkles of old age or care; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... sez he, "I want one of them gorgeous silk dresses that they wear. I'd love to appear in a red and yeller suit, Samantha, or a green and purple, or a blue and maroon, with a pink sash made of thin glitterin' silk, but I spoze that you will break that up in a minute. So, I spoze that I shall have to dwindle down onto a silk scarf, or some plumes in my hat, mebby—you never are willin' for me to soar out and spread myself, but you probable wouldn't break ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... survived, had borne the test of time; but he had given his hearer no hint of the extent to which it had been enlarged and modified, of the fresh implications it now unfolded. In a brief flash of retrospection Bernald saw the earlier books dwindle and fall into their place as mere precursors of this fuller revelation; then, with a leap of helpless rage, he pictured Howland Wade's pink hands on the new treasure, and his prophetic ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... darkness, at the mystical ceremony, Loosely robed in flying raiment, sang the terrible prophetesses. "Fear not, isle of blowing woodland, isle of silvery parapets! Tho' the Roman eagle shadow thee, tho' the gathering enemy narrow thee, Thou shalt wax and he shall dwindle, thou shalt be the mighty one yet! Thine the liberty, thine the glory, thine the deeds to be celebrated, Thine the myriad-rolling ocean, light and shadow illimitable, Thine the lands of lasting summer, many-blossoming Paradises, Thine the North and thine the South ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... which built up their fortunes; how many acknowledge the stern and heavy responsibility of their opportunities how many refuse to dream their lives away in a Sybarite luxury; how many are smitten with the lofty ambition of achieving an enduring name by works of a permanent value; how many do not dwindle into dainty dilettanti, and dilute their manhood with factitious sentimentality instead of a hearty, human sympathy; how many are not satisfied with having the fastest horses and the "crackest" carriages, and an unlimited wardrobe, and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... showed they belonged to the grade above fashion. People of rank tastes did not often go there. The little Kentuckian, with her emphatic, sham-hating face, and Grey, whose simple, calm outlook on the world made her last year's bonnet and cloak dwindle into such irrelevant trifles, did not misbecome the place. Others might go there to fever out ennui, or with fouler fancies. Grey did not know. The play was a simple little thing; its meaning was pure as a child's song; there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Government scowled at it, and at last passed a law preventing the Protestant boys dressing up the figure on the first of July, and walking round it. That was the death-blow of the Orange party, your hanner; they never recovered it, but began to despond and dwindle, and I with them; for there was scarcely any demand for Orange tunes. Then Dan O'Connell arose with his emancipation and repale cries, and then instead of Orange processions and walkings, there were Papist processions and mobs, which made me ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... to efface the impression of the afternoon, and above all to show that I wanted him to talk about himself, I reverted to his work. "You must need an outlet of that sort. When a man's once had it in him, as you have—and when other things begin to dwindle—" ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... such also are employed in the castration of animals and the ablation of tumours. In the latter instances, all afflux of nutriment and heat being prevented by the ligature, we see the testes and large fleshy tumours dwindle, die, and finally ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... renowned of our English rivers dwindle into little muddy rills when compared with the sublimity of the Canadian waters. No language can adequately express the solemn grandeur of her lake and river scenery; the glorious islands that float, like ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... first quarter of the year began to dwindle, and in those days I thought often with regret of my lost ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... learn again. There were times after this when he observed incuriously a parade of mind pictures, part memory, part pure hallucination and containing nothing of reason; other times when he thought not at all. The sun appeared to dwindle, retreating and fading far away into a remote place where there were no stars at all. It became a feeble candle, guttered unsteadily a moment and suddenly winked out. Abruptly Johnny ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... first time, the rank grass is of a deeper green, and the face of the salt-meadows is seamed with irregular clay-brown channels, which at high-tide show out like crows'-feet on an ancient countenance, but at the ebb dwindle to little gullies with greasy-looking banks and a dribble of iridescent water in the bottom. It is in the autumn that the moles heap up meanders of miniature barrows, built of the softest brown loam; and in the turbaries the turf-cutters pile ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... had passed without developments, interest in Donna and her affairs began to dwindle, for not infrequently matters move in kaleidoscopic fashion in San Pasqual, and the population, generally speaking, soon finds itself absorbed in other and more important matters. Mrs. Pennycook was quick to note that Donna (to quote Mr. Hennage) was "next to her game," ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... together in anticipation as they crossed the bay. They sat where they could watch the red and green lights, reflected like topazes and rubies in the shimmering water, fall away and dwindle as the silhouette of the embarcadero receded. On the electric train they were whizzed among many sleepy folk into a sleeping town, Oakland, drowsing and silent. Gratton summoned a somnolent taxi-driver and ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... been watching the figures make their appearance from the stile, re-form groups and dwindle slowly down to the corn, and their heads and shoulders bob along above it—all with a kind of resentment. These people had found their life; he was still looking for his. He was watching, too, the strangely unreal appearance of the sunlit fields, the long shadows, the golden smoky light, and ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... something peculiarly congenial to the thoughtful soul of the cultured lady in the quiet pastoral beauty of the extensive scene; and still more in the sense of serene elevation above the whole, seeing it all dwindle into small proportions, as the wisdom of age calmly surveys the remote panorama ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... really gone, when the people had seen the last of Captain Lamberton standing on her deck giving orders, and had watched her white sails dwindle and disappear, they walked back over the ice to their homes on the shore remembering sadly that it would be a long time before they could expect to have any news from her. It might be two or three months before she reached ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... was destined to disappointment; for the wind continued to dwindle after sunset until it finally died away altogether, and left both craft without steerage-way. By this time, however, we had drifted within range of the barque's guns, and she had opened a rather desultory ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... development, it also holds the place of prominence during the lying-in period. Immediately after delivery the womb weighs two pounds and measures some eight inches in height, five in breadth, and four in thickness. In the course of a few days it begins to dwindle in size, gradually sinking in the abdomen until it lies entirely within the pelvic cavity. Toward the end of five or six weeks it resumes the position occupied before conception, regains approximately its original dimensions, and weighs two ounces. ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... have travell'd to the shore, That ends the vasty ocean's unknown sway, Since thou wert first from earth's remotest pore, Rais'd as an emblem of man's craft to lay; Yet those same waves shall dwindle into earth, Ere, lost in time, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... on the way—a surprise so stupendous and unexpected that, beside it, the lobster-surprise would dwindle away into insignificance and be quite forgotten for the rest of the day. And oddly enough, it was to be Blossom who should be ...
— Judith Lynn - A Story of the Sea • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... said to have ended with the surrender of the army under Lord Cornwallis, at Yorktown, on October 19, 1781, and little attempt at recruiting was made subsequently; consequently the regiments continued to dwindle until, at the evacuation of New-York, two years later, they were not more than one-third of their original strength. The New Jersey Volunteers, a year after their arrival in New-Brunswick, were mustered by Thomas Knox, under the ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... undeniably, but he was young and could wait. This was a taking argument with the legislators, many of whom had grown gray in the party service, and Lyons's managers felt confident that the support accorded to this tribune of the people would dwindle to very small proportions when the time came ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... eyes narrowed into red points that bored into the other's eyes, and plunged like daggers into his heart and mind. Before that glance, like a vivisectionist's knife, Jake wilted; he seemed to shrink, dwindle, collapse. And with a growing, cold, awful horror, a suspicion so hideous that his mind revolted from it, Peter Champneys stood staring from one black ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... forlorn. There were many rooms, but none more than scantily furnished, and a number of them were stripped bare. Betty found herself wondering how long a time it had taken the belongings of the big place to dwindle and melt away ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... tire of watching it, thinking that it could not be spared from the landscape. It lies only three miles from the curving end of the promontory, and is about twenty miles due south of Naples. In this atmosphere distances dwindle. The nearest land, to the northwest, is the larger island of Ischia, distant nearly as far as Naples; yet Capri has the effect of being anchored off the bay to guard the entrance. It is really a rock, three miles and a half long, rising straight out ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... mountains still float back. Their shining green has changed to a less vivid hue; they are taking bluish tones here and there; but their outlines are still sharp, and along their high soft slopes there are white specklings, which are villages and towns. These white specks diminish swiftly,— dwindle to the dimensions of salt-grains,—finally vanish. Then the island grows uniformly bluish; it becomes cloudy, vague as a dream of mountains;—it turns at last gray as smoke, and then melts into the horizon-light like ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... those with whom we have much in common—of whose life we are, or fancy that we might have been, a part. The figures that we see in history elevated above the ordinary attributes of man, are magnified as we see them through the mist of our own vague perceptions, and dwindle if we approach too near them. If they are brought down from the lofty pedestal of rank or fame on which they stood, that they may be within reach of the warmest sympathies of men who live upon a lower ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... appetites, and muscular impulses, is that which first presents itself, being the first outgrowth from the great inferior ganglion or summit of the spinal system. As human brains degenerate to a lower type they approximate this form. The frontal and occipital lobes dwindle and the principal mass remaining is that in the basis of the skull between the ears. We see this form distinctly in congenital idiots. The embryo cerebrum here represented measures but three lines vertically, four lines in length, and five lines in thickness. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... be about $25,000. In two years he spent about $20,000. His brother Roswell, more prudent, lived for several years on his share but finally, owing to the depreciation of real estate values, saw his fortune dwindle away. He is said to have envied the shrewdness of Eugene in spending his ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... found their congregations dwindle away daily; and Penn being young, handsome, and of a graceful stature, the court as well as the city ladies flocked very devoutly to his meeting. The patriarch, George Fox, hearing of his great reputation, came to London (though the journey was very long) purely to see and converse with him. ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... began to dwindle, he was idle, and his wife was unable to do hard work; they had other small children who now began to cry for milk, and the father's heart ached for them and he went over the fence one night prepared to bring all he could get. That day all the children had milk, but it was soon gone ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... an owl, And now and then a nightingale) is dim, And the loud shriek of sage Minerva's fowl Rattles around me her discordant hymn: Old portraits from old walls upon me scowl— I wish to heaven they would not look so grim; The dying embers dwindle in the grate— I think too that I ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... an agreement with a being whose aggregate of perfections is expressible, we will say, by 20. Now, if they would always keep at that point, there might be some reason for your remaining unaltered, namely, your not being able to help it. But suppose that they dwindle down to 19-1/2, the person, that is, the whole sum of the qualities admired, no longer exists, and you, of course, are absolved from your engagement. But mind, I do not say that you are justified in changing only in case of a change on the opposite side: you may very ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Father of a race by whom Perished the Roman Empire: [M] how the friends 190 And followers of Sertorius, [N] out of Spain Flying, found shelter in the Fortunate Isles, [O] And left their usages, their arts and laws, To disappear by a slow gradual death, To dwindle and to perish one by one, 195 Starved in those narrow bounds: [P] but not the soul Of Liberty, which fifteen hundred years Survived, and, when the European came With skill and power that might not be withstood, Did, like a pestilence, maintain ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... old Merlin's enchantments still lingered there, for as Nan stood silently absorbing the mysterious glamour of the place, the petty annoyances of the day, the fret of Lady Gertrude's unwelcoming reception of her, seemed to dwindle into insignificance. They were only external things, after all. They could not mar the loveliness of this mystic, legend-haunted ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... coming up, bent discreetly to whisper a word in his ear, and the communication caused a sudden change in Mr. Lavington's expression. His face was naturally so colorless that it seemed not so much to pale as to fade, to dwindle and recede into something blurred and blotted-out. He half rose, sat down again and sent a rigid smile ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... Peggotty. He was not so much surprised to see me as I had expected. I remarked this in Peggotty, too, when she came down; and I have seen it since; and I think, in the expectation of that dread surprise, all other changes and surprises dwindle into nothing. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... these expeditions. One sees a remarkable reassortment of values. Under ordinary conditions it is so easy to carry a point with a little bounce; self-assertion is a mask which covers many a weakness.... [Page 283] Here the outward show is nothing, it is the inward purpose that counts. So the "gods" dwindle and the humble ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... contentment, which I believe you are too candid to counterfeit. Your easy solution of that great human riddle given the world, to find happiness. The Athenian and Alexandrian schools dwindle into nothingness. Commend me to your 'categories,' O Queen of Philosophy." She withdrew her searching eyes, and fixed them moodily on the fire, twirling the tassel of her robe as ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... divine To what would one day dwindle that which made Thee more than mortal? and that so supine By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid? She who was named eternal, and arrayed Her warriors but to conquer—she who veiled Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed Until the o'er-canopied horizon failed, ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity. In its preventive police it ought to be sparing of its efforts, and to employ means, rather few, unfrequent, and strong, than many and frequent, and, of course, as they multiply their puny politic race, and dwindle, small and feeble. Statesmen who know themselves will, with the dignity which belongs to wisdom, proceed only in this the superior orb and first mover of their duty steadily, vigilantly, severely, courageously: whatever remains will, in ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... as like to himself, and they behaved in accordance with his ideals. In the dimmest, oldest religions, nearest the matriarchate, we find great goddesses—types of Motherhood, Mother-love, Mother-care and Service. But under masculine dominance, Isis and Ashteroth dwindle away to an alluring Aphrodite—not Womanhood for the child and the World—but the incarnation of female ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... of them often gain by the interchange. Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up. That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes a flower in the other. A flower, on the other hand, may dwindle down to a mere weed by the same change. Healthy growths may become poisonous by falling upon the wrong mental soil, and what seemed a night-shade in one mind unfold as a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... world bows down with reverence before the book of all books, the Bible. The Roman sword, the Grecian palette and chisel, have indeed rendered noble service to the cause of civilization, yet even their proudest claims dwindle into insignificance when compared with the benefits which the Bible has wrought. It has penetrated into realms where the names of Greece and Rome have never resounded. It has illumined empires and ennobled ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... since this was a part of a scout's duty; though no mean advantage was ever taken of the rival camps—he would not stand for that. In a quiet way he had learned how their meetings became more frequent, and the desire to excel, that had threatened to dwindle away for lack ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... for that peace which is the forerunner of death. The silence of infinite space terrifies me. Heap more fagots upon the fire! More! And yet more! Myself too, if needs must. I will not let the fire dwindle. If it dies down, there is an end of us, an ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... offices—through the dense streets and houses of cities, and all their manifold sophisticated life—must either be fibred, vitalized, by regular contact with out-door light and air and growths, farm-scenes, animals, fields, trees, birds, sun-warmth and free skies, or it will certainly dwindle and pale. We cannot have grand races of mechanics, work people, and commonalty, (the only specific purpose of America,) on any less terms. I conceive of no flourishing and heroic elements of Democracy in the United States, or of Democracy ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... he shouted to them, "more than the others are doing? Together and in order we might succeed, broken we should be useless. If this huge army cannot break their line, what could two hundred men do?" At last, as the storm of javelins began to dwindle, a mighty shout rose from the Romans, and shoulder to shoulder with levelled spears they advanced, while the flanks giving way, the cavalry burst out on both sides and fell upon the Britons. For those in front, pressed by the mass behind them, there was no falling back, they fell as ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... unconnected with the new emotion, indifferent, now assume importance. A look, a tone of the voice, a pressure of the hand, are events to dream about and feast upon. In the presence of the beloved object all things else are either unheeded or dwindle ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the plain ends; the hillsides rise and the river-bottoms dwindle away in the distance: such is the feeling that one experiences as he climbs these vine-clad slopes from either the Rhone, the Loire, or the Seine valleys, and here it is that the imaginary line is drawn between the vins ordinaires and ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... your only visible trust, and, if it is a good boat, you trust it well, for indeed it seems to try its very best, like a horse on the desert plain, that knows it must go on if it is ever to get to the other side. Then as the cliffs, that looked high behind you, dwindle into a line of deep blue, the compass by your knees becomes a magic thing, with no tongue indeed to speak, but surely a brain it must have to know the ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... harassed her, and had always found that, when reduced to material written words, the dimensions of her troubles were astonishingly diminished. She recommended her procedure to the troubled youth, and prophesied that his anxieties would dwindle away in the clear atmosphere of ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... carol in dear Mr. Kenyon's volume, because it is, and was in MS., a great favorite of mine. There are excellent things otherwise, as must be when he says them: one of the most radiant of benevolences with one of the most refined of intellects! How the paper seems to dwindle as I would fain talk on more. I have performed a great exploit, ridden on a donkey five miles deep into the mountains to an almost inaccessible volcanic ground not far from the stars. Robert on horseback, and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... cut out of them altogether,—their fortunate successors would find a most improved world to start upon! For Cant does lie piled on us, high as the zenith; an Augean Stable with the poisonous confusion piled so high: which, simply if there once could be nothing said, would mostly dwindle like summer snow gradually about its business, and leave us free to use our eyes again! When I see painful Professors of Greek, poring in their sumptuous Oxfords over dead Greek for a thousand years or more, and leaving live English all ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and Central European countries, Austria will need to emphasize knowledge-based sectors of the economy and deregulate the service sector, particularly telecommunications and energy. The strong GDP growth of 1998 is expected to dwindle back to 2.3% in 1999, and observers caution that this projection may be revised downwards in view of the Asian and Brazilian crises and ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... while he With a sad heart walks through this jubilee, Beholding how beyond this happy land, Stretches a thirsty desert of gray sand, Where all the air is one thick, leaden blight, Where all things dwarf and dwindle,—so walk I, Through my rich, present life, ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... other hand, fatty substances, such as beef suet, lard and butter, do not undergo any appreciable change. Moreover, the worms soon dwindle away, incapable of growing. This sort of food does not suit them. Why? Apparently because it cannot be liquefied by the reagent disgorged by the worms. In the same way, ordinary pepsin does not attack fatty ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... it came quickly to his hand; because the five hundred pounds must be preserved intact for eventual use. That was the great point. With the entire five hundred one felt a substance at one's back; but it seemed to him that should he let it dwindle to four-fifty or even four-eighty, all the efficiency would be gone out of the money, as though there were some magic power in the round figure. But what sort ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... monstrous lies and senseless shams Have we been cullied all along at Sam's! Who could have e'er believed, unless in spite Lewis le Grand would turn rank Williamite? Thou that hast look'd so fierce and talk'd so big, In thine old age to dwindle to a Whig! Of Kings distress'd thou art a fine securer. Thou mak'st me swear, that am a known nonjuror. Were Job alive, and banter'd by such shufflers, He'd outrail Oates, and curse both thee and Boufflers For thee I've lost, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... first two or three weeks on the nourishment it got from the remembrance of Dinah's confession that Sunday afternoon. There is a wonderful amount of sustenance in the first few words of love. But towards the middle of October the resolution began to dwindle perceptibly, and showed dangerous symptoms of exhaustion. The weeks were unusually long: Dinah must surely have had more than enough time to make up her mind. Let a woman say what she will after she has once told a man that she loves him, he is a little too flushed ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Samuel Anna Maria, Duke of Brittany, and son of Louis XVI. The unhappy Prince, when a prisoner with his unfortunate parents in the Temple, was enabled to escape from that place of confinement, hidden (for the treatment of the ruffians who guarded him had caused the young Prince to dwindle down astonishingly) in the cocked-hat of the Representative, Roederer. It is well known that, in the troublous revolutionary times, cocked-hats were worn ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... although crowded, as everything seems to be in China. Ichang stands at the extreme eastern edge of the tangle of mountains that stretch across Szechuan to the Tibetan plateau, and just below this point the scenery changes, the hills dwindle, and the valley opens into the wide flat plains of the lower Yangtse. It is a merciful arrangement, allowing the eyes and brain a chance to recover their tone after the strain of trying to take in the wonders of the gorges, and I was glad for the open, vacant ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... the flashing drift was blown, Crimsoned with the conflagration, and the roofs went thundering down! Oh, the prayers, the prayers and curses, that together winged their flight From the maddened hearts of many, through that long and woful night!— Till the fires began to dwindle, and the shots grew faint and few, And we heard the foeman's challenge only in a far halloo: Till the silence once more settled o'er the gorges of the glen, Broken only by the Cona plunging through its naked den. Slowly ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... in truth this scheme of reconciling a direction really and truly deliberative with an office really and substantially controlling is a sort of machinery that can be kept in order but a very short time. Either the Directors will dwindle into clerks, or the Secretary of State, as hitherto has been the course, will leave everything to them, often through design, often through neglect. If both should affect activity, collision, procrastination, delay, and, in the end, utter confusion, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... shrinking for many years, but the heart of the chief never shrank. His dwelling dwindled from a castle to a house, from a house to a cottage; but the hospitality did not dwindle. As the money vanished, the show diminished; the place of entertainment from a hall became a kitchen, from a kitchen changed to a barn; but the heart of the chief was the same; the entertainment was but little altered, the hospitality ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... adaptive modification has a delightfully simple answer to supply, viz., that when, from changed conditions of life, an organ which was previously useful becomes useless, natural selection, combined with disuse and so-called economy of growth, will cause it to dwindle till it becomes a rudiment. On the other hand, the theory of special creation can only maintain that these rudiments are formed for the sake of adhering to an ideal type. Now, here again the former theory is ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... steel their children to cruelty and danger. Revenge will become the burden of history. That is the price men will pay for clinging to their little separatist cults and monarchies and complete independencies, now. The traffic and wealth of our great and liberal age will diminish, the arts will dwindle and learning fade, science will cease to advance, and the rude and hard will inherit the earth. The Warpath or the World State; that ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... neglect. Women domesticate themselves to death already. What they want is cultivation. They need to be stimulated to develop a large, comprehensive, catholic life, in which their domestic duties shall have an appropriate niche, and not dwindle down to a narrow and servile one, over which those duties shall spread and ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... separate state, although I regard this as very doubtful. In any event the great North and West, with the immense tides of immigration pouring in, will so preponderate as to be overshadowing. The Southern empire, of which Mrs. Merwyn dreams, would dwindle rather than grow. Human slavery, right or wrong, is contrary to the spirit of the age. But enough of this political discussion. I only touch upon it to influence your action. By the course you are pursuing you not ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... struck from midnights, there are fire-flames noon-days kindle, Whereby piled-up honors perish, whereby swollen ambitions dwindle, While just this or that poor impulse, which for once had play unstifled, Seems the sole work of a life-time that away ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... and, turning with a parting blast of their whistles, headed back to the City. Only the larger, heavier steamers and the sea-going tugs still kept on their way. On either shore of the bay the houses began to dwindle, giving place to open fields, brown and sear under the scudding sea-fog, for now a wind was building up from out the east, and the surface of the bay had begun ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... was that the food, lying in the blaze of sunlight on the plate, slowly underwent a change: the sugar got smaller in size, the honey-drops diminished, the blob of cream lost its first circumference, and even the bread-crumbs seemed to dwindle visibly. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... little world. I saw, not far from me, Anita, standing with her brother; and the giant figure of Miko with them. Half an hour since this wandering little world had showed itself, it swiftly passed, began to dwindle behind us. A huge half moon. A thinner, smaller quadrant. A tiny crescent, like a silver barpin to adorn some lady's breast. And then it was a dot, a point of light indistinguishable among the myriad others hovering in this ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... on the disc began to wax and dwindle rapidly; like the momentary clinging, and as rapid vanishing, of breath across a mirror ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... 596; squeezing &c. v.; strangulation; corrugation; astringency; astringents, sclerotics; contractility, compressibility; coarctation[obs3]. inferiority in size. V. become small, become smaller; lessen, decrease &c. 36; grow less, dwindle, shrink, contract, narrow, shrivel, collapse, wither, lose flesh, wizen, fall away, waste, wane, ebb; decay &c. (deteriorate) 659. be smaller than, fall short of; not come up to &c. (be inferior) 34. render smaller, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... undertook to think about it," said Thorndyke. "I never reject a case off-hand unless it is obviously fishy. It is surprising how difficulties, and even impossibilities, dwindle if you look at them attentively. My experience has taught me that the most unlikely case is, ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... shrouded with protecting mists of light in Moon Pool Chamber, and heard their words. Yet, being crafty, he thought of the power that would be his if he heeded and how quickly the strength of the sun king would dwindle. So he and his made a pact with the Shining ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... these stirring events were taking place and just before Magruder, with McLaw's and Walker's divisions, was either quietly lying in front of Richmond watching the army of McClellan dwindle away, leaving by transports down the James and up the Potomac, or was marching at a killing gait to overtake their comrades under Lee to share with them their trials, their battles and their victories in Maryland. Lee could not leave the Capital with all his force so long as ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... has, and now I think on't, a little taller wou'd do well for Propagation; I should be both the Posterity of the antient Family of the Blunts of Essex should dwindle into Pigmies ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... have their peculiar tastes. Cut off the supply of phosphate of lime from a field of corn, and it will not grow. You can easily do this by planting the same land with corn for three or four successive years, and your crop will dwindle away to nothing, unless you supply the ground every year with as much of the mineral as the corn takes away from it. All plants have the power of selecting from the soil the materials necessary to their growth; and if they do not find them in the soil, they will not grow. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the rush, And cried, "Bring a gorse-bush, And under the caldron now kindle!"— But the Miller cried, "Nay! Give over, I pray!"— For his courage began fast to dwindle. ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... spring from the diseased activity of some particular Prince on whom the authority may happen to devolve. This, if it takes a regular hereditary course: but,—if the succession be interrupted, and the supreme power frequently usurped or given by election,—worse evils follow. Science and Art must dwindle, whether the power be hereditary or not: and the virtues of a Trajan or an Antonine are a hollow support for the feeling of contentment and happiness in the hearts of their subjects: such virtues are even a painful mockery;—something that is, and may ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... He had the uncomfortable sensation that comes to men who grandly contemplate mountains and . . . see them dwindle to mole-hills. The apparently outrageous had shown itself in explanation nothing so out-of-the-way after all. He seized upon the single point in Jill's behavior that still constituted ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... ground in sober recognition of my error. "Forgive me the heat of my zeal," I protested. "I diminish, I dwindle, I wither. Unless your pity forgives me, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... towards the broad river-bed. The stones of it glared like the sands of Africa; Fornovo baked under the sun all white and black; between us was this broad plain of parched shingle and rocks that could, in a night, become one enormous river, or dwindle to a chain of stagnant ponds. To-day some seven narrow streams wandered in the expanse, and again they seemed so easy to cross that again I wondered at the need ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... This attitude, that nature provided whatever was necessary for Washo survival, crops up in other contexts which I will discuss later in this paper. Far from disappearing, the old notions seem to be maintaining a strong hold on the minds of the Washo. As the number of active peyotists dwindle (d'Azevedo and Merriam 1957), one gets the impression that the shamanistic forms may again become a more important part of ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... so that it came quickly to his hand; because the five hundred pounds must be preserved intact for eventual use. That was the great point. With the entire five hundred one felt a substance at one's back; but it seemed to him that should he let it dwindle to four-fifty or even four-eighty, all the efficiency would be gone out of the money, as though there were some magic power in the round figure. ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... the WISE from their bright minds would kindle Such lamps within the dome of this wide world, That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle Into the HELL from ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... distasteful. My house-deaths have generally been periodical, recurring after seven years; but this last is premature by half that time. Cut off in the flower of Colebrooke! The Middletonian stream and all its echoes mourn. Even minnows dwindle. A parvis ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... fatty substances, such as beef suet, lard and butter, do not undergo any appreciable change. Moreover, the worms soon dwindle away, incapable of growing. This sort of food does not suit them. Why? Apparently because it cannot be liquefied by the reagent disgorged by the worms. In the same way, ordinary pepsin does not attack fatty substances; it takes pancreatin to reduce them to an emulsion. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... time, that has made so many musicians recede from us and dwindle, has brought Berlioz the closer to us and shown him great. The age in which he lived, the decades that followed his death, found him unsubstantial enough. They recognized in him only the projector of gigantic edifices, not the builder. His music seemed scaffolding only. Though a generation ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... same course. The policy of 1768, he contended eleven years later, had already succeeded in great measure. The assimilation of government had been effected; an assimilation of manners would follow. The excessive military spirit of the inhabitants had begun to dwindle, as England's interest required. The back settlements of New York and Canada were fast being joined. Two or three thousand men of British stock, many of them men of substance, had gone to the new colony; warehouses and foundries were being built; and ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... called,—that indeed is here. If Literature continue to be the haven of expatriated spiritualisms, and have its Johnsons, Goethes and true Archbishops of the World, to show for itself as heretofore, there may be hope in Literature. If Literature dwindle, as is probable, into mere merry-andrewism, windy twaddle, and feats of spiritual legerdemain, analogous to rope-dancing, opera-dancing, and street-fiddling with a hat carried round for halfpence, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... where our daily life is furtive; work a craft; art a participation—it is in miniature the goal of statesmanship. If Chicago were like Hull House, we say to ourselves, then vice would be no problem—it would dwindle, what was left would be the Falstaff in us all, and only a spiritual anemia could worry over that ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... lost in the vast spaces, they look very much smaller than they would if they stood two blocks away in the open air. I "averaged" a man as he passed me and watched him as he drifted far down by the baldacchino and beyond—watched him dwindle to an insignificant school-boy, and then, in the midst of the silent throng of human pigmies gliding about him, I lost him. The church had lately been decorated, on the occasion of a great ceremony in honor of St. Peter, and men were engaged, now, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... establishment of its power within as well as without. That the object of emigration is not yet fully attained may be inferred from the fact that it still continues on so large a scale; that it must ultimately dwindle to much smaller proportions, if not cease utterly, is pretty certain. This is our wish and hope: for the home population of the island must be large enough to invest it with deserved importance in the eyes of foreigners. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... of chess. Best, said the architect, take off one good-sized shop, rather than halve the premises. James would be left a little cramped, a little tight, with only one-third of his present space. But as we age we dwindle. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... red man appears to be nearly decided. What between their wars with each other, the use of spirituous liquors, and the diseases imported by the whites, they dwindle away every day. The most fatal disease to them is the small-pox. The following account, which I have extracted from one of the American papers, was confirmed to me by a letter ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... personal turn to things is an expression of that intensity of nature which makes her, as Mr. Kipling has truthfully put it, "more deadly than the male!" She must be that—were she not, the race would dwindle. He would never sacrifice himself as she does for the preservation of the young! This necessity of concentrating her whole being on a little group makes her personal. The wise woman is she who recognizes ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... to the bridesmaids. Mrs. Tipping had chosen them, and it did not take the hapless skipper long to arrive at the conclusion that she was far fonder of bridesmaids than he was. His stock of money was beginning to dwindle, and the purchase of a second wedding suit within a month was beginning to tell even ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... Odin, the Father of a race by whom Perished the Roman Empire: [M] how the friends 190 And followers of Sertorius, [N] out of Spain Flying, found shelter in the Fortunate Isles, [O] And left their usages, their arts and laws, To disappear by a slow gradual death, To dwindle and to perish one by one, 195 Starved in those narrow bounds: [P] but not the soul Of Liberty, which fifteen hundred years Survived, and, when the European came With skill and power that might not be withstood, Did, like a pestilence, maintain its hold 200 And wasted down by glorious ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... nothing, everything believe! But why repine we that these puny elves Shoot into giants?—we may thank ourselves: Fools that we are, like Israel's fools of yore, The calf ourselves have fashion'd we adore. But let true Reason once resume her reign, This god shall dwindle to a calf again. Founded on arts which shun the face of day, By the same arts they still maintain their sway. Wrapp'd in mysterious secrecy they rise, 110 And, as they are unknown, are safe and wise. At whomsoever aim'd, howe'er severe, The envenom'd slander flies, no names appear: Prudence ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... were paralysed by their fear of being too successful. Their situation had become desperate: if any event in the chapter of human accidents should fall out to give them a reprieve, the only consequences would be, that as they had dwindled, dwindled before, they would dwindle, dwindle again. There was no stock of good luck which such conduct would not run out. It was clear what was coming: the Tories must return to power. How long they would stay there was another question; but their return was a phasis, a phenomenon ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... knew that the reality was going to dwindle wofully within my ideal, as almost everything else does. When we reached the spot, we found a picnic-party just finishing their dinner, on one of the overthrown stones of the druidical temple; and within the sacred circle an artist was painting a wretched daub of the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... arrested by these violations of modesty and decorum; but no one can master its contents and become possessed of it as a whole without perceiving that the mirror is held up to nature, that it reflects spots and blemishes which, on a survey of the vast and various orb, dwindle into natural and so comparative insignificance. Byron was under no delusion as to the grossness of Don Juan. His plea or pretence, that he was sheltered by the superior grossness of Ariosto and La Fontaine, of Prior and of Fielding, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... dear Edwin and Angelina, you expect too much from love. You think there is enough of your little hearts to feed this fierce, devouring passion for all your long lives. Ah, young folk! don't rely too much upon that unsteady flicker. It will dwindle and dwindle as the months roll on, and there is no replenishing the fuel. You will watch it die out in anger and disappointment. To each it will seem that it is the other who is growing colder. Edwin sees with bitterness ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... from their country and the world, they are all to be considered as pupils of the truly great archnavigator COLUMBUS; himself a worthy scholar from the nautical academy of the truly illustrious and enlightened father of discoveries, DON HENRY. All other discoveries, whether nautical or by land, dwindle into mere ordinary events, when compared with his absolutely solitary exertion of previous scientific views. The sagacious and almost prophetic induction, persevering ardour, cosmographical, nautical, and astronomical ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... and gratifying to a father's feelings. Still, as time passed on, forebodings came upon me that this great expedition, starting with so much display from Melbourne, with a steady, declared, and scientific object, would dwindle down into a flying light corps, making a sudden dash across the continent and back again with no permanent results. Discharges and resignations had taken place, and no efforts were made by the committee to fill up the vacancies. No assistant surveyor ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... Wilkinson was still looking moodily out of the window, when there came a sharp clang at the bell. Often it had rung, and with every ring his hopes had sprung up, only to dwindle away again, and change to leaden disappointment, as he faced some beggar or touting tradesman. But the doctor's spirit was young and elastic, and again, in spite of all experience, it responded to that exhilarating summons. ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the shock, to cause the nation to pass insensibly from the monarchy to democracy by the practice of constitutional fictions,—what detestable reasons all those are! No! no! let us never enlighten the people with false daylight. Principles dwindle and pale in your constitutional cellar. No illegitimacy, no compromise, no grant from the king to the people. In all such grants there is an Article 14. By the side of the hand which gives there is the claw which snatches back. I refuse your charter point-blank. A charter is a mask; the lie lurks ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... shall dwell. There between Mars and Venus if she stay, Her sight the brightness of the sun will quell, Because, her infinite beauty to survey, The spirits of the blest will round her swell. If she decide upon the fourth fair nest Each of the three to dwindle will begin, And she alone the fame of beauty win, Nor e'en in the fifth circle may she rest; Thence higher if she soar, I surely trust Jove with all other stars ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... vacancies among the officers filled from the best noncommissioned officers and men, the habit was to raise new regiments, with new colonels, captains, and men, leaving the old and experienced battalions to dwindle away into mere skeleton organizations. I believe with the volunteers this matter was left to the States exclusively, and I remember that Wisconsin kept her regiments filled with recruits, whereas other States generally filled their quotas by new regiments, and the result was that we estimated ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... is there the awful nurse of Life: Death rocks the cot. Why meet we there no wolf Save those huge-limbed? Because weak wolf-cubs die. 'Tis thus with man; 'tis thus with all things strong:— Rise higher on thy northern hills, my Pine! That Southern Palm shall dwindle. House stone-walled— Ye shall not have it! Temples cedar-roofed— Ye shall not build them! Where the Temple stands The City gathers. Cities ye shall spurn: Live in the woods; live singly, winning each, Hunter or ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... smaller than ever this year," she remarked every season; and every season the headgear of fashionable London did indeed seem to shrink and dwindle, "fine by degrees, and beautifully less." The coalscuttle-shaped headdress of our grandmothers had not yet resolved itself into a string of beads and a rosebud in these days, but was ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... it, thinking that it could not be spared from the landscape. It lies only three miles from the curving end of the promontory, and is about twenty miles due south of Naples. In this atmosphere distances dwindle. The nearest land, to the northwest, is the larger island of Ischia, distant nearly as far as Naples; yet Capri has the effect of being anchored off the bay to guard the entrance. It is really a rock, three miles and a half long, rising straight out of the water, eight hundred feet high at one ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... cabal. The private citizen, who employs the most immoral practices to acquire power, can only act in a manner indirectly prejudicial to the public prosperity. But if the representative of the executive descends into the lists, the cares of government dwindle into second-rate importance, and the success of his election is his first concern. All laws and negotiations are then to him nothing more than electioneering schemes; places become the reward of services rendered, not to the nation, but ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... feelings of one of the last of the Greek religious philosophers, one of the family of Orpheus and Musaeus, having survived his fellows, living on into a time when the habits of Greek thought and feeling had begun fast to change, character to dwindle, the influence of the Sophists[3] to prevail. Into the feelings of a man so situated there are entered much that we are accustomed to consider as exclusively modern; how much, the fragments of Empedocles himself which remain to us are ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... of Berne, the most imposing figure of all Germanic heroic lore. The necessity of providing him with a role corresponding to his importance, coupled with a growing repugnance on the part of the proud Franks to acknowledge defeat at the hands of the Huns, caused the person of Attila to dwindle in importance. Gradually, too, the role played by Kriemhild was totally changed. Instead of being the avenger of her brothers, as depicted in the Norse versions, she herself becomes the cause of their destruction. Etzel is not only innocent of any desire to harm the Nibelungs, but ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... have it, is that this matter should be shrewdly pressed, and an end made of it as soon as may be. Our people dwindle daily; they who were well a se'nnight since are ill to-day, and may be dead to-morrow. Our provision waxeth short and poor, and be it once spent our good friend Jones will give us none of his we may be sure. We are no babes to be cast down by these ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... the nearest and most within the reach of observation, but all attempts to calculate the distance of that luminary have proved futile. Of its inconceivable remoteness some notion may be formed by the fact, that the diameter of the earth's annual orbit, if viewed from it, would dwindle into an invisible point. This is what is meant by the stars not having, like the planets, a parallax; that is, the earths' orbit, as seen from them, does not subtend a measurable angle. With two other stars, ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... of old Merlin's enchantments still lingered there, for as Nan stood silently absorbing the mysterious glamour of the place, the petty annoyances of the day, the fret of Lady Gertrude's unwelcoming reception of her, seemed to dwindle into insignificance. They were only external things, after all. They could not mar the loveliness of this mystic, legend-haunted ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... nightingale) is dim, And the loud shriek of sage Minerva's fowl Rattles around me her discordant hymn: Old portraits from old walls upon me scowl— I wish to heaven they would not look so grim; The dying embers dwindle in the grate— I think too that I have sate up ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... disappointment, it is in itself disappointment; it is not what it expected to be; and it finds nothing which confronts it quite, if at all, responsive to the inward vision. The greatest, the loveliest things in the world lose their iridescence or dwindle before it. The old come to things measurably prepared to see them as they are, take them for what they are worth; but the young are the prey of impassioned prepossessions which can never be the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... threatened their very existence. Slavery must of necessity exercise the most baleful influence upon any slave-holding people, and especially upon those members of the dominant caste who do not themselves own slaves. Moreover, the negro, unlike so many of the inferior races, does not dwindle away in the presence of the white man. He holds his own; indeed, under the conditions of American slavery he increased faster than the white, threatening to supplant him. He actually has supplanted him in certain of the West Indian islands, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the past shall we be? Sunken, forgotten, crumbled to imperceptible atoms; the ashes of generations-the dust of empires-heaped over us! And when we compare those wide estimates to that divine eternity that evolves and limits all things, how does our individual existence on the earth dwindle and vanish!—a heart-throb in the pulses of the universal life,—a quivering leaf in the forest of being,—"a ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... not wrathful, my good Lord of Douglas," answered the Prince; "I did but smile to think how your princely retinue would dwindle if every thief were dealt with as the poor Highlanders ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... having shown their superiority in the superlative excellencies of murder, usurpation and robbery (and I maintain they have gone further in the execution of these infamies than was true of the Negro-Carpet-bag bacchanalia); having made majorities dwindle into iotas and vaulted themselves into power at the point of the shot gun and dagger (regular bandit style); having made laws which discriminate odiously against one class while giving the utmost immunity to the other; having, after doing these things, modeled the government they ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... affairs. The modest assurance, the happy boldness, the extemporaneous logic, all that 'led but to the grave,' exist, like the images of departed actors, only in the recollection of those who witnessed them, till memory shall fade into tradition, and tradition dwindle down to a name." (Supplement to Vacation Rambles, p. 115.) The eagerness with which the talents of Sir William Follett were sought, forcibly illustrates the truth of a remark, made to me in the course of some friendly advice, by one who may be ranked among the most brilliant advocates ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... figure she makes! And how well that garb becomes her poor parents' circumstances!—And how would they look upon me, thought I to myself, when they should come to be threadbare and worn out? And how should I look, even if I could purchase homespun clothes, to dwindle into them one by one, as I got them?—May be, an old silk gown, and a linsey-woolsey petticoat, and the like. So, thought I, I had better get myself at once equipped in the dress that will become my condition; and though it may look but poor to what I have been ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... store will dwindle into a store for selling rice, and while his velvets, silks, hats and muslins moulder he will get very sick of a hundred million women who don't spend forty cents ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... had elected him, unalterably determined against its extension, was nevertheless pledged not to interfere with its continuance in the States where it already existed. Of course, when new regions were forever closed against it, from its very nature it must have begun to shrink and to dwindle; and probably gradual and compensated emancipation, which appealed very strongly to the new President's sense of justice and expediency, would, in the progress of time, by a reversion to the ideas of the founders of the Republic, have ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... anyone ever been able to write with free and genuine appreciation of even the later novels?" asks or echoes a lady, Miss Grace Toplis, writing on Jefferies. "In brief, he was an essayist and not a novelist at all," says Mr. Henry Salt. "It is therefore certain that his importance for posterity will dwindle, if it has not already dwindled, to that given by a bundle of descriptive selections. But these will occupy a foremost place on their particular shelf, the shelf at the head of which stands Gilbert White ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... for these far-northern dwellers when the steamer came. A great event it was, too, for these young adventurers who had gone north with the brigade, who now had seen that brigade dwindle and scatter over more than fifteen hundred miles of unknown country; and who now saw the remnant of the brigade proper, one steamboat and a scow, come to anchor here at the farthest north of the fur trade ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... For the assurance of timid and sensitive persons, it may be stated that extension work is optional, and may be carried to any desired stage of completion. The many enter upon the work because it is popular and interesting; and as soon as it assumes the character of study, the class will often dwindle down to a small portion of the audience. The requirements for an examination will weed this remainder until there is found but a handful that will submit to the test. These workers are usually mature, and often prove themselves to be thorough and proficient ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... regardless of his own family, but the echo of the mystic, sublime discourses of the Greek porches, the faint but sacred trace of the march of vast armies, and the fall of nations, caused Leslie to dwindle into a mere speck in the creation. Of course she would be provided for somehow: marry, or make her own livelihood. Socrates did not plague himself much about the fate of Xantippe: Seneca wrote from his exile to console his mother, but the epistles ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... hemicycle of hills. The heights of Mount Tifata began to fall away on the left, the rough, precipitous line of crags, sweeping around toward the east, seemed to dwindle into the distance, even as they drew nearer, while the low jumble of Neapolitan hills, beyond which towered Vesuvius with its fluttering pennon of vapour, rose higher and higher upon the southern horizon. A turn of the road, a temporary makeshift, led them around Casilinum, ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... squeeze yourself back into your corner like that. A stolen kiss isn't what I want. Look: I'm not even trying to touch the sleeve of your jacket. Don't suppose that I don't understand your reasons for not wanting to let this feeling between us dwindle into an ordinary hole-and-corner love-affair. I couldn't have spoken like this yesterday, because when we've been apart, and I'm looking forward to seeing you, every thought is burnt up in a great flame. But then you come; and you're so ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... words may lose their independence, may suffer phonetic decay, and dwindle down to mere suffixes and terminations. Thus in Burmese the plural is formed by to, in Finnish, Mordvinian, and Ostiakian by t. As soon as to ceases to be used as an independent word in the sense of number, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... have someone besides Pat, but the others are either away or worse than Pat. You're good for Pat if she isn't for you. You sort of stiffen her up—she told me so. Pat needs whalebone. When her purse gets flat her morals dwindle; mine always get scared stiff. I'll write twice a week, Joan, my lamb, Sunday and Wednesday. I'll be ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... the cringing wretch he confronted. His eyes narrowed into red points that bored into the other's eyes, and plunged like daggers into his heart and mind. Before that glance, like a vivisectionist's knife, Jake wilted; he seemed to shrink, dwindle, collapse. And with a growing, cold, awful horror, a suspicion so hideous that his mind revolted from it, Peter Champneys stood staring from one black face ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... Samuel J. May, "and the more I see the desirableness of living; yet certainly not in this frail body, but just as it shall please the dear Father of us all." One by one he saw the little band of which he was leader dwindle as now one and now another dropped by the way. And it was he or Mr. Phillips, or both, who spoke the last loving words over their coffins. As the little band passed on to the unseen country, a new joy awoke in the soul of the leader left behind, the ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... though so intimately connected with Racine for many years, had not read his compositions. When at length he was persuaded to read Phaedra, he declared himself to be delighted, but complained that the poet had set a dangerous example, in making the manly Hippolytus dwindle to an effeminate lover. As a critic, Arnauld was right; but Racine had his nation to please. Such persons entertain notions of poetry similar to that of an ancient father, who calls poetry the wine of Satan; or to that ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... drive her up the mountain road to the Inn that nestled in a valley nine thousand feet up the mountain. It was a drive Fanny never forgot. Fenger, Ted, Haynes-Cooper, her work, her plans, her ambitions, seemed to dwindle to puny insignificance beside the vast grandeur that unfolded before her at every fresh turn in the road. Up they went, and up, and up, and the air was cold, but without a sting in it. It was dark when the lights of the Inn twinkled out at them. The door was thrown open as they swung up ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... the office of the currency department the larger part facing Dalhousie Square. It then retired to the back part of the premises looking on to Mission Row, which became the entrance to the bank. As time went on the bank seemed in some way or another to dwindle in standing and importance, and it did not tend to increase either its reputation or popularity when it issued a notice to the effect that in future no exchange brokers need trouble to call as it had appointed its own individual broker (Mr. Chapman) to do all the work. The bank continued ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... notice how our Lord here declares that in comparison with the sin of not listening to His words, and being taught by His manifestation, all other sins dwindle into nothing. 'If I had not spoken, they had not had sin.' That does not mean, of course, that these men would have been clear of all moral delinquency; it does not mean that there would not have been amongst them crimes against their own consciences, crimes against the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... presented a like aspect of potential beauty and comfort, utterly uncared for and forlorn. There were many rooms, but none more than scantily furnished, and a number of them were stripped bare. Betty found herself wondering how long a time it had taken the belongings of the big place to dwindle and melt away ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to 4. It seemed that at last fortune was to favor the red. The cheering went on and on. Meyer sent the captain to second but was thrown out at first. Another tally would tie the score, but the players who were coming to bat were the weakest hitters, and Willard's hopes began to dwindle. But one can never tell what will happen in baseball, and when Fearing lined out a swift ball over second baseman's head and Don Satterlee romped home, the wearers of the red shrieked in mingled ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the moment, but he mustn't let Mirabelle get the bit in her teeth, and run away with him. As soon as ever she got him on record as favouring the sort of legislation which she herself wanted, Mr. Mix's power was going to dwindle. And Mr. Mix adored his power, and he hated to think of losing ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... encouraging settlers of every denomination, will have much the advantage of all supplies from the Bay of Fundy and westward. What the consequence will be time only will reveal.' Many persons at Halifax, wrote Pynchon, prophesied that the new settlement would dwindle, and recommended the shore of the Bay of Fundy or the banks of the river St John in preference to Port Roseway; but Pynchon attributed their fears to jealousy. A few years' experience must have convinced him that his ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... could be discerned apparently moving with the torrent, but in reality remaining stationary. Now he would raise himself half out of the water, and ascend like a mist half as high as the near mountain, and then he would dwindle down to the size of a man. His laugh accorded with his savage visage, and his long hair stood on end, and a mist always ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... one pound ten," said Grannie. "I looked at the purse this morning. One pound ten, and sevenpence ha'penny in coppers; that's all. That wouldn't be a bad sum if there was anythink more coming in; but seeing as ther' aint, it is uncommon likely to dwindle, look at it ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... so rich in bird life of all kinds, in forest, marsh, and savanna, they are everywhere abundant—food is plentiful there; but when we go to higher elevations avd cold sterile deserts, where their companion families of the tropics dwindle away and disappear, the creepers are still present, for they are evidently able to exist where other kinds would starve. On the stony plateaus of the Andes, and on the most barren spots in Patagonia, where no other bird is seen, there are small species of Synallaxis, which, in their obscure ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... anticipation, and I echoed the sound. I was somebody now; but what a nobody I should dwindle into, in comparison with the daughters of wealth and fashion who ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... powerless to stem the torrent of cadet enthusiasm at this public mention of their beloved leader of the year gone by. Up sprang the entire corps, and the rafters rang with the thunder of their cheers—a thunder that seemed to redouble rather than dwindle at sight of the silver-haired commandant, smiling ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... in from Thebes another hero as rival to Adrastos. He then split up the worship of Adrastos; part of his worship, and especially his sacrifices, he gave to the new Theban hero, but the tragic choruses he gave to the common people's god, to Dionysos. Adrastos, the objectionable hero, was left to dwindle and die. No local hero can live on ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... from Hong-Kong, all might be well. It was of the utmost importance that he should not present Bobby to Sister Cordelia until the die was irrevocably cast. Faults that in Miss Boynton of the Big Gully Ranch would be glaring iniquities would, in the wife of the Honorable Percival Hascombe, dwindle ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... worried me. I think it is just as probably a change in dietary. I have noticed that most of your vegetarians are shock-headed, ample-bearded men, and I have heard the Ancestor was vegetarian. Or it may be, I sometimes fancy, a kind of inherent disposition on the part of your human animal to dwindle. That came back in my memory vividly as I looked at the long rows of Sceptics, typical Advanced people, and marked their glistening crania. I recalled other losses. Here is Humanity, thought I, growing hairless, growing bald, growing toothless, unemotional, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... main walk he managed to secure four successive crops of flowers—the pompones were especially gaudy and beautiful; but his chief triumph were the chrysanthemums of the northern border. The trees, however, seem delicate, and suffering from the cold winds, dwindle as they approach the river. The planes, limes, and wych elms stand best. The Temple rooks—the wise birds Goldsmith delighted to watch—were originally brought by Sir William Northcote from Woodcote Green, Epsom, but ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... right and left. Once the faint track I was following headed straight towards one of these apparent sheets of water, and I was even meditating a bathe, but, lo! when I was a hundred yards or so off, it began to dwindle and disappear, and I found nothing but the same endless stretch of grass, burnt up by the ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... not fallen away vilely since this last action? do I not bate? do I not dwindle? Why, my skin hangs about me like an old lady's loose gown; I am withered like an old apple-John. Well, I'll repent, and that suddenly, while I am in some liking; I shall be out of heart shortly, and then I shall have no strength to repent. An I have not forgotten what the inside of ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... foliage by degrees, So fade expressions which in season please; And we and ours, alas! are due to fate, And works and words but dwindle to a date. Though, as a monarch nods and commerce calls, Impetuous rivers stagnate in canals; Though swamps subdued, and marshes drain'd sustain The heavy ploughshare and the yellow grain; And rising ports along the busy shore Protect the vessel from old Ocean's roar— All, all ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... one in ten, twenty or a hundred, that may perfect a bee. Thus the increase of bees is not enough to replace the old ones that are continually dying off. It is plain, therefore, that this stock must soon dwindle down to a very small family. Now let a scarcity of honey occur in the fields, this poor stock cannot be properly guarded, and is easily plundered of its contents by the others. Honey is taken that is in close proximity to dead bodies, corrupting ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... I heard them in the darkness, at the mystical ceremony, Loosely robed in flying raiment, sang the terrible prophetesses. "Fear not, isle of blowing woodland, isle of silvery parapets! Tho' the Roman eagle shadow thee, tho' the gathering enemy narrow thee, Thou shalt wax and he shall dwindle, thou shalt be the mighty one yet! Thine the liberty, thine the glory, thine the deeds to be celebrated, Thine the myriad-rolling ocean, light and shadow illimitable, Thine the lands of lasting summer, many-blossoming Paradises, Thine the North and thine the ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... loved my school, and the fine faith the children had in the wisdom of their teacher was truly marvellous. We read and spelled together, wrote a little, picked flowers, sang, and listened to stories of the world beyond the hill. At times the school would dwindle away, and I would start out. I would visit Mun Eddings, who lived in two very dirty rooms, and ask why little Lugene, whose flaming face seemed ever ablaze with the dark-red hair uncombed, was absent all last week, or why I missed so often the inimitable ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... this remark dretful kinder loud and hysterical, and then would dwindle down kinder low at the end on't, and bustin' out into tears somewhere through ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... he accomplish it? How small and insignificant he felt, and how utterly worthless! How he seemed to dwindle into nothing beside the great work that he was called to do! And yet how anxious he was to do it well! How he longed to be like his father David, a true shepherd to his people! How his heart yearned over his subjects; and how greatly he desired ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... ordinary conditions it is so easy to carry a point with a little bounce; self-assertion is a mask which covers many a weakness.... [Page 283] Here the outward show is nothing, it is the inward purpose that counts. So the "gods" dwindle and the humble supplant them. ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... a woman's gladness at any rate. From the day when your image began to dwindle in my mind, I have lived my life as though under an eclipse. During all these years it has grown harder and harder for me—and at last utterly impossible—to love any living creature. Human beings, animals, plants: I shrank from ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen
... brimful, evidently filled by the recent rain, which had not been heavy enough to fill the lagoon. Here we camped for two days, which we could ill afford, as already we had to cut down our rations, and before long our meals would dwindle to one instead of two a day. Godfrey's sickness necessitated a delay—he suffered from such fearful pains in his head, poor fellow! Often after a day's march he would collapse, and lie prone with his head nearly bursting from pain. A drink ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... thus: you enter into an agreement with a being whose aggregate of perfections is expressible, we will say, by 20. Now, if they would always keep at that point, there might be some reason for your remaining unaltered, namely, your not being able to help it. But suppose that they dwindle down to 19-1/2, the person, that is, the whole sum of the qualities admired, no longer exists, and you, of course, are absolved from your engagement. But mind, I do not say that you are justified in changing only in case ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... miles up river from the fur trading-post, and then had landed in order to lighten the canoe for the ascent against the current. At that point the forest has already begun to dwindle towards the Land of Little Sticks, so that often miles and miles of open muskegs will intervene between groups of the stunted trees. Jim and I found ourselves a little over waist deep in luxuriant and tangled grasses that impeded ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... you, was none of the best: and I have repaired it myself. It was in fact a damaged lot. Something the public will bear: topographical sins dwindle into peccadilloes in a romance; and no candid people look very sharply after the hydrography of a novel. But still it did strike me—that the case of a man's swimming on his back from Bristol to the Isle of Anglesea, was more than the most indulgent ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... end to the other. The structures were of rough material hastily put together, and among the debris are to be found portions of older buildings, stehe, and fragments of statues. The town began to dwindle after the Pharaoh had taken possession of his sepulchre; it was abandoned during the XIIIth dynasty, and its ruins were entombed in the sand which the wind heaped over them. The city which Amenemhait III. had connected with his tomb maintained, on the contrary, a long existence ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... hardly believe him to be of the same race. But when you looked at the eyes that sparkled out like a beetle's from each side of his hooked nose, you saw at once that he inherited all the fiery spirit of his forefathers. In fact, a Frenchman's spirit never exhales, however his body may dwindle. It rather rarefies, and grows more inflammable, as the earthly particles diminish; and I have seen valor enough in a little fiery-hearted French dwarf, to have furnished out ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... without the blemish of circumstance—not his, but circumstance, in whose evil shade he must seem smirched. What could she do with her faulty vision, but send him away? Was that not less dishonourable than to bid him remain and dwindle as she looked at him? What a kink in her affairs, when she must be cruel to her love, not because she loved him less, but rather that she might ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... chair that was offered to him between two of the Brothers, and sat down, feeling vaguely that his perceptions were not quite as keen and accurate as usual. He felt a trifle dazed perhaps, and the spell of the past came strongly over him, confusing the immediate present and making everything dwindle oddly to the dimensions of long ago. He seemed to pass under the mastery of a great mood that was a composite reproduction of all the ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... being forct but when its judg'd advantageous—this is certain you can move your Army across the Country in three or four days, which will take the regular Troops as many weeks. You can make them starve and rot with cold and fluxes, and make them dwindle away to nothing if they were triple your Number, and without striking a stroak, if we take the advantage the Countrey and Climate affords—the renown'd King Robert Bruce, Sir William Wallace, and the late Marquis of Montrose, of which your R.H. is ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... of them one day, Du Mesne," replied John Law. "'Tis a roadway fit for a nation. Ah, Du Mesne! our St. Lawrence, our New France—they dwindle when compared to this ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... that a prince who succeeds to another of superior valour, may reign on by virtue of his predecessor's merits, and reap the fruits of his labours; but if he live to a great age, or if he be followed by another who is wanting in the qualities of the first, that then the kingdom must necessarily dwindle. Conversely, when two consecutive princes are of rare excellence, we commonly find them achieving results which win for them enduring renown. David, for example, not only surpassed in learning and judgment, ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... part; no further can we go; And better death than we from high to low Should dwindle, or decline from ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... Watling. But Ralph's philosophy easily triumphed. Why not be practical, and become master of a situation which one had not made, and could not alter, instead of being overwhelmed by it? Needless to say, I did not mention the conversation to Mr. Watling, nor did he dwindle in my estimation. These necessary transactions did not interfere in any way with his personal relationships, and his days were filled with kindnesses. And was not Mr. Ripon, the junior partner, one of the evangelical lights of the community, conducting advanced Bible classes every week ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to dwindle to nought,' said I, laughing, 'what account are we to give of you in Taunton? Since you have donned armour and taken to winning the hearts of fair maidens, you have outstripped us all in importance, and become a man of ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Spanish lake, sacred to the ships of the king's subjects alone. With such a simple code of navigation coming in aid of the other causes which impoverished the land, it may be believed that the maritime traffic of the country would dwindle into the same exiguous proportions which characterised her ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... aversion. I desire your opinion, Whether I may not lawfully play the inquisition upon her, make use of a little force, and put her to the rack and the torture, only to convince her, she has really fine limbs, without spoiling or distorting them. I expect your directions, ere I proceed to dwindle and fall away with despair; which at present I don't think advisable, because, if she should recant, she may then hate me perhaps in the other extreme for my tenuity. I am ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... wish to amuse yourself with reading the lives I wrote in the last number of the Biography,[10] they are Archbishop Hamilton, Sir William Hamilton, Dr Robert Henry, Edward Henryson, J. Bonaventura Hepburn, Roger Hog, John Holybush, and Henry Home of Kames.... The gooseberries appear to dwindle as they ripen. I am afraid few will remain for you, but you will find a sufficient number where you are. I intend to walk to Dunkeld, and to take two days. Al. Smith may come a bit with us.... All my little ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... There is not anything in the universe but what does and ought equally to bear these two opposite characters: on the one side, the seal or stamp of the artificer upon his work, and, on the other, the mark of its original nothing, into which it may relapse and dwindle every moment. It is an incomprehensible mixture of low and great; of frailty in the matter, and of art in the maker? The hand of God is conspicuous in everything, even in a worm that crawls on earth. Nothingness, on the other hand, appears ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... All nations by his tyranny, and reigns With haughty power from Kharsak to these plains. I'll lead the way, my Sar, to his wild home; 'Tis twenty kas-pu[2] hence, if you will come. A wall surrounds his castle in a wood, With brazen gates strong fastened. I have stood Beneath the lofty pines which dwindle these To shrubs that grow in parks as ornate trees. The mighty walls will reach six gars[3] in height, And two in breadth, like Nipur's[4] to the sight. And when you go, take with you many mules; With men to bring the spoils, and needed tools To break the gates, his castle overthrow: To lose ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... away, dissipate, dawdle; desolate, devastate, despoil, sack, pillage, ravage, strip; decline, decay, pine, wither, dwindle, molder. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... activity of some particular Prince on whom the authority may happen to devolve. This, if it takes a regular hereditary course: but,—if the succession be interrupted, and the supreme power frequently usurped or given by election,—worse evils follow. Science and Art must dwindle, whether the power be hereditary or not: and the virtues of a Trajan or an Antonine are a hollow support for the feeling of contentment and happiness in the hearts of their subjects: such virtues are even a painful mockery;—something that is, and may ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... most of them trivial. And these accidents, often the most trivial, most powerfully determine not only the direction but also the degree and kind of force—what characteristics shall develop and what shall dwindle. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... arbitrated in the past century challenge with trumpet-tongued eloquence the support of all men for reason's peaceful rule. To-day no discussion is needed to show that if war is to be abolished, if navies are to dwindle and armies diminish, if there is to be a federation of the world, it must come through treaties of arbitration. In this way alone lies peace; yet in this way lies the present great barrier to further progress—the conception which ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... considered as very ancient of its claims to any high antiquity. Certain portions of the Veda even, which, as far as our knowledge goes at present, we are perfectly justified in referring to the tenth or twelfth century before our era, may some day or other dwindle down from their high estate, and those who have believed in their extreme antiquity will then be held up to blame or ridicule, like Sir W. Jones or Colonel Wilford. This cannot be avoided, for science ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... stretch across the country you inhabit, and if you so please you may accompany me all the way. You may even follow me into the land of Repose which lies beyond your own territory, but its air will not agree with you. You will dwindle, peak, and pine in that exquisite atmosphere, and in a very little while I shall have seen the last ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... in mining. They had work before them, and had better be about it without any more delay, since there could be no telling at what time the absent men might show up. Once they returned to the camp, of course, the chances of the scouts accomplishing much began to dwindle enormously. ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... immediately die out, but it soon began to dwindle. Only here and there did it leap forward with its old savage fury. Presently these sporadic plunges wore themselves out for lack of fuel. The devastated area became a smouldering, smoking char showing ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... itself, being the first outgrowth from the great inferior ganglion or summit of the spinal system. As human brains degenerate to a lower type they approximate this form. The frontal and occipital lobes dwindle and the principal mass remaining is that in the basis of the skull between the ears. We see this form distinctly in congenital idiots. The embryo cerebrum here represented measures but three lines vertically, four lines in length, and five lines in thickness. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... in the matter began to dwindle. The fine fire which had sustained him during the story's composition had died out. He was satisfied with his work. He had written a good story, and that was the end of it. No doubt he would send it East—to the Centennial Company—to-morrow or the day after—some ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... thoughtful night under the gaslight with Robert Edgeworth's letter lying between his numbed fingers. The fire burns there cheerfully now—there is no other light than that cast by the fitful flames which leap and dwindle in shadows through the twilight that lingers still, huge fanciful phantoms skipping over the walls and the ceiling and floor, a little flickering subdued light that trembles on the great arm chairs. "Flo" is curled up, with both ends saluting one another, on the ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... appreciative ones by neglect. Women domesticate themselves to death already. What they want is cultivation. They need to be stimulated to develop a large, comprehensive, catholic life, in which their domestic duties shall have an appropriate niche, and not dwindle down to a narrow and servile one, over which those duties shall spread ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... a game of chess. Best, said the architect, take off one good-sized shop, rather than halve the premises. James would be left a little cramped, a little tight, with only one-third of his present space. But as we age we dwindle. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... a little and grew more indistinct, the sound of the traffic began to dwindle away, voices seemed farther off, ceased altogether, and all was quiet once more where the mirage shimmered and faded, and a bull rhinoceros coming down through the stillness snorted, and ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... taste the whole of it, fare like my peers The heroes of old, Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness and cold. For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end, And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a peace ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... drinking makes his belly swell big, but consumes other parts of his body. O! it is a sad grant, when the desire is granted, only to make the belly big, the estate big, the name big; when even by this bigness the soul pines, is made to dwindle, to grow lean, and to look like ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... fighting among disparate ethnic groups, rebel groups, warlords, and youth gangs in Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone gradually abate, the number of refugees in border areas has begun to slowly dwindle; UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) has maintained over 4,000 peacekeepers in Sierra Leone since 1999; Sierra Leone considers excessive Guinea's definition of the flood plain limits to define the left bank boundary of the Makona and Moa rivers and protests Guinea's continued occupation ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... it must be the seat of a powerful and permanently established government. Nor does it seem possible, even in the event of Bombay taking the ascendance as the capital of British India, that the proud City of Palaces shall upon that account dwindle and sink into decay. Stranger things, and even more melancholy destinies, have befallen the mighty Babylons of the earth; but with all its faults of situation and of climate, I should at least, for one, regret the fate that would render the glories of a city so distinct ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... charity is one of those things even the wise man knew to be rare under the sun. Where we have been privileged to look in behind the veil of the family circle, we are more convinced than ever that fraternal affection an all the boasted nobility of sisterly love dwindle down to a series of petty quarrels and jealousies as painful as they are unchristian and unbecoming. The reserve, or rather the hypocrisy of politeness, put on before strangers, is no criterion of the inward domestic life. Some one has said of ladies, "A point yielded or ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... desire to live," he wrote Samuel J. May, "and the more I see the desirableness of living; yet certainly not in this frail body, but just as it shall please the dear Father of us all." One by one he saw the little band of which he was leader dwindle as now one and now another dropped by the way. And it was he or Mr. Phillips, or both, who spoke the last loving words over their coffins. As the little band passed on to the unseen country, a new joy awoke in the soul ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... together. And both of them often gain by the interchange. Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up. That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes a flower in the other. A flower, on the other hand, may dwindle down to a mere weed by the same change. Healthy growths may become poisonous by falling upon the wrong mental soil, and what seemed a night-shade in one mind unfold as a morning-glory in ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... proportions in all times, that, while a Class is represented by few types, those types are wonderfully rich and varied, but in proportion as other expressions of the same structure are introduced, the first dwindle, and, if they do not entirely disappear, become at least much ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... their growth are creatures of the warmth; the heat is the motive power that makes them go; when this fails, they are still. The katydids rasp away in the fall as long as there is warmth enough to keep them going; as the heat fails, they fail, till from the emphatic "Katy did it" of August they dwindle to a hoarse, dying, "Kate, Kate," in October. Think of the stillness that falls upon the myriad wood-borers in the dry trees and stumps in the forest as the chill of autumn comes on. All summer have they worked incessantly in oak and hickory and birch and chestnut and spruce, some of ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... of life slips by, Frozen Winter comes apace; Strength is 'minished silently, Care writes wrinkles on our face: Blood dries up and courage fails us, Pleasures dwindle, joys decrease, Till old age at length assails us With his troop of illnesses. Like a dream our prime is flown, Prisoned in a study; Sport and folly are youth's own, ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... chimney tops in the old hilly town immediately at hand; the beautiful St. Lawrence sparkling and flashing in the sunlight; and the tiny ships below the rock from which you gaze, whose distant rigging looks like spiders' webs against the light, while casks and barrels on their decks dwindle into toys, and busy mariners become so many puppets; all this, framed by a sunken window in the fortress and looked at from the shadowed room within, forms one of the brightest and most enchanting pictures that ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... persistence in getting ready for the fulfilment of his hopes, he ordered tanks and printer for the final work of getting his stuff ready for the market. He had at best a crudely primitive outfit, though he saw his bank balance dwindle and dwindle to a most despairingly small sum. And still it did not snow nor show any ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... one. But I see what you mean. There might be a sense of peace, but the minds and bodies which had been vibrating with the stir of power would feel that the soul had gone out of things, and they would dwindle too." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to think about it," said Thorndyke. "I never reject a case off-hand unless it is obviously fishy. It is surprising how difficulties, and even impossibilities, dwindle if you look at them attentively. My experience has taught me that the most unlikely case is, at ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... dwindle and the shadows to encroach with a dominion of somberness over the room. It seemed to the figure in the bed as he struggled against rising tides of torpor and exhaustion that his own resolution was waning with the firelight and that ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... the question of physical courage is very complicated in the present case. It cannot be said, for instance, that you ran away from physical fear, after giving proof of such astonishing physical superiority. Your deeds this evening make the labours of Hercules dwindle to the proportions of ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... however, after the preliminary twists and turns of indecision, turned due north. For nearly a week Sam thought this must be a ruse, or a cast by which to gain some route known to Jingoss. But the forests began to dwindle; the muskegs to open. The Land of Little Sticks could not be far distant, and beyond them was the Barren Grounds. The old woodsman knew the defaulter for a reckless and determined man. Gradually the belief, and at last the conviction, forced itself on him that here he gamed with no cautious ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... morning, as wet and sad as any other, when Stewart and Fanny, seated in the back of an ambulance, their feet overhanging the edge, watched the black hut dwindle upon the road, and wondered how any one had lived there ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... County. Traps, guns, poison, and Hounds had reduced their number nearly to zero, and the few survivors had learned the bitter need of caution at every step. But the destructive ingenuity of man knew no bounds, and their numbers continued to dwindle. ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... possible—that the lungs, especially those of young persons, can expand and come to their full and natural size under pressure, even though the pressure should be slight? Must they not be weakened? And if the pressure be strong, as it sometimes is, must they not dwindle away? ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... not exactly an illness. But he seemed to dwindle and pine, somehow, and Cyril and I got dreadfully anxious about him. I don't think Richmond suited him, and I could not give him the comforts he needed; and he fretted so about his want of education. He seemed to ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... consider the Number of our Universities, Colleges, and Academies, religious Monasteries and pious Seminaries, resorted to from all civilized Parts of Europe, our Metropolitical and Diocesan Cathedrals; on such impartial Review, surely, the foregoing Tribe of Sneerers and Flouters must dwindle ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... at Baalbec is the foundation platform upon which the temples stand. Even the colossal fabrics of Ancient Egypt dwindle before this superhuman masonry. The platform itself, 1,000 feet long, and averaging twenty feet in height, suggests a vast mass of stones, but when you come to examine the single blocks of which it is composed, you are crushed with their incredible bulk. On the western side ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... solid foundation of devilgrass. It sprawled kittenishly, its deceptive softness faintly suggesting fur; at once playful and destructive. My optimism of the night before was dashed; this voracious growth wasnt going to dwindle away of itself. It would have to be killed, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... long time before he would dare smoke a cigar again, and his supply of cigarettes was destined to dwindle down to nothing before that day. But he did not ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... I'd take money from—" began Nancy, in bridling wrath; but at the expression on the other's face she stopped, and let her words dwindle off in a mumbling protest, as she hurried from the room to look after her creamed ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... acts. Thus it becomes the ultimate gate of heaven. And, alas! what a dismal crowd of sufferers, refusing all shorter and happier ways, wait to be drawn through this torturing passage of remedial mercy! May the number entering by the other gates ever increase, and those entering this dwindle! And yet, may it forever stand open for the unhappy culprits who must be lost unless ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... him to the basest of deaths. The devastating growth of medical, and especially surgical, science—that, if you like, for us all, is "the question of the hour!" And what a question! of what surpassing importance, in the presence of which all other "questions" whatever dwindle into mere academic triviality. For just as the ancient State was wounded to the heart through the death of her healthy sons in the field, just so slowly, just so silently, is the modern receiving deadly hurt by the botching and ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... these foods, used as we must use them, in very small quantities, is in the warmth and comfort they give. Also, these weights (except the bread) are of uncooked food. Eight ounces of meat would, if boiled or roasted, dwindle to five or six, while the ten ounces of lentils or beans would swell to twice the capacity of any ordinary stomach. So, ten pounds of potatoes are required to give you the actual benefit contained in the few ounces of meat; and only the Irishman fresh from his native cabin can calmly ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... citizens of the exporting states were disposed to rejoice doubly at being saved from loss by the depreciation of property on their hands [43] and at seeing the negro element in their population begin to dwindle;[44] but even these considerations were in some degree offset, in Virginia at least, by thoughts that the shrinkage of the blacks was not enough to lessen materially the problem of racial adjustments, that it was prime young ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... gave a short laugh pregnant with scorn. "Abe Rose, dew yew know what ails yew?" he demanded fixing his eyes fiercely upon the invalid. "Dew yew know what'll happen tew yew ef yew don't git out o' this bed an' this here house? Either yer beard'll fall out an' yew'll dwindle deown ter the size o' a baby or yew'll turn into a downright old woman—Aunt Abraham!—won't that sound nice? Or yew'll die or yew'll go crazy. ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... them in the darkness, at the mystical ceremony, Loosely robed in flying raiment, sang the terrible prophetesses. "Fear not, isle of blowing woodland, isle of silvery parapets! Tho' the Roman eagle shadow thee, tho' the gathering enemy narrow thee, Thou shalt wax and he shall dwindle, thou shalt be the mighty one yet! Thine the liberty, thine the glory, thine the deeds to be celebrated, Thine the myriad-rolling ocean, light and shadow illimitable, Thine the lands of lasting summer, many-blossoming ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... every flexure, like the branches of a chandelier, running more than a foot in length, and not thicker than the finger, are among the varied frost-work of these grottoes; common stalactites of carbonate of lime, although beautiful objects, lose by contrast with these ornaments, and dwindle into mere clumsy, awkward icicles. Besides these, there are tufts of 'hair salt,' native sulphate of magnesia, depending like adhering snowballs from the roof, and periodically detaching themselves by their own increasing weight. Indeed, the more solid alabaster ornaments become ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... adds naively that he was just on the point of winning a reputation and a competence "when this execrable project was set on foot for my ruin as well as that of my country." Men who saw their incomes dwindle were easily disposed to think that the cessation of business was an admission of the legitimacy of the law, a kind of betrayal of the cause. And it was to counteract the influence of lukewarm conservatives, men who were content to "turn and shift, to luff up, and ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... and night, since Wednesday, soldiers in new grey uniforms pass through the Brandenburger Thor down the broad road to Charlottenburg. Their tramp never stops. I can see them from my window tramping, tramping away down the great straight road; and crowds that don't seem to change or dwindle watch them and shout. Where do the soldiers all come from? I never dreamed there could be so many in the world, let alone in Berlin; and Germany isn't even at war! But it's no use asking questions, or trying to talk about it. I've found the word "Why?" in this house is not only useless but ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... pay to live on, and my pretty little wife to keep, I sold out, thinking that before the money was exhausted, I should be sure to drop into something. I took my darling to Italy, and we lived there in splendid style as long as my two thousand pounds lasted; but when that began to dwindle down to a couple of hundred or so, we came back to England, and as my darling had a fancy for being near that tiresome old father of hers, we settled at the watering-place where he lived. Well, as soon as the old man heard that I ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... world would sink into decrepitude. It is the monastic idea carried into the wide field of active life, and is like the error of those who, in their zeal to cultivate their higher nature, suffer the neglected body to dwindle and pine, till body and mind alike lapse into feebleness ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... mother joy! Who can deny that I am fortunate? Who will doubt that I shall remain happy? Fortune would have a hard time if she undertook to shatter my happiness. Take this or that one from my treasured children; but when would the number of them dwindle to the sickly two of Latona? Away with your sacrifices! Take the laurel out of your hair. Go back to your homes and let me never see such ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... The immolations of an Indian Juggernauth dwindle into insignificance before it! We again repeat, nothing but slavery is worthy to be compared for its horrors with this monstrous system of iniquity. As we write, we are amazed at the enormity of its unprincipledness, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... in the hives after August, it is a bad omen, as they are then reserved for the sake of the young queens, which they are expecting to raise; and the season being too far advanced, and their failing in the attempt, and being without a queen, the colony will most certainly dwindle away, before the ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn
... wisdom of their teacher was truly marvellous. We read and spelled together, wrote a little, picked flowers, sang, and listened to stories of the world beyond the hill. At times the school would dwindle away, and I would start out. I would visit Mun Eddings, who lived in two very dirty rooms, and ask why little Lugene, whose flaming face seemed ever ablaze with the dark-red hair uncombed, was absent all last week, or why I missed so often the inimitable rags of Mack and Ed. Then the ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... wander'd near Heard lamentings by the shore, Saw at dawn three stains of gore In the waters fade and dwindle. Never more with song and spindle Saw we Maids of Elfin-Mere, The Pastor's Son did pine and die; Because true love should never lie. Years ago, and years ago; And the tall reeds sigh as the wind ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... the handle for fast trotters, and drive so much and ride so little, it ain't easy to get the right saddle beast in our State. The Cape Breton pony is of the same breed, though poor feed, exposure to the weather, and rough usage has caused him to dwindle in size; but they are the toughest, hardiest, strongest, and most serviceable of their inches, I ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... recruits who took its place were mostly undisciplined and unreliable. When the exigencies became pressing, a new method was resorted to, and then the usual erosion of life in the field, the losses by casualties and sickness, caused the numbers to dwindle. Long ago the paymaster had ceased to pretend to pay off the men regularly so that there was now a large amount of back pay due them. Largely through Washington's patriotic exhortations had they kept fighting to the ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... apathy and inertness of men born with the indomitable energy which characterises Europeans and Americans, of men imbued with the progressive and stirring instincts of the white people, who yet allow themselves to dwindle into pallid phantoms of their kind, into hypochondriacal invalids, into hopeless believers in the deadliness of the climate, with hardly a trace of that daring and invincible spirit ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... drain him dry as hay; Sleep shall neither night nor day Hang upon his pent-house lid; He shall live a man forbid: Weary se'nnights, nine times nine, Shall he dwindle, peak, ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... out her hand, which suddenly seemed to dwindle in size as it was clasped by the huge palm ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... it is so easy to carry a point with a little bounce; self-assertion is a mask which covers many a weakness.... [Page 283] Here the outward show is nothing, it is the inward purpose that counts. So the "gods" dwindle and the humble ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... Poole, vast beds of grit? What was the climate on its banks when it washed down the delicate leaves of broad-leaved trees, akin to our modern English ones, which are found in the fine mud-sand strata of Bournemouth? When, finally, did it dwindle down to the brook which now runs through Wareham town? Was its bed, sea or dry land, or under an ice sheet, during the long ages of the glacial epoch? And if you say—Who is sufficient for these things?—Who can answer these questions? I answer—Who but you, or ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... labour. The possibilities that have existed, and that do still in a dwindling degree exist, for resolute statesmen to make English the common language of communication for all Asia south and east of the Himalayas, will have to develop of their own force or dwindle and pass away. They may quite probably pass away. There is no sign that either the English or the Americans have a sufficient sense of the importance of linguistic predominance in the future of their race to ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... fighting its way toward the source of heat. In an improperly constructed or improperly run brooder the chicks go through a varying process of chilling, sweating and struggling when they should be sleeping, and the result is puny chicks that dwindle and die. ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... be more or less thrown do not want her ladyship. On Brown's promotion she did not become part of the bargain. Brown must henceforth have two existences—a public and a private existence; and it will be well for Lady Brown, and well also for Sir Jacob, if the latter be not allowed to dwindle down to a minimum. ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... doomed bodies! Tremble, ye cruel, God hates ye! Men speak of a murder—and sometimes, by way of distinction, they say 'a cruel murder.' See, now, what a crime cruelty must be, since it can aggravate murder, the crime before which all other sins dwindle ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... territory from one state to another, when it is persuaded that adequate grounds exist for such a transference. Friends of peace will make a mistake if they unduly glorify the status quo. Some nations grow, while others dwindle; the population of an area may change its character by emigration and immigration. There is no good reason why states should resent changes in their boundaries under such conditions, and if no international authority has power to make ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... if for no better reason. If in Australia we were to exclude as 'outsiders' all the leading colonists who are in the habit of intoxicating themselves—to say nothing of the chance customers—'society' would dwindle down to nearly two-thirds its present size. But there has been a very appreciable improvement in this respect during the last half-dozen years, and the tone of public feeling on the subject is gradually approximating to that of English society. ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... had opportunity to see some of their comrades dropping with moans and shrieks. A few lay under foot, still or wailing. And now for an instant the men stood, their rifles slack in their hands, and watched the regiment dwindle. They appeared dazed and stupid. This spectacle seemed to paralyze them, overcome them with a fatal fascination. They stared woodenly at the sights, and, lowering their eyes, looked from face to face. It was a strange pause, and ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... early recognition is made possible by methods whose reliability is among the remarkable achievements of medicine. It is the sound opinion of conservative men that if the knowledge now in the hands of the medical profession could be put to wide-spread use, syphilis would dwindle in two generations from the unenviable position of the third great plague to the insignificance of malaria and yellow fever on the Isthmus of Panama. The influences that stand between humanity and this achievement are the lack of general public enlightenment ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... his terrible form could be discerned apparently moving with the torrent, but in reality remaining stationary. Now he would raise himself half out of the water, and ascend like a mist half as high as the near mountain, and then he would dwindle down to the size of a man. His laugh accorded with his savage visage, and his long hair stood on end, and ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... patience with all that," Freddy said. "He inherited a magnificent kingdom; he let it dwindle almost to ruin. If you could read some of the letters of Horemheb, the commander-in-chief of his army, begging him to send reinforcements to Syria, imploring him to realize the danger that menaced Asia, you would feel as impatient as I do with his mission work ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... years later, had already succeeded in great measure. The assimilation of government had been effected; an assimilation of manners would follow. The excessive military spirit of the inhabitants had begun to dwindle, as England's interest required. The back settlements of New York and Canada were fast being joined. Two or three thousand men of British stock, many of them men of substance, had gone to the new colony; warehouses and foundries were being built; and many of the principal ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... the sad sweetness of dreams in the hour of twilight, I have no desire for that peace which is the forerunner of death. The silence of infinite space terrifies me. Heap more fagots upon the fire! More! And yet more! Myself too, if needs must. I will not let the fire dwindle. If it dies down, there is an end of ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... expressible, we will say, by 20. Now, if they would always keep at that point, there might be some reason for your remaining unaltered, namely, your not being able to help it. But suppose that they dwindle down to 19-1/2, the person, that is, the whole sum of the qualities admired, no longer exists, and you, of course, are absolved from your engagement. But mind, I do not say that you are justified in changing only in case of a change on the opposite side: you may very possibly become simply ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... cannot in any case necessarily indicate their existence ... It is unnecessary to add that, in proportion as we remove from Apostolic times without positive evidence of the existence and authenticity of our Gospels, so does the value of their testimony dwindle away. Indeed, requiring, as we do, clear, direct and irrefragable evidence of the integrity, authenticity, and historical character of these Gospels, doubt or obscurity on these points must inevitably be fatal to them as sufficient testimony—if they could, under any circumstances, be considered ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... did all my pleasure was gone; I could not help thinking it was for what they got out of me that they liked me. I longed to penetrate the mystery of women's life. It seemed to me cruel that the differences between the sexes should never be allowed to dwindle, but should be strictly maintained through all the observances of life. There were beautiful beings walking by us of whom we knew nothing—irreparably separated from us. I wanted to be with this sex as a shadow is with ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... it? How small and insignificant he felt, and how utterly worthless! How he seemed to dwindle into nothing beside the great work that he was called to do! And yet how anxious he was to do it well! How he longed to be like his father David, a true shepherd to his people! How his heart yearned over his subjects; ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... recompens'd the Want of Flesh and other luxurious Meats, which shortened their Lives so many hundred Years; the [87][Greek: makro-biote-a] of the Patriarchs, which was an Emblem of Eternity as it were (after the new Concession) beginning to dwindle to a little ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... necessity exercise the most baleful influence upon any slave-holding people, and especially upon those members of the dominant caste who do not themselves own slaves. Moreover, the negro, unlike so many of the inferior races, does not dwindle away in the presence of the white man. He holds his own; indeed, under the conditions of American slavery he increased faster than the white, threatening to supplant him. He actually has supplanted him in certain of the West Indian islands, where the sin of the white ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... with adaptive modification has a delightfully simple answer to supply, viz., that when, from changed conditions of life, an organ which was previously useful becomes useless, natural selection, combined with disuse and so-called economy of growth, will cause it to dwindle till it becomes a rudiment. On the other hand, the theory of special creation can only maintain that these rudiments are formed for the sake of adhering to an ideal type. Now, here again the former ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... in amputations to control the flow of blood; and such also are employed in the castration of animals and the ablation of tumours. In the latter instances, all afflux of nutriment and heat being prevented by the ligature, we see the testes and large fleshy tumours dwindle, die, and finally ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... question on that subject," said Tom, "for how would the high ideas he entertained of the ingenuity of the age in which he had lived, dwindle into nothing! Nay, should he appear in the country first, what would he think of the various implements of husbandry, for ploughing, and preparing the land; the different machines for sowing the corn, for threshing, grinding, and dressing it; and in numerous instances (though perhaps ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... that twinkled to them were still just tinged with rose. Here and there a flake of gold seemed to have lit upon the clump of sombre green furze-bushes, by which neighbours in a small knot stood watching the three generations of Patmans dwindle away down the road with its narrow dewy grass-border, threading the vast sweep of sky-rimmed brown. Father and son walked, while little Katty bobbed along, balanced in a swaying donkey-pannier. The widow M'Gurk, who felt a good deal of concern about the destiny of her late lodgers, hoped "they were ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... that if as frank caution were uttered in regard to other memorable places, the objects of interest in Italy would dwindle sadly in number, and the valets de place, whether they know how to read and write or not, would be starved to death. Even the learning of Italy is poetic; and an Italian would rather enjoy a fiction than know a fact—in which preference I am ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... tell you that thrift of time will repay you in after life with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual and moral stature ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the bull-roarer is associated with mysteries and initiations. Now mysteries and initiations are things that tend to dwindle and to lose their characteristic features as civilisation advances. The rites of baptism and confirmation are not secret and hidden; they are common to both sexes, they are publicly performed, and religion and morality of the purest ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... frozen snow, while everything else near it is granite. By insulating this mountain, and studying it by itself, one feels its mild sublimity; but still, as a whole, I give the preference greatly to the other view. From this point the lake is too distant, the shores of Savoy dwindle in the presence of their mightier neighbour, and the mysterious-looking Valais, which in its peculiar beauty has scarcely a rival on earth, is entirely hid from sight. Then the lights and shades are nearly ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... immorality," I sighed, "is well-nigh over. Already the augurs of the pen begin to wink as they fable of a race of men who are evilly scintillant in talk and gracefully erotic. We know that this, alas, cannot be, and that in real life our peccadilloes dwindle into dreary vistas of divorce cases and the police-court, and that crime has lost its splendour. We sin very carelessly—sordidly, at times,—and artistic wickedness is rare. It is a pity; life was once a scarlet volume scattered with misty-coated demons; it is now a yellow ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... to one and from this by further burning distilled the single ejaculation of the Faith "There is no god but God and Mohammed is the Prophet of God," which was all his maturer wisdom deemed essential:—so in the books of that period do we find the corpus of genetic knowledge dwindle to a few prerogative instances and these at last to the brief ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... has made so many musicians recede from us and dwindle, has brought Berlioz the closer to us and shown him great. The age in which he lived, the decades that followed his death, found him unsubstantial enough. They recognized in him only the projector of ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... sections it attained its highest development. It was soon found that a commission after the Massachusetts model, when composed of men less competent or less disposed to do their duty, was liable to dwindle into a statistical board or even become a pliant tool in the hands of the railroads. Furthermore, the conditions in Massachusetts, where railroad owners and railroad patrons lived side by side ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... they are unworthy to be ranked among the perennials. From seed, the plants are extremely robust. C. persicifolia grandiflora resents division, which frequently results in weakened growth and a tendency, especially in poor or badly drained soil, to dwindle away. The only satisfactory method of growing Campanulas is to raise plants annually from good strains of seed. If sown in gentle heat early in the year—February is the usual month—many of the varieties flower ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... found schools which are the only repositories of learning; but the time must inevitably come when this order is transformed into the deadliest enemy of the civilization which it has brought into being. The power of the spiritual oligarchy rests upon superstitious terrors which dwindle before advancing enlightenment; hence the clergy have become reactionary, have sought to stifle the spirit of free inquiry, and have used the schools which they have builded as instruments to keep alive unreasoning prejudice, or to serve their selfish ends. This, then, has been ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... contingency of fortune or misfortune and persuades daily and hourly his delicious pay. What baulks or breaks others is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy. Other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing to his proportions. All expected from heaven or from the highest he is rapport with in the sight of the daybreak or a scene of the winter woods or the presence of children playing or with his arm round the neck of a man or woman. His love ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... But why repine we that these puny elves Shoot into giants?—we may thank ourselves: Fools that we are, like Israel's fools of yore, The calf ourselves have fashion'd we adore. But let true Reason once resume her reign, This god shall dwindle to a calf again. Founded on arts which shun the face of day, By the same arts they still maintain their sway. Wrapp'd in mysterious secrecy they rise, 110 And, as they are unknown, are safe and wise. At whomsoever ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... wide by three hundred feet long, seating six thousand people, and having standing room for about half as many more. It was a bold venture, perhaps too bold for its time. When the novelty had worn off the profits began to dwindle and then ceased entirely. Amos F. Eno, a New Englander who had prospered exceedingly in New York, bought the property and planned to erect a hotel that was to surpass anything that the city had already ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... their guard when these deal with the three poets who "inaugurated in song the young liberties of Norway." The writings of the three celebrated lyric patriots, Schwach, Bjerregaard and Hansen, will not bear to have the blaze of European experience cast upon them; their tapers dwindle to sparks in the light of day. They gratified the vanity of the first generation after 1815, but they deserve no record in the chronicles of poetic art. If Ibsen ever read these rhymes of circumstance, it must have been to ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... he, adorable Delilah; and fear not, even though incited by the foe, by clipping my locks, to dwindle my strength. Give me your sword, man," turning to an officer:—"Ah! I'm fettered. Clip ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... met Matthew on the street, and been gratified with his deferential bow. His bulk, to which, as a rotund lady, she had taken an antipathy, seemed to dwindle down as it was looked at. Matthew, whose ideal was a delicate woman with observable shoulder blades, had also, by repeated sights of Mrs. Frump, become reconciled to her ample proportions. Meantime, they had heard much, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... back. Their shining green has changed to a less vivid hue; they are taking bluish tones here and there; but their outlines are still sharp, and along their high soft slopes there are white specklings, which are villages and towns. These white specks diminish swiftly,— dwindle to the dimensions of salt-grains,—finally vanish. Then the island grows uniformly bluish; it becomes cloudy, vague as a dream of mountains;—it turns at last gray as smoke, and then melts into the horizon-light ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... in New York without repaying the money she owed to Trenor; to acquit herself of that odious debt she might even have faced a marriage with Rosedale; but the accident of placing the Atlantic between herself and her obligations made them dwindle out of sight as if they had been milestones and she had ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... are flashes struck from midnights, there are fire-flames noon-days kindle, Whereby piled-up honors perish, whereby swollen ambitions dwindle, While just this or that poor impulse, which for once had play unstifled, Seems the sole work of a life-time that away the rest ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... of the scanner, Captain Steve Strong, the examining officer, watched the space-suited figure dwindle to a mere speck on the screen. As the regular skipper of the Polaris crew, he could not help secretly rooting for Tom, but he was determined to be fair, even to the extent of declaring the Arcturus unit the winner, should the decision be very close. ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... bubbs, towing massive loads, were accelerating slowest, with the ex-gridiron twins riding the rigging. But their rings would dwindle to star ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... retrogressive metamorphosis that minishing and ablation towards the final which is agreeable unto nature so is it with our subsolar being. The aged sisters draw us into life: we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die: over us dead they bend. First, saved from waters of old Nile, among bulrushes, a bed of fasciated wattles: at last the cavity of a mountain, an occulted sepulchre amid the conclamation of the hillcat and the ossifrage. And as no man knows the ubicity of his tumulus nor to what processes ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... my tall, tall ship, To a boat did dwindle suddenly; Its mast was gone, it helm had none, Full soon it ...
— Marsk Stig - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... if you will have it, is that this matter should be shrewdly pressed, and an end made of it as soon as may be. Our people dwindle daily; they who were well a se'nnight since are ill to-day, and may be dead to-morrow. Our provision waxeth short and poor, and be it once spent our good friend Jones will give us none of his we may be sure. ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... history textbooks in those passages and pages which they devoted to our Revolution. These books he grouped according to the amount of information they gave about Pitt and Burke and English sympathy with us in our quarrel with George III. These groups are five in number, and dwindle down from group one, "Textbooks which deal fully with the grievances of the colonists, give an account of general political conditions in England prior to the American Revolution, and give credit to prominent Englishmen for the services they rendered the Americans," to group five, "Textbooks ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... be said to have ended with the surrender of the army under Lord Cornwallis, at Yorktown, on October 19, 1781, and little attempt at recruiting was made subsequently; consequently the regiments continued to dwindle until, at the evacuation of New-York, two years later, they were not more than one-third of their original strength. The New Jersey Volunteers, a year after their arrival in New-Brunswick, were mustered by Thomas Knox, under the supervision of Col. Edward Winslow. The return is dated at ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... intellect, which he knows can bring no profit to the heart: "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant." He will undoubtedly—let this be frankly acknowledged—grow in a certain kind of knowledge, and as certainly he will dwindle in the higher knowledge that comes through love. The poem is neither enigmatical nor cynical, but in entire accord with Browning's own deepest convictions ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... prose, he is utterly at a loss alike for thought and expression. He neither knows what to communicate, nor is he master of the language in which it is to be conveyed. Hence his recorded travels dwindle away into a mere scrap-book of classical quotations—a transcript of immaterial Latin inscriptions, destitute of either energy, information, or eloquence. Does he come from Cambridge? He could solve cubic equations as well as Cardan, is a more perfect ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... 4:13 13 Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief. ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... and now I think on't, a little taller wou'd do well for Propagation; I should be both the Posterity of the antient Family of the Blunts of Essex should dwindle into Pigmies ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... the broad glassy pools that seemed to lie right and left. Once the faint track I was following headed straight towards one of these apparent sheets of water, and I was even meditating a bathe, but, lo! when I was a hundred yards or so off, it began to dwindle and disappear, and I found nothing but the same endless stretch of grass, burnt up ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... evening, and after dinner, wishing to efface the impression of the afternoon, and above all to show that I wanted him to talk about himself, I reverted to his work. "You must need an outlet of that sort. When a man's once had it in him, as you have—and when other things begin to dwindle—" ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... with the rest, I saw the commerce dwindle, High-bosomed, sturdy vessels take the main And leave us, with the morning in their faces, Never to come to any port again. Slowly an ominous and pregnant silence Grew deep upon the ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... Confederation be united in one body? Or were there such discordant elements, that they who held to the Apostolic Faith and Order would be thrust out? Was there vitality enough in the Church in Connecticut to live and grow? Or, when they who composed it then were gone, would it dwindle and die out? No man could have answered those questions then; God has answered them since. And as we run back along the story of the years that have written out the answer which we read this day, we come at last to that day, so truly memorable, ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... mistake fallen into by Hodgkinson as to the identity of Landsborough's Herbert and his own Mulligan. It will be remembered that in the central districts, the watersheds are so low and the size of the rivers so uncertain, that to find a watercourse dwindle away into nothing in one mile, and expand into a river the next is not at all surprising, so that to leave the head of a river and come on to another running in the same direction, it would appear quite feasible that it was the ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... 23 And because of their iniquity the church had begun to dwindle; and they began to disbelieve in the spirit of prophecy and in the spirit of revelation; and the judgments of God did stare ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... of it, fare like my peers The heroes of old, Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness and cold. For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end, And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... especially surgical, science—that, if you like, for us all, is "the question of the hour!" And what a question! of what surpassing importance, in the presence of which all other "questions" whatever dwindle into mere academic triviality. For just as the ancient State was wounded to the heart through the death of her healthy sons in the field, just so slowly, just so silently, is the modern receiving deadly ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... marks its place. The modern nuns are in the garden nearly the whole morning long, and by night the ghosts of the former nuns haunt it; and in very bright moonlight I myself do a bit of Madame de la Peltrie there, and teach little Indian boys, who dwindle like those in the song, as the moon goes down. It is an enchanted place, and I wish we had it in the back yard at Eriecreek, though I don't think the neighbors would approve of the architecture. I have adopted two nuns for my own: one is tall ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... little embarrassing one. How will she look, etc., etc., etc., are the important subjects of my present conjectures—how different from what they were three weeks ago! I give you leave to laugh when I tell you seriously, I had begun to "dwindle, peak, and pine," upon the subject—but now, after the charge I have received, it were a shame to resemble Pharaoh's lean kine. If good living and plenty of exercise can avert that calamity, I am in little danger of disobedience, and so, to ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... the importance and interest of the subject for pointing it out—is curiously formed. His head is unusually large, and his broad shoulders and deep chest admirably match his quite noble head; but below the waist he appears to dwindle away, his legs seeming to bend under the weight of his body, so that he waddles rather than walks, moving with a rolling gait which is rather like a seaman's. He is, indeed, a giant mounted on ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... little and grew more indistinct, the sound of the traffic began to dwindle away, voices seemed farther off, ceased altogether, and all was quiet once more where the mirage shimmered and faded, and a bull rhinoceros coming down through the stillness snorted, and watered at the ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... Oh Mamatee, once more! I had a dream, and heard the gusty breeze Hurtle from out a sea of hissing pines, Then dwindle into voices, faint and sweet, Which cried—we come! It was my love and yours! They spoke to me—I know that they are near, And waft their love to us ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... and other luxurious Meats, which shortened their Lives so many hundred Years; the [87][Greek: makro-biote-a] of the Patriarchs, which was an Emblem of Eternity as it were (after the new Concession) beginning to dwindle to a little ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... the Earth swept out all round them and grew larger, and larger still, and then began to dwindle. They saw then that they were launched upon some astounding journey. Does my reader wonder they saw when they had no eyes? They saw as they had never seen before, with sight beyond what they had ever thought to be possible. Our eyes gather ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... which do not agree with our Gospels cannot in any case necessarily indicate their existence ... It is unnecessary to add that, in proportion as we remove from Apostolic times without positive evidence of the existence and authenticity of our Gospels, so does the value of their testimony dwindle away. Indeed, requiring, as we do, clear, direct and irrefragable evidence of the integrity, authenticity, and historical character of these Gospels, doubt or obscurity on these points must inevitably be fatal to them as sufficient testimony—if they could, under any circumstances, ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... a long time before he would dare smoke a cigar again, and his supply of cigarettes was destined to dwindle down to nothing before that day. But he ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... we see the whole Highlands. Our Highland Mountains are of the best possible magnitude—ranging between two and four thousand feet high—and then in what multitudes! The more familiar you become with them, the mightier they appear—and you feel that it is all sheer folly to seek to dwindle or dwarf them, by comparing them as they rise before your eyes with your imagination of Mont Blanc and those eternal glaciers. If you can bring them under your command, you are indeed a sovereign—and have a noble set of subjects. In some weather they are of any height you choose to put ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... deep sea creatures, on the contrary, the eyes gradually become more and more developed, so that while in some species the eyes gradually dwindle, in others they become ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... dumfoundered. He had pictured to himself a different scene—a more immediate protest, and his hope began to dwindle on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... massive loads, were accelerating slowest, with the ex-gridiron twins riding the rigging. But their rings would dwindle to star specks ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... changed to a less vivid hue; they are taking bluish tones here and there; but their outlines are still sharp, and along their high soft slopes there are white specklings, which are villages and towns. These white specks diminish swiftly,— dwindle to the dimensions of salt-grains,—finally vanish. Then the island grows uniformly bluish; it becomes cloudy, vague as a dream of mountains;—it turns at last gray as smoke, and then melts into the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... within the hemicycle of hills. The heights of Mount Tifata began to fall away on the left, the rough, precipitous line of crags, sweeping around toward the east, seemed to dwindle into the distance, even as they drew nearer, while the low jumble of Neapolitan hills, beyond which towered Vesuvius with its fluttering pennon of vapour, rose higher and higher upon the southern horizon. A turn of ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... Lincoln and an acquaintance of his named William F. Berry, on credit, taking their promissory notes in payment. Lincoln and Berry could not foresee that the town of New Salem had already lived through its best days, and was destined to dwindle and grow smaller until it almost disappeared from the face of the earth. Unduly hopeful, they accepted the offer, and also bought out, on credit, two other merchants who were anxious to sell. It is clear that the flattering ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... of people. There is nothing more miserable than to see a man, as his years go by, gripping harder and tighter at this poor, fleeting world that is slipping away from him; nothing sadder than to see how, as opportunities and capacities for the enjoyment of life dwindle, and dwindle, and dwindle, people become almost fierce in the desire to keep it. Why, you can see on the face of many an old man and woman a hungry discontent, that has not come from the mere wrinkles of old ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... who helped Mrs. Bal out of the blue car (also big, in proportion to the size of the owner and his fortune) was Morgan P. Bennett of New York, the Tin Trust millionaire. Somerled's puny horde of millions dwindle into humble insignificance beside Morgan Bennett's pile. If Somerled has made two millions out of his mines and successful speculations, and a few extra thousands out of his pictures, M. P. Bennett has made ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the long rays that twinkled to them were still just tinged with rose. Here and there a flake of gold seemed to have lit upon the clump of sombre green furze-bushes, by which neighbours in a small knot stood watching the three generations of Patmans dwindle away down the road with its narrow dewy grass-border, threading the vast sweep of sky-rimmed brown. Father and son walked, while little Katty bobbed along, balanced in a swaying donkey-pannier. The widow M'Gurk, who felt a good deal of concern about the destiny of her late lodgers, ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... Crimsoned with the conflagration, and the roofs went thundering down! Oh, the prayers, the prayers and curses, that together winged their flight From the maddened hearts of many, through that long and woful night!— Till the fires began to dwindle, and the shots grew faint and few, And we heard the foeman's challenge only in a far halloo: Till the silence once more settled o'er the gorges of the glen, Broken only by the Cona plunging through its naked den. Slowly from the mountain summit was the drifting veil withdrawn, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... witnessed the act, and he was cocksure that no higher power existed to see, it; but for all that it worried him. Memories are not dead things but alive; they dwindle in disuse, but they harden and develop in all sorts of queer ways if they are being continually fretted. Curiously enough, though at the time he perceived clearly that the shifting was accidental, as the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... he had taken up his abode in the Rue de Courcelles, situated in one of the most aristocratic quarters of Paris. But so far, events had shown his theory to be incorrect. In spite of the greatest economy, very cleverly concealed, he had seen the little capital which constituted his entire fortune dwindle away. He had originally possessed but twenty thousand francs, a sum which in no wise corresponded with his lofty pretensions. He had paid his rent that very morning; and he could not close his eyes to the fact that the time was near at hand when he would be unable to pay it. What should ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... cruelty, and lust, and seldom illumined by the mild radiance of wisdom and virtue. And when they turn their eyes from man himself to the place he occupies in the universe, how are they overwhelmed by a sense of his littleness and insignificance! They see the earth which he inhabits dwindle to a speck in the unimaginable infinities of space, and the brief span of his existence shrink into a moment in the inconceivable infinities of time. And they ask, Shall a creature so puny and frail claim ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... allowed Wanhope to resume with a laugh, and say that Alford waited at the station in the singleness to which the tactful dispersion of the others had left him, and watched the train rapidly dwindle in the perspective, till an abrupt turn of the road carried it out of sight. Then he lifted his eyes with a long sigh, and looked round. Everywhere he saw Mrs. Yarrow's smiling face with that inner ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... before them, and had better be about it without any more delay, since there could be no telling at what time the absent men might show up. Once they returned to the camp, of course, the chances of the scouts accomplishing much began to dwindle enormously. ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... deceitful, bright and golden, round thee, Isolda, shines. Accursed day with cruel glow! Must thou ever wake my woe? Must thy light be burning ever, e'en by night our hearts to sever? Ah, my fairest, sweetest, rarest! When wilt thou— when, ah, when— let the torchlight dwindle, that so my bliss may kindle? The light, how long it glows! ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner
... good Lord of Douglas," answered the Prince; "I did but smile to think how your princely retinue would dwindle if every thief were dealt with as the poor Highlanders ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... terrible. The Russians availed themselves of every opportunity to harass the retreating force. When it reached the ruins of Smolensk, only forty thousand were left of more than a hundred thousand that had left Moscow. The army continued to dwindle. At Smorgoni, Napoleon left Murat in command, and hastened in disguise to Paris. The expedition cost the lives of not less than three hundred thousand men. This gigantic failure was due to the foiling by the Russians of Napoleon's habitual ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... assurance of timid and sensitive persons, it may be stated that extension work is optional, and may be carried to any desired stage of completion. The many enter upon the work because it is popular and interesting; and as soon as it assumes the character of study, the class will often dwindle down to a small portion of the audience. The requirements for an examination will weed this remainder until there is found but a handful that will submit to the test. These workers are usually mature, and often prove themselves to be thorough and proficient students. The examination ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... them, and, in a measure, as it grew so did Darnley's kingship, hardly established as yet—for the Queen had still to redeem her pre-nuptial promise to confer upon him the crown matrimonial—begin to dwindle. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... under earth again like fire the violet kindle, [Str. 1. Ere the holy buds and hoar on olive-branches bloom, Ere the crescent of the last pale month of winter dwindle, Shrink, and fall as falls a dead leaf on the dead month's tomb, Round the hills whose heights the first-born olive-blossom brightened, Round the city brow-bound once with violets like a bride, Up from under earth again ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the first quarter of the year began to dwindle, and in those days I thought often with regret of my lost ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... with the new outburst of patriotic feeling. Matthew Paris is the greatest, as he in reality is the last, of our monastic historians. The school of St. Alban's survived indeed till a far later time, but its writers dwindle into mere annalists whose view is bounded by the abbey precincts and whose work is as colourless as it is jejune. In Matthew the breadth and precision of the narrative, the copiousness of his information on topics whether national or ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... down, feeling vaguely that his perceptions were not quite as keen and accurate as usual. He felt a trifle dazed perhaps, and the spell of the past came strongly over him, confusing the immediate present and making everything dwindle oddly to the dimensions of long ago. He seemed to pass under the mastery of a great mood that was a composite reproduction of all the moods ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... every nature; to collect the knowledge of every thing; to collect power towards removing whatever is pernicious. The knowledge of three things will subdue and destroy evil: knowledge of its cause, its nature, and its operation. Three things continually dwindle away: the Dark, the False, the Dead. Three things continually increase: ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... hair all over with his pocket handkerchief for a minute or two, felt the respective pulses, wrote out prescriptions for unguents and syrups; ordered baths, blisters, clysters, and cold douches—and all to no purpose, as both patients seemed to dwindle away more and more day by day. The only really doubtful point seemed to be, which of the ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... as she read of the extravagances of the world and saw her own vanishing revenues; but the funds continued to dwindle until Sarah Smith asked herself: "What will become of this school when I die?" With trembling fingers she had sat down to figure how many teachers must be dropped next year, when her brother's letter came, and she slipped ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... that the WISE from their bright minds would kindle Such lamps within the dome of this wide world, That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle Into the HELL from ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... glowering abroad from a shop door festooned in boots, his leather apron in front, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, as befitted an important man, saw young Gourlay pass the Cross with his bag in his hand, and dwindle up the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... hand, it is not impossible that, left to the unimpeded action of the natural laws that govern the existence of various races, the black population, no longer directly preserved and propagated for the purposes of slavery, might gradually decrease and dwindle, as it does at the North—where, besides the unfavourable influence of a cold climate on a race originally African, it suffers from its admixture with the whites, and the amalgamation of the two races, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... and part; no further can we go; And better death than we from high to low Should dwindle, or ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... days after the capture of Malolos, General Otis issued a proclamation to the Filipinos, in the hope that by drawing off public sympathy from the insurgent cause it would dwindle away. The terms of this ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... surrounded by the prodigious pictures and statues, and lost in the vast spaces, they look very much smaller than they would if they stood two blocks away in the open air. I "averaged" a man as he passed me and watched him as he drifted far down by the baldacchino and beyond—watched him dwindle to an insignificant school-boy, and then, in the midst of the silent throng of human pigmies gliding about him, I lost him. The church had lately been decorated, on the occasion of a great ceremony in honor of St. Peter, and men were engaged, now, in removing the flowers and gilt paper ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... possible contingency of fortune or misfortune and persuades daily and hourly his delicious pay. What baulks or breaks others is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy. Other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing to his proportions. All expected from heaven or from the highest he is rapport with in the sight of the daybreak or a scene of the winter woods or the presence of children playing or with his arm round the ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... moved forward.... Dazedly Every watched the two pass at a walk into the gloomy corridor and dwindle slowly to a mere blur of blue and grey under the shadow of the towering walls. At last distance and dusk swallowed them, and he could see ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... height, to tower unhumanly tall above the cringing wretch he confronted. His eyes narrowed into red points that bored into the other's eyes, and plunged like daggers into his heart and mind. Before that glance, like a vivisectionist's knife, Jake wilted; he seemed to shrink, dwindle, collapse. And with a growing, cold, awful horror, a suspicion so hideous that his mind revolted from it, Peter Champneys stood staring from one black face ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... adorable Delilah; and fear not, even though incited by the foe, by clipping my locks, to dwindle my strength. Give me your sword, man," turning to an officer:—"Ah! I'm ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... whom he had played many a game of chess. Best, said the architect, take off one good-sized shop, rather than halve the premises. James would be left a little cramped, a little tight, with only one-third of his present space. But as we age we dwindle. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... to follow. She discovered that her husband was a hopeless gambler and spendthrift, spending long hours daily at the card-tables, watching with pale face and trembling lips his pile of gold dwindle (as it usually did) to its last coin; and often losing at a single sitting a month's revenue from the Civil List. Her own dowry of five million roubles, she knew, was safe from his clutches. Her father had taken care to make that secure, but Milan's ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... recognise something in the Temple-children question which touches a wider issue than the personal or missionary. Those who have read Queen Victoria's Letters must have become conscious of a certain enlargement. Questions become great or dwindle into nothingness according as they affect the honour and the good of the Empire. We find ourselves instinctively "thinking Imperially," regarding things from the Throne side—from above instead ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... tea-table, which you must never presume to approach without first asking leave. And lastly, wherever I am, you shall always knock at the door before you come in. These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... to devolve. This, if it takes a regular hereditary course: but,—if the succession be interrupted, and the supreme power frequently usurped or given by election,—worse evils follow. Science and Art must dwindle, whether the power be hereditary or not: and the virtues of a Trajan or an Antonine are a hollow support for the feeling of contentment and happiness in the hearts of their subjects: such virtues are even a painful mockery;—something that is, and may vanish in a moment, and leave the monstrous ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... 1714 schools for more than a rudimentary education were forbidden to be taught by Dissenters. Thus, we are not surprised to hear, considerable defection went on, and early in the century congregations began to dwindle. As it proceeded some became very small indeed, ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... several men were standing behind the pilot-house with stop-watches in their hands. The little craft seemed alive under their feet and quivered with eagerness to be off. The passenger boats going in the same direction were passed in a twinkling, and the tugs and sailing vessels seemed to dwindle as houses and trees seem to shrink when viewed from the rear platform of a ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... stream his terrible form could be discerned apparently moving with the torrent, but in reality remaining stationary. Now he would raise himself half out of the water, and ascend like a mist half as high as the near mountain, and then he would dwindle down to the size of a man. His laugh accorded with his savage visage, and his long hair stood on end, and a mist always ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... of failure and impediment, an interest and consideration to which, in its full usefulness and vigour, it had not presumed to aspire. Therefore Dominic Iglesias held calmly on his way, seeing the circle of his occupations, pleasures, and activities dwindle and decrease, yet maintaining not only his serenity of mind, but his accustomed self-respecting outward refinement of bearing and habit. To meet death with a gracious stoicism, well-dressed and standing upright, is, rightly considered, a very fine art, reflecting ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... founded on respect, Lady, lady, Can never dwindle to neglect, My sweet lady; And, while thy gentle virtues live, Such is the love that I will give. The torrent leaves its channel dry, The brook runs on incessantly; The storm of passion lasts a day, But deep, true love endures alway, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... terrible to me, is at all times particular distasteful. My house-deaths have generally been periodical, recurring after seven years, but this last is premature by half that time. Cut off in the flower of Colebrook. The Middletonian stream and all its echoes mourn. Even minnows dwindle. A parvis fiunt MINIMI. I fear to invite Mrs. Hood to our new mansion, lest she envy it and rote us. But when we are fairly in, I hope she will come and try it. I heard she and you were made uncomfortable by some unworthy to be cared for attacks, and have tried ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... carry out his dishonest purpose, and not likely to shrink from violence, to which he was probably only too well accustomed. From the old man he was not likely to obtain assistance, for already Paul's courage had begun to dwindle, and he regarded his nephew ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... advantage of all supplies from the Bay of Fundy and westward. What the consequence will be time only will reveal.' Many persons at Halifax, wrote Pynchon, prophesied that the new settlement would dwindle, and recommended the shore of the Bay of Fundy or the banks of the river St John in preference to Port Roseway; but Pynchon attributed their fears to jealousy. A few years' experience must have convinced him that his suspicions ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... Already the augurs of the pen begin to wink as they fable of a race of men who are evilly scintillant in talk and gracefully erotic. We know that this, alas, cannot be, and that in real life our peccadilloes dwindle into dreary vistas of divorce cases and the police-court, and that crime has lost its splendour. We sin very carelessly—sordidly, at times,—and artistic wickedness is rare. It is a pity; life was once a scarlet volume scattered with misty-coated demons; it is now a yellow journal, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... on from battlefield to battlefield, from one scene of carnage to another. They see their regiments dwindle to nothing, their officers decimated, three-fourths of their comrades dead or wounded, and yet each night they gather about their bivouacs apparently undisturbed by it all. One sees them on the road the day after one of these desperate fights ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... novels?" asks or echoes a lady, Miss Grace Toplis, writing on Jefferies. "In brief, he was an essayist and not a novelist at all," says Mr. Henry Salt. "It is therefore certain that his importance for posterity will dwindle, if it has not already dwindled, to that given by a bundle of descriptive selections. But these will occupy a foremost place on their particular shelf, the shelf at the head of which stands Gilbert White and Gray," ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... later that, preceded by a slight chilling of the air, the first faint pallor of dawn came filtering through the velvet darkness ahead, stealing imperceptibly higher and higher into the eastern sky, and causing the stars thereaway to dwindle and grow dim until, one after another, they vanished in the cold, colourless light that now stretched along the horizon beneath our jibboom-end, spreading right and left, even as one stood and watched it. Then a faint flush of palest primrose stole into the pallor, against which the horizon line ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... architects; of astronomers, mathematicians, geologists, physicians; of philosophers, theologians, divines; of statesmen, politicians, inventors, actors; of philanthropists, reformers, economists, the great of our own history need not, indeed, shrink in form, but must dwindle in number till our past seems as thinly peopled as our continent. It is in these rooms that the grandeur of England, historically, resides. You may, if you are so envious, consider it in that point and this, and at some point find her less ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... Weatherbee's office, Jane seated herself resignedly to wait for the appearance of the matron. When fifteen minutes had passed and she was still waiting, the stock of "calm courage" attributed to her by Adrienne, began to dwindle into nettled impatience. ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... Rose, dew yew know what ails yew?" he demanded fixing his eyes fiercely upon the invalid. "Dew yew know what'll happen tew yew ef yew don't git out o' this bed an' this here house? Either yer beard'll fall out an' yew'll dwindle deown ter the size o' a baby or yew'll turn into a downright old woman—Aunt Abraham!—won't that sound nice? Or yew'll die or yew'll go crazy. ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... his political friends had advised the President not to visit Europe lest the vast prestige and influence which he wielded from a distance should dwindle unutilized on close contact with the realists' crowd. Even the war-god Mars, when he descended into the ranks of the combatants on the Trojan side, was wounded by a Greek, and, screaming with pain, scurried back to Olympus with paling halo. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... of escape both swelled in my breast as I saw the hulls dwindle to a dot and disappear behind the horizon. In a moment, my plan was conceived and perfected. The sea was perfectly smooth, and I was expert in the use of oars. That very night I launched our canoe,—the only vessel left in the cove,—and placing the sail, scullers, and grappling-hook within ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... wounds are fatal; where, above all, recurrent pestilence and famine, unfailing if of irregular recurrence, decimated the people, it has been all important that woman should employ her creative power to its very uttermost limits if the race were not at once to dwindle and die out. "May thy wife's womb never cease from bearing," is still today the highest expression of goodwill on the part of a native African chief to his departing guest. For, not only does the prolific ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... storming against thee of disease, disappointment, loss, and misery. Set on the one side all possible as well as all actual weaknesses, burdens, pains, and set on the other these two words—'My grace,' and all these dwindle into nothingness and disappear. If troubled Christian men would learn what they have, and would use what they already possess, they would less often beseech Him with vain petitions to take away their blessings which are in the thorns in the flesh. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of it, the Territorial divisions after they took the field seemed to be treated as veritable Cinderellas for a long time. They generally set out short of establishment, and they were apt to dwindle away painfully for want of reserves after they had spent a few weeks on the war-path. The Returns show this to have been the case. More than one of the divisional Generals concerned spoke to me, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... that we have done enough for the present," Terence said. "We will leave it to the rest of the army to do a little fighting now. We have lost, in killed and wounded, some two hundred men, and I don't wish to see the whole force dwindle away. I propose that we do not go near Braga. I have no idea of putting myself under the command of Friere; I have seen enough of him already. So we will travel by by-roads till we get near Oporto, then we will find out how matters stand there. My own idea ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... there was nobody better. And how many other young ladies are like her?—and how many love-marriages carry on well to the last?—and how sentimental firms do not finish in bankruptcy?—and how many heroic passions don't dwindle down into despicable indifference, or end ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you will have it, is that this matter should be shrewdly pressed, and an end made of it as soon as may be. Our people dwindle daily; they who were well a se'nnight since are ill to-day, and may be dead to-morrow. Our provision waxeth short and poor, and be it once spent our good friend Jones will give us none of his we may be sure. We are no babes to be cast down by these things, nor ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... tardy in that icy clime, For Death is there the awful nurse of Life: Death rocks the cot. Why meet we there no wolf Save those huge-limbed? Because weak wolf-cubs die. 'Tis thus with man; 'tis thus with all things strong:— Rise higher on thy northern hills, my Pine! That Southern Palm shall dwindle. House stone-walled— Ye shall not have it! Temples cedar-roofed— Ye shall not build them! Where the Temple stands The City gathers. Cities ye shall spurn: Live in the woods; live singly, winning each, Hunter ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... of the casual variations of individuals are indifferent, for they do not tell much either for or against success in life; they are small oscillations which leave the type unchanged. As circumstances change, the stability of the species may gradually dwindle through the insufficiency of some definite quality, on which in earlier times no such insistent demands were made. The individual animals will then tend to fail in the struggle for life, the numbers will dwindle and extinction ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... the stancia of Malofskaya the country becomes much wilder, and forests dwindle away as we near the timber line. Occasionally not a tree would be visible from sled to horizon, only a level plain of snow, which under the influence of wind, sunshine and passing clouds would present as many moods and aspects as the sea. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... only repositories of learning; but the time must inevitably come when this order is transformed into the deadliest enemy of the civilization which it has brought into being. The power of the spiritual oligarchy rests upon superstitious terrors which dwindle before advancing enlightenment; hence the clergy have become reactionary, have sought to stifle the spirit of free inquiry, and have used the schools which they have builded as instruments to keep alive unreasoning prejudice, or to serve their selfish ends. This, then, has been ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... find Mr. Blithers saying to himself that there wasn't the slightest use in even hoping that he might be invited to transfer his lodgings from the Regengetz to the Royal bed-chambers. The chance of being invited to dine there seemed to dwindle as well. While he sat and waited in the first antechamber he even experienced strange misgivings in respect to ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... prospect for meeting our energy needs when our current domestic reserves of oil and natural gas begin to dwindle in the next decade. I urgently ask Congress and the new administration to move quickly on these issues. This Nation has the resources and the capability to achieve our energy goals if its Government has the will to proceed, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Gerald R. Ford • Gerald R. Ford
... have state libraries holding a score of volumes for every one that Greece could boast; Rome's temples should be galleries of rare paintings, ten for each that Athens had. Rome should be so great, so rich, so gorgeous, that Greece should be as nothing beside her; Egypt should dwindle to littleness, and the memory of Babylon should be forgotten. Greece had her Homer, her Sophocles, her Anacreon; Rome ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... now they dwindle, Whirling with the whirling spindle. Twist ye, twine ye! even so ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... the altar kindle, And at their margins sacred grass is piled; Beneath their sacrificial odours dwindle Misfortunes. May ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... waste-weir of our great commercial and manufacturing cities and towns, whose population, without the infusion—and that continually—of the strong, substantial, and vigorous life blood of the country, would soon dwindle into insignificance and decrepitude. Why then should not this first, primitive, health-enjoying and life-sustaining class of our people be equally accommodated in all that gives to social and substantial life, its due development? It is absurd to deny them by others, or that they deny themselves, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... to have a touch of ideality. ROYCE'S 'loyalty to loyalty' is an excellent example. 'Causes,' as anti-slavery, democracy, liberty, etc., dwindle when realized in their sordid particulars. The veritable 'cash-value' of the idea seems to cleave to it only in the abstract status. Truth at large, as ROYCE contends, in his Philosophy of Loyalty, appears another thing ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... like what the English call "the joys and comforts of the domestic hearth" seemed an impossible attainment in this dreary old palazzo. The social amenities must wither in its desolate atmosphere, and dwindle to chill shadows, like the ghosts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... excite the organs of the brain by agencies applied externally directly over them, before which the discoveries of Gall, Spurzheim, or Sir Charles Bell—men who have been justly regarded as benefactors of their race—dwindle into comparative insignificance. This important discovery has given us a key to man's nature, moral, intellectual, and physical."—Democratic ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... you cheat yourself from day to day with the thought that there are better things to come. Quite the contrary turns out to be the case. Your prospects, like the proverbial sacrifice of Mandrobulus, dwindle and contract from day to day. Gradually you get some faint glimmerings of the truth. It begins to dawn upon you at last, that those golden hopes were neither more nor less than gilded bubbles: the vexations, on the ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... Why should I give up that much of you that is mine? If she could take it—But she cannot take it. If I let you go—you will do nothing. All this ambition, all these interests will dwindle and die, and she will not mind. She will not understand. She will think that she still has you. Why should she covet what she cannot possess? Why should she be given the thing that is ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... twin charioteer who would drive her up the mountain road to the Inn that nestled in a valley nine thousand feet up the mountain. It was a drive Fanny never forgot. Fenger, Ted, Haynes-Cooper, her work, her plans, her ambitions, seemed to dwindle to puny insignificance beside the vast grandeur that unfolded before her at every fresh turn in the road. Up they went, and up, and up, and the air was cold, but without a sting in it. It was dark when the lights of the Inn twinkled out at them. The door was thrown open as they ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... always begin this remark dretful kinder loud and hysterical, and then would dwindle down kinder low at the end on't, and bustin' out into tears somewhere through it from first ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... fortunate successors would find a most improved world to start upon! For Cant does lie piled on us, high as the zenith; an Augean Stable with the poisonous confusion piled so high: which, simply if there once could be nothing said, would mostly dwindle like summer snow gradually about its business, and leave us free to use our eyes again! When I see painful Professors of Greek, poring in their sumptuous Oxfords over dead Greek for a thousand years or more, and leaving live English ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... joy. Ambition is the luxury of the happy. It is sometimes, but more rarely, the consolation and distraction of the wretched; but most of those who have trodden its paths, if they deal honestly with themselves, will acknowledge that the gravest disappointments of public life dwindle into insignificance compared with the poignancy of suffering endured at the deathbed of a wife or of a child, and that within the small circle of a family life they have found more real happiness than the applause of ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... strong imagination turn The great wheel backward, until Troy unburn, And then unbuild, and seven Troys below Rise out of death, and dwindle, and outflow, Till all have passed, and none has yet been there: Back, ever back. Our birds still crossed the air; Beyond our myriad changing generations Still built, unchanged, their known inhabitations. A million years before Atlantis ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... not prove, as events turned turned out, a good general, nor even a soldier of moderate ability, and it is even possible that he also lacked that fierce courage of which none of his predecessors was ever destitute. He allowed his army to dwindle away and his fortresses to fall into ruins; the foreign alliances existing at his accession, together with those which he himself had concluded, were not turned to the best advantage; his provinces were badly administered, and his subjects rendered discontented: his most salient characteristic was ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Chelsea elves, Men who had lost a limb themselves, Its interest did not dwindle— But Bill, and Ben, and Jack, and Tom Could hardly have spun more yarns therefrom, If the leg had ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... will have to have the power of transferring territory from one state to another, when it is persuaded that adequate grounds exist for such a transference. Friends of peace will make a mistake if they unduly glorify the status quo. Some nations grow, while others dwindle; the population of an area may change its character by emigration and immigration. There is no good reason why states should resent changes in their boundaries under such conditions, and if no international authority has power to make ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... newly discovered countries and the fear of piratical invasions had by 1591 decreased the total population of the colony to 15,000. This number remained almost stationary until about 1663 when it began to dwindle further until the low water mark was reached, about 1737, and the entire population of the Spanish portion of the island was estimated at but 6,000. Timely tariff concessions revived trade and encouraged immigration and new importations of slaves the number of inhabitants increased ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... almost every other colony. The opposition to this measure was even ascribed to the Chief Justice. He would further suggest that Mr. Stuart should be detached by motives of self-interest, from the party with whom he acted, and which it was supposed, would dwindle into insignificance without him. If the Attorney-Generalship should become vacant, it might be offered to him. The most fruitful source of all the dissensions in Canada was, nevertheless, according to Sir John Sherbrooke, the want of confidence in its ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... and most within the reach of observation, but all attempts to calculate the distance of that luminary have proved futile. Of its inconceivable remoteness some notion may be formed by the fact, that the diameter of the earth's annual orbit, if viewed from it, would dwindle into an invisible point. This is what is meant by the stars not having, like the planets, a parallax; that is, the earths' orbit, as seen from them, does not subtend a measurable angle. With two other stars, however, astronomers have unexpectedly and recently been more ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... with intolerable precipices, the Moon outrivals the Earth. I took a passing glimpse of the famous crater-mountains, called by our astronomers Copernicus and Theophilus, the former situated in the eastern and the latter in the western hemisphere of the Moon. The largest openings of our Earth dwindle into insignificance compared with such ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... discharge of artillery in the outskirts, and the church bells begin ringing; but the peals dwindle away to a melancholy jangle, and then to silence. Simultaneously, on the northern horizon of the arid, unenclosed, and treeless plain swept by the eye around the city, a cloud of dust arises, and a Royal procession is seen nearing. It means ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... law preventing the Protestant boys dressing up the figure on the first of July, and walking round it. That was the death-blow of the Orange party, your hanner; they never recovered it, but began to despond and dwindle, and I with them; for there was scarcely any demand for Orange tunes. Then Dan O'Connell arose with his emancipation and repale cries, and then instead of Orange processions and walkings, there were Papist processions and mobs, which made me afraid ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... the red man appears to be nearly decided. What between their wars with each other, the use of spirituous liquors, and the diseases imported by the whites, they dwindle away every day. The most fatal disease to them is the small-pox. The following account, which I have extracted from one of the American papers, was confirmed to me by a letter ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... palace and town; and overhead the hollow night and the larger stars. Presently the small procession issued from the palace, crossed the parade, and began to thread the glittering alley: the swinging couch with its four porters, the much-pondering Chancellor behind. She watched them dwindle with strange thoughts: her eyes fixed upon the scene, her mind still glancing right and left on the overthrow of her life and hopes. There was no one left in whom she might confide; none whose hand was friendly, or on whom she dared to reckon for the barest loyalty. With the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on the hillside, watching the tail-light dwindle, I reflected on the various kinds of crime I had now sampled. Contrary to general belief, I was not a murderer, but I had become an unholy liar, a shameless impostor, and a highwayman with a marked taste for ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... everywhere, may there not be a great space beyond the region of the stars? And this immense space, surrounding all this region, ... may be replete with happiness and glory. ... What now becomes of the consideration of our Earth and of its denizens? Does it not dwindle to something incomparably less than a physical point, since our Earth is but a point compared with the distance of the fixed stars. Thus the part of the Universe which we know, being almost lost in nothingness compared with that which is unknown to us, but which we ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... &c v.; strangulation; corrugation; astringency; astringents, sclerotics; contractility, compressibility; coarctation^. inferiority in size. V. become small, become smaller; lessen, decrease &c 36; grow less, dwindle, shrink, contract, narrow, shrivel, collapse, wither, lose flesh, wizen, fall away, waste, wane, ebb; decay &c (deteriorate) 659. be smaller than, fall short of; not come up to &c (be inferior) 34. render smaller, lessen, diminish, contract, draw in, narrow, coarctate^; boil down; constrict, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... glass between them. Transformed, shifted or mutilated, such elements of art still carry their history plainly stamped upon them.... It is thus even with the fashion of the clothes men wear. The ridiculous little tails of the German postilion's coat show of themselves how they came to dwindle to such absurd rudiments; but the English clergyman's bands no longer so convey their history to the eye, and look unaccountable enough till one has seen the intermediate stages through which they came down from the more serviceable wide collars, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... at hand; the beautiful St. Lawrence sparkling and flashing in the sunlight; and the tiny ships below the rock from which you gaze, whose distant rigging looks like spiders' webs against the light, while casks and barrels on their decks dwindle into toys, and busy mariners become so many puppets; all this framed by a sunken window [1] in the fortress and looked at from the shadowed room within, forms one of the brightest and most enchanting pictures that the eye can ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... of the intellectual and moral world. Nor, on the other hand, shall we permit ourselves to become so completely absorbed in the contemplation of the majesty of God, to dwell so warmly on his infinite sovereignty and the littleness of man, as to cause the sphere of human power to dwindle down to a mere point, and entirely disappear. We shall endeavour to find the true medium between these two extreme opinions. That such a medium exists somewhere, will not be denied by many persons. The only question will be, as ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... Why not be practical, and become master of a situation which one had not made, and could not alter, instead of being overwhelmed by it? Needless to say, I did not mention the conversation to Mr. Watling, nor did he dwindle in my estimation. These necessary transactions did not interfere in any way with his personal relationships, and his days were filled with kindnesses. And was not Mr. Ripon, the junior partner, one of the evangelical lights of the community, conducting advanced Bible classes ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... moved. The erratic Arizona breezes twisted the dust of their going. Senor Johnson watched them dwindle. With them seemed to go the joy in the old life. No longer did the long trail possess for him its ancient fascination. He ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... rays that come to me are but faint cross lights, mazing the obscurity wherein I live. And after all, excellent as it is, I can be no gainer by this book. For the more we learn, the more we unlearn; we accumulate not, but substitute; and take away, more than we add. We dwindle while we grow; we sally out for wisdom, and retreat beyond the point whence we started; we essay the Fondiza, and get but the Phe. Of all simpletons, the simplest! Oh! that I were another sort of fool than I am, that I might restore my good opinion of myself. Continually I stand in the pillory, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
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