"Leanness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... threading unfrequented hill trails armed with a revolver and a brown leather jug?" No answer suggested itself, and summoning her haughtiest, coldest look, she met the glance of the man who drew rein beside her. His features were clean-cut, bronzed, and lean—with the sinewy leanness of health. His gray flannel shirt rolled open at the throat, about which was loosely drawn a silk scarf of robin's-egg blue, held in place by the tip of a buffalo horn polished to an onyx luster. The hand holding ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... nationality nor expatriation was very obvious upon him. At first sight you would have supposed him a sallow Englishman, spare of flesh and too narrow in the chest; you might have put down his dead complexion and his leanness to India or Jamaica, and been inclined to attribute his dry cynicism to the same superfervent experience. But presently you would be alive to his hungry mind, to his hungry, raging air, his restless habit and large way of looking at circumstance—as if by no ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Invention occupied him at night. He read, too, books on optometry. Don't think that he was a Rollo. He wasn't. But he was naturally somewhat shy, and further handicapped by an unusually tall lean frame which he handled awkwardly. If you had a good look at his eyes you forgot his shyness, his leanness, his awkwardness, his height. They were the keynote of his gentle, studious, kindly, humorous nature. But Chicago, Illinois, is too busy looking to see anything. Eyes are something you see with, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... his hands, behind his back, rubbed each other, pressing closely together their twisted and knotty fingers. Even here, among hundreds of his own kind, he attracted attention by his resemblance to a sparrow-hawk of the steppes, by his rapacious leanness, his easy stride, outwardly calm but alert and watchful as the flight of the bird that ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... Incidentally he bought young sheep in season, and chickens from the Mexican ranchers, and even a bear that had been shot up in the mountains very early in the spring, before the fat had given place to leanness. Whatever else Starr did he kept carefully to himself, but his meat buying was perfectly authentic and satisfactory. And if those who knew his past record wondered at his occupation, Starr had plenty of reasons for the change, ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... lives. Now, if my present purpose thrives, I'll prop my former proposition By building on a small addition. A certain Wolf, in point of wit The prudent fisher's opposite, A Dog once finding far astray, Prepared to take him as his prey. The Dog his leanness plead; "Your lordship, sure," he said, "Cannot be very eager To eat a dog so meagre. To wait a little do not grudge: The wedding of my master's only daughter Will cause of fatted calves and fowls a slaughter; And then, as you yourself can judge, I cannot ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... rustiness; her skin hard, through which her bowels might be seen; her dry bones were projecting beneath her crooked loins; instead of a belly, there was {only} the place for a belly. You would think her breast was hanging, and was only supported from the chine[98] of the back. Leanness had, {to appearance}, increased her joints, and the caps of her knees were stiff, and excrescences projected from her overgrown ancles. Soon as {Oreas} beheld her at a distance (for she did not dare come near her), she delivered ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... rags and skins, approaching towards me. Possessed of the wealth of penances, he was named Tanu. Compared, O mighty-armed one, with other men, his height seemed to be eight times greater. As regards his leanness, O royal sage, I can say that I have never beheld its like. His body, O king, was as thin as one's little finger. His neck and arms and legs and hair were all of extra-ordinary aspect. His head was proportionate to his body, and his ears and eyes also were the same. His speech, O best of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... when irritated. His teeth, without being very regular, were very white and sound, and he never suffered from them. His nose of Grecian shape, was well formed, and his sense of smell perfect. His whole frame was handsomely proportioned, though at this time his extreme leanness prevented the beauty of his features being especially noticed, and had an injurious effect ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... the people who were there, Turning their faces, hurried on their steps, Both by their leanness and ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... not go on with the infuriating interview. It ended as it began, except that Rowley was in tears, and that I had acquired one fact. The man was drawn for me as being of any height you like to mention, and of any degree of corpulence or leanness; clean-shaved or not, as the case might be; the colour of his hair Rowley 'could not take it upon himself to put a name on'; that of his eyes he thought to have been blue—nay, it was the one point on which he attained to a kind of tearful certainty. 'I'll take my ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... aside the sheet, and I was astonished at the divine magnificence of the limbs. The breast was powerful, broad, and arched; the arms and thighs were full, and softly muscular; the feet were elegant, and of the most perfect shape; nowhere, on the whole body, was there a trace either of fat or of leanness and decay. A perfect man lay in great beauty before me; and the rapture which the sight caused made me forget for a moment that the immortal spirit had left such an abode. I laid my hand on his heart—there was a deep silence—and I turned ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... days of his leanness, had beautiful hands, and he displayed them with a certain coquetry. As he grew stouter his hands became superb; he took the utmost care of them, and looked at them when talking, with much complacency. He felt the same satisfaction in his ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... late of Missouri, later of Utah, and latest of North Dakota, stood an even six-foot unshod. He had an air of leanness, almost emaciation, not borne out by any fact of anatomy. We make our hasty estimates from the face. Brother Scraggs's face was gaunt. Misfortune had written there, in a large, angular hand, "It might have ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... nomad tribes of the Biarmii and Amaxobii, who, according to him, were most skilful fascinators, says that they so affected persons with their curse that they lost their freedom of will and became insane and idiotic, and often wasted away in extreme leanness and corruption, and so perished: "ut liberi non sint nec mentis compotes, soepe ad extremam maciem deveniant, et tabescendo dispereant." Olaus Magnus agrees with him in these symptoms; and Hieronymus says, that, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... the campaign which was to end in the rout of the enemy, he got up and took a turn the length of the room. He didn't look the least bit in the world like a confidence-man to-night and the two boys marvelled at their earlier suspicions. Miller was tall, lean with the leanness of muscles unhampered by useless flesh, and lithe. He had very clear brown eyes, a straight nose and high cheek bones that somehow reminded Steve of the engraved portrait of John C. Calhoun that hung in the library at home. Altogether, from the top of his well-shaped head ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... enforcement of this wicked act—an act evidently destructive of the very nature and essence of that mutual relation between pastor and people, and which has the native and necessary tendency to schism in the church, spiritual leanness, and starving of the flock, by thrusting in idle, idol shepherds upon them, such as serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own bellies; feed themselves, but not the flock; and seek not them, but theirs, contrary to John x, 2, 9; ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... the Scripture saith, the whole law is fulfilled in love: and if so, then where love is wanting, it needs must follow the whole law is broken. It is where love grows cold that sin abounds; and therefore the want of unity and peace is the cause of that leanness and barrenness that is among us; it is true in spirituals as well as temporals, ...
— An Exhortation to Peace and Unity • Attributed (incorrectly) to John Bunyan
... departs who looks behind." As in the hinges of that sacred ward The swivels turn'd sonorous metal strong, Harsh was the grating, nor so surlily Roar'd the Tarpeian, when by force bereft Of good Metellus, thenceforth from his loss To leanness doom'd. Attentively I turn'd, Listening the thunder that first issued forth; And "We praise thee, O God," methought I heard, In accents blended with sweet melody, The strains came o'er mine ear, e'en as the sound Of choral voices, that in solemn chant With organ mingle, and, ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... like Waihee, the path of his journey was marked afterward by leanness and famine. But a king must be fed, and it is not good to anger a king. So, like warning in advance of disaster, Waihee heard of his coming, and all food- getters of field and pond and mountain and sea were busied ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... the interim of training to even a new leanness, and sailing-orders heavy and light in his heart, Lieutenant Kantor, on two days' home-leave, took leave of home, which can be ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... to wilt under the blight of poverty, and to revive under the fuller harvesting of this world's goods, and Mr. Shelton, Sr., who had, in the days of his leanness, let Polly run wild with all the college boys of Harmouth, became suddenly particular, as his bank account fattened, in regard to the niceties of conduct in his daughters. His scruples even embraced Deena; he said she ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... where he bivouacked for the night. Stuart, it was ascertained, marched till about midnight to the small town of Leitersburgh, where he rested his worn and wearied command. His condition was really pitiable. A large number of his men were mounted on shoeless horses, whose leanness showed that they had made many a long march through and from Virginia. Or, as was the case with a large proportion of them, they had fat horses, which were stolen from the fields and stalls of the invaded States, but, being entirely unused to such hard and ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... sterility of imagination and want of passion by veneering with magniloquent epithets. They padded their ill-favored Muse, belaced and beruffled her, and covered her with garments stiffened with tawdry embroidery to hide her leanness; they overpowdered and overrouged to give her the beauty Providence had refused. I say their Muse, but they had no Muse of their own; they imported an inferior one from England, and tried her in every style,—Pope's and Dryden's, Goldsmith's and Gray's, and never rose above a poor imitation; producing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... back the hardy assertion of the men, which was that the pious Pelican—true to his name—was extremely fond of poultry. I am the still less disposed to believe this scandal, from the continued leanness of the Pelican, which could hardly have been the case did he nourish himself by so nutritious a dish as the drum-sticks of fowls, a diet prescribed to pugilists in training. But who can avoid being suspicious ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... dropped, accentuating the gaunt leanness of his hollow-cheeked, emaciated face, gazed at Doc Madison with a curious mingling of incredulity ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... corpulent," said Norah indignantly, whereat Jim, who personified leanness with breadth of shoulder, grinned even more widely than Wally, and patted her on the head as he passed with an armful of clothes, which he stowed into his wardrobe much as he might have dumped sacks of potatoes into a barn. Even Norah's wide and free views on the subject ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... age their beauty dim With wrinkled brow and tresses grey, Nor arid leanness eat away The vigour ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... so to earth again, he arose from his knees, and with a grave, simple grace came forward to greet us. He was not more than eight-and-twenty years old, and he was slightly built and thin—not emaciated, but lean with the wholesome leanness of one who strove to keep his body in the careful order of a machine of which much work was required. His face still had in it the soft roundness and tenderness of youth, that accorded well with its expression of gracious sweetness; ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... Engulf'd the victor steed from mortal sight. Haste from thy woods, mine Arbuthnot, with speed, Rich woods, where lean Scotch cattle love to feed: Let Gaffer Gooch and Boodle's patriot band, Fat from the leanness of a plundered land, True Cincinnati, quit their patent ploughs, Their new steam-harrows, and their premium sows; Let all in bulky majesty appear, Roll the dull eye, and yawn th' unmeaning cheer. Ye veteran Swiss, of senatorial ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... beech trees, which have also the angular edges of reeds. How different from the harp-strings which form the aerial skeleton of Chartres! No, in spite of all, Beauvais, like Reims, and like Paris, is a fleshy cathedral; it has not the elegant leanness, the perennial youthfulness of form, the Patrician stamp of Amiens, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... brief. The Yogis have discovered the reason of the wondrous capacity of the chameleon to assume the appearance of plumpness or of leanness. This animal looks enormous when his lungs are filled with air, but in his normal condition he is quite insignificant. Many other reptiles as well acquire the possibility of swimming across large rivers quite easily by the same process. And the air that remains ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... our mistaken Endeavours after heightening the Sentiments, by a figurative Expression; This is very ill Judg'd: The little Ornaments of Rhetorick might serve, fortunately enough, to swell out the Leanness of some modern Compositions; but to shadow over the Lustre of a divine Hebrew Thought, by an Affectation of enliv'ning it, is to paint upon a Diamond, and call it ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... that all the Fops of empty Heads and Pockets may know where to be sure of a Cully; and may they rook ye till ye lose, and fret, and chafe, and rail those youthful Eyes to sinking; watch your fair Face to pale and withered Leanness. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... penalty of dissatisfaction in the imaginary good for which they had sacrificed so much, and of deep remorse for a misconduct which has incurred the divine displeasure. It is said of Israel, "he gave them their request, but sent leanness ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... likewise do, I imagine, if I live to be old. Showing us his withered fleshless arms, and taking hold of his armlets, he observed: "The time was when these armlets could not slip off. Now, see how easily they come away." He then abused me for my leanness, and admired the Taleb (Overweg), because he had more flesh on his bones. His highness also stated that he and a single man went to Damerghou and back in thirteen days, bringing a caravan of ghaseb. They never stopped on the road, but travelled day and night. This garrulous gentleman also ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... the Carmelite convent at Blois under Louis XVIII. Celebrated for her leanness. She was known by Renee de l'Estorade (Mme. de Maucombe) and Louise de Chaulieu (Mme. Marie Gaston), who went to school at the convent. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... hand. It was brown bread with a vengeance. On the mountain we might buy eggs and fowls; but as the first were generally bad when sold to us, we soon got disgusted with them; and though we put up with the fowls as a change of diet, their toughness and leanness would have made them rejected everywhere else. Being the rainy reason, we had great difficulty in purchasing a little honey. Wild coffee was now and then obtainable; but it made, in the absence of sugar, and with or without smoky milk, such a ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... fattening and beautifying from one degree to another of poetical perfection, while I have, under the chilling shade of the Ochil Hills, been dwindling down from one degree of poetical extenuation to another, till at length I am become the very shadow and ghost of literary leanness! I should now wish to see you, and compare you as you are now with what you were in your 'Queen's Wake' days. For this purpose, I would be very fain you would condescend to pay us a visit. I see you indeed, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... of her leanness, out of her extraordinary litheness, little Eve Edgarton stared up speculatively at Barton's great hulking helplessness. Her hat looked humorous. Her hair looked humorous. Her tattered flannel shirt was distinctly humorous. But there was nothing humorous ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... present a cut of a Devon cow; but with the remark, that she presents a deficiency of bag, and stands higher on the leg, than she ought to do; and her leanness in flesh gives her a less graceful appearance than is her wont, when ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... working of heredity. While he was in the yellow drawing-room, therefore, he amused himself with the belief that he had fallen in with a menagerie. He established comparisons between the grotesque creatures he found there and certain animals of his acquaintance. The marquis, with his leanness and small crafty-looking head, reminded him exactly of a long green grasshopper. Vuillet impressed him as a pale, slimy toad. He was more considerate for Roudier, a fat sheep, and for the commander, an old toothless ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... adds, Shakespeare alludes to this personage, as habited in his own time. The old age of Pantaloon is marked by his leanness, and his spectacles and his slippers. He always runs after Harlequin, but cannot catch him; as he runs in slippers and without spectacles, is liable to pass him by without seeing him. Can we doubt that this Pantaloon had come from the Italian theatre, ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... stamped with swine's grease, wasteth away the kernels by the throat; and women do usually make pottage of Cleavers with a little mutton and oatmeal, to cause leanness, and to keep them from fatness." Dioscorides reported that: "Shepherds do use the herb to take hairs out of the milk, if ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... attractions for those around her, and it is unpleasant for her to feel that no man can ever turn his eyes admiringly upon her. A misshapen limb, a hump in the back, a withered arm, a shortened leg, a clubbed foot, a hare-lip, an unwieldy corpulence, a hideous leanness, a bald head—all these are unpleasant possessions, and all these, I suppose, give their possessors, first and last, a great deal of pain. Then there is the taint of an unpopular blood, that a whole race carry with them as a badge of humiliation. ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... strong, comely woman, this housemother, portly in person and large of face, with plentiful gray hair brushed smooth; from the face the colour had faded, but the look of health and strong purpose remained. The father, on the other hand, tended to leanness; his large frame was beginning to be obviously bowed by toil; his hair and beard were somewhat long, and had a way of twisting themselves as though blown by the wind. When the light of the summer morning shone through the panes of clean glass upon this family at breakfast, it ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... her hands and her eyelids, and drank of a phial, and commenced tugging at a brass ring fixed in the floor, and it yielded and displayed an opening, over which she stooped the upper half of her leanness, and pitching her note high, called 'Karaz!' After that, she rose and retreated from the hole hastily, and in the winking of an eye it was filled, as 'twere a pillar of black smoke, by the body of the Genie, he breathing hard with mighty travel. So he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... then, seein' as your dinner's none too hearty, judging by the leanness of your bones. No, I've no chick nor child of me own, and shure I can let the cratur alone enough to pay the milkman's bill for this little mite. You'll have to bring the dinner every day this week, and you'll see he'll get on fine ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... freely in the rarefied air on the heights of a theocracy, and demanded a visible king. It had its desire, and as a consequence, 'leanness in its soul.' Christendom has found it as difficult to do without visible embodiments of authority, law, defence, and hence many evils and corruptions in the institutions and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... kitchen, Frederick was standing on the hearth; he was bending forward and warming his hands over the coal fire. The light played on his features and gave him an unpleasant look of leanness and nervous twitching. Margaret stopped at the door; the child seemed to her ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... American women prided themselves on their fragility. To be healthy, strong or plump was thought to be the height of vulgarity, and refinement was held to be inseparable from leanness and consumption. These views still obtain—so it is said—in Boston, and especially in Bostonian literary circles; but elsewhere the American woman is growing plump and healthy, and is actually proud of it. While wise men are ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... identified him without the aid of his insignia, for he stood head and shoulders above his companions and bore himself with an air of authority. He was unusually tall, at least six feet three, and very slim, very lithe; he was alert, keen; he was like the blade of a rapier. The leanness of his legs was accentuated by his stiff, starched riding-breeches and close-fitting pigskin puttees, while his face, apart from all else, would have challenged ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... four years younger than those ignorant of that science. Painters and sculptors are deeply impenetrated with this truth; for in representing those who practice abstinence by choice or duty as misers or anchorites, they always give them the pallor of disease, the leanness of misery, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... as well as upon the actors, dancers, and choristers, who were sold to the directors of the plays and spectacles. In the cabinet of the Roman College there are to be seen two small statues representing two infibulated musicians, which are remarkable for the excessive size of the ring and the leanness of the persons to which they are attached. The mode of applying this ring did not differ much from the usual method of preparing ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Feejeeian, and docile Guinea Negro; the stolid Indian, and ant-like plodder of teeming India,—are but the outward symbols of that contrariety of moral, or rather immoral existence which is the fate of barbarism. They have no equality of beauty nor ugliness, leanness nor obesity, vice nor virtue, but varying differences, such as the spontaneous growth of uncultured nature in different climes exhibits in the vegetable and lower orders of the animal creation. What ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... Master Monstruwacan perceived that I was set to this thing, and not to be moved; and he did put it to me how that I had grown to leanness, with so much troubling, and that I should have wisdom to wait awhile, that I put on my ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... colossal monstrosity of the inclined ways, the disastrous lack of symmetry in the church of the Rosary and the Basilica, the former looking too heavy, like a corn market, whilst the latter had an anaemical structural leanness with no kind of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... or meant to be understood to say, that Miss Effingham was somewhat inclined to embonpoint. I do not pretend to know the reason of this: perhaps leanness and emaciation were not considered genteel when she happened to be educated, as they are unfortunately by too many of my fair countrywomen; perhaps she never thought much about it; for I have always observed that ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... at the scantiness around; the room, the parson, the furniture, the very fire, all gave him the feeling caused by seeing legs that have outgrown their trousers. But there was something underlying that leanness of the landscape, something superior and academic, which defied all sympathy. It was pure nervousness which made ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... general unconsciousness of "what is on the table," is a sign of preoccupation with serious things. It may be; but the German love of food is not necessarily a sign of grossness, and that "overfed" appearance, of which the Union spoke, is not necessarily a sign of inefficiency, any more than leanness or cadaverousness is a sign of efficiency. There is certainly some power of hard work in King William's army, and, indeed, we could hardly point to a better illustration of the truth, that all the affairs of men, whether political, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin |
