"Shrinking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... civil engineers, for their own private advantage in obtaining work, some Americans have been so foolish as to decry the book altogether, as traitorous to the interests of the country. Such mingled bigotry and conceit, shrinking from just criticism, would fetter all progress but fortunately it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Against his better judgment he was still bent upon the expedition, and Ben Zoof declared himself ready to accompany his master in the event of Count Timascheff hesitating to encounter the peril which the undertaking involved. But the count entirely repudiated all idea of shrinking from what, quite as much as the captain, he regarded as a sacred duty, and turning to Lieutenant Procope, told him that unless some better plan could be devised, he was prepared to start off at once and make the attempt to skate across to Formentera. The lieutenant, ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... you mean?" she gasped, shrinking from him, a burning spot reappearing under the dimpled skin of ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... in her chair crying silently and shrinking into herself as if she were afraid to say more, and Ellen went on. "Listen, now, what yer frien' says. 'The Elder is wrong, for Bertrand'—that's ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... some of our old soaks shrinking in their seats; and when he wound up, 'Shrieking, howling, blaspheming, over they go,' it was simply immense! There was such a stampede for the platform that you'd think we were drowning, and scrambling for life-buoys. I knew from the way Mother spoke when I set out for the hall that ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... never met in Scotland, is so good as, among perfect strangers, to denounce me as the origin of 'The Land o' the Leal!' I cannot trace it, but very much dislike as ever any kind of publicity." The extreme diffidence and shrinking modesty of the amiable author continued to the close of her life; she never divulged, beyond a small circle of confidential friends, the authorship of a single verse. The songs published in her youth had been given to others; but, as in the case of Lady Anne ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... on in silence, Douglas longing to ask her what she meant, and yet shrinking from taking what he felt might be a liberty, for there was something about the girl that kept him from speaking freely. Dressed like a peasant as she was, he instinctively felt that here was no ordinary farmer's drudge. She had uttered nothing ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... [left alone and shrinking into an old and desolate figure] What am I to do? I am a most perplexed and wretched man. [He falls on his knees, and stretches his hands in entreaty over the abyss]. I invoke the oracle. I cannot go back and connive at a blasphemous lie. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... ill at ease he sought McPherson later in the day and that genial and warm-hearted man, shrinking always behind so stern an exterior that few comprehended ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... sentiments; and she shows in the person of Corinne how much weakness may coexist with strength, and how timid and dependent is a woman even in the blaze of triumph and in the enjoyment of a haughty freedom. She paints the most shrinking delicacy with the greatest imprudence and boldness, contempt for the opinions and usages of society with the severest self-respect; giving occasion for scandal, yet escaping from its shafts; triumphant ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... and held me back to gaze yet again on features which I was about to cover from his sight. It is well that God, in his unsearchable wisdom, hath made death loathsome to us. It is well that an undefined and instinctive shrinking within us, makes what we have loved for long ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... alone within the lodge, Waited and waited, with a shrinking heart, Thinking each rustle was his sister's step, Till hope grew less and less, and then went out, And every sound was changed from hope to fear. Few sounds there were:—the dropping of a nut, The squirrel's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the water. The flood ran high in the deep and rapid river; yet the margin was covered with high reeds and, although I ultimately encamped near a small lagoon within the reeds, the cattle would not venture to drink at it, instinctively shrinking back from the muddy margin. In the course of the evening one animal fell into the river and was extricated with great difficulty and after much digging in the bank. One remarkable difference between this river and the Murrumbidgee was that, in the latter, even where reeds most prevailed, ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... all the swift action, felt intuitively the meaning of it, and in Bosomer's sudden change of front. The outlaw was keen, and he had expected a shrinking, or at least a frightened antagonist. Duane knew he was neither. He felt like iron, and yet thrill after thrill ran through him. It was almost as if this situation had been one long familiar to him. Somehow he understood this yellow-eyed Bosomer. The outlaw had ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... an hallucination as to the cause of that scar and the awesome circumstances which attended its infliction? Or, harder still to believe, were these soul-compelling tones, these evidences of grief, this pathetic yielding to the rights of the law in face of the heart's natural shrinking from disclosures sacred as they were tragic—were these the medium by which she sought to mislead justice ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... fall overboard and come ashore to dry out, stuff your shoes full of dry grass or old paper to keep them from shrinking. When they are dry, soften them with tallow or oil. Every one who goes camping at some time or other gets wet. The only advice I can give you is to get dry again as soon as possible. As long as you ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... a very general human shrinking from the thought of any operation on the eye—it is so delicate, so sensitive in every way, but as a matter of fact, science can do many things by way of operation upon the eye. If I did not think ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... looked—the heroine of such a turmoil! Her eyes travelled from face to face, shrinking—unconsciously appealing. In the dim, soft color of the room, her white face and hands, striking against her black dress, were strangely living and significant. They spoke command—through weakness, through sex. For that, in spite of intellectual distinction, was, after all, her secret. She breathed ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mass! I scorn your proffers; Is there no crimson blush to tell of fame And shrinking womanhood! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... a skeleton! Oh, this is too horrible!" gasped Joe, shrinking up against the wall. And his female companion clung close ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... you are!" cried Betty, involuntarily, shrinking from the sinister face that grinned malevolently into hers. "You have no right to ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... specifically accuse me? "Moi!" exclaimed one. Pause of deep silence: a lean angry little Figure, with broad bald brow, strode swiftly towards the tribune, taking papers from its pocket: "I accuse thee, Robespierre,"—I, Jean Baptiste Louvet! The Seagreen became tallow-green; shrinking to a corner of the tribune: Danton cried, "Speak, Robespierre, there are many good citizens that listen;" but the tongue refused its office. And so Louvet, with a shrill tone, read and recited crime after crime: dictatorial ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... for all; The courage of the bird that dares the sea; The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn; The friendly welcome of the wayside well; The mercy of the snow that hides all scars; The undelaying justice of the light That gives as freely to the shrinking flower As to the great oak flaring to the wind— To the grave's low hill as to the Matterhorn That shoulders out ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... And Robin would make a little speech, telling them that the House of Laughter was all theirs to do what they wanted with it and that the key would always hang just behind the shiny green trellis. Robin had demurred at this last detail, shrinking in horror at the thought of a "speech," but Beryl had insisted that she really must ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... the rapid settlement of large and fertile districts of our State, which are not unknown to the more enterprising and persevering pioneers, who have led the way through the wilderness, and are now engaged almost single-handed in their labors, not shrinking from the privations and sufferings which are sure to surround these first settlements in ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... vile creature out of the house, and if she ever dares to show her face upon these premises again send for a constable and have her taken up," said Mrs. Brudenell hoarsely and white with suppressed rage, as she pointed to the shrinking girl ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the hill, and looking back in the direction in which they had come, they could see the little stream, peeping forth many times to the daylight, and then shrinking back into the shade. Farther on, it became broad and deep, though rendered incapable of navigation, in this part of its course, by the occasional interruption ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bosom of that peerless child of the forest, the beautiful Fluella; and all the more intense were its workings, because confined to its own deep recesses, where the hidden flame was laboring constantly for an outlet to its pride-walled prison, but as constantly shrinking in terror from the disclosure. She had once, however, through the violence of emotions which she could not control, accidentally betrayed the state of her feelings; but it was to one in whose discretion ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... nearly instantaneously, and starts from the periphery of the disc; so that an alteration in the shape or size is impossible. On the contrary the process of drying in the thicker portions proceeds more slowly, and is therefore accompanied by a shrinking of the discs. ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... clenched his hands at the "Jim Crow" cars, and chafed at the color-line that hemmed in him and his. A tinge of sarcasm crept into his speech, and a vague bitterness into his life; and he sat long hours wondering and planning a way around these crooked things. Daily he found himself shrinking from the choked and narrow life of his native town. And yet he always planned to go back to Altamaha,—always planned to work there. Still, more and more as the day approached he hesitated with a nameless dread; and even the day after graduation ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... saw Jack duck his head under the tent flaps of the jail and the white-faced youth follow shrinking after. He stood while the armed guards took up their stations on the four sides of the tent and began pacing up and down the paths worn deep in tragic significance. He saw the wounded man carried into Pete's place across the way, and the dead man taken farther down the street. ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... tried to kiss me.... He is all brute. He ... he told me you were dead.... Oh, dear God, dear God!" cried the girl, shrinking back, covering her face with ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... a shrinking from notice without assignable reason. Coyness is a half encouragement, half avoidance of offered attention, and may be real or affected. Diffidence is self-distrust; modesty, a humble estimate of oneself in comparison with others, or with the demands of some ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... at a quick pace towards Moorgate. Just as they reached it, they heard the bell ring, and saw the dead-cart approaching. Shrinking back while it passed, they ran on till they came to an apothecary's shop, where Leonard, describing the state of the sick man, by his entreaties induced the master of the establishment and one of his assistants ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... out of difficulties especially galling to one of her gentle but lofty spirit? Her expression when she caught my look of joy had little of the demure tenderness of a maiden blushing at her first involuntary avowal. There was shrinking in it, but it was the shrinking of a frightened woman, not of an abashed girl; and when I strove to follow her, the gesture with which she waved me back had that in it which would have alarmed a more exacting lover. Had I mistaken my ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... finest, most piquant and intoxicating perfume of their gaudy religion. And what would the great painters have been without women—without their lovely, their bewitching sweethearts, whom they changed into holy maidens? From luxurious women were designed the modest, shrinking Magdalens, before whose mysterious charms the wise children of men bow the knee in adoration. Ah, how many Madonnas has Raphael painted from his Fornarina! and Correggio had the art to change his bewitching wife into ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... act, possibly, as the idiosyncrasy of an unbalanced mind; it is certain that some of my kinsfolk will do so. But while I have been able to bear up under their greater or less displeasure for many years, I find myself shrinking before the possibility of dying absolutely unknown and forgotten by you. Your mother, Agatha Shaw, of blessed memory now for many years, was my ward and pupil after the death of your grandfather. I think I may say without undue self-congratulation that few women of their time ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... bounteous boon I crave— I, with the coarse stubbed hands, the dull and narrow eyes, The low-browed leer of the brutal, base-born slave? What can I know of Love? I, with my ape-like face, Frighting the tender trust of the timorous, shrinking maid, Who, drawn by my deep soul's spell, half-yields to the soul's embrace Then looks on its hideous mask and trembles ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... time the wind came afresh from the north-west it was a little colder, a little more remindful of the icy winter blasts. Everywhere is autumn a melancholy season, charged with regrets for that which is departing, with shrinking from what is to come; but under the Canadian skies it is sadder and more moving than elsewhere, as though one were bewailing the death of a mortal summoned untimely by the gods before he has lived out ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... Teddy's strong points, but just then he had a most violent desire to fade gently out of sight. He had not the slightest wish to be "in the limelight." Never had he been more eager to play the part of the shrinking violet. ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... more interestedly than he had spoken yet, "it will do; the tribute is accepted—for Ar-hap, my master!" And taking shrinking Heru by the wrist, and laying a heavy hand upon her shoulder, he was about to ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... electrified him with little shocks of shrinking and dismay. Yet, though he affected to laugh, he knew that he was beginning to feel more than uneasy, and that strange forces were tugging with a thousand invisible cords at the very centre of his being. Something ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... shrinking. Dick's first thought was connected with Maisie, and it hurt him as white-hot ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... debt which every man owed, and must pay; and that now was as well as another time." I was much pleased and edified with the maxims of this sea-philosopher, who endured the amputation of his left hand without shrinking, the operation being performed (at his request) by me, after Mackshane, who was with difficulty prevailed to lift his head from the deck, had declared there was a necessity ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... dome of St. Paul's, and the mean archway of Dean's Court, into a region of gorgeous blazonments, we come to that quiet and grave house, like an old nobleman's, that stands aside from the new street from the Embankment, like an aristocrat shrinking from a crowd. The original Heralds' College, Cold Harbour House, founded by Richard II., stood in Poultney Lane, but the heralds were turned out by Henry VII., who gave their mansion to Bishop Tunstal, whom he had driven from Durham ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... a short gasp and came to a halt, shrinking back against the hedge. Something in her outline struck sharply on Sam's sense, though with a flash of doubt and wonder. She carried a small handbag, and wore a thick veil ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sheltering instinct had extended even to the man she loved. He had been outwardly strong and self-confident, assured, self-reliant, even severe with others, but behind the bold exterior, as always to the eyes of the beloved woman, had been a little, shrinking, helpless child, craving the comfort of a woman's hand—the sanctuary of ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... indeed a spirit?" OLIVE asked, Shrinking a step aside. Then her kind heart O'ercome the transient awe, and stealing close, While smiling on him with sweet, wondering eyes, Began again:—"But art thou truly he Whose name is on the lip of the great world?— Of whom the wives and mothers, tearful, speak When sound the Northern ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... the modest costumes of these Indian ladies and their bashful and shrinking disposition, it does seem strange that they should fascinate one like myself of the Saxon race. To be sure the sight of the bared shoulders and necks of society belles when undressed in the decollete fashion of their ball gowns ravishes and gluts our sensuality, but a momentary glimpse ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... Desborough? why did he not come? At last she stole from the room and into the adjoining chamber, and then indeed an awful sight met her shrinking gaze. ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... first sight appear difficult to explain how volcanic energies should still continue in activity, now that the mean temperature of the earth has become constant, and the outer crust can be no longer subject to the shrinking, and consequent cracking which it must have undergone while cooling. The phenomena that attend volcanic eruptions furnish a full explanation of this, for they are attended in almost all cases with the evolution of great quantities of gaseous matters, and steam, which ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the tall abbess, towering among her shrinking sisters. She indicated first one and then another among the poor captives, and as they refused, she turned to Morgan and, with a grave dignity, said in Spanish, of which he was a master, that she would ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Probus, 'unless we may say that souls earnestly devoted and zealous, are mad. There is not a more righteous soul in Rome. His conscience is bare, and shrinking like a fresh wound. His breast is warm and fond as a woman's—his penitence for the wild errors of his pagan youth, a consuming fire, which, while it redoubles his ardor in doing what he may in the cause of truth, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... her tearful charms, Folded upon the mighty Hector's breast, And the babe shrinking in its Nurse's arms, Affrightened by the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... bawled out Sir John, so soon as he had come pretty near them, and in so loud a voice that all on deck might have heard the words; and as he spoke he waved his cane back and forth as though he would have struck the young lady, who, shrinking back almost upon the deck, crouched as though to escape such a blow. "You hussy!" he bawled out with vile oaths, too horrible here to be set down. "What do you do here with this Yankee supercargo, not fit for a gentlewoman to wipe her feet upon? Get to your cabin, you ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... the inquiring and obviously sympathetic Montague girl. He entered and saw that she was not on the set. The bar-room dance-hall was for the moment deserted of its ribald crew while an honest inhabitant of the open spaces on a balcony was holding a large revolver to the shrinking back of one of the New York men who had lately arrived by the stage. He forced this man, who was plainly not honest, to descend the stairs and to sign, at a table, a certain paper. Then, with weapon still in hand, the honest Westerner forced the cowardly New Yorker in the direction ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... the missionary Gehring was present at the marriage of a girl of ten to an adult man amongst the Tamil Mohammedans. The story of the child's shrinking terror is very pathetic. When her veil was withdrawn she fainted from nervousness and excitement. Those present showed no pity for her, but crowded around to enjoy the opportunity of gazing at her. They saw no reason why she ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... intolerable provocation given by the mob, after all the leniency and forbearance of the ministry, and after the shrinking Of the minority, we shall by and by hear that this firing was a massacre—will it not be villanous and horrible? And yet as soon as safety is secured—though by this means alone all now agree it can be secured—nothing would less surprise me than to hear the seekers ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... these Sierras have! Kissing the purple of heaven now, and now in their awful deeps hiding the shrinking form of darkness ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... required downcast eyes and shrinking silence. I gave him both. There could be no better answer for a speech so personal ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... man narrowly, the rider noted his nervous glance, and his shrinking, dreading manner. Harlan's eyes gleamed with suspicion, and in a flash he was off the black and standing before Laskar, ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... not produce as much butter as a Devonshire dairy of fifty. Some "necessary" cruelty is involved in the stockman's business, however humane he may be. The system is one of terrorism, and from the time that the calf is bullied into the branding pen, and the hot iron burns into his shrinking flesh, to the day when the fatted ox is driven down from his boundless pastures to be slaughtered in Chicago, "the fear and dread of man" are ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... abridge, abbreviate, curtail, truncate, syncopate. Show (noun), display, ostentation, parade, pomp, splurge. Show, exhibit, display, expose, manifest, evince. Shrink, flinch, wince, blench, quail. Shun, avoid, eschew. Shy, bashful, diffident, modest, coy, timid, shrinking. Sign, omen, auspice, portent, prognostic, augury, foretoken, adumbration, presage, indication. Simple, innocent, artless, unsophisticated, naive. Skilful, skilled, expert, adept, apt, proficient, adroit, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... and a deadly, murderous hate, the more startling because of its very repression. Coupling it with what he knew or suspected of the man, Stratton felt there was some excuse for that momentary mental shrinking. ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... sleep!" he cried out instead, shrinking as from a lifted hand, though he was merely being shaken playfully to ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... connected, should have been felt within eight hours of each other, whereas there was several days' difference. His theory, which is amply sustained by observation, is that an earthquake is a movement caused by a shrinking, from loss of heat, of the interior of the earth and the crushing together and displacement of the rigid exterior as it accommodates itself to this contraction. It has been noticed that the earth is shaken ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... may be not only the dreaded enemy who ends life, but also the friend who brings relief from all conflict, strife and effort. Death may, therefore, well express a shrinking from adaptation and reality, and as such may symbolize one of the most deep-seated yearnings of the human soul. But from time immemorial man has associated with this yearning another one, one which, without ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... rigid, ragged face of the broken landes, sometimes towering themselves to a loftie height, to see if they can finde refuge from those snowes and colds that continually beat them, sometimes hiding themselves under some hollow hills or cliffes, sometimes sinking and shrinking into valleys, looking pale with snowes and falling in frozen and dead swounes: sometimes breaking their neckes into the sea, rather embracing the waters' than the aires' crueltie," and so on with the like labored fancies. "Great God," he concludes, "to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... To let the breach widen in this way was absurd. Wilton, when I said as much to him, said that it was due to her wonderful sensitiveness and highly strungness, and that it was just one more proof to him of the loftiness of her soul and her shrinking horror of any form of deceit. In fact, he gave me the impression that, though the affair was rending his vitals, he took a mournful pleasure in contemplating ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... goes to China,' went on Gaston, bending nearer to the shrinking figure, 'and returns after twelve months, where he meets Octave Braulard in the theatre—yes, the two murderers meet in Melbourne! How came Braulard here? Was it chance? No. Was it design? No. Was ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... Captain Crang to step into the gig. The Prince nodded a careless, haughty assent, shrinking a little, however, as Mr. Wapshott passed down the clockwork of the catamaran for his royal inspection. Recovering himself, he glanced at it perfunctorily and nodded to the sailors to give way and pull towards the hull of ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... throbbing silence. The group that, with the exception of Dexter Sprague, had been so united, so cemented with long-sustained friendship, again dissolved visibly before Dundee's eyes into eleven individuals, each shrinking into himself, mentally drawing away from any possible ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... street from us. I often take care of them when the mother is away." Then her eye chanced to fall upon the shrinking figure of Mittie, and she demanded wrathfully, "Have you been up to your tricks again, Mittie Cole? I shall certainly report you to your father this time sure. I will take the twins home, Mr. Strong. It is too bad your little guest has been hurt, ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... and Fulton ferry-boats for India's coral strand; but there's nothing in what the Atlantic Cable gives, like that it takes away from the heart of the man who has looked the Sphinx in the face and dreamed with the Brahmin under his own banian. Spare the shrinking Nunas of our poetry ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... knowing all that you must know, do you send such children as this to school? Eden's mother, indeed, had opposed the step, but his guardian (for the boy's father was dead), seeing that he was being spoilt at home, and that he was naturally a shrinking and timid lad, had urged that he should be sent to Saint Winifred's, with some vague notion of making a man of him. He might as well have thrown a piece of Brussels lace into the fire with the intention of changing it into open iron-work. ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... spot from which the noise came, the dog was standing at the edge of a pit, out of which came a frightened cry. The old man looked in, and there he saw a child clad in garments that shone like gold, shrinking timidly into ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... to go further still; even if we could, still we should be shrinking from our plain duty, Gentlemen, did we leave out Literature from Education. For why do we educate, except to prepare for the world? Why do we cultivate the intellect of the many beyond the first elements ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... his heir, and bring him up to have better notions of hospitality and good manners than could be learned at Howth Castle. Then she hurried back to her ship, with the poor little lordling who seemed too frightened to cry, and hid his face against her bosom, as though shrinking from the look of her dark, angry eyes. Immediately she ordered all sails to be set, and sped away toward Connaught. The nurse ran up to the castle with the news, but as she could not be admitted till the Earl had dined and drunk his punch, so much time was lost that, before ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... now, however, observe the multiplied changes afterwards arising from the continuance of this one cause. The cooling of the Earth involves its contraction. Hence the solid crust first formed is presently too large for the shrinking nucleus; and as it cannot support itself, inevitably follows the nucleus. But a spheroidal envelope cannot sink down into contact with a smaller internal spheroid, without disruption; it must run into wrinkles as the rind of an apple does when the bulk of ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... remains rather than the illimitable wastes of thick-ribbed ice and snow which daunts us at the thought of Arctic and Antarctic regions? Again, in the story of the earth, as told by geology, do we not also experience the same sense of dismay, and the soul shrinking back on itself, when we come in imagination to those deserts desolate in time when the continuity of the race was broken and the world dispeopled? The doctrine of evolution has made us tolerant of the thought of human animals,—our progenitors as we must believe—who were ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... issues: inadequate sanitation facilities; increasing levels of soil salinity; industrial pollution; excessive pesticides; part of the basin of the shrinking Aral Sea suffers from severe overutilization of available water for ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the drawing, Mrs. Blyth looked at Madonna. The poor girl stood shrinking close to the couch, with her hands clasped tightly together in front of her, and with no trace of their natural lovely color left on her cheeks. Her eyes followed Valentine listlessly to the bookcase, then turned towards Zack, not reproachfully nor angrily—not even tearfully—but again with ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... the tramp to the woman and child. She was decent, the poor creature, he thought. Her poor rags were clean and mended. She had a shrinking, suffering air. The boy, who was about nine years old, seemed to cling to her as though in terror of the burly ruffian. He was pale and thin and even on this beautiful June day ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... chapter in the history, which professes to explain the gradual formation of a solar system by a process of cooling and shrinking, to which the central orb is exposed. And here we are met by a difficulty at the outset; for the existence of comets with their very eccentric orbits is wholly irreconcilable with the theory. At their perihelion, many of ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... tresses. Then Bhima, O king, whirling his heavy and blazing mace, hurled it with great force at the car of Duryodhana. That heavy mace speedily crushed the steeds, the driver, and the car also, of thy son in that encounter. Thy son, then, O monarch, afraid of Bhima and shrinking within the narrowest compass, ascended another car, viz., that of the illustrious Nandaka. Then Bhima, regarding Suyodhana to have been slain amid the darkness of that night, uttered a loud leonine roar challenging the Kauravas. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... even greater than Ned Land's. When this stranger focused his gaze on an object, his eyebrow lines gathered into a frown, his heavy eyelids closed around his pupils to contract his huge field of vision, and he looked! What a look—as if he could magnify objects shrinking into the distance; as if he could probe your very soul; as if he could pierce those sheets of water so opaque to our eyes and scan the deepest ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... With closed eyes, shrinking from the mass, They seemed, in thought, removed as far From all their coarse environment As sun is separate from star! The very picture of disdain, From all such gorging, it was plain, They ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... shrinking back from the difficulties of life is indicated so frequently in psychology and in mythology by the symbol of the mother is not surprising, but I should yet like to offer for a forceful illustration an episode from the war of Cyrus against Astyages which I find recorded in Dulaure-Krauss-Reiskel ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... be the matter!" exclaimed by aunt, shrinking from me, and following with her frightened eyes the direction of mine. My breath was coming in short, quick gasps now, and my excitement was almost ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... were often going To hear my judgments in the dusky court; But though now many heads gray locks are showing, Their hearts are fresh, their memory is not short; And as we never shunned good cheer and drinking, From foaming bumpers we'll not now be shrinking. ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... resemblance (which is as much as one can expect) to the scene which had been in my sleep before me. But sleeping I had seen roaring torrents; waking, I beheld a quiet stream. The little river, as blue as ever, and shrinking from all thoughts of wrath, showed nothing in its pure gaze now but a gladness to refresh and cool. In many nicely sheltered corners it was full of soft reflection as to the good it had to do; and then, in silver and golden runnels, on it went to do it. And ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... the old judge, without gentleness or any show of confidence in what the shrinking ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... would impute to her a willingness to recant. No innocence could escape that. Now, had she really testified this willingness on the scaffold, it would have argued nothing at all but the weakness of a genial nature shrinking from the instant approach of torment. And those will often pity that weakness most who, in their own persons, would yield to it least. Meantime, there never was a calumny uttered that drew less support from the recorded circumstances. It rests ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... to and opened her blue eyes at this moment, shrinking closer to her grandfather and hugging her arms about his neck; then she peeped timidly around as if in search of the bad parent who had tried to get her to desert this precious home ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... the phrase in mockery). Who shrinking from the battle takes refuge where he can, because he has gained a corpse as ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... have sent a succession of shots along the ridge, as the party scrambled away, which would have toppled the dusky barbarians off like so many ten-pins; but he had no desire to inflict needless slaughter, and, in answer to the appeal of the shrinking Ariel, he had promised her that, so far as he was concerned, her parent should receive ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... drawn aside for the last two stages; the grosser, gutter, animal stages, which, not always by any means, but all too commonly follow. "Past feeling!" The delicate sense of feeling about right and purity dulls and goes. The fine inner judgment blunts and leaves. The shrinking sensitiveness toward the dishonorable and impure loses its edge and departs. Then—pell mell, like a pack of dogs down a steep hill, follows the last—"lasciviousness," the purest, holiest things in the gutter-slime, and then, cold-blooded, greedy trading in these things. That's the picture ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... one week's anguish That can have changed her so; Joy has not died here lately, Struck down by one quick blow; But cruel months have needed Their long relentless chain, To teach that shrinking manner Of ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... assurance that the periodical shifting of business, the perpetual transformations in industrial organisation, the rise and fall of industries, localities or firms, the changes of fashion and the ebb and flow of demand, and even a relative diminution of reputation may not lead to a shrinking of the deposits and current account balances of any one bank, or even of each bank in turn. Accordingly, every bank has to maintain an uninvested, or, at least, a specially liquid, reserve to meet such a possible ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... motionless for a moment; then he turned on his heel and strode over to the fire-place, staring down into the coals. The sight of that bent and shrinking figure, a woman, old and feeble, trembling like a ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... for Europe day after to-morrow; shall, perhaps, go directly to Heidelberg. Have you any commissions? any messages?" Under the mask of seeming indifference, she watched Beulah intently as, shrinking from the cold, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... It was very beautiful, and in its hand it carried a great bunch of shining bubbles, fastened to a stick by parti-colored ribbons, just as Teddy had seen Italians carrying balloons, only these bubble-balloons were growing and shrinking and changing every moment, just as though ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... So, shrinking a little and keeping a sharp look-out for enemies in case they had need to "drop dead" and pretend to be a dead stick or leaf, they ran on hand in hand, and came after a time to the edge ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... declared, "Well, you needn't laugh at her. She's pluck to the backbone. Show me another girl who would have undertook to corral a bank robber as she did. I don't wonder she thought that was my occupation. I certainly look rough enough—" Suddenly his roving eyes fell upon the timid, shrinking Gloriana, so depressed at the way matters had turned out that she could scarcely keep back the scalding tears. If it had not been for her, Tabitha would never have gone on such a wild-goose chase. Why hadn't she kept ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... introductions to her husband's books, for which she had contracted with Charles Scribner's Sons. As I have already said, it was only after much urging that she consented to do this work, and her almost painful shrinking from it appears in a letter of March 25, 1911, to Mr. Charles Scribner: "With this note I send the introduction to Father Damien. I didn't see how to touch upon the others when I know so little about them. I know this thing is about as bad as anything can be. I cringe whenever ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... sometimes they were dry, and there were anxious hours when we were not sure of water for ourselves, still less for the horses. One well near a salt lake was rather brackish. This lake is a landmark in the entire region round; it seems to be slowly shrinking, and many caravans camp here to collect the salt, which is taken south. The weather, too, had changed; the days were hotter and dryer, but the nights were cool ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... solely for the sake of their ability and attainments, and neither tradition nor convention had any influence on the appointments he made. He was passionate but not resentful, and he possessed the noble quality of not shrinking from confession of error. As for his military genius and his statecraft, it is only necessary to consider his achievements. They entitle him to stand in the very front of the world's greatest men. Turning to his legislation, we find much that illustrates the ethics of the time. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... buck-board across," he said, and the man began fumbling uneasily at his saddle-girths, and said something evasive about "giving trouble"; but when the Maluka—afraid that a man's life might be the forfeit of another man's shrinking fear of causing trouble—added that on second thoughts we would ride across as soon as horses could be brought in, he flushed hotly and stammered: "If you please, ma'am. If the boss'll excuse me, me mate's dead-set against a ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... of the child! Another fiery scourge, wielded by the Hand Unseen, bit deep into his shrinking conscience, into his writhing soul. His own act had brought this about. Be a cur, and accuse Destiny, blame Fate, lay the onus upon God, as so many defaulters do—he could not. He lay looking his ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... divinest part Ruled triumphant in the heart, And, with shrinking, sudden start, The bleak old world ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... den, which none can enter safely without due precautions, but the taking these precautions is within our own power; we can all rely upon the blessed promises of the Saviour that he will not desert us in our hour of need if we will only truly seek him; there is more infidelity in this shrinking and fear of investigation than in almost any open denial of Christ; the one who refuses to examine the doubts felt by another, and is prevented from making any effort to remove them through fear lest he should come to share them, ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... of my arm firmly, and as soon as I had stopped she had withdrawn her hand in haste. She was audacious and shrinking. She feared nothing, but she was checked by the profound incertitude and the extreme strangeness—a brave person groping in the dark. I belonged to this Unknown that might claim Jim for its own at any moment. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... this is what we saw: A man—tall, strong, powerful, with a face purple with passion—bending over the crouching form of a girl, whose slender body was quivering, shrinking, and writhing as the man's hand, armed with a short stick, fell, smiting her defenceless ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the soul-shrinking creeds of his day; wasted none of his time in the stupidities, inanities and contradictions of theological metaphysics; he did not endeavor to harmonize the astronomy and geology of a barbarous people with the science of the nineteenth century. Never, for one moment, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... of caprice, and pardon my irresolution, when you find me shrinking with terror from the promise I have made, and no longer either able or willing to perform it. The reproaches of your family I should very ill endure; but the reproaches of my own heart for an action I can neither approve ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... who stood at the end of the line, shrinking farther and farther, fled in their terror, climbing trees and high places, with loud chatter. Wandering far, sleeping ever in tree tops, in the far-away Summerland, they are sometimes seen of far-walkers, long of tail and long handed, like ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... couple of yards to move it, and then it rested upon the very brink, a shrinking sensation coming over me as I saw Tom stand, candle in hand, with one foot resting upon the rock ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... started again, and the clear air, the bright sun, the novel wildness of the dark forest, and our keenly awakened curiosity, made the excursion delightful, and enabled us to bear without shrinking the bumps and bruises we encountered. We soon lost all trace of a road, at least so it appeared to us, for the stumps of the trees, which had been cut away to open a passage, were left standing three ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... two years of age, Phebe "fell into the hands of a relative who kept the county jail," and her childhood knew little but the bitter fare and ceaseless drudgery of domestic slavery. She grew up with a crushed spirit, and was a timid, shrinking woman as long as she lived. She married Timothy H. Brown, a house-painter of Ellington, Ct., and passed her days there and in Monson, Mass., where she lived ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... led through a low doorway to a room on the ground floor; a place very like a cell. Were we took our meal in silence. When it was over I flung myself on one of the beds prepared for us, shrinking from my companions rather ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... dashing the rattling lightning links to the deck, and snatching the burning harpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them; swearing to transfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a rope's end. Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from the fiery dart that he held, the men fell back in dismay, and Ahab ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... London, and began their real life work, he cannot but have partaken fully of the satisfaction this gave to them, whilst they were, as yet, buried amidst the mass of East-End misery. It was shortly before the foundation of the Work that he was converted at one of his mother's own Meetings. The shrinking from publicity, which seems an essential part of every conscientious person, held him long back from resolving to become one of their Officers. But during all the years between his being saved and that great ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... morning Mrs. Booth continued to respond to the call to proclaim Salvation, until she came to be regarded as one of the most powerful preachers of her day. Her service was not unattended with sorrow. For many years this shrinking woman had to face fires of criticism and blizzards ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... full in the face while a great storm was surging in her mind. "I can't obey my father," she was saying to herself, I can't! It's too hard—too hard! The old man mistook her silence for the rejection of his prayer and slowly turned to go. The shrinking figure, the concentrated misery, the hopeless expression on his face, the tears in his eyes, the pathetic woebegone listlessness in his walk were too much for her; she could ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... I don't want to arouse any suspicion," replied Tom. "I've got to stay here a while yet, and arrange about shrinking on the jackets, after the core is ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... not, in fact, apply this reckoning; he may possibly not have time, at the urgent moment, to work it out; his heroism is inspired by the universal praise or blame that reward self-devotion or punish shrinking from it, and thus render acts moral or immoral by the habitual association of ideas. The martyr or patriot does not, indeed, stop to calculate; he does not feel the subtle egoism that is hidden in the desire for applause; he believes himself to be acting with ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... he had made a point of concealing from the Doctor. It will probably seem to the reader, however, that the Doctor's vigilance was by no means excessive, and that these two young people had an open field. Their intimacy was now considerable, and it may appear that for a shrinking and retiring person our heroine had been liberal of her favours. The young man, within a few days, had made her listen to things for which she had not supposed that she was prepared; having a lively foreboding of difficulties, he proceeded to gain as much ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... rub. He was haunted by what might have happened. Soon he became a timid, shrinking lad, utterly lacking confidence in the strength of his arms and his skill with an oar and a sail; and after that came to pass, his life was hard. He was afraid to go out to the fishing-grounds, where he must go every day with his father to keep the head of ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... so—so deuced—small, Bev, a wretched little pale-faced, shivering atomy, peeping up at me over a ragged elbow waiting to be thrashed, and I liked him because he didn't snivel, and he was too insignificant for prison, so, when he told me how hungry he was, I forgot to cuff his shrinking, dirty little head, and suggested a plate of beef at one of the a la mode shops. 'Beef?' says he. 'Yes, beef,' says I, 'could you eat any?' 'Beef?' says he again, 'couldn't I? why, I could eat a ox whole, I could!' So I naturally dubbed him Milo of Crotona ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... of digestion, and not to be swallowed in a hurry. For lack of mental nutriment, Stubberud with great resignation consoled himself with a pipe, but his enjoyment must have been somewhat diminished by the thought that his stock of tobacco was shrinking at an alarming rate. Every time he filled his pipe, I could see him cast longing looks in the direction of my pouch, which was still comparatively full. I could not help promising a fraternal sharing in case he should run short; and after that ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... also by changes in atmospheric conditions and temperature. It is characterised objectively by a swelling of the mucous membrane, which is pink or red in appearance and of a soft consistence, pitting when touched with the probe, and shrinking on the application of a 5 per cent. solution of cocain. Its soft consistence and the fact that it becomes smaller when painted with cocain differentiate it from true hypertrophy of the mucous membrane. Its situation and immobility, ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... shrinking inside her silks as if frost had touched her—all she knows is that she doesn't understand. And then there is the harlequin looking at her with his face gone suddenly pinched and odd as if he had started to torture himself with his own hands; and the ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... first depends, I cannot judge;—but, for one or other of such motives, I saw lately in some illustrated paper, a pictorial comparison of old-fashioned and modern travel, representing, as the type of things passed away, the outside passengers of the mail shrinking into huddled and silent distress from the swirl of a winter snowstorm; and for type of the present Elysian dispensation, the inside of a first-class saloon carriage, with a beautiful young lady in the last pattern of Parisian travelling dress, conversing, Daily news in hand, with a young officer—her ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... boy by the collar, and, seizing a horsewhip, brought it down with terrible force on the boy's shrinking form. ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... in the darkness, with his eyes open, somewhat disturbed, almost afraid of that body, hidden under the same sheet, lying a short distance from him, which avoided touching him, shrinking with manifest repulsion. ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... are thinking our fathers would think; From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink; To the life we are clinging they also would cling; But it speeds for us all like a ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... cries she felt assured; that he had pursued a portion of her abductors towards Montreal, and would continue his efforts, with those of her guardian and the inmates of Stillyside, to find and recover her she did not doubt; but in the meantime what might she not have to endure? And shrinking from the contemplation of the uncertain gulf before her, she was at length recalled to a sense of external things, by a sudden change of sound, from that of the clatter of the horses' hoofs on the hard road, to one like the roll of a distant peal of thunder, and telling her they were crossing ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... Jacob of old, but firm and calm, more clear in his mind and more sure of himself—as we see him at last when the full will of God breaks upon his soul with the Battle of Carchemish and he calmly surrenders to his own and his people's fate. That is how this prophet, by nature so fluid, and so shrinking stands out henceforth a fenced city and a wall of bronze over against the whole people of the land: the one unbreakable figure in the breaking-up of the state and the nation. We perceive the method in God's discipline of such a soul. He sees his servant's weakness ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... mock the old and wise, Your laugh shall fill the world with flame, I'll write upon the shrinking skies The scarlet splendour ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... close the frozen clime Where out of all the woods of time, Amid the frightful seraphim The fierce, cold eyes of Godhead gleam, Revolving hate and misery And wars and famines yet to be. And in my dreams I stood alone Upon a shelf of weedy stone, And saw before my shrinking eyes The dark, enormous breakers rise, And hover and fall with deafening thunder Of thwarted foam that echoed under The ledge, through many a cavern drear, With hollow sounds of wintry fear. And through the waters waste and grey, Thick-strown for many a league away, Out of the toiling sea arose ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... when news had been brought from time to time of bands of soldiers whom we had narrowly escaped; and now, as she looked upon the towers of Chinon, growing more and more distinct as the daylight strengthened, her face wore a smile of serene confidence in which natural fear and shrinking had ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore, And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain, — Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face The vast sweet visage of space. To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn, For a mete and a mark To the ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... been that Maurice was acquainted with her history, he could hardly have resisted the fascination of this creature, as tender and as innocent in appearance as a dewy rose; but he was thoroughly aware of her moral worthlessness. Yet as she stood shrinking on the threshold as if she were too timid to advance, he could not but feel her attractiveness and the sweetness of her presence. He watched curiously as in response to a word from Mrs. Rangely she came hesitatingly ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... had hitherto been the farmers' best customers. They would have the best of everything when their wages were high; as their wages declined their purchases declined. In a brief period, far briefer than would be imagined, this shrinking of demand reacted upon agriculture. The English farmer made his profit upon superior articles—the cheaper class came from abroad so copiously that he could not compete against so ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... expression was mild and inoffensive, and his watery pale eyes and receding chin gave one the idea that he was hardly to be trusted astride anything more spirited than a gold-headed cane. And yet, somehow, he aroused compassion rather than any sense of the ludicrous: he had that look of shrinking self-effacement which comes of a recent humiliation, and, in spite of all extravagances, he was obviously a gentleman; while something in his manner indicated that his natural tendency would, once at all events, have been to avoid ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... intimates. Instead, I who am a famed champion go daily in distrust, almost in fear, of these incomprehensible and shatter-pated beings. To every side there is a feeble madness over-busy about long-faced nonsense from which I recoil, who must conceal this shrinking always. There is no hour in my life but I go armored in reserve and in small lies, and in my armor I am lonely. Freydis, you protest deep love for this well-armored Manuel, but what wisdom will reveal to you, or to me either, just what is Manuel? Oh, but I am puzzled ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... form their conjectures as to the cause of this sudden break in her trance of anguish. She had up till that moment, with the instinctive aversion which mourners only know, and which we have formerly alluded to in the case of Martha, been shrinking from facing the gladsome light of heaven, caring not to look abroad on the blight of an altered world. But the few words her sister uttered, and which the other auditors manifestly had not comprehended, all at once rouse her from her seat of pensive sadness, and her shadow is seen hurrying ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... the aspect of the coming which is prominent here. Not the kingly, nor the redemptive, but the judicial, is uppermost. With keen irony the Prophet contrasts the professed eagerness of the people for the appearance of Jehovah and their shrinking terror when He does come. He is 'the Lord whom ye seek'; the Messenger of the covenant is He 'whom ye delight in.' But all that superficial and partially insincere longing will turn into dread and unwillingness to abide His scrutiny. The images of the refiner's ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... renew old strifes, but would be glad to turn my back upon the past and devote myself to questions of peace, development, and progress. Still, if these allegations are true, it would be a cowardly shrinking from the gravest public duty to allow such events to deepen into precedents which would subvert the foundation of republican institutions and convert our elections into organized crimes. I do not say these allegations are true, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... minute after death will only be another little step in Growth, to be followed by another and then another, as we are used to growing here, greatly diminishes one's shrinking at the change. ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... they pass on, crying, 'Senza Moccolo! Senza Moccolo!'; low balconies full of lovely faces and gay dresses, struggling with assailants in the streets; some repressing them as they climb up, some bending down, some leaning over, some shrinking back—delicate arms and bosoms—graceful figures—glowing lights, fluttering dresses, Senza Moccolo, Senza Moccoli, Senza Moc-co-lo-o-o-o!—when in the wildest enthusiasm of the cry, and fullest ecstasy of the sport, the Ave Maria rings from the church steeples, and the Carnival is over in an ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... darken his life and to darken mine. There is no wedding-day near for us. The obstacles are rising in front of him and in front of me. The next misfortune is very near us. You will see! you will see!" She shivered as she said those words; and, shrinking away from me, huddled herself up in a ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... machinery or the drift of trade, been thrown out of employment, and who set up in needless shops as a method of eking out the savings upon which they count. They contrive to make sixty or seventy per cent, of their expenditure, the rest is drawn from the shrinking capital. Essentially their lives are failures, not the sharp and tragic failure of the labourer who gets out of work and starves, but a slow, chronic process of consecutive small losses which may end if the individual is exceptionally ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... into pieces, but retained their continuity; but, in opposition to all experience and reason, he supposed that the cooling rings kept contracting and widening out at the same time. According to the nebular hypothesis—or guess—the fire mist was cooling and shrinking up, while the rings of the same heat and material were cooling faster and widening out from it: a piece of disorder equal to a miracle, for it can not be duplicated among solids or fluids in heaven ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... outwitted at their own game of sharp watching. How they would have jumped had they only known what was lying there in the grass so near their hiding place! At first, every time I saw a pair of little black eyes wink, or a head come from under a wing, I felt myself shrinking close together in the thought that I was discovered; but that wore off after a time, when I found that the eyes winked rather sleepily, and the necks were taken out just to stretch them, much as one would ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... valve line, after noticing the hand of the aneroid barometer, and it was not long before I succeeded in opening the shutters in the way described by Mr. Glaisher.... Again, on letting off more gas, I perceived that the lower part of the balloon was rapidly shrinking, and I heard a sighing, as if it were in the network and the ruffled surface of the cloth. I then looked round, although it seemed advisable to let off more gas, to see if I could in any way assist Mr. ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... his hand, knocked at the door of the private office and closed the door carefully behind him. As he stood upon the threshold, his heart gave a sudden leap. Mr. Weatherley was sitting in his accustomed chair, but his attitude and expression were alike unusual. He was like a man shrinking under the whip. And Fenella—he was quick enough to catch the look in her face, the curl of her lips, the almost wicked flash of her eyes. Yet in a moment she ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cruel exercise of power to compel this delicate and shrinking female to stand once more in the pillory of the law; or, to put "ELISHA'S" orthography to a second test by a crucial and censorious public. Whatever may be the result of all this indifference to the sanctity of private character and correct spelling, PUNCHINELLO ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... enemies to birds—there is no fear or suspicion shown, even when the enemy is in full view and about to strike. This, it will be understood, is when no warning-cry is uttered by the parent bird. This shrinking, and, in some cases, hiding from an object corning swiftly towards them, is the "wildness" of young birds, which, Darwin says again, is greater in wild than in domestic species. Of the extreme tameness of the young rhea ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... are the whimpering winds on the hill, Dumb is the shrinking plain, And the songs that enchanted the woods are still As I shoot to the skies again! Does the blood grow black on my fierce bent beak, Does the down still cling to my claw? Who brightened these eyes for the prey they seek? Life, I follow thy law! For I ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... was built on and under them. Three or four weather-beaten trees were shrinking from the wind, and the grass grew so sparingly that I could not avoid thinking Dr. Johnson's hyperbolical assertion "that the man merited well of his country who made a few blades of grass grow where they never grew before," might here have been uttered with strict propriety. ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft |
