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More "Puny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Parliament, and has of course joined Young England. He is the only man in the country who believes in the De Mogynses, and sighs for the days when a De Mogyns led the van of battle. He has written a little volume of spoony puny poems. He wears a lock of the hair of Laud, the Confessor and Martyr, and fainted when he kissed the Pope's toe at Rome. He sleeps in white kid-gloves, and commits dangerous excesses ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... terrified—and especially at night. Supposing the man were to lose his way? Or he might be drunk? I wish I had asked Jim to come down for me. There's Miss Constance's mother never misses a single night; I wonder who she thinks is going to run away with that puny-faced creature!" ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... had been for a number of years a feature at Hartranft's. As a puny infant, barely able to crawl, Solomon, as he was solemnly dubbed, was brought in off the Teton Mountains, and as milk was scarcer than money at the horse-ranch, he was aristocratically fed on ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... the table, and when he would have put her aside, as gently as he could, she attacked him fiercely, in a childish storm of passion, sobbing, striking at him with her puny fists. The soldier bowed his head ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... in a mere dialogue such as 'Paradise Regained '; it lacks the grandiose mise-en-scene and the shifting splendours of the greater epic; the stupendous figure of the rebellious archangel, the true hero of 'Paradise Lost,' is here dwarfed into a puny, malignant sophist; nor is the final issue in the later poem even for a moment in doubt—a serious defect from an artistic point of view. Jortin holds its peculiar excellence to be 'artful sophistry, false reasoning, set off in the most specious ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... loyalty, Elise relapsed into a sulky obedience to her governess and her mother. To their puny vision it seemed that her attitude towards them was one of haughty aloofness, and everything possible was done to subdue her spirit. Being unable to see that the child was lonely, and too proud to admit her craving for sympathetic companionship, ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... upon our conscious rectitude, and bearing aloft the shield of the Constitution of our country, your puny efforts are impotent; and we defy all your power. Put the majority of 1834 in one scale, and that by which this Expunging resolution is to be carried in the other, and let truth and justice, in heaven above and ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... a little lad, with blue soft eyes and bright fair hair. He was the only son of Brian, the chief of the M'Swynes, and people used sometimes to say scornfully that he was a poor puny son to come of such a father, for he was not big and burly, as a M'Swyne ought to be, but slim and fair, and like a girl. However, Brian M'Swyne loved his fair-haired boy, and would have given up most other ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... report prevailed to alienate the child's affections even from his mother, in making him believe that, owing to his deformity and growing ugliness, she had transferred all her tenderness to his younger brother, who certainly was very superior in health and beauty to the puny Dauphin. Making a pretext of this calumny, the governor of the heir-apparent was malicious enough to prohibit him from eating or drinking anything but what first passed through the hands of his physicians; and so strong was the impression made by this interdict ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... governors of Ceylon to seek to improve the position of the women of the Rodiya caste, especially of the young girls. Some benefit is claimed as a result of the efforts of the English women—but the majesty and power of Great Britain are puny institutions compared with the force of caste among native races. To keep down the Rodiya population a certain Kandyan king, it is stated on good authority, used to have a goodly number of them shot ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... East India Company. "French India" to-day consists of Pondicherry, Karikal, Yanaon, Mahe, and Chandarnagar—196 square miles in all,—while the Indian Empire of Britain spreads over an area of 1,800,000 square miles. French empire in America is now represented only by two puny islands off the coast of Newfoundland, two small islands in the West Indies, and an unimportant tract of tropical Guiana, but historic traces of its former greatness and promise have survived alike in Canada and in Louisiana. In Canada the French population has stubbornly held itself aloof from the ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... ways a child of three or even four; so big and strong was he. He spoke perfectly in his childish way, with great emphasis and a curious, soft burr over his r's and h's. And he actually tried to wrestle with his cousin Ibrahim, who was, however, rather a puny boy, despite the fact that he was three years older than ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... wrists. Thus I held her at arm's length, and my fingers tightened until I saw the flesh grow white beneath them. The intensity of my rage beat hers down and made it a puny thing. ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... Italian masters, and we know of nothing more touchingly beautiful, throughout the whole range of musical composition, than many of the andante cantabili of this school. This, also, has been rarely attempted by the English masters, and their puny efforts will bear no comparison with the rich, graceful, flowing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... that the scene related, innocent as it was, and, as one would naturally imagine, of puny consequence, if any, did no less a thing than, subsequently, to precipitate the Protestant Countess de Saldar into the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church. A little ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... more certain, steady and fatal in its progress, than this cancer on the political body of Virginia. It is eating into her very vitals. And shall we admit that the evil is past remedy? Shall we act the part of a puny patient, suffering under the ravages of a fatal disease, who would say the remedy is too painful? Pass as severe laws as you will to keep these unfortunate creatures in ignorance, it is in vain, unless you can extinguish that spark of intellect which God has given them. Sir, ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin
... masses. Indeed, there were so many of them, that their blind and unkind mother, Nature, had driven away before her this surplus, as unmoved as if they had been superabundant men. On the scorching funnels and ironwork of the ship they died away; the deck was strewn with their puny forms, only yesterday so full of life, songs, and love. Now, poor little black dots, Sylvestre and the others picked them up, spreading out their delicate blue wings, with a look of pity, and swept them overboard ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... in company with Honour to fight a duel: to pay off some debt at play;—or dirty annuity, the bargain of his lust; Perhaps Conscience all this time was engaged at home, talking aloud against petty larceny, and executing vengeance upon some such puny crimes as his fortune and rank of life secured him against all temptation of committing; so that he lives as merrily;'—(If he was of our church, tho', quoth Dr. Slop, he could not)—'sleeps as soundly in his bed;—and at last meets death unconcernedly;—perhaps ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... the world. They have increased to double their former size, and they yield about four and some of them five times as much milk as formerly. By greater attention to breeding and feeding, they have been changed from an ill-shaped, puny, mongrel race of cattle to a fixed and specific breed of excellent color and quality. So gradually and imperceptibly were improvements in the breed and condition of the cattle introduced, that although I lived in Ayrshire from 1760 to 1785, and have traversed ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... Why, this is what he wants; this is why he brought the prisoner here! Would you have me walk into his trap? Would you have me sacrifice my men, this garrison, why, this country even, to save the life of one puny Englishman, who is probably himself a spy?" He stopped a moment. "Why, man, you sicken me!" he cried, and he slashed at me with his sword as if I ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... An-to-ni-o was a puny lad, and not strong enough to work. He did not care to play with the other boys of the town. But he liked to go with his grandfather to the stone-yard. While the old man was busy, cutting and trimming the great blocks of stone, the lad would play among the chips. Sometimes ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... of him," interrupted Manfred; "he was a sickly, puny child, and Heaven has perhaps taken him away, that I might not trust the honours of my house on so frail a foundation. The line of Manfred calls for numerous supports. My foolish fondness for that boy blinded the eyes of my prudence—but it is better as it is. I hope, ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... before, the real story of the James and of America too commences with the bloom of the dogwood some three hundred years ago, when from the wild waste of the Atlantic three puny, storm-worn vessels (scarcely more seaworthy than our tub of a houseboat) beat their way into the sheltering mouth of this ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... trade too base, (Which seldom is the dunce's case,) Put on the critic's brow, and sit At Will's the puny judge of wit. A nod, a shrug, a scornful smile, With caution used, may serve a while. Proceed on further in your part, Before you learn the terms of art; For you can never be too far gone In all our modern ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... spawning salmon through two thousand miles of boiling Yukon flood. At such times he felt impelled to—express his own unconquerable essence; and with strong drink, wild music, and Batard, he indulged in vast orgies, wherein he pitted his puny strength in the face of things, and challenged all that was, and had been, and was yet ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... with aerial clotheslines flapping their perpetually washings, worked and sweated and even slept in the same sour garments. Facing her there on these sidewalks of slops, and the unprivacy of stoops swarming with enormous young mothers and puny old children, Getaway, with a certain fox pointiness out in his face, squeezed her arm until she could feel the bite of his ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... to note Mr. Churchill's soliloquy on his journey in an armoured train, published in the Morning Post at the very time the noble fellow was suffering for his bravery on an identical trip. "This armoured train," he said, "is a very puny specimen, having neither gun nor Maxims, with no roof to its trucks and no shutters to its loopholes, and being in every way inferior to the powerful machines I saw working along the southern frontier. ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... association or its purpose. They do not realize that California sends 25,000 tons of walnuts to market, worth millions of dollars, and 10,000 tons of almonds this year. They don't realize that down in Georgia, in the poor, puny pinewoods where men had a hard time to make a living at one time, they are now riding around in limousines because they are growing nuts. They do not realize the enormous social and economic importance and consequence of work of the nut growers of today in the part that they play in the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... feet. She stooped over the terrifying figure and seized the man's weapon. Her eyes shone with a strange light. She felt her arms tingle. A wonderful power seemed to flow through her body, like a gush of strong wine. She was assured that she, unaided, could beat down all the puny, despicable creatures who barred the path to her lover. She vaulted over the writhing form of the Alaculof, and made to climb the stairs, but Christobal, admirably cool, fired again and brought another Indian to his knees. The second Indian's fall caused Frascuelo to trip; and the Chilean, locked ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... of domestic license. A few deaths might result (and did), and many injuries, but the treatment they received would make such an impression on Mrs. Pankhurst's followers that they would at last realize the futility of measuring their puny force against the muscle of man. Force, as the Premier had just said, must be the ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... has created a new model for funny writers; and the fact is noticeable that, in various parts of this country as well as in his own, he has numerous puny imitators, who suppose that by simply adopting his comic spelling they can write quite as well as he can. Perhaps it would be as well if they remembered the joke of poor Thomas Hood, who said that he could write as well as Shakespere ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... her husband, their differences of opinion, and puny wranglings, hoistings of two standards, reconciliations for the sake of decency, breaches of the truce, and his detested meanness, the man behind the mask; and glimpses of herself too, the half-known, half-suspected, developing creature claiming to be Diana, and unlike ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the copyright, into the Morning Chronicle, in its early days, was nearly the sole exponent of the wants— of the gossip (in prose and in verse)—and of the daily events of Quebec. As such, though, from the standard of to-day, it may seem quaint and puny, still it does not appear an untruthful mirror of social life in the ancient capital. Its centenary number of June, 1864, with the fyles of the Gazette for 1783, have furnished the scholarly author of the "Prophecy of Merlin," ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... resigned the Premiership of Australia to become High Commissioner in London, and Hughes was named as his successor. The puny lad who had landed at Brisbane thirty years before with half a crown in his pocket sat enthroned. The reins of power were his and he lost no time ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... boy was born amid the smell of gunpowder, he must have been a disappointment to his soldier father. He was puny and sickly, and for a time it did not seem likely that he would live at all. So when he was only a few months old, he was taken from the uncongenial air of India and brought by his parents to England. Here he spent his boyhood, away from the father and mother who were ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... behind the witch through the frowning gate of her Eden of fair inks and smooth white surfaces. She had shared with David the remains of her Sandwich of Knowledge; she had left on the table her puny paper defiance. David, except that he had required but little temptation, had played Adam's part very creditably in the affair. For him Eden had been a soft warm place, and he was anxious to blame somebody—the woman for choice—for the loss of his comfort. He followed ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... diminutive stature of mankind, if we pursue the metaphor, was daily sinking below the old standard, and the Roman world was indeed peopled by a race of pygmies; when the fierce giants of the north broke in, and mended the puny breed. They restored a manly spirit of freedom; and after the revolution of ten centuries, freedom became the happy ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... sight of as you approach is the spire tapering into the sky, or the huge towers holding possession of the centre of the landscape—majestically beautiful—imposing by mere size amidst the large forms of Nature herself. As you go nearer, the vastness of the building impresses you more and more. The puny dwelling-place of the citizens creep at its feet, the pinnacles are glittering in the tints of the sunset, when down below among the streets and lanes the twilight is darkening. And even now, when the towns are thrice ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... look bored; but, when I avail myself of the privilege of joining in the responses and the singing, I feel that I am fertilizing my spirit for the truth that is proclaimed. As a citizen I have certain rights, but when I come to think of my privileges my rights seem puny in comparison. Then, too, my rights are such cold things, but my privileges are full of sunshine and of joy. My rights seem mathematical, while my privileges seem ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... is it to be so introduced? Certainly not by the very puny efforts made hitherto. The quantity sent should be multiplied many times, and arrangements made to forward it on arrival, to some, if not all, of the great cities in the interior. There it should be sold at auction to the highest bidders, ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... shall laugh, when trumpeted along "In lying speech and still more lying song, "By these learned slaves, the meanest of the throng; "Their wits brought up, their wisdom shrunk so small, "A sceptre's puny point ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the end, who is the meaning. He is the only King.... Of course I must write about Him. I must tell all my world of Him. And before the coming of the true King, the inevitable King, the King who is present whenever just men foregather, this blood-stained rubbish of the ancient world, these puny kings and tawdry emperors, these wily politicians and artful lawyers, these men who claim and grab and trick and compel, these war makers and oppressors, will presently shrivel and pass—like paper thrust ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... was this power that he was trifling with, that brought him now this cold, dead fear before which he quailed! What was this something that in his temerity he had dared invoke—that rose now engulfing him, a puny maggot—that snatched him up and flung him headlong, shackled, before this nebulous, terrifying tribunal, where out of nothingness, out of a void, the calm, majestic features of the Patriarch took form and changed, and changed, and ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... has been a good sister to you. You were the youngest; and a puny little fellow you were then, with all your greatness. Many and many a time, in your quarrels with other boys, have I seen her get into no end of disgrace for defending you. Do you remember that old log ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... help going over it again. The children all fell ill together—the two eldest were twin boys, one puny, the other a very fine fellow, and his father's especial pride and delight. As so often happens, the sickly one was spared, the healthy one ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be compelled to inform us that there were no red meats of any sort to be had, but only sea foods. So we started in with oysters. Personally I have never cared deeply for the European oyster. In size he is anaemic and puny as compared with his brethren of the eastern coast of North America; and, moreover, chronically he is suffering from an acute attack of brass poisoning. The only way by which a novice may distinguish a bad European oyster from a good ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... manhood. Experience is directly opposed to this shameless assertion. It is war that wastes a nation's wealth, chokes its industries, kills its flower, narrows its sympathies, condemns it to be governed by adventurers, and leaves the puny, deformed, and unmanly to breed the next generation. Internecine war, foreign and civil, brought about the greatest set-back which the Life of Reason has ever suffered; it exterminated the Greek and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... senate as in our councils, men were what they still are;' and the old Jesuit takes a narrow view of the progress of mankind, who asserts that the masculine and vigorous treatment that was necessary to Thucydides and Livy is not required by the historians of our puny and degenerate day. Even the Count Gobineau, who so ably and, to his followers, conclusively proves the fallacy of the dearest hope of every learned philanthropist and patriot, does not, in his most earnest antagonism to the doctrine of human progress, insinuate the existence ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... generation three seem to me to rise head and shoulders above the crowd—Gibbon Wakefield, Grey, and Selwyn, the founder, the ruler, the pastor. Nor must it be supposed, because these towered above their fellow-actors, that the latter were puny men. Plenty of ability found its way to the Colony, and under the stress of its early troubles wits were sharpened and faculties brightened. There is nothing like the colonial grindstone for putting an edge on good steel. Grey, Selwyn, and Wakefield, as unlike morally as they were in ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... shall we deny the power of the Creator to eliminate the element of time, when we have gone so far in eliminating the element of space? Who am I that I should attempt to measure the arm of the Almighty with my puny arm, or to measure the brain of the Infinite with my finite mind? Who am I that I should attempt to put metes and bounds to the power of ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... ant-heap; the scorching heat penetrates into the unprotected cells, and enrages the dwellers inside. They swarm out full of fight, like an army lusting for battle. Their home has been ravished of the protection they had raised with half a lifetime of labour, and in their puny way they want vengeance. They find a foe on top, a man ready to their wrath. They crawl into his scorched boots, over his baked feet, guiltless of stockings; they charge up the legs, on which the trousers hang loosely, and as they charge they bite, because ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... black with ships, and the pale waves would have been red with fire. Carne looked at the water way touched with silver by the soft descent of the winter sun, and upon it, so far as his gaze could reach, there were but a dozen little objects moving, puny creatures in the distance—mice in front of a lion's den. And much as he hated with his tainted heart the land of his father, the land of his birth, some reluctant pride arose that he was ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Yes; and their necks rise from their shoulders like ivory towers. Any costume will look beautiful on such women. But how are poor, puny, ill-made women to dress in such fashions? They could not wear those dresses without exhibiting all those personal defects which our present fashion conceals. It's all very fine for perfectly beautiful women to have such ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... only the descendant of some of those puny heroes who boiled their own kettles before the walls of Troy, I shall write to her from a Grecian, rather than a Roman canton: when I shall find myself, for example, among her ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... of Marion was unpromising. At birth he was puny and diminutive in a remarkable degree. Weems, in his peculiar fashion, writes, "I have it from good authority, that this great soldier, at his birth, was not larger than a New England lobster, and might easily enough have been put into a quart pot." ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... in shop, street, church, theatre, bar-room, official chair, are pervading flippancy and vulgarity, low cunning, infidelity—everywhere the youth puny, impudent, foppish, prematurely ripe—everywhere an abnormal libidinousness, unhealthy forms, male, female, painted, padded, dyed, chignon'd, muddy complexions, bad blood, the capacity for good motherhood deceasing or deceas'd, shallow notions of beauty, with a range of manners, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... ooze of the Chott, sturdy walls must enclose them. Ages pass, and still the groves descend, while the defences grow so stout and high that, viewed from above, the palms down there, in that deep funnel, look like puny vegetables, and men like ants. And still they descend.... One day the pale population engaged in tilling this shadowy paradise will be horrified to perceive, in their encircling bulwarks, rents and crevices that ooze forth ominous jets of mud. The damage ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Sometimes, when I think of this man and his like, when I think of my puny attempts to creep into their skins, I must need laugh, lest, like Beaumarchais, I should weep. What, after all, do I know of him? What is there in my armoury to pierce this impenetrable outer-man? Once, when I was Browning-mad, I began an epic. Yes, I, an epic! I pictured ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... the facts of nature. Looks straight to find God's meaning in them, and then tries to exalt and ennoble them to their loftiest good. He does not, in his puny impotence, quarrel with the all-powerful Creator and try to stamp out that with which He thought fit ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... size of the nestler is comic, and its tiny beseeching weakness is compensated perfectly by the happy patronizing look of the mother, who is a sort of high reposing Providence toward it. Welcome to the parents the puny straggler, strong in his weakness, his little arms more irresistible than the soldier's, his lips touched with persuasion which Chatham and Pericles in manhood had not. His unaffected lamentations when he lifts up his voice ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... useless to set a hen in very hot weather. As we had more eggs than were required, we did so during part of June, July, and August, but had very bad fortune with them; the hen seldom hatching more than three or four, and those puny little creatures. ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... unmeasured trail had to be broken. The Northland giants thronged about them, glistening in their impenetrable armour and crested by the silvery burnish of their glacial headpieces. They frowned vastly, yet with a sublime contempt, at the puny intrusion of their solitude. But the fiery spirit impelling the brothers was a power which defied the overwhelming grandeur of the mountain world, and rendered insignificant the trials they encountered. The cry was "On!" and the dogs laboured as only these burden-bearers ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... the mother that the child should not, must not die, possibly had something to do with keeping the breath of life in the puny man-child. The fond mother had given him the name of his father, even before birth! He was to live to do the work that the man now dead had hoped to do; that is, live a long and honest life, and leave the fair acres more valuable than he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... time forward the state of affairs in Acadia was a peculiar one. By the Treaty of Utrecht it was a British province, and the nominal sovereignty resided at Annapolis, in the keeping of the miserable little fort and the puny garrison, which as late as 1743 consisted of but five companies, counting, when the ranks were full, thirty-one men each.[206] More troops were often asked for, and once or twice were promised; but they were never sent. "This has been hitherto no more than a mock government, its authority never yet ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... skeptic's puny hands, While near the school the church-spire stands, Nor fears the bigot's blinded rule, While near the church-spire ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... offered a cult made up of practices only. And why is it the monks, above all, who contribute to the deterioration of faith? 'I am ashamed to tell how superstitiously most of them observe certain petty ceremonies, invented by puny human minds (and not even for this purpose), how hatefully they want to force others to conform to them, how implicitly they trust them, how boldly ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... up to his full height, lifted his sword from the ground and hung it on his side, and strode away with Wattie, looking all the while like a great giant in company of a puny dwarf. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... scarce, and able only by the greatest caution to drag out a dull existence as a nocturnal and burrowing animal. It would seem that with such powerful protection as he originally had, he would have outlived the puny armadillos, but his fast disappearance proves that the race is not always to the swift, nor the ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... lest our claims to attention are not fully recognized, less our worth be not observed, our proper station accorded to us. How we press our paltry little claims upon others, how we glorify our own insignificant deeds; how large loom up our small and puny acts. The whole universe centers in us; our ego is a most important thing; our work of the highest value and significance; ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... with a puny joy, Accept amusement for their little while And feed upon some nourishing employ But otherwise shake their wise heads and smile— Protesting that one man can no more move the mass For good or ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... forward to them as to something quite out of the common groove. There were none of the accessories which generally attract boyish admiration—no rhetoric, no purple patches, no declamation, no pretence of spontaneity. His anxious forehead crowned a puny body, and his voice was so faint as to be almost inaudible. The language was totally unadorned; the sentences were closely packed with meaning; and the meaning was not always easy. But the charm lay in distinction, aloofness from common ways of thinking and speaking, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... from the near prairie the mighty, portentous rumbling roar of a bull—the bellow that he utters when he is roused to fight, the savage roar that means "I smell blood." It is one of those tremendous menacing sounds that never fail to give one the creeps and make one feel, oh! so puny and helpless. ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Sir Adam (perceive me), a wonder! The constitution of a horse, an ox, nay an elephant, the which monstrous beast (you'll allow me!) hath a pachydermatous hide tolerably impervious to spears, axes, darts, javelins and the like puny offences, and a constitution whereby he liveth (you'll observe) whole centuries. Indeed, Sir Adam, 'tis a cure marvellous, being one I ha' wrought on my patient in spite of said patient. For look now (and heed me) here we have soul, mind and will, or what ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... business which is despatched without complaint or hindrance in a tolerably short interview once a week, or once a month, or once a quarter, between the Secretary of State and the Agent-General. If that is all, we can only say that seldom has so puny a mouse come forth ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... view in which this traffic wears a more cheering aspect; for any one comparing the puny Portuguese or the bastard Brazilian with the athletic negro, cannot but allow that the ordinary changes and chances of time will place this fine country in the hands of the latter race. The negro will be fit to cultivate the soil, and will thrive beneath the tropical sun of ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... Parker, a Theist. 'Three great principles—the absolute goodness of God; the final salvation of every created soul; and the divine authority of conscience—are the obvious fundamental canons of the Faith of the Future.' We continue our quotations: 'God will not leave us when all our puny theologies have failed us, and all our little systems shall have had their day and ceased to be. We shall yet praise Him who is the light of life, even though the darkness may seem to gather round us now. Christianity may fail us, and we may watch it with straining ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and when a Canadian stood up to those airs, he was hissed. Special interests became intrenched behind a triple rampart of fashion and administration and loyalty. Details of the revolt need not be given here. A great love is always the best cure for a puny affection—a Juliet for a Rosalind; and when a pure patriotism arose to oust this spurious lip-loyalty, there ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... said Uncle Eb. 'Don't never pay if go bookin' fer trouble—it stew easy if find. There ain' no sech thing 's trouble 'n this world 'less ye look for it. Happiness won't hey nuthin if dew with a man thet likes trouble. Minnit a man stops lookin' fer trouble happiness 'II look fer him. Things came puny nigh's ye like 'em here 'n this world—hot er cold er only middlin'. Ye can either laugh er cry er fight er fish er go if meetin'. If ye don't like erry one you can fin fault. I'm on the lookout fer happiness—suits me best, ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... be warned in time, ye tenth transmitters of a foolish face, ye reckless begetters of diseased or puny bodies, with hearts and brains to match! Far down the corridors of time shall club-footed retribution follow in your footsteps, and overtake you at every turn! Most remorselessly, most vindictively, will you be aroused, in sleepless hours of unbearable misery (future-waking ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... manners, his customs, are all doomed to destruction and oblivion as completely as an ant-hill which exists one night and is trodden down the next. Forever and forever he works and plans in vain; forever and forever Nature, the visible and active Spirit of God, rises up and crushes her puny rebel. ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Wing lay wounded, and to bear him slowly, carefully, back to shelter, reaching the caves without further molestation before darkness set in, had served to convince the young commander that he could count on reasonable security for the night. Unless they know their prey to be puny and well-nigh defenceless, Apaches make no assault in the darkness, and so, with the coming of the dawn, he had about him fit for service a squad of seven troopers, most of them seasoned mountain ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... Another had trimmed himself magnificently from an illuminated manuscript, had stuck a nosegay in his bosom, culled from "The Paradise of Dainty Devices," and having put Sir Philip Sidney's hat on one side of his head, strutted off with an exquisite air of vulgar elegance. A third, who was but of puny dimensions, had bolstered himself out bravely with the spoils from several obscure tracts of philosophy, so that he had a very imposing front, but he was lamentably tattered in rear, and I perceived that he ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... had, as should all men, an eye to my posterity. It was a great cross to me, as may be thought, to find that all my forethought had been in vain, and that while Turnip, the farrier, had eight as fine lads as one would care to father, of a puny wench that my Marian could have slipped in her pocket, Mistress Butter presented me with no children, weakly or healthy). But, as I have said, Marian, in her own arms, did carry my lady up-stairs to her chamber, and laid ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... Sierra Madre is incomparably stronger and more luxurious than that of the cold North. The pine-trees in higher altitudes, for instance in Norway, appear miserably puny and almost stunted when compared with the giants of the South. Trees of 100 to 150 feet high and 10 to 15 feet in girth are frequent. We noticed some species of pines the needles of which were over a ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... scornfully, not at all pleased with the idea of having his powerful enemy in the boat with him, "such a puny young fellow can be of no use to me, and if I go as far out to sea as I generally do, and stay as long, you will catch a cold that will ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... sea In a deal-wood box! It were plain folly. There is naught more precious in the world than I: I carry God in me, to give to men. And when has the sea been friendly unto man? Let it but guess my errand, it will call The dangers of the air to wreak upon me, Winds to juggle the puny boat and pinch The water into unbelievable creases. And shall my soul, and God in my soul, drown? Or venture drowning?—But no, no; I am safe. Smooth as believing souls over their deaths And over agonies shall slide ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... what do you mean?' said the stout man rising a little, and supporting himself on his elbow. 'Keep you poor! You'd keep us poor if you could, wouldn't you? That's the way with you whining, puny, pitiful players. When you lose, you're martyrs; but I don't find that when you win, you look upon the other losers in that light. As to plunder!' cried the fellow, raising his voice—'Damme, what do you mean by such ungentlemanly language as ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... murder; or, if a wolf could have written a journal, the gaunt and famished wretch could not have ravened more eagerly for slaughter. It was blood which was Marat's constant demand, not in drops from the breast of an individual, not in puny streams from the slaughter of families, but blood in the profusion of an ocean. His usual calculation of the heads which he demanded amounted to two hundred and sixty thousand; and though he sometimes raised it as high as three hundred thousand, it never fell beneath the smaller number. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... is far beyond the puny functions of comedy and tragedy. The grotesque farce of vaudeville and the tawdry show which only appeals to sentiment at highest and often to ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... authority. For a century it has not been denied, and the cup of bitterness which England had held to Alexander's lips was certainly brimming. Since the beginning of hostilities Great Britain had failed in every single engagement. Her naval force in the Baltic was puny, but it preyed on Russian commerce; the promised war material did not arrive; her support at Constantinople was farcical; she had no more heart in Turkish partition than before and ever since; ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... rainy day may be A blessed interval! A little halt for introspect, A little moment to reflect On life's discrepancy— Our puny stint so poorly done, The larger duties scarce begun— And so may conscience culpable ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... land he reached and that for his revenue there should be given one-tenth of the entire produce of the countries. Such a far reaching demand as this could not have been acceded to only by a doubting sovereign, and he would probably have been beheaded with his puny crew of one hundred and twenty men if he had reached Asia and attempted to carry out such ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... of us. Three of the brethren are Egyptians, and two are natives of Damascus. The rest are, like myself, descendants of a race supposed to have perished from off the face of the earth, yet still powerful to a degree undreamed of by the men of this puny age." ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... he fell, and regaining his feet rushed madly and blindly about in vain hope of finding the lost trail and escaping the doom that seemed closing in upon him. The snow clouds were like dense walls, and he, like a child, in puny effort wildly trying to batter them down to gain ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... They need something concrete to tie to. They need to be taught, if you please, what is the "gang" spirit among boys. They need to learn that their young bodies are to be used, instead of decorated. Until they learn that, we shall have sickly mothers and puny babies. No single movement for the improvement of American people as a race, no advance of science or sanitation, can compare in importance with the necessity for building up morally, spiritually and bodily, our ...
— Why I Believe in Scouting for Girls • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... vigor in men. This is human nature. Weakly and delicate fathers have weak and puny children, though the mother may be strong and robust. A weak mother often bears strong children, if the father is physically and sexually vigorous. Consumption is often inherited from fathers, because they furnish the body, yet more women die with it because of ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... weak, puny boy was returned to his parents a robust, healthy, manly man. Many a timid, helpless boy went home a brave, independent man. Many a wild, reckless boy went home sobered, serious, and trustworthy. And many whose career at home was wicked and blasphemous went home ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... least 90 per cent will be about alike in appearance, productivity and otherwise. The remaining plants may show variations so striking as to attract attention. Some may be tall and scraggly, some may be small and puny; others may be light green, still others dark green; and so on. But there may be one or two plants that stand out conspicuously as the best of the whole lot. These are the ones to mark with a stake so they will not be molested when the ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... all." No human being or class of human beings would venture to talk thus to equals. It is only because women are dependent on men that such cowardly impudence can be dished out to them day after day by puny legislators and editors, themselves often reeking in social corruption which should banish them forever from the presence of womanhood. Yours for an even-handed scale in morals as well as ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... puny sages shake Their heads, and haste to mock the failing one, Who in his strength could make the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... waste undulated and frothed amidst the countless cells of crumbling house walls, and broke along the foot of the city wall in a surf of bramble and holly and ivy and teazle and tall grasses. Here and there gaudy pleasure palaces towered amidst the puny remains of Victorian times, and cable ways slanted to them from the city. That winter day they seemed deserted. Deserted, too, were the artificial gardens among the ruins. The city limits were indeed as sharply defined as in the ancient days when the gates ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... just man who ne'er was hard? And who is mild, is oft not strong enough. The brave become too venturesome in war. What we call virtue is but conquered sin, And where no struggle was, there is no power. But as for me, no time was given to err, A child—the helm upon my puny head, A youth—with lance, high on my steed I sat, My eye turned ever to some threat'ning foe, Unmindful of the joys and sweets of life, And far and strange lay all that charms and lures. That there are women, first I learned to know When in the church my wife was ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Australian or American maxima may be as brutal, or even more so, but the average efficiency in smiting with the fist of wickedness is, beyond all question, on the English side. 'English fair play' is a fine expression. It justifies the bashing of the puny drapers' assistant by the big, hairy blacksmith; and this to the perfect satisfaction of both parties, if they are worthy the name of Englishmen. Also, the English gentleman may take off his coat to the potsherd of the earth; and so excellent is his ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... little hour,—how short a time To wage our wars, to fan our fates, To take our fill of armored crime, To troop our banner, storm the gates. Blood on the sword, our eyes blood-red, Blind in our puny reign of power, Do we forget how soon is sped One ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... had a single purpose—to produce good soldiers and obedient citizens. A sound body formed the first essential. A father was required to submit his son, soon after birth, to an inspection by the elders of his tribe. If they found the child puny or ill-shaped, they ordered it to be left on the mountain side, to perish from exposure. At the age of seven a boy was taken from his parents' home and placed in a military school. Here he was trained in marching, sham fighting, and gymnastics. He learned to sing warlike ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... last cast off his mastery. So he was not taken unawares when he ordered them back in quest of their abandoned charge, and saw the gleam of the hunting knives that they drew from the sheaths. A pitiful spectacle, three weak men lifting their puny strength in the face of the mighty vastness; but the two recoiled under the fierce rifle blows of the one and returned like beaten dogs to the leash. Two hours later, with Joe reeling between them and Sitka Charley bringing up the rear, they came to the fire, ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... headache, he never does anything; he is always unwell. This was the reason why Asclepius and his sons practised no such art. They were acting in the interest of the public, and did not wish to preserve useless lives, or raise up a puny offspring to wretched sires. Honest diseases they honestly cured; and if a man was wounded, they applied the proper remedies, and then let him eat and drink what he liked. But they declined to treat intemperate and worthless subjects, even though they might have made large fortunes ...
— The Republic • Plato
... have you knights and warriors, so boastful and so honoured, been making your fruitless attempts to rescue the tomb of Christ! God can wait no longer! He is tired of your vain puny efforts. Stand back and let us, whom you despise, carry out his commission! He who calls can insure the victory, and we will show you what the children ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... find cripple boys playing "tip-cat," another game upon which the law has its eye, or hurrying along on crutches after something that serves as a football, and getting there in time, too, for a puny kick. But that kick, little as it is, thrills the poor chap, and he feels that he has been playing. I am sure that football is going to play a great part in the physical salvation of Tom, Dick and Harry, but ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... accomplished. When the last Pope of Rome dies, so it was said, then time would be accomplished. The last Pope had died. Their basilica with its mighty dome was a desert where scorpions and snakes abounded. The fifth Buddha would appear, not the second Christos. Suddenly I saw before me in a puny boat a beautiful beardless youth. He was attired in some symbolical garments and upon his head a triple tiara. I could not believe my aged eyes. He sat upright. His attitude was hieratic. His eyes were lifted heavenwards. He clasped ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... tired of the trimly circumscribed monotony of material life, of the isolating flat contention against hunger and want. But the mountains took me out of myself. They were Peter's windmill, raised to the Nth power. They loomed above me, seeming to say: "We are timeless. You, puny one, can live but a day." They stood there as they had stood from the moment God first whispered: "Let there be light"—and there was light. But no, I'm wrong there, as Peter would very promptly have told me, for it was only in the Cambrian ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... advertisement (see Dispatch), but retire yourself in the country (I should think I would—Monteagle), where you may abide in safety; for though there be no appearance of any punae; (what the deuce does this mean? Puny's little—Monteagle), yet they will receive a terrible blow-up (By punae he means members of Parliament, and he is another Guy!—Monteagle); yet they shall not see who hurts them, though the place shall be purified and the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... their incapacity plain. The execution of the King had filled them with alarm, and with hatred against the ruder and more robust party who had forced that startling act of vengeance upon them. Puny social disgusts prevented them from co-operating with Danton or with Robespierre. Prussia and Austria were not more redoubtable or more hateful to them than was Paris, and they wasted, in futile recriminations about the September massacres or the alleged peculations ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... out here and take it like a man,' says the blacksmith. 'The last two ministers were such puny fellers, there was no fun in thrashing them; but you're something worth while. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... these four terrible weeks—ecstasy, despair—ecstasy, despair—and to the world as unblinking as a marble in a museum! Do you wonder that I welcome the hurricane, in which no man dare think of any but his puny self? For the moment I am free, and as alive, as triumphant as that great wind outside—as eager to devastate, to fight, to conquer, to live—to live—to live. What do I care for civilization? If James Hamilton were out there ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... was one morning while I was walking along Back-lane, at the top end of the town, that I "fell in luck." Old John Malloy kept a grocer's shop there—the Ship Inn now marks the spot—and I heard from him that he had a small litter of pigs. I saw them, and found among them a black pig—a puny, rickety, and most dejected-looking creature. I asked John what he would take for the best and the worst, and although he did not wish to part with the best pig, he was not very particular in that respect with regard to ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... skimm'st the peaceful pool, Where the speckled trout at play, Rising, shares thy dancing prey, While the treach'rous circles swell Wide and wider where it fell, Guiding sure the angler's arm Where to find the puny swarm; And with artificial fly, Best to lure the victim's eye, Till, emerging from the brook, Brisk it bites the barbed hook; Struggling in the unequal strife, With its death, disguised as life, Till it breathless beats the shore Ne'er to cleave the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... with which, nowadays, every puny whipster gets the sword of Sir Walter has already been remarked. If any Tom o' Bedlam chooses to tell the world that all the New Scottish novelists are Sir Walter's masters, what does it matter to anybody? ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... fiend, Front the keen arrows of Love's sunken sun, For that, with nearer vision it discerns What in the distance like ripe roses seemed Crimsoning with odorous beauty the gray rocks Are the red lights of wreckers! Just as well The obstinate traveler might in pride oppose His puny shoulder to the icy slip Of the blind avalanche, and hope for life; Or Beauty press her forehead in the grave, And think to rise as from the bridal bed. But let the soul resolve its course shall be Onward and upward, and the walls of pain May build themselves about it ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... years of age, puny and pale and sickly, having lived most of her time in a close back room, up three pairs of stairs, in a London house of business, where her mother had been housekeeper. Her only playfellow had been a cat, and the prospect from her window had been the walls of the houses on the opposite side ...
— The Christmas Child • Hesba Stretton
... Arab filled his puny chest, took a long, devouring look about him, and sought a definition of the word to make sound the lift of pride and hope ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... amazement, he sprang on the strapping servant like a wild-cat, and began to beat, cuff, and belabor him with all the strength of his puny limbs. ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... who had scoffed at him when he first appeared, a puny boy, at Chatham, found themselves gradually trusting more and more to his advice, and his uncle, who had at first predicted that three months' service would send Horatio back to shore, was now the first to predict that ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... small thing to ask or to grant. Upon this piece of lent land stood our favorite oak. The potatoes were scarcely peeping green above the soil, when we observed that the great boughs which we looked at admiringly a dozen times a day, as they towered far above the puny race around them, remained distinct in their outline, instead of exhibiting the heavy masses of foliage which had usually clothed them before the summer heat began. Upon nearer inspection it was found that our neighbor had commenced his ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... beauty; her round, fair face and honest blue eyes were pleasant to look at, and she had beautiful hair, but that was all; yet she could not help seeing that she was a very vision of loveliness beside the sallow, puny, almost deformed aspect of her poor little neighbour. She coloured deep with angry sympathy, but Lobelia only smiled, a wan ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... one will take the trouble to watch the action of the sageer or water-wheel, it must strike him as a most puny effort to obtain a great result, that would at once suggest an extension of the principle. The sageer is merely a wheel of about twenty feet diameter, which is furnished with numerous earthenware jars upon its exterior circumference, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... flashlight must be lying. Hoping against hope that its fall had not shattered the bulb, he ran his fingers over the cold, damp stones, every instant expecting to feel the clutch of the unseen monster. How tiny, how puny he was! All at once his fingers encountered the smooth familiar shape of the flash and he raised it cautiously through the darkness. Patiently he shifted the Winchester to his left hand in order to set the flashlight on the top of a flat rock, pointing it as nearly as ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... the farmer with whom I lived. I was the child by a former marriage of his wife, who had brought me with her into this wilderness, a puny, ailing creature of four years, and into the three years that followed was compressed all the happiness I could remember. The free life in the open air, the nourishing influence of the rich natural scenery by which I was surrounded, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... of these shall puny sages shake Their heads, and haste to mock the failing one, Who in his strength could ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... disgrace me! Oh, these four terrible weeks—ecstasy, despair—ecstasy, despair—and to the world as unblinking as a marble in a museum! Do you wonder that I welcome the hurricane, in which no man dare think of any but his puny self? For the moment I am free, and as alive, as triumphant as that great wind outside—as eager to devastate, to fight, to conquer, to live—to live—to live. What do I care for civilization? If James Hamilton were out there among the flying trees and called to me, ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... looking like a giant in comparison with this dwarfish antagonist. As she approached, the little craft glided swiftly in front of her grounded consort, like a new David offering battle to a modern Goliath. As if in disdain of this puny antagonist, the Merrimac began an attack on the Minnesota. But when the two eleven-inch guns of the Monitor opened fire, hurling solid balls of one hundred and sixty-eight pounds' weight against the iron sides of her great opponent, it became at once evident that a new move had opened ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... consolation to me if I should be caught by a bilious fever in some rice swamp. The situation of Theodosia, so far from being an objection, ought, in my mind, to be an additional and strong motive. With her Northern constitution she will bring you some puny brat that will never last the summer out; but, in your mountains, one might expect to see it climb a precipice at three weeks old. Truly, I mean to be serious, and beg to know whether you have, in fact, resolved, and whether the resolution has, in good faith, been the result of reflection ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... was in favor of the plan, and a firm ally to the lovers. He had grown extremely Western in his ideas, and was persuaded in his mind that "this old East," as he termed it, with its puny possibilities, did not amount to much, and that as soon as he was old enough to shape his own destinies, he should return to the only section of the country worthy the attention of a young man of parts. Meanwhile, he was perfectly well ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... some years ago, partly on account of his kind-heartedness, partly since he could never resist a bargain and he got her for almost nothing, partly, perhaps because of his canny foresight, bought a wretched, puny, sickly, little runt of a four-year-old slave-girl, a mere rack of bones covered with yellow skin. She continued sickly for some years, then, when she was more than half grown, the fresh air of Trebula, its good water, the kindness with which ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... trail had to be broken. The Northland giants thronged about them, glistening in their impenetrable armour and crested by the silvery burnish of their glacial headpieces. They frowned vastly, yet with a sublime contempt, at the puny intrusion of their solitude. But the fiery spirit impelling the brothers was a power which defied the overwhelming grandeur of the mountain world, and rendered insignificant the trials they encountered. The cry was "On!" and the dogs laboured as only these ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... about it," he cried bitterly. "I'm not worth it. Besides, I can't stand it from—you. Only—from Kate. I know what you're thinking. You're bound to think that way. You were born with a man's body—a big, strong man's body. I was born weak and puny. I was born all wrong. I don't say it in excuse. I merely state a fact. Look at me beside you, both children of the same parents. I'm like a woman, I can't even grow the hair of a man on my face. My mother reveled in what she regarded as the artistic beauty of ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... a purty good world this is; For all its follies and shows and lies, Its rainy weather, and cheeks likewise, And age, hard hearing, and rheumatiz; We're not a faultin' the Lord's own plan; All things jest At their best, It's a puny ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... Pope and Swift, and the author of "Letters" bearing upon politics and literature. "Bolingbroke," says Prof. Saintsbury, "is a rhetorician pure and simple, but the subjects of his rhetoric were not the great and perennial subjects, but puny ephemeral forms of them—the partisan and personal politics of his day, the singularly shallow form of infidelity called Deism and the like; and his time deprived him of many, if not most, of the rhetorician's most telling ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... complicate the thought, or puzzle us, they only heighten expectation]. In such an age bodily vigour is the most indispensable qualification of a warrior. At Landen two poor sickly beings, who, in a rude state of society, would have been regarded as too puny to bear any part in combats, were the souls of two great armies. In some heathen countries they would have been exposed while infants. In Christendom they would, six hundred years earlier, have been sent to some quiet cloister. ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... glided the puny form of a little old Turk, poorly dressed like a marabout or santon of the desert—a sort of enthusiasts, who sometimes ventured into the camp of the Crusaders, though treated always with contumely, and often with ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... he meant it, too. It was no empty phrase. Rather something in touch with Life's great scheme of compensations, which she manipulates in her own great way, beyond the comprehension of puny humans. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... had adored him in time past, and had built temples in his honor. They also were puny mortals, scarcely longer of life than the birds themselves. The Phoenix had seen many generations of men grow up, do good or evil deeds, and die, sometimes leaving grand monuments upon the ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... girls, and from them received his first impression that women were small of soul and narrow of mind. As they stood by the gate now, this last hour grudged to them, neither dreamed that this was the final canto in the poem of boyhood. They had been fast friends since the first day pale, puny Fred made his appearance in school, and was both laughed at and bullied by some boys larger in size, but ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... "By the puny god, Harpocrates!" the prince cried, scoffing. "That is the weakest avowal I have heard in ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... After supper was over, dishes all washed and kitchen in order, she would then go to the little ones for the night. One can see that she had very little time with the children. My heart was sore and heavy, for my wife was almost run to death with work. The children grew puny and sickly for want of proper care. The doctor said it was because the milk the mother nursed to them was so heated by her constant and excessive labors as to be unwholesome, and she never had time to cool before ministering ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... in which the productive tasks of the home have almost all been surrendered to the factory; in an age in which even cooking and sewing, last puny provinces of a once ample empire, are forever making concessions of territory to those barbarian invaders, the manufacturers of ready-to-eat foods and ready-to-wear clothes; in an age in which home industry lies fainting and gasping, while Mrs. Charlotte Perkins ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... which seemed a splendid and spacious one to him. It was filled with ladies in beautiful costumes, and with men in clawhammer coats. He had seen pictures of evening suits in the newspapers but never before had he been privileged to behold live men in them. The men seemed pale and puny for the most part. He had never before seen ladies in low-necked dresses and one just before him seemed shamelessly naked, and he gazed at her in astonishment. He was glad ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... of will, his eloquent, passionate speech, and, above all, his burning patriotism, soon brought him to the front as the leader of the national party; and he now strove with all his might to prevent his land falling to the position of a mere satrapy of the liberators. Better the puny autocracy of Prince Alexander than the very real despotism of the nominees of the Emperor ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... these puny mortals! (furious). I will launch from fairy portals All the most terrific thunders In my ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... me; exhausted, spent, my life shrunken up within me, my energy burned out, a puny, spiritless remnant of the strong woman who lay down upon that couch, I lay despondent, vacant of all interest in the world hitherto so exciting to me. I had not seen Monsieur since this apparent commencement of recovery. A great, good-natured nurse kept watch ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... solace and relaxation in sitting at the windows of our respectable inn to watch every passer-by on the dusty boulevard below, in spending half the day indoors, let it be ever so comfortably, or in merely turning out in the evening to shop in the puny town, whilst we bemoaned the want of a circulating library and a brass band. It was even more intolerable, as the Post had been built perversely with its back to the fine view of the glaciers. Moreover, the whole establishment was in the hands of bricklayers, painters and glaziers, who ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... to it, my dear. Do you think that that woman, who sits there at Barchester in high places, disgracing herself and that puny ecclesiastical lord who is her husband,—do you think that she would not immure me if she could? She is a she-wolf,—only less reasonable than the dumb brute as she sharpens her teeth in malice coming from anger, and not in malice coming from hunger as do the outer wolves of the forest. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... were dead it would forget you in a few days," repeated themselves over and over again. His vindictive feeling against society died out in the consciousness of his weakness and insignificance. What is the use of one's smiting a mountain with his fist? Only the puny hand feels the blow. The world became, under Mrs. Arnot's words, too large and vague a generality ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... seeds of disease, he has less about entailing them upon others. And a consumptive young man or woman—the son or daughter of consumptive parents—hesitates not to spread the evil in society, and entail puny faces, weakness, pain, and early death upon several individuals, and punish their children for ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... impossible contrasts, the magic illusions of color made it a land of remote enchantment, even to the most unimaginative. And to Hanson the world outside became as unreal as a dream that is past. Here was beauty, and the wide, free spaces of nature, where every law of man seemed puny, ineffectual and void. In this unbounded, uncharted freedom the shackles of conventionality fell from him. Here was life and here was love. He was a primitive man, and here, before him in visible form, stood the world's desire. Barriers there were none. A man and woman, both as vital as the ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... had fought in Monmouth's Rebellion. Pitied by the planters, despised even by the negro slaves, this small colony held itself aloof, starved, and married none but members of their own colony. They are now mere shadows of men, with puny bodies and witless minds, living in brush or wooden hovels and eating nothing but a ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... baby is better, and I dare say it is my imagination that says she looks pale and puny. She is now asleep in your study, where too I am sitting in your chair. I came down as soon as I could this morning, and have stayed here all day. It is so quiet and pleasant among your books and papers, and it was so dull up-stairs! I thought before your letter came, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... on board, but this saccharine essence of rat was too much even for the unscrupulous stomachs of South-Sea whalers. A queer set they were on board that Sydney barque. Paper Jack, the captain, was a feeble Cockney, of meek spirit and puny frame, who glided about the vessel in a nankeen jacket and canvass pumps, a laughing-stock to his crew. The real command devolved upon the chief mate, John Jermin—a good sailor and brave fellow, but violent, and given to drink. The junior mate had deserted; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... ascending, as the river is left, to the summit of the streams falling into it. Long slopes or terraces are thus formed, furrowed here and there by the ravines, which serve to drain off the water from above into the river below. Puny rivulets where they begin, these watercourses cut deeper as they run on, until, at the river, they become impassable gulches. The old military road skirts the foot of the heights, which sometimes abut closely upon the river, and sometimes draw back far enough to leave a strip of ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... London Streets. Everything is gesticulation, and the gesticulations are ambiguous. When we think he is going to weep, he laughs; when we think he is going to laugh, he cries. A remarkable genius who does everything he can to make himself appear puny, yet who is, ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... calculated to promote my health was a habit that I could not easily relinquish. So now I began to read up and practice physical culture—which I had always spoken of as physical torture. I had read that any puny, warped little body could, by proper and persistent training, be made sturdy and strong. I had no desire to grow big, ugly muscles that look like knots, but I was effeminate enough to think that a touch of physical culture might enhance ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... hand, the Hopi came into the country with a comparatively elaborate system of house structures, previously developed elsewhere. They are an undersized, puny race, content with what they have and asking only to be left alone. They are in no sense warriors, although there is no doubt that they have fought bitterly among themselves within historic times. Following the ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... was a clerk with a small salary in the Navy Pay Office, and his son Charles was born in 1812 at Portsea. When Charles was about four his father was moved to Chatham, and here the little boy Charles lived until he was nine. He was a very puny little boy, and not able to join in the games of the other boys of his own age. So he spent most of his time in a small room where there was some books and where no one else besides himself cared to go. He not only read the books, but lived them, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... voices. The body was diseased, so that no spiritual influence could work upon it. Had every man in the empire been a Christian, yet, when, the army had lost its discipline and efficiency, when patriotism had fled, when centuries of vices had enfeebled the physical forces, when puny races had lost all martial ardor, and could present nothing but weakness and cowardice—all from physical causes, how could they have successfully contended with the new and powerful barbaric armies? Christianity saves the soul; it does not restore exhausted physical functions. The ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Quixote, with a scornful smile, "lion-whelps against me! Against me, your puny monsters! and at this time of day! By yon blessed sun! those who sent them hither shall see whether I am a man to be scared by lions. Alight, honest friend! and, since you are their keeper, open the cages and turn out your savages of the desert: ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... me and the mist Is damp and cold upon my hands and face. Why should I fear?—the loved have gone before: I seem to hear the plash of coming oars; The mists are lifting and the boat is near. 'Tis well. To die as I am dying now— A soldier's death amid the gladsome shouts Of victory for which my puny hands Did their full share, albeit it was small, Was all my late ambition. Bring the Flag, And hold it over my head. Let me die thus Under the stars I've ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... a hunter—a hunter always. He may be a poor thing and hunt only a few puny aims, or he may be a strong man and choose big game. But he is ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... fairy window, she pointed down the steep to a small garden patch near by—mere pot of rifled loam, half rounded in by sheltering rocks—where, side by side, some feet apart, nipped and puny, two hop-vines climbed two poles, and, gaining their tip-ends, would have then joined over in an upward clasp, but the baffled shoots, groping awhile in empty air, trailed back ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... love for women, because I've got a mother, and if ever there was a woman on the face of this earth that deserves the love of a son, that woman is my mother. Sister," he added, turning to one of those who sat on a bench near him with a thin, puny, curly-haired boy wrapped up in her ragged shawl, "the best prayer that I could offer up for you—and I do offer it—is, that the little chap in your arms may grow up to bless his mother as heartily as I bless mine, but that can never be, so long as you love the strong ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... pursuers. High up on the left side, and rounding the rim of the cup, were little black figures. They had not followed my trail, but, certain of my purpose, had gone forward to intercept me. I remember feeling a puny weakling compared with those lusty natives who could make such good going on steep mountains. They were certainly no men of the plains, but hillmen, probably some remnants of old Machudi's tribe who still squatted in the glen. Machudi was a blackguard chief whom the Boers long ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... their puny knives with which to give battle to the serpent, the boys stood petrified with terror. Even Ben, to whom his rescue and Frank's peril had been unfolded so swiftly that he was half-dazed, seemed unable to ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... read about Kings in your history-book you will find that size has nothing to do with Kingliness. I have heard, indeed, that some of them were very puny little fellows, in mind as ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... There is no puny planet, sun or moon, Or zodiacal sign which can control The God in us! If we bring that to bear Upon events, we mold them to our wish, 'Tis when the infinite 'neath the finite gropes That men are ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... now on the other, would show us a glimpse of the land looming darkly ahead. The powers of darkness seemed at play; while the sea, the ice, the craggy cliffs, and the flashing heavens were advertising man's puny power. ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Thereafter I studied him with some attention during our drive of four or five miles. I called to mind the theory that an innate physical deficiency is seldom without its moral counterpart, and I wondered how far this would apply to the deaf-mute at my side, who was ill-grown, wizened, and puny into the bargain. The brow-beaten face of him was certainly forbidding, and he thrashed his horse up the hills in a dogged, vindictive, thorough-going way which at length made me jump out and climb one of them on foot. It was the only form of ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... Laura Bridgman. 'She was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, on the twenty-first of December, 1829. She is described as having been a very sprightly and pretty infant, with bright blue eyes. She was, however, so puny and feeble until she was a year and a half old, that her parents hardly hoped to rear her. She was subject to severe fits, which seemed to rack her frame almost beyond her power of endurance: and life was held by the feeblest tenure: but when a year and a half old, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... main street opened on the sea-front, a lady and gentleman were advancing with hesitating steps, as though unfamiliar with the place. The brother was a puny little man, with a sallow complexion. He was wearing a motoring-cap. The sister too was short, but rather stout, and was wrapped in a large cloak. She struck them as a woman of a certain age, but still good-looking under the thin veil that covered ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... she recognized the distant figure of a man, dwarfed to puny proportions by the bulk of the structure in the mazes of which he stood. The man was O'Neil; he was perched upon one of the girders near the center of the longest span, where he could watch the attack upon the pyramidal ice-breakers ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... this puny game amuses me? Do I not know that you could buy a principality like this for a souvenir of Europe if it happened to please you? The one time I have been allowed to feel a man was in your country, where we met as equal rivals.... No, not equal even then, because you were ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... years ago were only known to travellers and a few shepherds. But although this great change has been brought about by railway enterprise, the gorge is still uninhabited, and has lost little of its grandeur; for when the puny train, with its accompanying white cloud, has disappeared round one of the great bluffs, there is nothing left but the two pairs of shining rails, laid for long distances almost on the floor of the ravine. But though there are steep ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... who helped Mrs. Bal out of the blue car (also big, in proportion to the size of the owner and his fortune) was Morgan P. Bennett of New York, the Tin Trust millionaire. Somerled's puny horde of millions dwindle into humble insignificance beside Morgan Bennett's pile. If Somerled has made two millions out of his mines and successful speculations, and a few extra thousands out of his pictures, M. P. Bennett has made twenty ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... that great day of God Almighty," it would seem, must commence by a conflict of opinions. Mind will war with mind, and puny man will stoutly contend against the truths of the Almighty. In this revival of demon-worship, the old gods of the heathen are to be set up against the claims of Jehovah. His declarations are to be made to give place to "doctrines ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... had emerged from the depths of the primeval forests of Manyuema! The reflection of the dazzling light of civilisation was cast on him while Livingstone was thus listening in wonder to one of the most exciting pages of history ever repeated. How the puny deeds of barbarism paled before these! Who could tell under what new phases of uneasy life Europe was labouring even then, while we, two of her lonely children, rehearsed the tale of her late woes and glories? More worthily, perhaps, had ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... earthly life would seem but as the space of time from yesterday until today. Centuries upon centuries have rolled away behind us; before us stretches out an eternity of years to come; and on the narrow boundary between the past and the present flickers the puny taper we term our life. When we came into the world, we knew naught of what had been before us; but, as we grew up to manhood, we learned of the past; we saw the flowers bloom as they had bloomed for centuries; we beheld the orbs of day and night pursuing their ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... bears, the limitless deep green of the unmeasured seas, the great arch of the zenith, the clear view of the sun's march, the purity and the stillness and the mastery of it all, the consciousness of the puny power of man, the mind message recalling the sublimity and the awe of the unseen Power beyond—all these things impress you, move in you the deepest thoughts, turn you from the little estimates of self as Nature only ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... under the pinpricks which came from the United States. "A few short months of war," declared the Morning Post truculently, "would convince these desperate [American] politicians of the folly of measuring the strength of a rising, but still infant and puny, nation with the colossal power of the British Empire." "Right," said the Times, another organ of the Tory Government, "is power sanctioned by usage." Concession to Americans at this crisis was not to be entertained for a moment, for after ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... will represent him? This puny generation does not produce such figures as Pylades and Bathyllus—except among those Goths. Besides, Apollo must have golden hair; and our Greek race has intermixed itself so shamefully with these ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... good drinker will empty that horn at a draught. Some men make two draughts of it, but the most puny drinker of all ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... several indefinite rags, knitted stockings, a red calico jacket, and a large sheet of coarse linen spread over the hedge. At the noise of the gate the nurse appeared with a baby she was suckling on one arm. With her other hand she was pulling along a poor puny little fellow, his face covered with scrofula, the son of a Rouen hosier, whom his parents, too taken up with their business, left ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... but beautiful with a smiling delight in his deed. And then suddenly the spell that held the child was broken, and he leaped out upon the murderer and beat and beat and beat upon him with helpless, puny child-fists, and all a child's splendid and ineffectual rage. And at that the man turned and thrust the child from him in utter astonishment, and the boy fell heavily back upon the road, the second quiet figure lying there. And again the man's face ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... as this Yeobright descended into the Blooms-End valley from beside that very pool, where he had been standing with another person quite silently and quite long enough to hear all this puny stir of resurrection in nature; yet he had not heard it. His walk was rapid as he came down, and he went with a springy tread. Before entering upon his mother's premises he stopped and breathed. The light which shone ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... to sue for her hand, the assembled gods did not refuse their consent. They had scarcely signified their approbation, however, when Thor, who had been absent, suddenly appeared, and casting a glance of contempt upon the puny lover, declared he would have to prove that his knowledge atoned for his small stature, before ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... escape after all, you say?" asked Phil, who had some difficulty in keeping a grin of satisfaction from showing on his face; for the idea of these seven stalwart men chasing one puny little chap was pretty close to ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... supposed that good could come out of evil, but had deemed the supposition a monstrous and a deadly fallacy, to be combated, to be struck down to the dust. Even now he was chiefly conscious of a mental weakness in himself which had caused him to act as he had acted. He saw himself as one of those puny creatures whose so-called kind hearts lead them into follies, into crimes. Like many young men of virtuous life and ascetic habit, Uniacke was disposed to worship that which was uncompromising in human nature, the slight hardness which sometimes lurks, like a kernel, in the saint. ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... for she did not feel like sleep. It would be fine to sit out in the open, watch the moon and the stars, the mysterious banks gliding swiftly by, and new vistas always widening out ahead. But not with this puny, sandy little "river character," not with anybody that night. "No," replied she. "I think ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... discourse picked out of the effusions of the year as the one most adapted to excite admiration; and in those churches, from the way the ladies hold their fans, you know that they are not so much impressed with the heat as with the picturesqueness of half-disclosed features. Four puny souls stand in the organ-loft and squall a tune that nobody knows, and worshipers, with two thousand dollars' worth of diamonds on the right hand, drop a cent into the poor-box, and then the benediction is pronounced and the farce ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... don't, neither, considering her provocations. She were the smartest, most managing woman in these parts, and I never did have no faculty, and don't run her house like I ought; and John is a puny man and not able to do all her bidding; and the young uns they gits terrible noisy and feisty at ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... has done neither the one nor the other, his only chance of not being utterly forgotten, instead of being feared or hated, by his contemporaries, is to continue his work of mischief, and merely change the object of his puny attacks as one becomes more prominent than another, and as he can manage to maintain his own quasi-importance by attaching his name to great questions. He had no special dislike for this country; so far from that, he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... revenge!"—As this he said, He lifted up his stature vast, and stood, Still without intermission speaking thus: "Now ye are flames, I'll tell you how to burn, And purge the ether of our enemies; How to feed fierce the crooked stings of fire, And singe away the swollen clouds of Jove, 330 Stifling that puny essence in its tent. O let him feel the evil he hath done; For though I scorn Oceanus's lore, Much pain have I for more than loss of realms: The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled; Those days, all innocent of scathing war, When all the fair Existences of heaven Came ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... figure is lion-like in attitude, but how human of face in spite of its broken nose. It was carven of the solid rock and fashioned with its face to the sunrise and its back to the desert. No one knows the thought in the mind of the puny artist who brought it into being and then shrivelled beside it like a blade of grass. Was it intended to be a god? It has been silted up by sand and unburied again; it has been worshipped and hated. It has been reverenced and shot at, so that its face is chipped ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... lived to boast of the fact,—[This honor has been claimed also for Mrs. Millie Upton and a Mrs. Damrell. Probably all were present and assisted.]—but she had no particular pride in that matter then. It was only a puny baby with a wavering promise of life. Still, John Clemens must have regarded with favor this first gift of fortune in a new land, for he named the little boy Samuel, after his father, and added the name of an old and dear ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... spent, Her cruel heart disdains what they do motion. Yet though persisting in eternal hate, To aggravate the cause of my complaining, Her fury ne'er confineth with a date, I will not cease to love, for her disdaining. Such puny thoughts of unresolved ground, Whose inaudacity dares but base conceit, In me and my love never shall be found. Those coward thoughts unworthy minds await. But those that love well have not yet begun; Persever ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... Norwegian mountain folks are big and strong," said Granbury Lapham. "I fancy the puny ones die ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... world in the points in which he is superior. He is beyond a doubt the ablest head at unreasoning, and the greatest hand at writing it, of all who have tried in our day to attach their names to an error. Common cyclometers sink into puny orthodoxy by his side. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... near the caribou meat after the big fight. Thor was in no condition to eat, and Muskwa was so filled with excitement and trembling that he could not swallow a mouthful. He continued to worry a strip of black hide, snarling and growling in his puny way, as though finishing ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... intellect; these are the master qualities, and yet we are compelled to see here—if we would not wilfully be blind or blindfold—a poet, yes, a true poet, with a perfervid fancy rather than an imagination, a poet with puny passions, a poet with no more than the momentary and impulsive sincerity of an infirm soul, a poet with small ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... Coward, slave! Art thou so faint? Does Malatesta's blood Run in thy puny veins? Take ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... and with my window raised, I sat and mourned, and wrung my hopeless hands. No light was in the house. I half reclined— My back toward the window. Something shut The puny sheen of starlight from the room. The Thing, a monstrous shape, was with me there, And two hard arms were thrown about my waist. For very terror I was hushed, nor moved To cast my foe off. I was in the arms Of ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... Always, his consciousness was filled with a morbid counting of the matches, the measure of his life. So, when there was only the one, he felt that the end was, indeed, come upon him. He strove his mightiest, but his might was shrunken to a puny sham. He struggled forward valiantly, but his advance was like the progress of a snail. Then, suddenly, another step became an infinite labor—something of which he could not even think. He lurched forward, and fell against a tree-trunk. The concussion aroused him to ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... was unpromising. At birth he was puny and diminutive in a remarkable degree. Weems, in his peculiar fashion, writes, "I have it from good authority, that this great soldier, at his birth, was not larger than a New England lobster, and might easily enough have ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... the prison; but the prisoners! There were forty-eight—grey-haired men and puny boys—all ragged, and stalking with slippered feet from end to end with listless eyes. Some, all eagerness; some, crushed and motionless; some, scared and stupid; now singing, now swearing, now rushing about playing at ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... misfortunes have nothing to do with any curse? what though your reason tells you that all these calamities may be read as being the perfectly natural results of perfectly natural causes? Is the voice of man's puny reason clothed with such authority that it dares to answer his heart, which knows nothing but that it bleeds? The terrible facts of the case may be read in two ways. With an inscrutable symmetry these facts may and do fit in with the universal theory of the ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... this child was weakly and puny to boot; its parents often thought it looked sickly and would soon become a little angel in Heaven. But it was not so; Matthew thrived, became a priest subsequently, and weighed in his prime two hundred and fifty, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... that puny schoolma'm, with her baby face and weak voice, 'll never help you to get a livin', Ben. What are ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... Lucien, making ready their pieces, looked along the trail. There, sure enough, was a bear coming up as fast as he could gallop. It was at him Francois had fired. The small shot had only served to irritate him; and, seeing such a puny antagonist as ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... blood-hound for murder; or, if a wolf could have written a journal, the gaunt and famished wretch could not have ravened more eagerly for slaughter. It was blood which was Marat's constant demand, not in drops from the breast of an individual, not in puny streams from the slaughter of families, but blood in the profusion of an ocean. His usual calculation of the heads which he demanded amounted to two hundred and sixty thousand; and though he sometimes raised it as high as three hundred ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... side of a Lamennais, this Pierre Leroux was a very puny personage. He had been a compositor in a printing works, before founding the Globe. This paper, in his hands, was to become an organ of Saint-Simonism. He belonged neither to the bourgeois nor to ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... it may seem strange if I say that the artillery fire in the Mamund Valley did very little execution. It is nevertheless a fact. The Mamunds are a puny tribe, but they build their houses in the rocks; and against sharpshooters in broken ground, guns can do little. Through field-glasses it was possible to see the enemy dodging behind their rocks, whenever the puffs of smoke from the guns ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... of life runs ever away To the bosom of God's great ocean. Don't set your force 'gainst the river's course And think to alter its motion. Don't waste a curse on the universe— Remember it lived before you. Don't butt at the storm with your puny form, But bend and let ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... funny little cuss; like you, a trifle puny. Has coughin' fits. Coughs six times each fit. Spits up a chunk o' lead ev'y time he coughs. Want ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... is too egregious: But how should these young colts prove amblers, When the old, heavy, galled jades do trot? There shall you see a puny boy start up, And make a theme against common lawyers; Then the old, unwieldy camels 'gin to dance, This fiddling boy playing a fit of mirth; The greybeards scrub, and laugh, and cry, Good, good! To them again, boy; ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... the same tree were sown, the one in a deep clay soil and a favourable situation, the other in a light sandy soil and an unfavourable situation, the former would in time develop into a large and shapely, the latter into a puny and misshapen oak-tree. It would be the same, mutatis mutandis, with two human beings who were exposed from their earliest days to ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... announcement, but she knew not the greatness of the old woman's soul. It was long ere her voice was heard again. Presently, raising herself, she said, "I would it had been otherwise; but I have erred, I have misjudged. I thought that your Gods were false; puny creations of a nerveless brain; but they are strong, I own their power! It may be that the great ones of old have wearied of our spiritless race, and abandoned us. So perchance you may be wise to turn to the new-comers!" Her voice failed her, but as they knelt ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... for His assisting grace, And, straining every muscle, I brought round The vessel's stern close to the rocky wall; Then snatching up my weapons, with a bound I swung myself upon the flattened shelf, And with my feet thrust off, with all my might, The puny bark into the watery hell. There left it drift about, as Heaven ordains! Thus am I here, deliver'd from the might Of the dread storm, and ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... to speculate too curiously concerning God's plan in governing the world, much less to strive to thwart his purposes with our puny arms; he will work out his purposes of good to the human race, in his own good time and way, whether it meets our views or not. But from the revelation of his purpose concerning the descendants of the three progenitors of the human race after the flood, it is manifest that the children ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... it no longer requires, or it produces a positive injury on its constitution. After the period when Nature has ordained the child shall live by other means, the secretion of milk becomes thin and deteriorated, showing in the flabby flesh and puny features of the child both its loss of nutritious properties and the want of ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the despatch of Marshal de Retz in his place, on the plea of her son's illness. The excuse may have contained some truth,[1332] for, albeit Francis of Alencon had received the baptismal name of Hercules, he was a puny weakling, from whom no labors could ever be expected, but rather a dull existence of sloth and imbecility. It was, however, a stretch even of diplomatic assurance, for La Mothe Fenelon to suggest to the virgin queen of England, as he deliberately reports that ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... reappears. In a moment he is standing out amidst the tree-trunks, slim, erect, a puny figure in a world of giants. He is not so cowardly after all. He stands there calmly, with eyes alert, watchful, measuring, ready to gamble his wit and skill against whatever odds ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... Skirmishing took place in the wooded, undulating country between the shore and the slopes of Bembridge Down; the English retreated and broke the bridge over the Yar. This checked the French advance, though a force which was stopped by that puny stream could not have been very determined. A day or two later the French sent round a party to fill their water-casks at the brook which trickles down Shanklin Chine; it was attacked and cut to pieces.[1139] They then proposed forcing their way into Portsmouth Harbour, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... the door to receive them. Whether Ann is good-looking or not depends upon your taste; also and perhaps chiefly on your age and sex. To Octavius she is an enchantingly beautiful woman, in whose presence the world becomes transfigured, and the puny limits of individual consciousness are suddenly made infinite by a mystic memory of the whole life of the race to its beginnings in the east, or even back to the paradise from which it fell. She is to him the reality of romance, the leaner ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... process in sufficient quantity, so far as many members of the animal kingdom are concerned, and we, in our own day, have seen the extinction of the dodo as well as the threatened disappearance of other species. Creeping and crawling creatures too, that we could crush with the heel, are but the last and puny descendants of mighty and terrible monsters that once rolled and crashed through the fetid forests of the carboniferous era. So there are races of men today, amongst others the pygmies of Africa and the Australian bushmen, as well as some nearer in a certain degree to the dominant ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... shillings and six pence, and, You are welcome: with this shril addition, Anon, Anon sir, Score a Pint of Bastard in the Halfe Moone, or so. But Ned, to driue away time till Falstaffe come, I prythee doe thou stand in some by-roome, while I question my puny Drawer, to what end hee gaue me the Sugar, and do neuer leaue calling Francis, that his Tale to me may be nothing but, Anon: step aside, and Ile shew ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... experience of many observers that the first whelps born in a litter are the strongest, largest, and healthiest. If the litter is a large one, the last born may be noticeably puny, and this disparity in size may continue to maturity. The wise breeder will decide for himself how many whelps should be left to the care of their dam. The number should be relative to her health and constitution, and in any case it is well not to give her so many that they will be a drain upon ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... understand how the peasant, winning a scanty subsistence from his poor fields near the forest, and seeing his harvest destroyed in a night by the trampling of a herd of these great brutes against whom his puny weapons were powerless, looked on them as terrible and malignant deities. The sacrifice of a buffalo would be beyond the means of a single man, and the animal is now more or less sacred as one of the cow tribe. But the annual joint sacrifice of one or more buffaloes is a regular feature of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... spiritual infants are doing well—that is, they are beginning to think, and when man begins to think and question, he begins to progress. It is not the fact of these people's immature ideas that has caused these remarks on our part, but rather their tendency to set up their puny conceptions as the absolute truth, and then insisting upon forcing these views upon the outer world of men, whom they consider "poor ignorant heathen." Permit each man to think according to his light—and help him by offering to share with him the best ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... two boys, healthy and beautiful, took scarlatina and died; the poor, sickly girl wailed on. His wife, who had always been more devoted to her children than her husband, pined, and died also. Her money went, if not with her, yet away from him. His spirits began to fail him, and his small, puny, peaking daughter did not comfort him much. He was capable of true, but not yet of pure love; at present his love was capricious. Little Dora—a small Dorothy indeed in his estimation—had always been a better child than either of her brothers, but he loved them the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... profound and more harmonious than the transformation wrought by other animals. Why should not humanity succeed in changing nature to the extent of making it pacific? Why should not humanity, miserably puny though it is and will be, succeed, some day, in suppressing, or at least in controlling the struggle for life? Why indeed should not humanity abolish the law of murder? We may expect a great deal from chemistry. Yet I do not guarantee anything. It is possible that our race will persist in melancholy, ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... picking my way I paused to gaze at the distant purple peaks and watch the sun set in that lonely land as if I was witnessing it for the first time. As my eyes roamed over the stupendous distance and unnamed mountains I felt my own puny insignificance, as who has not when confronted with ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... and their seven children incommoded them greatly, because not one of them was able to earn his bread. That which gave them yet more uneasiness was that the youngest was of a very puny constitution, and scarce ever spoke a word, which made them take that for stupidity which was a sign of good sense. He was very little, and when born no bigger than one's thumb, which made him be ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... With puny fists I pounded the panel. A small pane in it was transparent. Within the lock I could see the blurred figures of Anita and her captor—and it seemed, another figure there. The lock was some ten feet square, with a low ceiling. It glowed with a ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... worked up to a pitch of wild excitement, naked to the waist, with their faces and bodies streaked with the powder, one could understand that the superstitious Spaniards, already depressed by their vain efforts to overpower so puny an assailant, thought that they were attacked by foes straight from the infernal regions. As they stood hesitating and aghast, we went at them, while Cochrane, with the force that had boarded at the waist, fell ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... from the body, it is obvious that any cause profoundly affecting the latter might in that way exercise an influence on the germ-cells; that if the parent was starved, the germ-cells might be ill-nourished and the resulting offspring might be weak and puny. There is experimental evidence that this is the case; but that is not the inheritance of an acquired character. If, however, a white man tanned by long exposure to the tropical sun should have children who were brunettes, ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... refuse, Bentley," said the scientist at last. "For then I should find it necessary to remove you. You might stand in my way, and though you would be but a puny obstacle, you still would be an obstacle. For example, consider Ellen Estabrook, your fiancee. I can find no use for her ... and she knows as much about me as you do. Therefore, at my convenience, ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... remove the glasses and place the seed-pans in the fullest light, where air can be given without danger to them. A dry east wind blowing fiercely over them will prove a blast of death. If they have no air at all, they will be puny, rickety things, scarcely worth planting out. Choice varieties should be carefully pricked out into pans and pots as soon as large enough; this will promote a fine, stocky growth and a splendid development of flowers. ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... peculiar worshipper. I may compare her to what I please, great or small—to a sapphire set in tin, to an angel with draggled feathers; for far beyond all comparison is that temple of the holy ghost in the desert—a woman in wretchedness and rags. She carried her puny baby rolled hard in the corner of her scrap of black shawl. To the youths a sea of trouble looked out of those wild eyes. As she drew near them, she hesitated, half-stopped, and put out a hand from under ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... tall, broad-shouldered son, who was as fine a specimen of an American sailor as could be found anywhere outside of New England. Although he was but three years older than Marcy, who was by no means a puny fellow, he stood head and shoulders above him, and was built like a young Hercules. It was little wonder that Mrs. Gray and Marcy had awaited his coming with the greatest anxiety and impatience, or ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... broken-hearted woman crying to heaven for her murdered husband and her stolen children, of the scouts and couriers shot down from ambush in their efforts to reach them in their isolation or to creep through with messages to the columns afield, of the wounded lying with but scant attention and puny guard, weary marches away, of the comrades killed or died of wounds in fierce grapple with the warriors of the desert and the mountains—even of this young soldier within their gates, sore stricken in daring rescue of ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... axe does fell the oak; He binds thee as the woodbine binds the tree; He darts upon thee as a hawk doth dart Upon small birds, so that from this hour forth Until the end of time, thou hast no claim Or title to be called a valorous man: Thou little puny phantom form," said Laegh. Then with the rapid motion of the wind, The fleetness of a swallow on the wing, The fierceness of a dragon, and the strength Of a roused lion, once again up sprang Cuchullin, high into the troubled air, And lighted for ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... were planning nothing. What was there to plan? We were under observation. A Martian paralyzing ray—or an electronic beam, far more deadly than our own puny weapons—would have struck us the instant we tried to leave ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... admiration. The wind, blowing furiously, whistled wildly among the rigging; the waves of alarming size and threatening appearance, came rushing in swift succession towards us, as if eager to overwhelm our puny bark, which nevertheless floated unharmed, now riding on the crest of a wave, and anon plunging into a deep and angry-looking gulf, taking no water on deck, excepting from an ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... gardens as if the black ships of the Greeks were come to take me. But such is long ago. Tell me, now, is the world yet harsh with men and sad with women? Burns yet that madness mirth calls Life? or truly does the puny, busy-tongued race sleep at last, nodding no more ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... as you approach is the spire tapering into the sky, or the huge towers holding possession of the centre of the landscape—majestically beautiful—imposing by mere size amidst the large forms of Nature herself. As you go nearer, the vastness of the building impresses you more and more. The puny dwelling-place of the citizens creep at its feet, the pinnacles are glittering in the tints of the sunset, when down below among the streets and lanes the twilight is darkening. And even now, when the towns are thrice their ancient size, and the houses have stretched upwards from two stories ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... the endless projection of past into present, and of present into future, are clothed with the sanctity of an inner shrine. We may think that a fox-hunting duke and a racing marquis were very poor centres round which to group these high emotions. But Burke had no puny sentimentalism, and none of the mere literary or romantic conservatism of men like Chateaubriand. He lived in the real world, and not in a false dream of some past world that had never been. He saw that the sporting squires of his party were as much the representatives of ancestral force ...
— Burke • John Morley
... disliked its little wooden cottage, on the unfinished spire; or was inspired, or in a towering passion to live in a tower, or saw no fun in waiting for funds; and so, continually pealed an appeal to the public:—however, it was a puny, little, curious bell, with a tongue of its own, now clacking for a charity sermon; and, curiously, Mr. Brown thinks a charity sermon always edifies him with the headache, and is doubtful about going, as ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... alphabet, than, in a short period, it was succeeded by the wonders of Greece and Rome. And now, that its circulation is facilitated in so incalculable a degree, who shall be daring enough to assert his puny standard is the measure of all possible futurity? I am amazed, sir, that a man of your acuteness, your readiness of wit, and your strength of imagination, can ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... du San Miguel; no von see, no von hear. I know in my heart you loaf me; tell me so vonce! Blanca!" The music and entreaty in the deep voice thrill me strangely. "Oh, Blanca darling, keess me!" My puny resistance is nothing to those athlete's arms; he holds me close one instant and I, breathless, struggle to free my hands, and push his hot cheek ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... a break came in the weaving gray lines we fancied this surely was all. All? What we saw there was a puny dribbling stream compared with the torrent that was coming. The crest of that living tidal wave was still two days and many miles to the rearward. We had seen the head and a little of the neck. The swollen body of the myriad-legged gray centipede ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... house. He expired at the age of sixty in March, 1181, just three months after the restoration of Kyoto to metropolitan rank. Since August of the preceding year, the Minamoto had shown signs of troublesome activity, but as yet it seemed hardly possible that their puny onsets should shake, still less pull down, the imposing edifice of power raised by the Taira during twenty years of unprecedented success. Nevertheless, Kiyomori, impatient of all reverses, bitterly upbraided his sons and his officers for incompetence, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... difference, that here, to obviate infiltration from the ooze of the Chott, sturdy walls must enclose them. Ages pass, and still the groves descend, while the defences grow so stout and high that, viewed from above, the palms down there, in that deep funnel, look like puny vegetables, and men like ants. And still they descend.... One day the pale population engaged in tilling this shadowy paradise will be horrified to perceive, in their encircling bulwarks, rents and crevices that ooze forth ominous jets of mud. The damage is hastily ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... blood, and she come and laid her hand on my burning forehead, her touch always made me think of an angel's wing, somehow, although I ain't never set up to be religious, and I think of such things as little as may be—except when Bill draws me to the subject from seeing him so puny, ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... scarcely sufficient tide to turn a mill; but in no better case are Ilissus and Cephissus found to be in the present day. The shade of Socrates still seems to linger over the Attic streamlet, swelling its puny tide to the capacity of the loftiest musings of the humanized; and the memory of Homer is wedded to these waters of Meles. The critics who would disprove the existence of the bard, and assign the different members of his compositions to numerous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... every step. I could no longer oppose the inclination to avail myself of your permission to write to you, a permission given with too much complaisance by you, and used by me with too much indiscretion. Madame de Tott did me the same honor. But she, being only the descendant of some of those puny heroes who boiled their own kettles before the walls of Troy, I shall write to her from a Grecian, rather than a Roman canton; when I shall find myself, for example, among her Phocaean ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... to follow the stream of folly, whatever course it shall happen to take. The good-natured man is commonly the darling of the petty wits, with whom they exercise themselves in the rudiments of raillery; for he never takes advantage of failings, nor disconcerts a puny satirist with unexpected sarcasms; but while the glass continues to circulate, contentedly bears the expense of an uninterrupted laughter, and retires rejoicing at his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... down it flows the higher the temperature it meets, and it will sooner or later reach a point where it will melt as fast as it advances. This stream of ice flowing down from snow-clad mountains is called a glacier. Those we are best acquainted with are but puny things compared with those of the polar regions, where in one case a great river of ice sixty miles wide, flowing from an unknown distance, some thousands of feet in depth (or height), pours out into ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... very year, the humane John Howard had reported of the Irish Charter Schools, then half a century established, that they were "a disgrace to all society." Sir J. Fitzpatrick, the Inspector of Prisons, confirmed the general impression of Howard: he found the children in these schools "puny, filthy, ill clothed, without linen, indecent to look upon." A series of resolutions was introduced by Mr. Orde, as the basis of better legislation in the next session; but it is to be regretted that the proposed reform never went farther than the introduction ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... were not able of themselves to do this, they often sneaked into a house and snatched a child out of the cradle. In place of the stolen baby, one of their own wizened children was laid. That was the reason why many a poor little baby, that grew puny and thin, was called a "wiseel-kind," or changeling. When the sick baby could not get well, and medicine or care seemed to do no good, the mother thought that the goblins had taken away ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... be thought of myself. I blush to flatter them, or to be flattered by them, and should dread letters being published some time or other, in which they would relate our interviews, and we should appear like those puny conceited witlings in Shenstone's and Hughes's Correspondence, who give themselves airs from being in possession of the soil of Parnassus for the time being; as peers are proud, because they enjoy the estates of great men who went before them. Mr. Gough is very welcome ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... acknowledge; there is a tincture of malice in his commendations: for where I own I am taught, I confess my want of knowledge. A judge upon the bench may, out of good nature, or, at least, interest, encourage the pleadings of a puny counsellor, but he does not willingly commend his brother-serjeant at the bar, especially when he controls his law, and exposes that ignorance which is made sacred by his place. I gave the unknown author ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... should go off to the Splash and find Kate there; but presently he returned with an axe in his hand. Giving the lantern to his father, he proceeded to smash the skiff with the axe, his object being to prevent my going on board the Splash. I regarded it as a puny effort on his part, and was relieved to find they did not intend to visit her themselves. As soon as I was satisfied in regard to his purpose, I crept carefully up to the horse, unfastened him, and jumped into the chaise. ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... saw my pursuers. High up on the left side, and rounding the rim of the cup, were little black figures. They had not followed my trail, but, certain of my purpose, had gone forward to intercept me. I remember feeling a puny weakling compared with those lusty natives who could make such good going on steep mountains. They were certainly no men of the plains, but hillmen, probably some remnants of old Machudi's tribe who still squatted in the glen. Machudi was ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... said Black Panther, 'our tribes, if we just whistle them up, will far outnumber your puny forces; so resistance is useless. Return, therefore, to your own land, O brother, and smoke pipes of peace in your wampums with your squaws and your medicine-men, and dress yourselves in the gayest wigwams, and eat happily of the juicy ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... plenty in the camp; of prime hunters' dainties; of buffalo humps, and buffalo tongues; and roasted ribs, and broiled marrow-bones: all these were cooked in hunters' style; served up with a profusion known only on a plentiful hunting ground, and discussed with an appetite that would astonish the puny gourmands of the cities. But above all, and to give a bacchanalian grace to this truly masculine repast, the captain produced his mellifluous keg of home-brewed nectar, which had been so potent over the senses of the veteran of Hudson's Bay. Potations, pottle deep, again went round; never did beverage ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... said, I am disappointed at our temporary check, but I am convinced it is only temporary. God does things in a big way. He staggers our poor little puny minds by His acts. The world is being re-made; old systems, hoary with age, are being destroyed. The birth of new movements is on foot, new thoughts are in the air, new dreams are being dreamed, and the new age is surely coming. But sometimes it seems as though we have ears, and ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... should not be cultivated for its own sake, but should be made subservient to social progress. This belief was confirmed by a perusal of some of George Sand's earlier works, which were for him a kind of revelation. Social questions engrossed his thoughts, and all other subjects seemed puny by comparison. When the Emancipation question was raised he saw an opportunity of applying some of his theories, and threw himself enthusiastically into the new movement as an ardent abolitionist. When the law was passed he helped to put it into execution by serving for three years as an Arbiter ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... church, to sit silent and look bored; but, when I avail myself of the privilege of joining in the responses and the singing, I feel that I am fertilizing my spirit for the truth that is proclaimed. As a citizen I have certain rights, but when I come to think of my privileges my rights seem puny in comparison. Then, too, my rights are such cold things, but my privileges are full of sunshine and of joy. My rights seem mathematical, while my ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... take any advantage of so puny a rival, Wotan refuses to take the forfeited head, and departs, after telling the Nibelung that the sword can only be restored to its pristine glory by the hand of a man who knows no fear, and that the same man will claim it as his lawful prize ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... runs ever away To the bosom of God's great ocean. Don't set your force 'gainst the river's course, And think to alter its motion. Don't waste a curse on the universe, Remember, it lived before you; Don't butt at the storm with your puny form, But bend and let it go ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... tumbling about, when, wearied with his efforts, he lay quiet for a little. Seeing the float, the shark got it into his mouth, and disengaging the sucker by a tug on the line, made a bolt at the fish; but his puny antagonist was again too quick, and fixing himself close behind the dorsal fin, defied the efforts of the shark to disengage him, although he rolled over and over, lashing the water with his tail until it foamed all round.' After such ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... Aminta, to commend you According to your merits. Miles above My puny lyre were this; I therefore send you, For reference, "The Classic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... permission, as he indeed was bound to do by the simplest rules of courtesy. Mr. Smalley replied at once, willingly granting the favour, as I can prove by the note still in my possession; and presently, frightened by the puny yelping of a few critical curs at home, he has the effrontery to deny ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... stayed up at the tavern, drinking and carousing with the Dutch travellers who brought the supplies of Hollands and Cape brandy and lager beer, and the American or English gold-miners and German drummers who put up there from time to time. Then the child lay in the outhouse alone. It was a frail, puny creature, always frightened and silent. It lived on a little mealie pap and odd bits of roaster-cakes that were thrown to it as though it were a dog. When the coloured women forgot to feed it, they said: "It does not matter. Anyhow, the thing ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... was now some years beyond sixty, but had that tremendous vigor of frame and constitution that distinguished the pioneers—an attribute strangely lacking in their puny and degenerate sons. This short and chunky old man, with his round, thick head, bristling hair and beard, and huge red neck, had still a fiber as tough as oak. He looked coarse, uncouth, and stupid, but in his small gray eyes shone the alert and unconquerable spirit which marked the pioneers as ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... and if you plucked a single plant, you were surprised to find how thin it was, and how little color it had. But viewed at a distance in a favorable light, it was of a fine lively purple, flower-like, enriching the earth. Such puny causes combine to produce these decided effects. I was the more surprised and charmed because grass is commonly of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... on the night shift. When they become sick, and are unable to rise from their beds to go to work, there are men employed to go on horseback from house to house, and cajole and bully them into arising and going to work. Ten per cent of them contract active consumption. All are puny wrecks, distorted, stunted, mind and body. Elbert Hubbard says of the child-labourers of ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... prevent them, several of the madmen started the water from the tanks. "Hurrah!" they shouted as they performed this feat. "The fire will now be put out, and we shall be saved." The hidden fire laughed at their puny efforts, and the wreaths of smoke came forth as ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... a word of the Langrois dialect, signifying a puny, sickly, effeminate being. In the mouth of Madame Sejournant, this picturesque expression acquired a significant amount of ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... chirping sparrows, bred in Temple chinks and crannies, might have held their peace to listen to imaginary skylarks as so fresh a little creature passed; the dingy boughs, unused to droop, otherwise than in their puny growth, might have bent down in a kindred gracefulness to shed their benedictions on her graceful head; old love-letters, shut up in iron boxes in the neighbouring offices, and made of no account among the heaps of family papers into which they had strayed, and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... preserve, so confident were they that they could operate without hindrance under all governments. Nevertheless, their sympathies inclined to absolute power as the best protection against the socialists, their puny but ardent adversaries. And just as they imitated the habits of the aristocrats, so they imitated their political and religious sentiments. Their women, in particular, loved the Prince and had dreams of appearing one day at ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... families of nobles and gentleman, might as well, in the opinion of almost all, have rested beneath a quaint little image of his infant figure, in brass, in the vaults of the little Norman chapel; for he was a puny, ailing child, apt to scandalize his father and brother, and their warlike retainers, by being scared at the dazzling helm and nodding crest, and preferring the seat at this mother's feet, the fairy tale of the old nurse, the song of the minstrel, ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tempted to exclaim, 'What merits has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some previous state of existence, that he is ushered into this state of being with the sceptre of rule, and the keys of riches in his puny fist, and I am kicked into the world, the sport of folly, or the victim of pride?... Often as I (p. 090) have glided with humble stealth through the pomp of Princes Street, it has suggested itself to me, as an improvement ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... a clerk with a small salary in the Navy Pay Office, and his son Charles was born in 1812 at Portsea. When Charles was about four his father was moved to Chatham, and here the little boy Charles lived until he was nine. He was a very puny little boy, and not able to join in the games of the other boys of his own age. So he spent most of his time in a small room where there was some books and where no one else besides himself cared to go. He not only read the books, but ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Merrimac, looking like a giant in comparison with this dwarfish antagonist. As she approached, the little craft glided swiftly in front of her grounded consort, like a new David offering battle to a modern Goliath. As if in disdain of this puny antagonist, the Merrimac began an attack on the Minnesota. But when the two eleven-inch guns of the Monitor opened fire, hurling solid balls of one hundred and sixty-eight pounds' weight against the iron sides of her great ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the public, at his last rehearsal. If he can dispense with flattery, he is sure at least of sincerity, and even though the annotation be rude, he may rely upon the justness of the comment." This is calm and complacent enough, but he proceeds with some warmth: "As for the little puny critics who scatter their peevish strictures in private circles, and scribble at every author who has the eminence of being unconnected with them, as they are usually spleen-swoln from a vain idea of increasing their consequence, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... tried to force the thing, but the cold, unyielding stone might well have laughed at my futile, puny endeavors. In fact, I could have sworn that I caught the faint suggestion of taunting laughter from beyond the ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tree with blows from his tusks; such threatening movements on his part effectually deterring his foes in their advance. Sticks and stones, large and weighty, are hurled at him from all sides. What does he care for such puny projectiles? Even a well-aimed tomahawk, that strikes him full and fairly, fails to hurt or penetrate his armour of bristles and tough hide. Like Achilles, his weak place is in his heels—his rear, and that is ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... tree fall, when its natural prop was stolen away by the sharp edge of the axe? It may have taken that tree a hundred, or a thousand years to grow; but when it crashes down, it is gone forever. A little, puny man has gone into the forest with an axe upon his shoulder, and has ruthlessly attacked one of God's greatest creations, a gorgeously abundant tree. He had no thought of what he was doing, of what he was destroying. His only ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... He was my foe; he is my tributary. We conquered him. He paid us the price of his liberty. We marched by Asciano upon Sienna. For sixteen thousand florins we spared that city; and we now hang like a thunderbolt over Florence, which dared to send her puny aid to the defence of Rimini. Our marches are forced and rapid and our camp in this plain but ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... people, the government trembled for itself—idle fear. That which shook this colony for a moment settled it as firm as a granite mountain and made it great with a rapidity that would have astounded the puny ages cant appeals to as the days ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... relaxation in sitting at the windows of our respectable inn to watch every passer-by on the dusty boulevard below, in spending half the day indoors, let it be ever so comfortably, or in merely turning out in the evening to shop in the puny town, whilst we bemoaned the want of a circulating library and a brass band. It was even more intolerable, as the Post had been built perversely with its back to the fine view of the glaciers. Moreover, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... himself alone—all alone in the world, where he never asked to come, and whence he could have gone, without anybody caring at all about it. He was not called Gringalet in mere sport; he was dwarfish and puny, and reedy; no one would have given him over seven or eight years, yet he was thirteen; but if he did not look more than half his age, it was not his fault, for he had not on the average eaten more than every other day, and then so little, and so bad, that he ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... her. For he could not have torn her heart to shreds and then stood bland, unaware of what he had done, had he loved her. Her young spirit, unversed in irony, drank in the bitter draught of disillusion. They had never loved each other; or, worse, far worse, they had loved and love was this puny thing that a blow could kill. His love for ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... some that are so puny and frail among the many brought into the world by the anaemic and jaded women of the present generation that, in the first days of their existence, their blood, incapable of warming them, threatens at every instant to congeal in their veins. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... unlovely things, begins to cast its glamour over the old Italian regimes. It is forgotten how low the Italian race had fallen under puny autocrats whose influence was soporific when not vicious. The vigorous if turbulent life of the Middle Ages was extinct; proof abounded that the role of small states was played out. Goldsmith's description, severe as it ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... and stood over her. "To some self-centered cub—some puny egotist in his twenties, who'll make you a slave to his needs and whims, and discard you for another woman when you've worn out your youth and beauty," he cried. "But you won't marry ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... structure occur detached in the chalk. It were curious to let the imagination run over the fact that the hosts of these uncommended gems died ages before the advent of man. The best of modern prizes may be puny in comparison with those which caused distress to the giant molluscs of the age when the Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus, and Pterodactylus were the aristocrats of the animal world. Such gems have gone for ever, and even during this age of insatiable and adventurous search man does not secure a ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... myself. Am I not king? Awake, thou coward majesty! thou sleepest. Is not the king's name twenty thousand names? Arm, arm, my name! a puny subject strikes At thy great glory. Look not to the ground, Ye favourites of a king; are we not high? High be our thoughts. I know my uncle York Hath power enough to serve our ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... 1759, there was born at the pretty little village of Hayes, in Middlesex, a puny babe, who in after years was to be one of the greatest ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... of the original guerrillas, for a wonder, and that meant he was probably a hell of a lot tougher and more knowledgeable than he seemed. Setting traps for Wohlen's animals, for instance, was emphatically not a job for the puny or the frightened. The first group was ...
— The Man Who Played to Lose • Laurence Mark Janifer
... stay. He begins to see that I am worth something. But pouf! how do people live in this crowded up town in the winter! It is dirtier than ever. The Americans have not improved it much. You see there is Rose and Angelique, before Baptiste, and he is rather puny, and father is getting old. Then, I could go up north every two or three years. Well, one finds out your worth ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... champions the higher rights of humanity, and is the first to wage war on the rabble. As soon as the plebeian forces himself into a place he is not fit for he begins to ail, to go into consumption, to go out of his mind, and to degenerate, and nowhere do we find so many puny, neurotic wrecks, consumptives, and starvelings of all sorts as among these darlings. They die like flies in autumn. If it were not for this providential degeneration there would not have been a stone left standing of our civilization, the rabble would have demolished ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... whatever hath once given Satisfaction will always do it: In all which they have manifestly the Advantage of us, who are so much govern'd by sickly and changeable Appetites, that we can with the greatest Coldness behold the stupendous Displays of Omnipotence, and be in Transports at the puny Essays of humane Skill; throw aside Speculations of the sublimest Nature and vastest Importance into some obscure Corner of the Mind, to make Room for new Notions of no Consequence at all; are even tired of Health, because not enlivened ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... look at the Prussian soldier as he marches past in his ill-fitting uniform and his leather helmet. First of all, we observe that he smokes a great deal. According to some of us, the "tobacco demon" ought by this time to have left him a thin, puny, hollow-eyed fellow, with trembling knees and palpitating heart and listless gait, with shaking hands and an intense craving for ardent spirits. You perceive, however, that a burlier, broader-shouldered, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... Lytton, Lytton Bulwer erst, Unseen amidst a metaphysic fog, Howl melancholy homage to the moon; For you once more Montgomery shall rave In all his rapt rabidity of rhyme; Nankeened Cockaigne shall pipe his puny note, And our young England's penny ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... pourtrayed downright villains; and the masterly way in which he has contrived to elude impressions of too painful a nature, may be seen in Iago and Richard the Third. The constant reference to a petty and puny race must cripple the boldness of the poet. Fortunately for his art, Shakespeare lived in an age extremely susceptible of noble and tender impressions, but which had still enough of the firmness inherited from a vigorous olden time not to shrink back with dismay from every strong and violent ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... (mixed figure,) and it was he who punctured the great South Sea Bubble, and sent it on a burst. Ha! ha! he-e-e!—how he laughs when he recurs to those days of the long, long ago, with their miserable little swindles, no better than farthing candles, (allowable rhyme,) and their puny dodges devised for flagellating ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... happy as we are. But those poor puny children! I am sorry for them, and when I think of my daughter, Yvonne, and that healthy young animal, Lindy, your adopted daughter, I ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... and shifting the body of the Texan so that his head would remain clear of the ever deepening wash in the bottom of the boat, she seized the pole and worked frantically. But after a few moments she realized the futility of her puny efforts to deviate the heavy craft a hair's breadth from its course. The tree-root that had knocked the Texan unconscious had descended upon the boat, and remained locked over the gunwale, holding the trunk with its high-flung tangle of roots and branches ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... in Hanover, New Hampshire, on the 21st December, 1829. She is described as having been a very spritely and pretty infant, with bright blue eyes. She was, however, so puny and feeble until she was a year and a half old, that her parents hardly hoped to rear her. She was subject to severe fits, which seemed to rack her frame almost beyond her power of endurance, and life was held by the feeblest tenure; but when a year and a half old she seemed to rally, ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore
... studied the case as closely as possible for more than an hour. There was but one peculiarity or symptom upon which to base a prescription. It was this: It would lie a few moments apparently asleep, then it would give a start and begin to scream with all its puny power. This would last one or two minutes, when it would as suddenly fall asleep again. This, they assured me, was the way it had performed all through its illness, except when opiated. 'Pains come and go suddenly.' That was all I had to go on. I could not locate the pains, nor by any possible means ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... behind it a well-organized, coherent national government, able to protect it and to enforce its rights in foreign lands, it is the shipping interest. But American ships, after the Treaty of Paris, hailed from thirteen independent but puny States. They had behind them the shadow of a confederacy, but no substance. The flags they carried were not only not respected in foreign countries—they were not known. Moreover, the States were jealous of each other, possessing no true community of interest, and each seeking advantage ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... Blackana enlarge himself, and as he replied he looked down upon me significantly. "O puny mortal, instruct me not in the miracles of my master. More great things are done under the canopies of Hell ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... plants, shows the effects of continued neglect or ill usage in diminished vigor and inferior bloom. This is not saying that a variety will "go back" to some ancestral sort, or that it will lose its individuality, but it will become puny and unsatisfactory. This deterioration is principally due to mismanagement, and can be counteracted by a change of methods. Suppose a fine, conical bulb is planted. If it meets with no misfortune it will produce ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford
... them, silently waiting for battle with one of the mightiest of God's creatures—one that was indeed a terrible foe to encounter were he but wise enough to make the best use of his opportunities. Against him we came with our puny weapons, of which I could not help reminding myself that "he laugheth at the shaking of a spear." But when the man's brain was thrown into the scale against the instinct of the brute, the contest looked less unequal than at first sight, for THERE is the secret of success. ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... to the excitement that he had forgotten himself, but Condell told him to think no more of it, as it was the sort of spirit that he liked to see a young man display. There was little time for conversation, however, for the Huascar, as though in revenge for the damage inflicted by her puny enemy, again discharged her whole broadside—or at least so much of it as was still capable of being fired; and the marksmanship was so excellent that every missile again struck the Covadonga, while at the same moment the Union again started firing with her ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... strata in the strangest manner. Seen from Funchal, the profile of Garajao is that of an elephant's head, the mahaut sitting behind it in the shape of a red-brown boss, the expanded head of a double dyke seaming the tufas of the eastern face. We distinguish on the brow two 'dragons,' puny descendants of the aboriginal monsters. Beyond Garajao the shore falls flat, and the upland soil is red as that of Devonshire. It is broken by the Ponta da Oliveira, where there is ne'er an olive-tree, and by the grim ravine of Porto de Canico o Bispo, the 'bishop' being a basaltic ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... her stolen children, of the scouts and couriers shot down from ambush in their efforts to reach them in their isolation or to creep through with messages to the columns afield, of the wounded lying with but scant attention and puny guard, weary marches away, of the comrades killed or died of wounds in fierce grapple with the warriors of the desert and the mountains—even of this young soldier within their gates, sore stricken in ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... night. Nec tibi occurrit perfecta universitas, nisi ubi majora sic praesto sunt, ut minora non desint. This is the judgment we ought to make of every part with respect to the whole. Any other view is narrow and deceitful. But what are the weak and puny designs of men, if compared to that of the creation and government of the universe? "As much as the heavens are above the earth, as much," says God in the Holy Writ, "are My ways and My thoughts above yours." Let, therefore, man admire what he understands, and be silent about what he does not ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... are surprised. Yes? I was suddenly ordered to sail in le Dauphin, and report to your good Governor, Bienville. A most sturdy soldier from all report. Heaven send us a sharp campaign, I am weary of these puny quarrels. We will have brave days in ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... necessary changes, he is to-day very scarce, and able only by the greatest caution to drag out a dull existence as a nocturnal and burrowing animal. It would seem that with such powerful protection as he originally had, he would have outlived the puny armadillos, but his fast disappearance proves that the race is not always to the swift, nor the ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... kinsman. Harold was the head of the most powerful noble house, next to the royal blood, in England; and personally, he was the bravest and most popular chieftain in the land. King Edward was childless, and the nearest collateral heir was a puny unpromising boy. England had suffered too severely during royal minorities, to make the accession of Edgar Atheling desirable; and long before King Edward's death, Earl Harold was the destined king of the nation's choice, though the favour of the Confessor was believed ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... laughter and even pity, at anything at once so weak and so malevolent. But they are not like the demons of sin that can hamper and wound; they are just little gnomes and elves that can make a noise, and their strength is a spiteful and a puny thing. ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... point of the boathook wavered, aimed first at the nonapus, then at the fishman. To the editor, both were alien—but he couldn't decide which one was more dangerous. For a long moment, neither of them advanced, and he wondered if they could really be frightened of his puny weapon. ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... and their labourers, instead of dining with them in their kitchen, have taken to forming unions and making speeches about their rights. If, here and there, in some remote nooks we find an approximation to the coarse, hearty patriarchal mode of life, we regard it as a naturalist regards a puny modern reptile, the representative of gigantic lizards of old geological epochs. A sketch or two of its peculiarities, sufficiently softened and idealised to suit modern tastes, forms a picturesque background to a modern picture. Some of Miss Bronte's rough Yorkshiremen ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... with a look of deep and unutterable scorn. "But to thee!—words would fail to express my contempt, my derision, my defiance of thy puny power! Read, and skulk back to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... culprit to work for ten days after the first offence, twenty after the second, and so on. But I don't suppose there will often be need to put this law in motion. The children of the Dawn, remember, will not be the puny self-ridden creatures that we are. They will not say, 'Is this what I want to do?' but 'Shall I, by doing this, be (a) harming or (b) benefiting—no matter in how infinitesimal a ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... no puny planet, sun or moon, Or zodiacal sign which can control The God in us! If we bring that to bear Upon events, we mold them to our wish, 'Tis when the infinite 'neath the finite gropes That men ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... reign, and Mary Stuart and her Guisan uncles, hated jealously by the queen-mother, Catharine de Medici, and by the reforming Bourbons, fell, for a time, into the background. Mary can hardly have loved her puny boy husband, but she nursed him night and day in his long sickness and his death so affected her that "she would not receive any consolation, but, brooding over her disasters with constant tears and passionate, doleful lamentations, she universally inspired deep pity." She had, indeed, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... death, surely no one deed of more desperate courage was done than that of this little band. The assault threatened the very life of the big ship, and was made in the bright light of the fire under the muzzles of her guns. These were turned on the puny foe, which received a shot in her boilers and sunk. It is believed that the crew lost their lives, but the Hartford had caught fire and was ablaze, the flames darting up the rigging and bursting through the ports; but the discipline of her crew prevailed over the fury of ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... and warriors, so boastful and so honoured, been making your fruitless attempts to rescue the tomb of Christ! God can wait no longer! He is tired of your vain puny efforts. Stand back and let us, whom you despise, carry out his commission! He who calls can insure the victory, and we will show you what the ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... more deliberate criticism manifested by Sonnino and Salandra, entitle these Ministers to the lasting gratitude of their country. For it should be borne in mind that they had against them not only the Senate, the Chamber, a section of the Press, the "cream" of the aristocracy, the puny sons and daughters of the leaders of the Risorgimento, but also, strange to say, the majority of Italian diplomatists in the capitals of the Great Powers, one of whom actually fell ill at the thought that Italy was about to fight shoulder to shoulder ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... political prisoners who had fought in Monmouth's Rebellion. Pitied by the planters, despised even by the negro slaves, this small colony held itself aloof, starved, and married none but members of their own colony. They are now mere shadows of men, with puny bodies and witless minds, living in brush or wooden hovels and eating nothing but a little wild fruit ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... man could be paroled the day after he was sentenced, though he were in for ninety-nine years. That was the law, and it was just, for no court is infallible and injustice must be rectified somewhere. After the poor man and his poor lawyer had matched their puny wits against those of a fighting District Attorney then mercy must intervene in the name of society and equalize the sentence. For the District Attorney is hired by the county to send every man to prison, but ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... hearts. A hollow roar rolled down the Nevskii Prospekt—a guard burst into the palace and put the women under arrest. The pent-up Revolution at last had burst—anarchy howled around the capital—the isolated Czar was captive, and plotting princelings joined hands with puny lawyers to browbeat courageous women and ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... undulated and frothed amidst the countless cells of crumbling house walls, and broke along the foot of the city wall in a surf of bramble and holly and ivy and teazle and tall grasses. Here and there gaudy pleasure palaces towered amidst the puny remains of Victorian times, and cable ways slanted to them from the city. That winter day they seemed deserted. Deserted, too, were the artificial gardens among the ruins. The city limits were indeed as sharply defined as ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... regularly to a certain furze bush within fifty perches of the "seminary," where I hid it till after "dismiss.*"! I grant it does not look well in me to become I my own panegyrist; but I can at least declare, that there were few among the Gaseys able to, resist the prowess of this right arm, puny as it was at the period in question. Our battles were obstinate and frequent; but as the quarrels of the two families and their relations on each side, were as bitter and pugnacious in fairs and markets as ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... old haphazard system of pairing, qualified more and more by worldly discretions, no longer secures a young population numerous enough or good enough for the growing needs and possibilities of our Empire. Statecraft sits weaving splendid garments, no doubt, but with a puny, ugly, insufficient baby in ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... heard described A GALE OF WIND AT SEA and it wonder and admiration. The wind, blowing furiously, whistled wildly among the rigging; the waves of alarming size and threatening appearance, came rushing in swift succession towards us, as if eager to overwhelm our puny bark, which nevertheless floated unharmed, now riding on the crest of a wave, and anon plunging into a deep and angry-looking gulf, taking no water on deck, excepting ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... outlay and work? He managed to hatch quantities of young chickens every February, but although he could fatten them by placing them in boxes and forcing a fattening mixture down their throats, he could not make them grow; they had no exercise; they remained puny little things, and another defect soon appeared: though fat they were tough and stringy. The breeder sent lots of them to me, and they looked fat and tender; but my customers complained that they could ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... with making a child puny, miss. Coddling up, and that sort, only leads to consumptions and assmas, ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... she not been wholly unarmed for the contest, however she might have been forced from her untenable posts, and compelled to disembarrass herself from her load of incumbrances, she never could have been driven altogether out of the field by her puny assailants, with all their cavils, and gibes, and sarcasms; for in these consisted the main strength of their petty artillery. Let us beware, lest we also suffer from a like cause; nor let it be our crime and our reproach, that in schools, perhaps even in Colleges, Christianity ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... of some such cordial after the losses they had sustained, and the ministry of Versailles did not fail to make the most of this advantage: they published a pompous narrative of the battle of St. Cas, and magnified into a mighty victory the puny check which they had given to the rear-guard of an inconsiderable detachment. The people received it with implicit belief, because it was agreeable to their passions, and congratulated themselves upon their success in hyperboles, dictated by that vivacity so peculiar ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... this kind the trouble of female labor lies. Nancy should save her vitality. She should store it up for wifehood and motherhood. She'll be a spent woman before she has a husband, and your grandchildren puny youngsters as a resulting. Think it over, John," ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... as if in wrath, to pursue the puny assailant which had dealt her this mortal stroke. No longer breasting the storm with stubborn persistency, she now drifted aimlessly before wind and wave. She was merely a larger plaything, tossed about by Titantic gambols. The junk was burst asunder ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... be "raised from the dunghill, set among princes, and made to inherit a throne of glory?" is dust and ashes, a puny rebel, a guilty traitor, to be pitied, pardoned, loved, exalted from the depths of despair, raised to the heights of Heaven—gifted with kingly honour—royally fed—royally clothed—royally attended—and, at last, royally crowned? O my ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... Prince Khudadad seeing this monstrous semblance was sore amazed and prayed Heaven that he might be victorious over that devil: then unsheathing his sword he stood awaiting the Abyssinian's approach with courage and steadfastness; but the blackamoor when he drew near deemed the Prince too slight and puny to fight and was minded to seize him alive. Khudadad, seeing how his foe had no intent to combat, struck him with his sword on the knee a stroke so dour that the negro foamed with rage and yelled a yell so loud ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... only their puny knives with which to give battle to the serpent, the boys stood petrified with terror. Even Ben, to whom his rescue and Frank's peril had been unfolded so swiftly that he was half-dazed, seemed unable to ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... humiliation to his father. Eberhard Ludwig loved personal vitality, and that vigorous manliness which he himself possessed, and which he saw daily in the sons of his poorest subjects; and he suffered intensely when he was brought into contact with his puny, unwholesome son. The Duchess's passionate spoiling and injudicious love made matters worse; the boy's health was in nowise benefited thereby, and it but served to accentuate the fact that his father ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... and accordingly on the 14th of May the vanguard of the French army entered the Duchy, and before the middle of the ensuing month the whole of Savoy, with the exception of Montmelian, was in the possession of his troops. This puny triumph was, however, counterbalanced and outweighed by the disasters at Casal and Mantua, the former of which, from the failure of provisions and reinforcements, fell into the hands of Spinola; while the latter, after having had ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... the big front door was a square-yard patch of puny, straggling grass; and it was these two bits of possibilities that put a happy thought into Sarah's head. For three days she said nothing, but she fell into the way of going often in and out of that door, and always her eyes ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... a pathway through a pasture-lot, comprising some ten acres, poor land, covered with puny bushes, and a few gnarled trees, producing cider-apples. It belonged to an old bachelor farmer, who lived in solitary fashion, doing his own cooking, and in general taking care of himself. He was reputed to have money concealed about his premises, which ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... unfamiliar and hitherto almost detested line of investigation now attracted me. Abstruse mathematical problems which had defied solution for centuries began to appear easy. To defy the State and its puny representatives had become mere child's play. So I forthwith decided to overcome no less ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... doubtless in the past their ways were thus and thus. But, as it is truly said, 'Tian went bare, his eyes could pierce the earth and his body float in space, but they of his seed do but dream the dream.' We, being but the puny descendants—" ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... affections even from his mother, in making him believe that, owing to his deformity and growing ugliness, she had transferred all her tenderness to his younger brother, who certainly was very superior in health and beauty to the puny Dauphin. Making a pretext of this calumny, the governor of the heir-apparent was malicious enough to prohibit him from eating or drinking anything but what first passed through the hands of his physicians; and so strong was the impression made by this ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Shakespeare. Of English poets it may be said generally they are either born in London or remote country places. The large provincial towns know them not. Indeed, nothing is more pathetic than the way in which these dim, destitute places hug the memory of any puny whipster of a poet who may have been born within their statutory boundaries. This has its advantages, for it keeps alive in certain localities fames that would otherwise have utterly perished. Parnassus has forgotten all about poor Henry Kirke White, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... tribe, is sent back by the angel, Ishmael is born, and this son of a slave (?) is regarded not only as free, but heir of the house of Abraham. Years pass, and the wild, reckless Ishmael is seen ridiculing Isaac, his puny brother and coheir. At the sight, all the mother and the aristocrat again rise up in Sarah, and she cries out to Abraham, "Cast out this bondwoman and her son, for he shall not be heir with my son, even Isaac;" and Abraham, so far from regarding them as chattels personal, and selling them south, ...
— Is Slavery Sanctioned by the Bible? • Isaac Allen
... of the profession. His huge gouty feet were encased in shoes with silver buckles, making a ridiculous termination to legs so spindling, with knees so bony, that when he crossed them they made you think of the emblems on a tombstone. His puny little thighs, lost in a pair of wide black breeches fastened with buckles, seemed to bend beneath the weight of a round stomach and a torso developed, like that of most sedentary persons, into a stout barrel, always buttoned into a ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... the sun is only occasionally to be seen suspended in abysses of blue, and resembles a drooping flower, one feels that the apparent chaos has lurking in it a secret harmony of mundane, but imperishable, forces—so much so that in time even one's puny human heart comes to imbibe the prevalent spirit of revolt, and, catching fire, to cry to all the universe: ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... of man as He knows him who knows him best. And in effect He says what we have been forgiven by God is as an unpayable amount. And what are not willing to forgive is like sixteen dollars and a fraction by contrast. What little puny folks some of us are in our ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... mountains into permanent form, and the air was filled with the roaring horrors of desolation. But they had gone, and left infinite peace behind them. That peace had endured for many thousands of years and it was unimaginable that any but the puny sounds of man would disturb that vast repose for thousands of years to come. The peaks of those old Adirondacks, their quiet lakes, their massive forests, looked as deathless as time itself. "The Great North Woods" could not have been more ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... organized play and athletics. They need something concrete to tie to. They need to be taught, if you please, what is the "gang" spirit among boys. They need to learn that their young bodies are to be used, instead of decorated. Until they learn that, we shall have sickly mothers and puny babies. No single movement for the improvement of American people as a race, no advance of science or sanitation, can compare in importance with the necessity for building up morally, spiritually and bodily, our ...
— Why I Believe in Scouting for Girls • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... faults or virtues, Shewing where its merit lieth. Then shall every beast that liveth, Every bird and every reptile, Every fish and every insect, Raise their own peculiar voices— (Terrible, or sweet, or puny); And will testify their own way Of the powers of King Nimaera, Who their being's fire feedeth, Gives them space for life and glory, With that limit ends their being; For no hidden spirit have they Image to the holy Maker. Now the grave shall ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... spacious one to him. It was filled with ladies in beautiful costumes, and with men in clawhammer coats. He had seen pictures of evening suits in the newspapers but never before had he been privileged to behold live men in them. The men seemed pale and puny for the most part. He had never before seen ladies in low-necked dresses and one just before him seemed shamelessly naked, and he gazed at her in astonishment. He was glad ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... they also had adored him in time past, and had built temples in his honor. They also were puny mortals, scarcely longer of life than the birds themselves. The Phoenix had seen many generations of men grow up, do good or evil deeds, and die, sometimes leaving grand monuments upon the earth, sometimes disappearing from knowledge ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... the poor and to the obscure, its anger and animosity penetrated as far as the lowest class; it created fissures in the social subsoil in order to diffuse the proscription there; the local triumvirates, nicknamed "mixed mixtures," served it for that. Not one head escaped, however humble and puny. They found means to impoverish the indigent, to ruin those dying of hunger, to spoil the disinherited; the coup d'etat achieved this wonderful feat of adding misfortune to misery. Bonaparte, it seems, took the trouble ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... to the person below, but already a man's hand leaning on a stick was visible beyond the edge of the rock. Peter strode straight down the face of the cliff to the turning in the path. Louise screamed. Peter seized by the collar a puny, crooked creature, whom he scarcely stopped to look at, and held him, as one might a cat, ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... then time would be accomplished. The last Pope had died. Their basilica with its mighty dome was a desert where scorpions and snakes abounded. The fifth Buddha would appear, not the second Christos. Suddenly I saw before me in a puny boat a beautiful beardless youth. He was attired in some symbolical garments and upon his head a triple tiara. I could not believe my aged eyes. He sat upright. His attitude was hieratic. His eyes were lifted heavenwards. He clasped ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... some debt at play;—or dirty annuity, the bargain of his lust; Perhaps Conscience all this time was engaged at home, talking aloud against petty larceny, and executing vengeance upon some such puny crimes as his fortune and rank of life secured him against all temptation of committing; so that he lives as merrily;'—(If he was of our church, tho', quoth Dr. Slop, he could not)—'sleeps as soundly in his bed;—and at last meets death unconcernedly;—perhaps much more ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... us? I dare to prophesy like a seer from old Chaldea. Assur of Nineveh, Marduk of Babylon, Baal of Tyre, Ammon of Memphis—all have bent the knee to Mazda the Glorious, to Mithra the Fiend-Smiting, and shall the weak daevas, the puny gods of Greece, save their land, when greater than they bow ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... beforehand the better progress, of course, the grafts will make when they are started. Whether or not they will start more readily have I been unable to ascertain, but I have a bunch of little fellows with a growth of only an inch or so, and so puny that I cannot account for it in any other way than a lack of proper nutrition. Many of these little trees, used as stock, are very old in comparison with their size and they will probably be dwarfs all their ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... many observers that the first whelps born in a litter are the strongest, largest, and healthiest. If the litter is a large one, the last born may be noticeably puny, and this disparity in size may continue to maturity. The wise breeder will decide for himself how many whelps should be left to the care of their dam. The number should be relative to her health and constitution, and in any case it is well not to give her so many that they will be a drain ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... full share of the universal good wishes. Everybody was pleased with his behavior; and the bachelor Bank President, and other members of the old school of gentlemen, pronounced him a glorious young fellow, a refreshing contrast to the puny, cadaverous youth of the day, and altogether worthy to have flourished thirty years ago. The bridesmaids and groomsmen were not neglected either; and both Miss Pillbody and Miss Trapper thought that the next best thing to getting married, was ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... thy crouching thunders now, O Jove! Free this high heart, which, a poor captive long, Doth knock to be let forth, this heart which still, In its invincible manhood, overtops Thy puny godship, as this mountain doth The pines that moss its roots. Oh, even now, While from my peak of suffering I look down, 280 Beholding with a far-spread gush of hope The sunrise of that Beauty, in whose face, Shone all around with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... fact Cannot Only not be controverted, but I doubt more remarkable every day— I mean, that under him we attained not only our highest elevation, but the most solid authority in Europe. When the names of Marlborough and Chatham are still pronounced with awe in France, our little cavils make a puny sound. Nations that are beaten cannot ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... the whole executive was concentrated in the hands of the monarch. First of all, the Imperator naturally decided in person every question of any moment. Caesar was able to carry personal government to an extent which we puny men can hardly conceive, and which is not to be explained solely from the unparalleled rapidity and decision of his working, but has moreover its ground in a more general cause. When we see Caesar, Sulla, Gaius ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... freighting that summer that the combined outfits of Jerkline Jo Modock and Al Drummond were taxed to capacity. The new settlers made constant demands upon them, and, though their wants were puny in comparison with those of the camps, Jo accommodated them whenever she could. Water had been struck at the surprisingly shallow depth of forty-five feet in some places, and many pumping plants were transported over ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... fancy this puny game amuses me? Do I not know that you could buy a principality like this for a souvenir of Europe if it happened to please you? The one time I have been allowed to feel a man was in your country, where we met as equal rivals.... No, not equal ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... sprang from the top of a dead tree, and flapped hurriedly away. A kingbird gave chase, and disappeared for some moments in the gulf between the great wings of the eagle, and I imagined him seated upon his back delivering his puny blows upon the royal bird. I interrupted two or three minks fishing and hunting alongshore. They would dart under the bank when they saw me, then presently thrust out their sharp, weasel-like noses, to see if the ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... all in wonder not unmingled with awe. What a place it was for man to live and wage his puny battles! Yet the fever of all of it, rising in her veins, made her eager already to partake of the dream, the excitement that made mere gold-slaves of the men who had come here compelling this forbidding place to yield up some ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... thousand other animals wearing turbans, or who are themselves being massacred by the latter, and that almost everywhere on earth this is the immemorial usage?" The Sirian, properly shocked, demands the reason of these horrible encounters between creatures so puny. "It is all about a pile of dirt no bigger than your heel," is the reply. "Not that any one of these millions of men marching to slaughter has the slightest claim to this pile of dirt; the only question ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... feels like I does towards you, thar hain't but one sort of goodness thet counts. I knows thet I cuts a sorry sort of figger alongside him, an' I hes ter fight myself day-long an' night-long ter keep from hatin' him fer hit. I hain't no Goliath outen ther Bible, but after all a right puny leetle feller took ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... were small of soul and narrow of mind. As they stood by the gate now, this last hour grudged to them, neither dreamed that this was the final canto in the poem of boyhood. They had been fast friends since the first day pale, puny Fred made his appearance in school, and was both laughed at and bullied by some boys larger in ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... still with every rising Sun The Sport renew'd; or if some daring Foe Provok'd their Wrath, they bent the hostile Bow, Nor waited his Approach, but rush'd with Speed, Fearless of Hunger, Thirst, Fatigue, or Death. But we their soften'd Sons, a puny Race, Are weak in Youth, fear Dangers where they're not; Are weary'd with what was to them a Sport, Panting and breathless in One short Hour's Chace; And every Effort of our Strength is feeble. We're poison'd with the Infection of our Foes, Their very Looks and ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... fell in. You know he would have had to gone in of his own accord. I'll let you know my father wa'n't the man to do anything like that, Jake Noyes!" The boy actually shook his puny fist in the man's face. "Say it again, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... grumble if the master comes to him and says, 'This little bit of ground that I have given you to grow a few sugar-canes and melons on, I am going to take back again.' What reason have we to set up our puny wills against Him, if He exercises His authority over us and demands that we should regard ourselves not only as sons but also as slaves to whom the owner of it and us has given a talent to be used ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
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