"Puny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... 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 over me, and fed me with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... 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
... puny, and did not make a very sturdy fight for life. Still he weathered along, season after season, and survived two stronger children, Margaret and Benjamin. By 1839 Judge Clemens had lost faith in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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
... 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 good world, ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... 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
... 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 ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... 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 |
