"Shrank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... church ladies was not quite so elaborate as she had planned. There came to her an impulse to tell her morning's experience. She shrank from doing it. It seemed a sacred thing. They might not understand. But the impulse remained and she obeyed it, and quietly told them. And as they listened there seemed to come a touch of the Spirit's presence ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... the clear stars of his mind were hidden by the stormy clouds of excitement that the daily newspaper perpetually renewed and by the daily developments of life. And just as his professional income shrank before his mental confusion and impotence, the private income that came from his and his wife's investments became uncertain. She had had two thousand pounds in the Constantinople loan, seven hundred in debentures of the Ottoman railway; he had held similar ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... mal-adroitness. Grave was the error he had committed in getting himself made governor-general against orders; graver still, perhaps fatal, the blunder of not being swift to confess his fault, and cry for pardon, before other tongues should have time to aggravate his offence. Yet even now he shrank from addressing the Queen in person, but hoped to conjure the rising storm by means of the magic wand of the Lord-Treasurer. He implored his friend's interposition to shield him in the emergency, and begged that at least her Majesty and the lords of council would suspend ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... eventually, they had passed through the shower of rice and slippers and were at last alone in the motorcar again; and once more she shrank into her corner and did not speak, and he waited patiently until they should ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... or less before her. Her own circle had been too limited to give Norah much experience of the outer world, and she shrank instinctively from anything that lay beyond Billabong and its surroundings. No one, meeting her in her home, would have dreamed that she might be shy; but the truth was that a very passion of shyness came over her when she thought of confronting a number of girls, all up ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... breakfast. There was a queer change in him—a sudden lofty independence—a sudden loathing of himself. He knew now that it was not in him to do good work in the world, but at least he would pay his own way. He had been a mass of vanity and now he was so mean in his own eyes that he shrank from the passers-by. Perhaps the long strain had damaged the gray matter of the brain, or some nervous centre—I do not know what change a physician would have found in him, but ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... turned red, drew his head down as though he would pull it within his shoulders, and shrank from the ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... was very bright; the washed leaves were brilliantly green; sweet scents of trees and buds filled the air, and opening apple blossoms were scattering beauty all over the land. Nothing could spoil that afternoon. Faith had a secret consciousness besides that the very thing from which she shrank was by no means disagreeable to Mr. Linden. She did not care what he did! And he,—in the joy of being with her, of seeing her grow stronger every hour, Mr. Linden was in a 'holiday humour'—in the mood for work or play or mischief; and took the road to Miss Bezac's for more than a ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... when sitting down to write tender and consoling messages to those in such circumstances, pre-occupied with urging the obligation of each one of them individually to hold fast, against possible torture or death, that which each one had individually received. But he never shrank from it, or from pointing out that such relation to God himself was the noblest privilege. And the evidence is plain that all over the Europe of that age this reception of a Divine message direct to the individual, in the newly opened Scriptures, was, not a burden, but a source of incomparable ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... of the mountain the two children shrank back into their mufflers, before the sweep of the wet, chill wind; but the mill was in sight—beyond the slope of bleak pastures outlined with stone walls—sunk deep in the valley beside a rapid mountain stream, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... using on all state and festive occasions. Then, pushing onwards, Alboin took forcible possession of his new realm and of the tearful young Rosamund, whom he forced to become his wife, although she shrank in horror from the murderer of all her kin and the ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... talk of politics, Sylvia Morgan was silent, and once, when "King" Plummer laid his big hand protectingly on her arm, she shrank slightly, but so slightly that no one save Harley noticed, not even the "King." The action roused doubts in his mind. Surely a girl would not shrink from her uncle in this manner, not from a big, ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... I shrank back against the mouldy wall of that old stairway shivering as if I had been suddenly stricken with the ague. I had trembled in every limb before ever I heard the sound of the sudden scuffle, and from a variety of reasons—the ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... of Aristotle's physics—of which his theology was an integral part and a logical capping—that the forms which beings approached pre-existed in other beings from which they had been inherited, and that the intermediate stages during which the butterfly shrank to a grub could not be understood unless we referred them to their origin and their destiny. The physical essence and potency of seeds lay in their ideal relations, not in any actual organisation they might possess in the day of their eclipse and slumber. An egg evolved into a chicken ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... instinctive attraction of one strong spirit toward another, the more, because that other was so differently embodied, endowed, and circumstanced. She was a bed-ridden invalid, but she thrilled, like Achilles, at the first gleam and clangor of arms. The only thing that Sophie feared, and from which she shrank, was Sin. All else attracted her in proportion as it was powerful, stirring, or awe-inspiring. Delicate, sensitive, and apparently meek and timid as was her nature, her heart was firm as a Roman general's, and her soul as large and sympathetic ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... up wagging his tail, and looking as pleased as if he had restored obedience to a flock of unruly sheep. I shrank back from Scroggie, wishing Turkey, who was still at the other end of the bridge, would ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... and, deserted as I was by the world, make a common cause, and endeavour to compensate the general injustice. But was it for me to force this conduct upon him, if, now in his declining years, his own fortitude shrank from it? Alas, neither he nor I foresaw the dreadful catastrophe that was so closely impending! Otherwise, I am well assured that no tenderness for his remaining tranquillity would have withheld him from ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... years ago the Lord revealed to his church the principle of celestial marriage. The idea of marrying more wives than one was as naturally abhorrent to the leading men and women of the church, at that day, as it could be to any people. They shrank with dread from the bare thought of entering into such relationship. But the command of God was before them in language which no faithful soul dare disobey, 'For, behold, I reveal unto you a new and everlasting covenant; and if ye abide not that covenant, then are ye damned; for no one can reject ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... to move at once from the window, but I did so soon enough to avoid his eye. He was looking fixedly into the narrow quadrangle upon which the window opened. I shrank back unperceived, to pass the rest of the day in terror and despair. I went to my room early that night, but I was too miserable ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... overtures of affection, she could not respond as fully as she would have liked. It was the same with the Vaynes and Avorys; they were all more than kind to her, and she longed to receive their attention with open arms; but she could not: the fact was, her wounded heart was so tender that it shrank ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... their scramble for spars, listened to the weird melody that presaged woe and wreck? To the broken casements of fishermen's huts, on distant shores, where anxious wives peered out in the blackening tempest, and shrank back appalled by sounds which sea-tradition averred were born in coral caves, mosaiced with blanching human skulls? What hoary hierophant in the mysteries of cataphonics and diacoustics will undertake to track those trills ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... work that was assigned to him he did as well as he could; but he had little art to recommend himself in immodest ways. He had not the vanity to presume that he would certainly succeed in strange enterprises. He shrank from the personal ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... those moments in the Duomo when she had sobbed with a mysterious mingling of rapture and pain, while Fra Girolamo offered himself a willing sacrifice for the people, came back to her as if they had been a transient taste of some such far-off fountain. But again she shrank from impressions that were alluring her within the sphere of visions and narrow fears which compelled men to outrage natural affections as ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... to my mother's side. Was it an animal, or a fungus, or only a mound of earth? The way to find out was to smell it. So, without any idea of hurting it, I trotted up and reached out my nose. As I did so it shrank a little more into itself, and became rounder and more like a fungus than ever; but the act of shrinking also made the black and white grass stick out a little farther, so that my nose met it sooner than I expected, ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... She suddenly shrank from the grandeur of judging of him, to the measure of her need of his forbearance. "Oh, why can't you let David alone? What's he ever ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... farm, an hour ere dawn, The second time rang out that clarion voice Which bids the Christian watch. As thus he lay T'wards him there moved in visions of the Lord A Venerable Shape, compact of light, And loftier than our mortal. Near arrived, That mild, compassionate Splendour shrank his beam, Or healed with strengthening touch the gazer's eyes Made worthier of such grace; and Laurence saw Princedom not less than his, the Apostles' Chief, To whom the Saviour answered, 'Rock art thou,' And later—crowning Love, not less than Faith— 'Feed thou My Sheep, My Lambs!' He knew ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... period for Cecille. At first the birth of this wholly new thing within her baffled her own power to reason. She watched its mushroom growth with fascination, just a little aghast. But when, all in a kind of cataclysmic flash, she thought to recognize it for what it was, she shrank away as if from a ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... The girl shrank back a little, but she did not remove her eyes from her mother's face. A great dread, however, had entered into them. A hot color leaped into her cheeks. Scarcely did she yet know what she dreaded; it was something intangible, too awful to be ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of lightning the eight men in front of him were covering each other—every man afraid to be the first to shoot, since he knew that the flash of his own pistol meant instantaneous death for him. As Hale shrank back, he pushed against somebody who thrust him aside. It was ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... leaving the trail behind me, I somehow had a foreboding that I might be mistaken for a faker and looked upon as an adventurer, and I shrank from the ordeal. My hair had grown long on the trip across; my boots were somewhat the worse for wear, and my old-fashioned clothes (understood well enough by pioneers along the trail) were dilapidated. I was not the most presentable ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... she got up, and, throwing on a loose gown of soft, pink cashmere, she stepped out upon the balcony to get a breath of air. She did not look toward the Salute; something withheld her from doing so, as if it had involved a self-betrayal which she shrank from. She turned, instead, to the east, where, rising pale, but distinct, against the faint rosy flush of the sky, was the tower and dome of San Pietro di Castello. A single star still pricked through the deepening colour, ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... extinguish them. At the first glance she did not appear beautiful, but as you gazed at her she became more and more perturbing, till she conquered you and inspired you with passionate admiration. It should be said though that she shrank from all self-assertion, comporting herself with much modesty, ever keeping in the background, striving to hide her lustre, invariably clad in black and unadorned by a single jewel, although she was the wife of a ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... had begotten bribery, corruption, and strife; the over-weening luxury had fostered unworthy ambitions—it was a time of much lawlessness. Under the shadow of the embassies infamous intrigues were planned by bands of idle men, who shrank from no deed of evil which held its promise of gold; the water-storey of some splendid palace might be a lurking-place for unprincipled men—spies and informers by profession—who wore the liveries of noble families whose secrets ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... way they encountered but one horseman; Galloway turned his own and Florence's animals out so that, though seen, they might escape recognition. At the nearest of the two hovels he dismounted, raising his arms to her. When she cried out and shrank back trembling, he laughed softly, caught her in his arms, and lifted her free of the saddle; when he would have kissed her she put her ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... that a pawnbroker's business was carried on within. It was not the first visit she had made to this establishment, for the poor little household ornaments, the loss of which had left her home so bleak and bare, were now in the safekeeping of the proprietor; but still she shrank back as she approached a dim side entrance in a narrow street, and drawing her bonnet closer over her face, pushed open a baize door, and entered a dark passage divided on one side into a row of narrow cells, separated from each other by ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... the convent which had received a large sum of money from Miss Lind. The children were attended by ten or twelve priests in rich vestments. They had come to see the songstress and to thank her in person. But Jenny shrank from appearing before such a stately deputation: "Tell them I cannot see them," she exclaimed. "They have nothing to thank me for. If I have done good it was no more than my duty." And the grand procession with its wreaths and banners, ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... it that Marguerite shrank from the touch of Hubert Tracy's hand as if stung by an adder? Why was it that, when she was obliged to listen to his flattering, oily tongue, that she saw the manly dignified form of Phillip Lawson standing between, with his hand uplifted, ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... the intersection of Bean Alley and the switch-yard, where the dusk banked up densely in the corners, he stopped again. He was watching his chance to get across the wide common, undetected. Twice he started, and twice he shrank back and flattened himself against the wall as ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... sailed through the dangerous currents of Hell Gate and landed at Throg's Neck, a peninsula on the sound across from Long Island. Washington parried this movement by so guarding the narrow neck of the peninsula leading to the mainland that the cautious Howe shrank from a frontal attack across a marsh. After a delay of six days, he again embarked his army, landed a few miles above Throg's Neck in the hope of cutting off Washington from retreat northward, only to find Washington still north of him at White Plains. A sharp skirmish followed in which ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... witheringly, "you—" she repeated and stopped helpless for the want of words but her eyes spoke with the fierce authority of the Turner clan, and its dominant power for half a century, and Nancy Dillon shrank, though she turned and made a spiteful face, when Melissa ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... and come along," was the quick order, and it was no time now for reluctance, resentment, much less refusal. The two men summoned shrank back and would not come, but Cawker found two who dared to follow. It was a case of "duck ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... century, and had figured at various times on the troubled stage of Scottish history, Lag was undoubtedly a man of some parts and capacity for public affairs, but coarse, cruel and brutal beyond even the license of those times. The Covenanting historians charge him with vices such as even they shrank from attributing to Claverhouse; and, careful as it is always necessary to be in taking the evidence of such witnesses, it is abundantly clear that even these ingenious romancists would have been hard put to it to stain the memory of Lag. Later historians ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... conduct her was that of the mistress of a handsome town-house, and the wife of a man of society. She liked handsome town-houses, and she was sure she would like society; but it would all be very new and strange to her, and, although she was a brave girl at heart, she shrank from making ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... blast, which swept furiously from the north up the declivity of the street, rattling the shutters in its headlong passage. Once or twice, when a passer-by, muffled warmly from the bitter air, hurried past, the phantom shrank closer to the wall, till he was gone. Its vague, mournful face seemed to watch for some one. The twilight darkened, gradually; but it did not flit away. Patiently it kept its piteous look fixed in one direction—watching—watching; and, while ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... made as if he saw it not. Now the horses bore forth towards the river. Then Odd drave his staff at Grettir, and smote the shoulder-blade, for that Grettir turned the shoulder towards him: that was so mighty a stroke, that the flesh shrank from under it, but Grettir ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... longer in the agony of suspense; but her limbs refused to support her, and her woman's heart shrank with a ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... Strange to say, the two things usually go together. Just as Philippe Egalite, Duke of Orleans, disbelieved in God, and yet tried to conjecture his fate from the inspection of coffee-grounds at the bottom of a cup,—just as Louis XI. shrank from no perjury and no crime, and yet retained a profound reverence for a little leaden image which he carried in his cap,—so the Romans under the Empire sneered at all the whole crowd of gods and goddesses whom their fathers had worshipped, but gave an implicit credence to sorcerers, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... was not sentimental, and any exhibition of feeling appeared to have an irritating effect upon his nerves. There were times when he shrank from some little sudden caress of Charlotte's as from the sting of an adder. Aversion, surprise, fear—what was it that showed in the expression of his face at these moments? Whatever that strange look was, ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... matter?" she asked, putting out her hand to the little boy, who shrank away from her and raised an arm before his eyes. "Why, honey, did you really think Billie would hurt a nice little ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... round A whirlwind caught and bore us; mighty gyves, Rapid and vast, of hissing spray wind-driven Far through the dizzy dark. Aloud she shriek'd— My heart was cloven with pain. I wound my arms About her: we whirl'd giddily: the wind Sung: but I clasp'd her without fear: her weight Shrank in my grasp, and over my dim eyes And parted lips which drank her breath, down hung The jaws of Death: I, screaming, from me flung The empty phantom: all the sway and whirl Of the storm dropt to windless calm, and I Down welter'd thro' the dark ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... as he bared his soul to her she dreamed A day-dream strange and new, wherein it seemed That in that soul's clear depth she saw her own, And his most secret thought (till then unknown) Seemed hers eternally. He spoke of death, And then her heart shrank, and she drew deep breath. Suddenly, ere she understood at all What new life dawned before her, came the call Of fairy horns; and so the Green Knight burst Upon the scene, as ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... ordering such a dinner, nor of the risk and expense attending the getting of it up. There was, for one, a Mr. Lee, a surgeon, who was very ready to join in the dinner to commemorate the Westminster victory, but he shrank from bearing any part of the onus of setting it on foot, either in purse or in person. But, having once proposed a measure, I was not to be foiled in that way. I therefore, after some considerable difficulty in finding any one to take the order for ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... Came one who cried, "I love thee," and he seized Her in his arms and kissed her with hot breath, That dried the tears upon her flaming cheeks. While evermore his boldly blazing eye Burned into hers; but she uncomforted Shrank from his arms and only ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... horizontal beach lines which they drew along their mountainous shores at the different levels at which they stood, and in the deposits of their beds. At its highest stage Lake Bonneville, then one thousand feet deep, overflowed to the north and was a fresh-water lake. As it shrank below the outlet it became more and more salty, and the Great Salt Lake, its withered residue, is now depositing salt along its shores. In its strong brine lime carbonate is insoluble, and that brought in by streams is thrown down at once in ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... horny hands, Who swung the axe, who tilled his lands, Who shrank from nothing new, But did ...
— Abraham Lincoln. - An Horatian Ode. • Richard Henry Stoddard
... a difficult purpose. Just how difficult was that purpose Irene was now experiencing in her own person. She had now no doubt that she felt for Dave that attachment without which ceremonies are without avail, and with which ceremonies are but ceremonies. And yet she shrank from surrender. . . . And she knew that some day ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... father had confided to him that they were in great debt to the gombeen man. Paddy could help them get out. There was to be a hiring fair in Strabane. Paddy swung along the road to Strabane pretending he was a man—he was to be hired out just like one. But when he arrived at the hiring field he shrank back. All the farm hands, big and little, stood herded together in between the cattle pens. A man? A beast. One overseer for a big estate came up to dicker for the boy, and said he would give him fifteen dollars for six months' work. Paddy ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... feels as if it might go on forever. Women are not very articulate about such things, and it was probably Ormond who put their feeling into words, though she recognized at once that it was her feeling, and shrank from it as if it were something wicked, that they would be punished for; so that one day, when he said suddenly, 'Jenny, I don't feel as if I could ever die,' she scolded him for it. Poor women!" said Wanhope, musingly, "they are not always cross when they scold. It is ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... then. Everywhere was the son of the house, and things went through with a rush. Upstairs, in the darkest corner of the attic—which had been cleared of goods—sat, hand in hand on an old packing-box, a little old man and a little old woman who winced and shrank together every time the "Going, going, gone!" floated up to them from ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... for words. "But in this case you mustn't—it's awful—in this special case—" He broke off. He saw the trap he was in. He could not denounce that crook without exposing himself. And from that he still shrank. Ann's prejudice against Jimmy Crocker might have its root in a trivial and absurd grievance, but it had been growing through the years, and who could say how strong ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... wailed in anguished abandonment. To his dying vision there was indeed a future; but shapes of distrust and shadow stood upon its disconsolate borders; and, when the prospect had no horror, he still shrank ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... The girl shrank away into the heather with the silent swiftness of a hare; now that she had lost the stimulus of indignant pity she was afraid of these brutes; if the whim entered into them they would be as brutal to ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... fell ill, and was confined first to the house, and then to his bed. My mother banished me from his room on the pretext that I disturbed him. She made me now learn a sentence, which, child as I was, I shrank from saying; but she would drive me out into the street with blows, ordering me to repeat it to each passer-by, if I did not wish ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... have always been intensely interested in Balzac, who never shrank from the reality, and whose almost lurid pictures of Parisian life have often haunted me in my wanderings through the old wicked-looking streets on the other side of the river. I am only sorry that my new friends—my French family—do not live in the ...
— A Bundle of Letters • Henry James
... himself to sixteen runs, and then retired moodily to cover-point, where, in Adair's fifth over, he missed Barnes—the first occasion since the game began on which that mild batsman had attempted to score more than a single. Scared by this escape, Outwood's captain shrank back into his shell, sat on the splice like a limpet, and, offering no more chances, was not out at lunch time with a ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... lay outspread before him, calm, uninvaded by any alien being, man or animal. The great ilex trees were immobile, fixed as the eternal stars overhead. And he shrank in swift protest, almost in terror, being called on thus to face things apparently super-normal, forces unexplored and uncharted, defying reason, giving the lie to ordinary experience and ordinary belief. Reality and hallucination, jostled one another in his thought, a giant note of interrogation ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... victim of ill-faith was carried back to Fez, and set to break stones with his companions. Then the plague broke out among the Moors, and each man shrank from his sick brother, and left him to die alone. As far as he might, dom Fernando sought out the plague-stricken people and nursed them night and day, often going without his own food that they might be nourished. Perhaps ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... Arnold shrank back with a cry of horror at the sight. From waist to neck Colston's back was a mass of hideous scars and wheals, crossing each other and rising up into purple lumps, with livid blue and grey spaces between them. As he stood, there was not an inch of naturally-coloured ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... away; another moment, and all were gone save Peggy, who was now on the floor, with her arms around the little miserable creature, who still shrank close against the wall, as if her life depended ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... took courage to contemplate him, regarded me with more and more complacency. He held neither flower nor arrow as the others did, but throwing back the clusters of dark curls that overshadowed his countenance, he presented to me his hand, openly and benignly. I shrank on looking at him so near, and yet I sighed to love him. He smiled, not without an expression of pity, at perceiving my diffidence, my timidity; for I remembered how soft was the hand of Sleep, how ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... as well as I could, till she should come again. For this I waited. I could not now endure the thought of compelling the attendance of her unconscious form; of making her body, like a living cage, transport to my presence the unresisting soul. I shrank from it as a true man would shrink from kissing the lips of a sleeping woman whom he loved, not knowing that she loved him ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... the hospital was soon evident. The surgeons found with surprise that her skill and knowledge were equal to every requirement, that she shrank from no task, however fearfully repelling it might be, and they quickly began to avail themselves of her womanly deftness. To the soldiers she was a perpetual blessing. Every means which her thoughtful ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... him. At first, there had been on her side—as soon as they were alone—a feeling of stifling embarrassment. All the painful, proud sensations with which she had received the news of her father's action returned upon her; she would have liked to escape; she shrank from what once more seemed an encroachment, a situation as strange ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... one, but especially from the 'canaille,' as she termed most of the inmates of this world, was a thing which always raised the slumbering devil in Wilhelmine. She turned abruptly, confronting the tiring-woman with that fixed evil glance of hers. The smile died on the woman's lips, and she shrank back muttering. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... slipped it under his arm with a possessive air, while she made to Brady some hurried excuses in a trembling voice. For a moment still she hung back, but Adams drew her gently with him, and after the first few steps, she recovered herself and walked rapidly to the waiting carriage. Inside she shrank back immediately into a corner from which, when they had rolled off, she sent forth a nervous question. "What is it? Tell me what it is?" ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... take an early morning ride and might not be back in time for breakfast. With this bundle in hand she went out at the door, her courage all but failing at thought of the man with the horse at the threshold. She shrank from being ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... but slightly annoyed. The man was simply doing his duty, and I daresay he showed me far more courtesy than other prisoners were treated with. Yet the process of searching is unspeakably revolting, and I shrank from it instinctively; taking care, however, by my rapid gestures to render ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... overspread Mrs Henderson's features, and secondly in a curious sickly feeling of lassitude and languor which he felt stealing over himself. But, to his unspeakable surprise, no sooner did he approach Henderson than the latter shrank away from him with a cry of fear, beseeching him in a weak voice not to come near him. Gaunt, however, by no means saw matters in this light; if the atmosphere were deadly, or even deleterious, as his own increasingly unpleasant sensations ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... man shrank back in dismay from his mysterious guest: the thunder rolled again, the rude gust swept fiercely by, the dark forest rustled awfully, and the stranger's torturing feelings were evidently prolonged by ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... little into Christina's way. He meant to be kind to her, but she was dreadfully afraid of him, and, when he came to visit his daughter, shrank out of his notice as much as possible, shuddering most of all at his attempts at civilities. His son she viewed as one of the thickwitted giants meant to be food for the heroism of good knights of romance. Except that he was fairly conversant with the use of weapons, and had occasionally ridden ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... however, in proposing to her that they should buy a Castle in Spain and put them into it. The fancy pleased her, but visibly she shrank from a step which it involved, so that he was, as it were, forced to say, half jokingly, half ruefully, "I can imagine your not caring for this rubbish or what became of it, Charlotte, but what ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... his utmost power on portraying the soaring genius of Paracelsus, as he conceived it, he turned impatiently away from the husk of popular legend by which it was half obscured. He shrank from no attested fact, however damaging; but he brushed away the accretions of folklore, however picturesque. The attendant spirit who enabled Paracelsus to work his marvellous cures, and his no less renowned Sword, were for Browning contemptible futilities. Yet a different way of treating legend ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... peril who had come to seek such prize, and, as if daunted by the courage of the Volsung, the fierce flames shrank back as he advanced, leaving ever a magic circle in which he rode unscathed, while all around they roared like some hungry lion robbed of its prey. They rose wave upon wave to the very sky, but their fierce ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... the marchese's paternal corrections must have sometimes taken a more practical shape than mere verbal upbraidings; for poor Bianca shrank back, throwing up one arm, as if to shield her face, and, with a wild cry of "Alberto! come to me!" fell into the arms of that tardy lover, who at that appropriate moment had made his ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... which became a second nature to his mistress. His intervention in Scotland in 1559-1560 showed that he could strike on occasion; and his action over the execution of Mary, queen of Scots, proved that he was willing to take responsibility from which Elizabeth shrank. Generally he was in favour of more decided intervention on behalf of continental Protestants than Elizabeth would admit, but it is not always easy to ascertain the advice he gave. He has left endless memoranda lucidly setting forth the pros ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... south. Stella was out of town. He followed her. He felt that he could not meet her before strangers with self-control, or go through formalities. He wrote a brief note at the hotel asking to see her alone. Then he shrank from the thought of meeting her with detestable things to explain, and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... one. It was the arbitrary selection of a weary will. My wife died within two years of her marriage. After her death I was thrown in the way of women who attracted me, but I wavered. If I made up my mind at night, I shrank back in the morning. I thought my irresolution was mere cowardice. It was not so. It was a warning that the time had not come. I resolved at last that there was to be no change in my life, that I would resign myself to my lot, expect no affection, and do the duty blindly ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... with the Rabbi in his long vigils. It was a singular means of grace to have known two such men in the flesh, when he was still young and impressionable. A spiritual emotion possessed Carmichael. He lifted his heart to the Eternal, and prayed that if on account of any hardship he shrank from duty he might remember MacLure, and if in any intellectual strait he was tempted to palter with truth he might see the Rabbi pursuing his solitary way. The district was full of the Rabbi, who could not have gone for ever, who might appear any moment—buried in a book and proceeding ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... Xerxes said to Queen Esther, "Who is he and where is he who dares to do so?" Esther answered, "A foe, an enemy, this wicked Haman." Then Haman shrank in terror before the king and the queen, and Harbonah, one of those who waited on the king, said, "There, standing in the house of Haman, are the gallows, seventy-five feet high, which Haman built for Mordecai, who spoke a good ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... the water a little deeper, and I shrank from it at first, but I was close to the bank and had only to stretch out my hand to catch hold of a tuft of grass or sedge, and, after the shrinking sensation, it seemed pleasant to have the water higher ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... ashamed of yourself." Marian shrank from him. She was horrified by the malignant fury that sparkled in his eyes and raged in his voice. "That damned scoundrel is worthy of you and you of him. But I'll get you yet. I never was crossed in anything in my life and I'll ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... cries for TOBY, M.P., but the Hon. Member begged to be excused from making a speech on this occasion. For one reason he shrank from coming into competition in the lists of platform-speaking with his revered friend and Leader. Another thing was, he was really so overcome by the honour just done him, that he could not trust himself to speak. He would write—as soon as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... and calculated indecency of a Giulio Romano; he could not have cast aside all conventional restraints, of taste as well as of propriety, as Rubens and even Rembrandt did on occasion; but as Van Dyck, the child of Titian almost as much as he was the child of Rubens, ever shrank from doing. Still the ease and splendour of the life at Biri Grande—that pleasant abode with its fair gardens overlooking Murano, the Lagoons, and the Friulan Alps, to which Titian migrated in 1531—the Epicureanism which saturated the atmosphere, the necessity for keeping ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... they looked almost as if they kept sort of shifting about me. I tried to follow back on my footprints, but in some places snow had shaken down from the branches. And there were so many—so dreadfully many other tracks—of animals—" She put her hands over her face and shrank down ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... many other fights, Gordon had himself to lead his army. If an officer shrank back before the savage enemy, Gordon would take him gently by the arm and lead him into the thickest of the battle. He himself went unarmed, and would lead his troops onwards with the little cane he nearly always carried. Where the fire was hottest, there Gordon was always to ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... Lieutenant Paddock commanding. The desperate situation of the soldiers in the ravine was at once apparent to every officer and man in the ambush. The soldiers fought valiantly, desperately, and the Indians shrank under the terrible counter fire. A more complete trap could not be contrived, for the troops were not only outnumbered, but exposed to a galling fire from the bluffs, over the edge of which it was impossible to reach the foe, as the range of sight would, of course, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... declaring with passionate conviction that she would carry on her husband's work. He smiled a sad smile and looked into the fire. Then he murmured that he was going where Albert was—that he would not be long. He shrank into himself. His children clustered round him and did their best to comfort him, but it was useless: the Baron's heart was broken. He lingered for eighteen months, and then, with his pupil, explored the shadow and ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... rescued by a woman from ignominy and death. Some feeling of this nature probably overpowered him. As he bade her good night, his voice faltered, and he passed his hand suddenly athwart his brow. Constance, having fulfilled this sacred duty, shrank from any further intercourse, and hastened to her chamber. It was long ere she could sleep; portentous dreams then brooded over her slumbers. The terrible vision was repeated, and she awoke, but not ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... all of whom knew each other, in the dim light of Barnard's Inn Hall, and the music of their rhythm was in his voice so that I was not conscious of the satyr-like repulsiveness of his face and head so long as he was reading. When he was not reading, the repulsiveness was to me overpowering and I shrank from his very presence. Nor was the shrinking less when I talked with him the night after his lecture, at a dinner where my place was next to his. He was like a loathsome animal with his decadent face, his yellow skin, and his little bestial eyes lighting up obscenely as he told ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... years, from the time of the examination for the classical Tripos? Nothing was more improbable, he was forced to admit. And yet, the idea of life if he did not marry Mrs. Goddard was dismal beyond all expression; he would probably not survive it. He did not know what he should do. He shrank from the thought of declaring his love to her at once. He remembered with pain that she had a terrible way of laughing at him when he grew confidential or too complimentary, and he dreaded lest at the supreme moment of his life he should appear ridiculous in her eyes—he, a mere undergraduate. ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... share his religion with others. The time was ripe. The moral state of Franke's school was low; the boys were given to vicious habits, and tried to corrupt his soul; and the Count, who was a healthy minded boy, and shrank with disgust from fleshly sins, retorted by forming a number of religious clubs for mutual encouragement and help. "I established little societies," he says, "in which we spoke of the grace of Christ, and encouraged each other in diligence and good works." ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... She shrank back with a startled exclamation, and turned to Copplestone. His face was convulsed with fury, his eyes ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... go forwards, but he was ashamed to seem churlish to so hospitable a man; and he was curious to see that wondrous bed; and, besides, he was hungry and weary; yet he shrank from the man, he knew not why; for though his voice was gentle and fawning, it was dry and husky like a toad's; and though his eyes were gentle, they were dull and cold like stones. But he consented, and went with the man up a glen which led from the road toward the peaks of Parnes, under ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... finished," said Horace. The truth was that he was perfectly aware that the other would not be in sympathy with his ideas; and Horace, who had just been suffering from a cold fit of depression about his work, rather shrank from any ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... hand, and shrank from him with a movement, slight as it was, so tragically eloquent, that fear for the first time caught ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins |
