"Shrinking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... round from behind the house, walking rapidly. Since dinner he had been off somewhere, alone, having it out with himself, perhaps shrinking, most of all, from this first exposure to his parents. Such an ordeal is it for us to reveal what we really are to those who have known us longest ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... place to another in shrinking fear of detection. In each one my experience was repeated until I believe I began to wear the air of ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... been in uttering them. But she had not figured on herself as an instrument in furthering the hope to the point of actual realisation. What could be more incongruous, more theatric,—yes, more bizarre, than her attitude at this moment? It seemed impossible that this shrinking, inert heap at her side was a living thing; a woman who had slain a fellow creature, and that creature the man who had been her husband for six years. It seemed utterly beyond sense or reason that she should be helping this murderess to escape, that she should be showing ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... air appeared to me to have grown ten times more sultry than it was an hour before. The pavement seemed literally to burn under my feet: and the sky had that heavy leaden look, 'dark as if the day of doom hung o'er Nature's shrinking head;' which produces a feeling of intolerable oppression. When I reached my lodgings it was beginning to rain. I threw open the window of my room, and then flung myself on my bed in a state which baffles ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... we are thinking our fathers would think; From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink; To the life we are clinging our fathers would cling; But it speeds for us all, like a bird ...
— The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address • Abraham Lincoln
... of consulting her mother. But she knew Mme. Favoral's shrinking timidity, and that she was as incapable of giving any advice as to make her will prevail. She would be frightened; she would approve all; and, at the first alarm, ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... days his strength had been magnificent, and even lions and tigers quailed before him. But old age was creeping on, which the other buffaloes realized only too quickly. His massive shoulders and sturdy limbs were shrinking a little, while his tough, thick skin was now almost hairless, except for his mane and a thin fringe on his ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... and turned pale—but it was only for a moment. The high spirit that was in her rose brightly in her eyes, and faced him without shrinking. ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... I—I thought, after all, I'd go to the dance," she said, in rather a timid voice, shrinking ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... summer Wally came back on leave: a changed Wally, with grim lines where there had once been only merry ones in his lean, brown face. He did not want to come to Homewood; only when begged to come did he master the pitiful shrinking he felt from ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... lightning that purifies the dense atmosphere, and, glancing for an instant, reveals the keenest light known to men. So the old year sings to me as it goes crowned with crystals and snow-drops to its end. Without shrinking, without sorrow, it folds its white garment around unwithered limbs, and submits gracefully to the past. Nature regards it with that calm face whereon no emotions are written, but a wise serenity forever sits. This year, too, is to many lonely hearts a redeemer; and no heavens will be darkly ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... brooch which had been the gift of the bridegroom, diamond earrings and necklace, and the collar and insignia of the Garter. She looked well in her natural agitation, for, indeed, she was a true woman at such a moment. She was shy and a little shrinking as became a bride, and her eyes were swollen with recent tears—an illustration of the wise old Scotch proverb, "A greetin' (weeping) bride's a happy bride." Here were no haughty indifference, no bold assurance, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... declare to us, if we will but listen to them; but that our present position is not that for which God designed us, and that to rest satisfied with it is not a yielding to an unavoidable necessity, but the indolently or madly shrinking from the effort which would ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... person of a very different order. She was a girl apparently between fifteen and sixteen, her figure as yet undeveloped, her dresses a little too short. Her face was small and white, her mouth had a most pathetic droop, and in her eyes—wonderful, deep blue eyes—there was a curious look of shrinking fear, beneath which flashed every now and then a gleam of positive terror. Her dark hair was arranged in a thick straight fringe upon her forehead, and in a long plait behind, after the schoolgirl fashion. Notwithstanding ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rush of confused emotion. A love for her aunt, desire to help her, and at the same time shrinking as though she saw the whole house which had been, from the first, unhappy to her was now diseased and evil and rotten. The hot life in her body told her against her moral will that she must escape, and her soul, moving in her and speaking to ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... constructed of good material. If not, however, in a few days you may be disappointed to find that it is becoming leaky. Then the best remedy is to cover the whole boat with unbleached muslin, sewed at the ends and tacked along the gunwales. Then tighten it by shrinking and finally give it at least three coats of a mixture of varnish and paint. This will doubtless stop the leaking entirely and will add but little to ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... words were out of her mouth, she saw that she had made a terrible mistake. Mrs. Gurley's face, which had been smiling, froze to stone. She looked at her arm as though the hand had bitten her, and Laura's sudden shrinking did not move her, to whom seldom ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... was a little boy, he lived in the odour of spices, which were kept upon his father's shop-shelves. He was a highly-spiced little boy and man, although the most timid and shrinking. His ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... and omissions of trivial ceremonies, with which he had been received. He had been friendly, though the Cranford ladies had been cool; he had answered small sarcastic compliments in good faith; and with his manly frankness had overpowered all the shrinking which met him as a man who was not ashamed to be poor. And, at last, his excellent masculine common sense, and his facility in devising expedients to overcome domestic dilemmas, had gained him an extraordinary place as authority among the Cranford ladies. He himself ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... pillow and the bed, slightly pressing down the latter with her other hand. For an instant she fancied that the sleeper's breathing stopped, and her heart gave a great bound. But the breathing went on the next instant—if it had stopped—and dreading the return of the lightning, shrinking from being revealed so near him, and in that act—for which the darkness seemed more fitting—she groped farther, and touched something. Then, as her fingers closed upon it and grasped it, and his breath rose hot to her burning cheek, she knew that the ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... Sheemah, left alone within the lodge, Waited and waited, with a shrinking heart, Thinking each rustle was his sister's step, Till hope grew less and less, and then went out, And every sound was changed from hope to fear. Few sounds there were:—the dropping of a nut, The squirrel's chirrup, and the jay's harsh scream, Autumn's sad remnants of blithe Summer's cheer, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... burthens laid on them by the Spaniards. They came to them naked, their Privities only vail'd, their Shoulders loaden with food; only covered with a Net, they laid themselves quietly on the ground, and shrinking in their Bodies like poor Wretches, exposed themselves to their Swords: Thus being all gathered together in ther Yards, some of the Spaniards Armed held the doors to drive them away if attempting to approach, and others with Lances and Swords Butcher these Innocents ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... "Oh, yes!" I answered, shrinking back into my corner-seat. He remained upon the step, with his arm over the window-frame, while the train moved on at a slackened pace for a few minutes, and then pulled up, but at no station. Before me lay a dim, dark, indistinct scene, with little specks of light twinkling here and there ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... last time, I thought, my fingers erred over its familiar chords. A thrill of horrid exultation possessed me, such as the fell Tiberius may have experienced when he bade his men hurl the shrinking form of a soft-limbed ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... originally in his business still appears on his inventory as representing the net surplus of his assets over his liabilities. If a currency were undergoing rapid inflation, a fixed amount of invested money would represent a shrinking stock of capital goods. This stock would last always, but would grow smaller by a true standard of measurement. All that we are at present interested in knowing is that practical usage treats capital as a permanent fund of productive ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... between grimly clinching teeth, yet that baffled effort, almost superb, to rise and battle still—a form magnificent in its proportions, yet helpless through wounds and weakness. Not the form Blake thought to see, of shrinking, delicate, dainty woman, but that of the furious warrior who thrice had dared him on the open field—the red brave well known to him by sight and deed within the moon now waning, but, only within the day gone by, revealed ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... shrinking creature, having a face walled with wrinkles, and wearing a short blue petticoat, showing heavy dull boots like a ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... the bank upon which we were, a volley burst upon them before which they wavered and swerved backward a few paces, as here and there a man reeled and staggered or sank to the earth. There was no panic—not a back turned—only that instinctive shrinking which Life sometimes feels when Death unexpectedly thrusts out his ghastly face through the smoke of battle. A color-bearer sprang forward with the battle-flag. He halted beside me and rested the end ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... desert with dunes; broad, flat intensely irrigated river valleys along course of Amu Darya, Syr Darya (Sirdaryo), and Zarafshon; Fergana Valley in east surrounded by mountainous Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan; shrinking Aral Sea in west ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... similarity to the symptoms of the Indian or Russian cholera has existed: the collapse—the deadly coldness with a clammy skin—the irritability of the stomach, and prodigious discharge from the bowels of an opaque serous fluid (untinged with bile in the slightest degree)—with a corresponding shrinking of flesh and integuments—the pulseless and livid extremities—the ghastly aspect of countenance and sinking of the eyes—the restlessness so great, that the patient has not been able to remain for a moment in any one position—yet, with all this, nobody ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... having fastened my own animal to the nearest tree, first picked up his hat, intending to clap it on his head; but either he considered his head unfit for a hat, or the hat, in its present condition, unfit for his head; for shrinking away the one, he took the other from my hand, and ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... complain that, in America, Science is preceding Art; that is inevitable. As yet there is a shrinking even from pure science,—that is, from all science which is not directly marketable; and while this is so, art must be still further postponed. We have hitherto valued science for its applications, natural history as a branch of agriculture, mathematics for the sake of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... special etiquette of the military class, and he was early made to know that the little sword in his girdle was neither an ornament nor a plaything. He was shown how to use it, how to take his own life at a moment's notice, without shrinking, whenever the code of his class might ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... slaughter and offer sacrifice (1Samuel xiv. 34 seq.); and, even in cases where priests are present, there is not a single trace of a systematic setting apart of what is holy, or of shrinking from touching it. When David "entered into the house of God and did eat the shew-bread, which it is not lawful to eat save for the priests, and gave also to them that were with him" (Mark ii. 26), this is not represented in 1Sam. xxi. as illegitimate when those who eat are sanctified, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... sensible man of nearer sixty than fifty years, sat in the cottage, hearing all that his parishioners could tell him and using his eyes. He saw the centre-piece of all surmise, a shrinking, pale slip of a girl, by the look of her not more than fifteen or sixteen years old. She was not emaciated by any means, seemed to be well nourished, and was quite as vigorous as any child of that age who could have been pitted against her. Her surroundings cowed her, he judged. To Dryhope she ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... huge water-fowl rising from the sea. Her course was westward and upward, like the eagle with his face turned toward the palace of the sun. At first the lights in the city of Baltimore became more numerous and distinct, as intervening objects were surmounted and overlooked. Next they began to fade, shrinking down into twinkling points like fireflies, until they disappeared. Forests, hills, and mountains followed after, as our altitude was increased, blending together like a hazy landscape, until, on passing above ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... post by the window. Her mind was bruised between two conflicting feelings—a dumb longing for someone to caress and comfort her, someone who would meet her pain with a bearing less hard and wooden than Bridget's—and at the same time, a passionate shrinking from the bare idea of comfort and sympathy, as something not to be endured. She had had a kind letter from Sir William Farrell that morning. He had spoken of being soon in London. But she did not know that she could bear to see him—unless he ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... employment, and who set up in needless shops as a method of eking out the savings upon which they count. They contrive to make sixty or seventy per cent, of their expenditure, the rest is drawn from the shrinking capital. Essentially their lives are failures, not the sharp and tragic failure of the labourer who gets out of work and starves, but a slow, chronic process of consecutive small losses which may end if the individual is exceptionally fortunate in an impoverished ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... you could rely upon lovers for retirement. But nowadays their role seems to be a bold ostentation of their condition. They rely upon other people to do the timid, shrinking part. Society, in America, is arranged principally for their convenience; and whatever portion of the landscape strikes their fancy, they preempt and occupy. All this goes upon the presumption that romantic love is really the only important interest ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... where we stood we could see their faces plainly as they turned and looked at each other with the moonbeams pouring over them. Was it fancy that made her look like a wraith, and he like some handsome demon given to haunting churchyards? Or was it only the sternness of his air, and the shrinking timidity of hers, which made him look so dark and ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... tutor—his silence, his melancholy, his personal beauty—which no one else, with perhaps one or two exceptions among the older men, cared to take into account; or touched perhaps by some note in him, surprised in passing, of weariness or shrinking, as compared with the contemptuous tone of the College towards him. He showed his liking impetuously, boyishly, as his way was, and thenceforward during his University career Langham became his slave. He had no ambition for himself; his motto might have been that dismal ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his parents, that young bride, and you, Bearer of much bereavement, woman true, And patriotic QUEEN! We hear the courage striking through the pain, As always in your long, illustrious reign, Which shrinking ne'er ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... climbed the crest of the hill, sat down, laid his hat on the grass, and slipped his long sensitive fingers backward over his shining hair. Neither man spoke at first; their friendship put them at ease. Nor did the one notice the shrinking and dread which ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... she said softly. 'It must be terrible to be feared—to meet always with doubt and shrinking where you look for confidence ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... belongings, for she was a woman of sentiment, and she felt the child should not be parted from this gift of his dying mother. But at length, when a knowledge of writing made it possible for him to read the letters, he was possessed with a feeling of shrinking from doing so, as one might shrink from opening a message from ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... Conelets large, subterminal, or on young trees often pseudolateral. Cones indehiscent, from 9 to 14 cm. long, short-pedunculate, ovoid-conical or subcylindrical; apophyses dull pale nut-brown, rugose, shrinking much in drying and exposing the seeds, prolonged and tapering to a more or less reflexed tip, the umbo inconspicuous; seeds large, wingless, the ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... in forty years of carnage the fighting propensities had glutted themselves. A reaction followed, and in the early years of Henry VIII. the statutes were growing obsolete, and the "unlawful games" rising again into favour. The younger nobles, or some among them, were shrinking from the tilt-yard, and were backward on occasions even when required for war. Lord Surrey, when waiting on the Border, expecting the Duke of Albany to invade the northern counties, in 1523, complained of the growing "slowness" of the young lords "to be at such journeys,"[67] ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... still and saws wood," said Lincoln "He don't talk a great deal, but he fights. I can't help feeling hopeful to-night, for it seems to me we have the enemy in a fix. You've heard me talk of the shrinking quadrilateral, which is the rebel States, as I see ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... Boston, where the governor John Indicot, and the deputy governor Richard Billingham, being both present, it was told him, 'Unless you will renounce your religion, you shall surely die.' But instead of shrinking, he said with an undaunted courage, 'Nay, I shall not change my religion, nor seek to save my life; neither do I intend to deny my Master; but if I lose my life for Christ's sake, and the preaching of ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... striking resemblance to something that certainly did not seem like a rock, but which, after some deliberation, he found to look very much like a shrinking Southern negro, forced into the ranks to supply the place of a citizen of Massachusetts. Everybody might not be able to see this, but Mr. P. thought he perceived ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... able to take the situation lightly then—this curious situation of the "freed" American wife, with or without children, drifting through Europe, aimless, and generally better off when friendless. But she began to be sorry for the type. Instead of shrinking from Gertie in the presence of the discerning compatriots, as she was at first inclined to do, she made it a point to be seen with her, championing the sisterhood of loneliness. There were moments when this association might not have ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... Tongue's breast and her long lashes still wet with tears. The baker, his face crimson with heat and streaked with rivulets of perspiration, looked up at us grimly through a sort of mist. I waited for him to spring to his feet and throw himself like a lion on my shrinking form; but, instead of doing so, he pressed his arms closer round Rosalie and smiled—yes, by Jove, smiled—and, if you'll take the word of a retired master mariner, winked, with a peculiar, tender and calfish expression that in anybody else ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... story—his shrinking from the message given him. We know not why; but perhaps from faint-hearted fear, or from a sense of his unworthiness and unfitness for the task. His own words about God as long-suffering seem to suggest another reason, that he feared to go with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... more out of him. Evidently he referred, however, to a condition of shrinking in the population, a circumstance which he did ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... the waitresses brought in fish and wine, and Jiurozayemon pressed Chobei to feast with him; and thinking to annoy Chobei, offered him a large wine-cup,[23] which, however, he drank without shrinking, and then returned to his entertainer, who was by no means so well able to bear the fumes of the wine. Then Jiurozayemon hit upon another device for annoying Chobei, and, hoping ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... Stephen Smith on his left. The white daylight on his right side gleamed faintly in, and was toned to a blueness by contrast with the yellow rays from the candle against the wall. Elfride, timidly shrinking back, and nearest the entrance, received most of the light therefrom, whilst Stephen was entirely in candlelight, and to him the spot of outer sky visible above the steps was as a steely blue patch, ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... cooler times of the year. But for under wear, in the hotter seasons and climates, wool has certain disadvantages. It is likely to be rough and tickling to most skins, which makes it uncomfortable, especially in warm weather. It is also difficult and troublesome to wash woolens without shrinking them; and, as soon as they do shrink, not only do they become uncomfortably tight, but the natural pores in them which make them so valuable close up, and they become almost air-tight. Finally, when loaded with perspiration, woolens easily become offensive, ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... O Company Of darkened Russia, watching long in vain, Now shall you see the cloud of Russia's pain Go shrinking ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... wandered out in her habit down the slope to the moat, crossed the bridge, glancing at the thin ice and the sedge that pierced it, and came up into the private garden. She knew she could hear the sounds of wheels from there, and had an instinctive shrinking from being at the ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... but output declined by an average of 4%-5% annually during 1989-95 because of systemic problems and disruptions in socialist-style economic relations and technological links with the former USSR and China. The leadership has insisted on maintaining its high level of military outlays from a shrinking economic pie. Moreover, a serious drawdown in inventories and critical shortages in the energy sector have led to increasing interruptions in industrial production. Abundant mineral resources and hydropower have formed the basis of industrial development since ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... at once a powerful impression on the people at large, when breaking through all the established rules of caste, he assumed the privileges of a Brahman, and throwing away the splendour of his royal position, travelled about as a beggar, not shrinking from the defiling contact of sinners and publicans. Though when we now speak of Buddhism, we think chiefly of its doctrines, the reform of Buddha had originally much more of a social than of a religious character. Buddha swept away the web with ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... maintaining that crimes of the imagination may be punished with death;[4]—The detector of Vulgar Errors, and the most humane of physicians,[5] giving the casting weight to the vacillating bigotry of Sir Matthew Hale;[6]—Hobbes, ever sceptical, penetrating and sagacious, yet here paralyzed, and shrinking from the subject as if afraid to touch it;[7]—The adventurous explorer, who sounded the depths and channels of the "Intellectual System" along all the "wide watered" shores of antiquity, running after witches ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... effect produced therefore was that of a broadcloth sleeve, carefully brought around two slender shoulders, and a handsome manly countenance leaning a little towards a blushing maiden's face. Worse than all, he too happened to look into the glass at the same moment, and our eyes in shrinking from one another's glance met under an awkward circumstance. He looked steadily at Amey Hampden in mirrorland, and then said in a very conventional tone, turning his ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... looked thoughtful; the old lawyer was grave and listened silently. Patsy, her arms still around the shrinking form of the child, looked pleadingly at her uncle. Beth's eyes were moist and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... in this as in other fields of activity. The task is a great one and underlies the task of dealing with the whole industrial problem. But the fact that it is a great problem does not warrant us in shrinking from the attempt to solve it. At present we face such utter lack of supervision, such freedom from the restraints of law, that excellent men have often been literally forced into doing what they deplored because otherwise they were left at the mercy of unscrupulous ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... G served as subject, that the illusion was emphatically stronger when the open and filled spaces were presented simultaneously and adjacent. In this instance, the illusion was doubtless a combination of two illusions—a shrinking of the open space, on the one hand, and a lengthening of the filled space on the other hand. Binet says, in his studies on the well-known Mueller-Lyer illusion, that he believes the illusion, in its highest effects at any rate, to be due ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... My mind went to Venza, back there on the asteroid. The wandering little world was already shrinking to a convex surface beneath us. Venza, with her last unknown play, gone to failure. Had I missed my cue? Whatever my part, it seemed now that I must have horribly ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... little cow of most placid disposition. Nothing disturbs her placidity, incites her to hurry, or bewilders her. Cure the dove of its timidity and shrinking and you will have a good prototype of Parilla, who, taking life easily and affably, is fat and amiable. When she brought home her firstborn, mooing plaintively, he, big and fat for his age, walked into the byre as a matter of course. Here was the first evidence ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... she had gone too far to recede, though she would willingly have delayed, in enjoyment of the present homage and shrinking from the future plunge away from all her protectors. Though the strong, manly will overpowered hers, and made her submit to the necessities of the case and fix a day early in July, she clung the more closely to her sisters, ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... perceptible; the intervals of rest long and frequent. An untimely slide as the chance gaze of the observer is directed to the spot, betrays that here is the centre of independent life and motive. The dwarf, unkempt weeds cloak a meek, weak, shrinking crab, whose frail claws and tufted legs are breeched with muddy moss, and whose oddly-shaped body is obscured by parasitic vegetation and realistic counterfeits thereof. Inspection, however critical, makes no satisfactory definition between the real and the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... their dollar affairs. I longed to mount a chair and tell them how they had been duped, but my role called for different lines. It was my part to feign satisfaction and my duty to keep every cent invested in our enterprise from shrinking a mill. I pumped as much enthusiasm into my speech ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... as one of the greatest applications of Christian principle, that one finds it difficult or impossible to forgive. The zeal of some of the modern clergy is open to a certain not unnatural suspicion: in view of their shrinking authority and the growing indifference of the world to dogma and ritual, they have been forced to take up these new and ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... if it took an hour to give Jennie a tattered apron. With some disappointment he noticed that except at rare intervals, and only when Tom was at home, he was no longer invited to the house. He had always been a timid, shrinking fellow where a woman was concerned, having followed the sea and lived among men since he was sixteen years old. During these earlier years he had made two voyages in the Pacific, and another to the whaling-ground in the Arctic seas. ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... fright lest he should guess right too soon; shrinking away, as she held the basket toward him; curling up her pretty shoulders; stopping her ear with her hand, as if by so doing she could keep the right word out of Toby's lips; and laughing softly the ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... brand-new incarnation of Louis Neville? The delightful indifference, fascinating absent-mindedness and personal neglect of the other phase? Would he be god enough to be less to her, now? Man enough to be more than other men? For a moment she had a little shrinking, a miniature panic lest this man turn too much like other men. But she let her eyes rest on him, and knew he would not. Whatever Protean changes might yet be reserved for her to witness, she came to the conclusion that this man was a man apart, different, and would not ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... People, most intolerant in religion, believing intensely in royal prerogative, thoroughly convinced of his regal as well as his personal infallibility, loathing that inductive method of thought which was already leading the English nation so proudly on the road of intellectual advancement, shrinking from the love of free inquiry, of free action, of daring adventure, which was to be the real informing spirit of the great British nation; abhorring the Puritans—that is to say, one-third of his subjects—in whose harsh, but lofty nature he felt instinctively that popular freedom was enfolded—even ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... above all, to the Saviour's final malediction, as the Judge of mankind. It is the design of Christ to establish an interest in the world; and this is to be maintained, not by fear, but by firmness: not by temporal compliances, but by holy resistance; not by sloth, inactivity, and shrinking into a corner, but by "putting on the whole armour of God." Not to be for Christ is to be against him—neutrality is enmity—a refusal to enlist under his banners is disloyalty, rebellion, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... cows does not produce as much butter as a Devonshire dairy of fifty. Some "necessary" cruelty is involved in the stockman's business, however humane he may be. The system is one of terrorism, and from the time that the calf is bullied into the branding pen, and the hot iron burns into his shrinking flesh, to the day when the fatted ox is driven down from his boundless pastures to be slaughtered in Chicago, "the fear and dread ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand, Far, far away, thy children leave the land. Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... is it that in his quality of Sage Emerson always haunted the perilous altitudes of Transcendentalism, 'seeing nothing under him but the everlasting snows of Himalaya, the Earth shrinking to a Planet, and the indigo Firmament sowing itself with daylight stars.' He never thinks it beneath his dignity to touch a point of minor morals, or to say a good word for what he somewhere calls subterranean prudence. Emerson values mundane circumspection as ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... the wherewithal for his pleasures at the gaming table, shaded his eyes from the burning sky, and calculated the gains of the past week. He was one of the many who found it easy to enrich themselves at the expense of his companion. The Greek, leaning upon his hand, and shrinking not from that sun, his nation's tutelary deity, with whose fluent light of poesy and joy and love his own veins were filled, gazed upon the broad expanse, and envied, perhaps, every wind that bent its pinions toward the shores ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... frame to horseback; and prone to imitate the somewhat recluse habits which German rulers introduced within the court: he was disposed to candle-light pleasures and cockney diversions; to Marybone and the Mall, and shrinking from the athletic and social recreations which, like so much that was manly and English, were confined almost to the English squire pur et simple after the Hanoverian accession; when so much degeneracy for a while obscured the English character, debased its tone, enervated its best ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... not a flower adorned the windows. Over the door, by way of sole adornment, the Mormon Eye was rudely sculptured; I had been brought up to view that emblem from my childhood; but since the night of our escape, it had acquired a new significance, and set me shrinking. The smoke rolled voluminously from the chimney-top, its edges ruddy with the fire; and from the far corner of the building, near the ground, angry puffs of steam shone snow-white in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... behind him. As he stood upon the threshold, his heart gave a sudden leap. Mr. Weatherley was sitting in his accustomed chair, but his attitude and expression were alike unusual. He was like a man shrinking under the whip. And Fenella—he was quick enough to catch the look in her face, the curl of her lips, the almost wicked flash of her eyes. Yet in a moment ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... There is no property of any species, even the properties that constitute the specific definition, that is not a matter of more or less. If, for example, a species be distinguished by a single large red spot on the back, you will find if you go over a great number of specimens that red spot shrinking here to nothing, expanding there to a more general redness, weakening to pink, deepening to russet and brown, shading into crimson, and so on, and so on. And this is true not only of biological species. It is true of the mineral ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... lovely whiteness of his changed weed, The Prince perceived well, and long admired; Toward the forest marched he on with speed, Resolved, as such adventures great required; Thither he came whence shrinking back for dread Of that strange desert's sight the first retired, But not to him fearful or loathsome made That forest was, but ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... outside the door, upon the veranda, shrinking from the raw winter wind. Relievedly she noticed Dan's tall form, when he swung ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... on Broadway, one will frequently see, in some shabbily dressed individual, who, with his hat drawn down close over his eyes, is evidently shrinking from the possibility of being recognized, the man who but a few weeks ago was one of the wealthiest in the city. Then he was surrounded with splendor. Now he hardly knows where to get bread for his ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... by the shoulders and stared into his face with an intentness that made the young fellow fancy that the fierce, black orbs confronting him were burning holes in his brain. For two minutes, that seemed two full hours, the gaze was concentrated upon him. Windybank felt his body shrinking into a smaller compass under the fascination. His breath came thickly, his knees trembled, and his heart laboured in ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... the pure and the defiled, were there. A poor washerwoman who in a moment of weakness has pawned the garments entrusted to her care, that she might venture upon a "row" of which she had dreamed, comes shrinking down with a pale, frightened face, and the bitterness of despair in her heart. She has lost. What then? She has no friend from whom she can borrow enough money to redeem the clothing, and if it is not taken home she may be arrested as a thief and sent to prison. She goes away, and ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... Autumn fills thy lap with leaves, Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air, Affrights thy shrinking train, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... Cleansing Water at his hand, Which must assoil the soul within From every stain of Adam's sin. The Infant eyes the mystic scenes, Nor knows what all this wonder means; And now he smiles, as if to say "I am a Christian made this day;" Now frighted clings to Nurse's hold, Shrinking from the water cold, Whose virtues, rightly understood, Are, as Bethesda's waters, good. Strange words—The World, The Flesh, The Devil— Poor Babe, what can it know of evil? But we must silently adore Mysterious truths, and not explore. Enough for him, in after-times, When he shall read ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... within the stanchions of the doorway to protect James I. of Scotland, till his murderers shattered the frail barrier; and that sublimest narrative of woman's devotion, Gertrude Van der Wart at her husband's execution. It is possible that all these women may have been timid and shrinking, before the hour of trial; and every emergency, in peace or war, brings out some such instances. At the close of the troubles of 1856, in Kansas, a traveller chanced to be visiting a lady in Lawrence, who, in opening ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... and the skiff, which had long since been swamped, dashed itself to pieces against the stern. Then the Reindeer towered above them on a mountain of water. Joe caught himself half shrinking back, for it seemed she would fall down squarely on top of them; but the next instant she dropped into the gaping trough, and they were looking down upon her far below. It was a striking picture—one Joe was destined never ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... out, leaving a heavy deposit of the material which forms the duplicate record. Numerous ingenious inventions have been made by Edison providing for a variety of rapid and economical methods of duplication, including methods of shrinking a newly made copy to facilitate its quick removal from the mold; methods of reaming, of forming ribs on the interior, and for many other important and essential details, which limits of space will not permit of elaboration. Those mentioned above are ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... occupied that the door opened softly, without any preliminary knock, and the wife stepped noiselessly into the room. The anxiety that beset her was painfully apparent in her bearing and in the expression of her face. Her form seemed drooping, as if under shrinking apprehension of some blow about to fall. The eyes of amber, usually so deep and radiant, were dulled now, as if by many tears; the rich scarlet of the lips' curves was bent downward mournfully. She stood just within the doorway for a brief space, watching intently the man who was so busy over ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... sometimes they were dry, and there were anxious hours when we were not sure of water for ourselves, still less for the horses. One well near a salt lake was rather brackish. This lake is a landmark in the entire region round; it seems to be slowly shrinking, and many caravans camp here to collect the salt, which is taken south. The weather, too, had changed; the days were hotter and dryer, but the nights were ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... last vigor to the deep, dark cells Of the dim wood. The keen, two-bladed Moon Of Falling Leaves roll'd up on crested mists And where the lush, rank boughs had foiled the sun In his red prime, her pale, sharp fingers crept After the wind and felt about the moss, And seem'd to pluck from shrinking twig and stem The burning leaves—while groan'd the shudd'ring wood. Who journey'd where the prairies made a pause, Saw burnish'd ramparts flaming in the sun, With beacon fires, tall on their rustling walls. And when the vast, horn'd ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... library, as if her chief anxiety was that the attention of its occupants should not be excited. Mr. Fox was delighted, though the angry flush was a little puzzling. But if Edith permitted that she would permit more, and if her only shrinking was lest others should see and know at present, that could soon be overcome. These thoughts passed through his mind while the incensed girl hastily obtained what she wished. But she, feeling that her cheeks were too hot to return immediately to ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... timid child, shrinking from everything like reproof or punishment, stood aghast at the mischief ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... composers in the public prints; the enthusiastic adulation of society and the great world not unnaturally followed the brilliant, joyous, sparkling, witty Italian, who was a far better subject for London lionizing than his sickly, sensitive, shrinking, and rather soured German competitor for ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... echo of her heart, Pure as the mountain-snows: Celestial transports round her play, And softly, sweetly die away. She smiles! and where is now the cloud That blacken'd o'er thy baleful reign? Grim darkness furls his leaden shroud, Shrinking from her glance in vain. Her touch unlocks the day-spring from above, And lo! it visits man with beams ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... much as having one's peace upset. How foolish to be so agitated and talk of having been robbed of everything. Fritzing's mind, she feared, that large, enlightened mind on whose breadth and serenity she had gazed admiringly ever since she could remember gazing at all, was shrinking to dimensions that would presently exactly match the dimensions of Creeper Cottage. She went upstairs disheartened and tired, and dropping down full length on her sofa desired Annalise to ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... sensation his charge was making, would put no check upon him; but the more shrinking Douglas was not so well pleased. Still, seeing that no offence was given, but rather the contrary, he possessed his soul in patience, devoutly wishing, however, that it was time for the close of the performance, which, under these circumstances, afforded him no ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... into a bustling life of cheerful rashness and great expectations. In 1864 a few tents were pitched on the place; in 1865 one of the largest towns in New Zealand was to be seen. Wood and canvas were the building materials—the wood unseasoned pine, smelling fresh and resinous at first, anon shrinking, warping, and entailing cracked walls, creaking doors, and rattling window-sashes. Every second building was a grog-shanty, where liquor, more or less fiery, was retailed at a shilling a glass, and the traveller might hire ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... sounded like a sigh, burst from Lucy's breast as she closed this letter. She had, with humility and shrinking, yet with a certain resolution, disclosed to her husband that when the occasion occurred she must do her duty according to her father's will, whether it pleased him or not. She had steeled herself ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... intent on the caldron. All along that disk the light was already broken, here and there flickering up, here and there dying down; the six lamps in that half of the circle still twinkled, but faintly, as stars shrinking fast from the dawn of day. But it was not the fading shine in that half of the magical ring which daunted my eye and quickened with terror the pulse of my heart; the Bush-land beyond was on fire. From the background of the forest ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... our rifles. They laughed derisively, as much as to say, "Oh, they will do us no harm, we know that." Never were they more mistaken in their lives, and it was the last mistake they ever made. We let them come on without shrinking. ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... hot-headed, red-legged, short-kilted, stirring, a bit of a bully, a loud talker, a dour lad with his head and his fists. This boy beside him made him think of neither man nor boy, but of his sister Jennet, who died in the plague year, a wide-eyed, shrinking, clever girl, with a nerve that a harsh word ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... their heads. This seen, Apollo, from his Actian height, Pours down his arrows; at whose winged flight The trembling Indians and Egyptians yield, And soft Sabaeans quit the wat'ry field. The fatal mistress hoists her silken sails, And, shrinking from the fight, invokes the gales. Aghast she looks, and heaves her breast for breath, Panting, and pale with fear of future death. The god had figur'd her as driv'n along By winds and waves, and scudding thro' the throng. Just opposite, sad Nilus opens wide ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... love of Heaven, have done!" cried Yellow Brian, shrinking before her, and yet with anger in his face. "Are you crazed, woman? Drogheda has fallen; O'Neill must join with the royalists, and never shall I ride into the west. Be off, for I ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... with him, and what might not come of it! Seeing that she had kept silent so long, however, it seemed to him more than probable that she had lost all care about him, and if let alone would say nothing. Thus he reasoned, lost in his selfishness, and shrinking from the thought of looking the disreputable creature in the eyes. Yet the awful consciousness haunted him that, if she had fallen into drunken habits and possibly worse, it was his fault, and the ruin of the once lovely creature lay at ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... dominions, electorates, and principalities in Germany, were secured by the constitutions of the empire, as well as by fair and equal alliances with their co-estates; whereas Hanover stood solitary, like a hunted deer avoided by the herd, and had no other shelter but that of shrinking under the extended shield of Great Britain: that the reluctance expressed by the German princes to undertake the defence of these dominions, flowed from a firm persuasion, founded on experience, that England would ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... action, felt intuitively the meaning of it, and in Bosomer's sudden change of front. The outlaw was keen, and he had expected a shrinking, or at least a frightened antagonist. Duane knew he was neither. He felt like iron, and yet thrill after thrill ran through him. It was almost as if this situation had been one long familiar to ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... face; coarse originally, and, in addition to the faults of nature, it now bore the plainest traces of hard living. As soon as he perceived Waymark and his companion, he fixed them with his eyes, and scarcely looked away as long as they remained in the room. The girl seemed shrinking under this gaze, though she sat almost with her back to him. She ceased talking, and, as soon as she saw that Waymark had finished, made a sign to him to pay quickly (with a sovereign she pushed across the table) and let them be gone. They rose, accordingly, and left. The man watched ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore, And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain, — Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face The vast sweet visage of space. To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... fortresses with cannon stolen from national arsenals. They sent out secret agents to Europe, they had their secret allies in the Free States, their conventions transacted all important business in secret session;—there was but one exception to the shrinking delicacy becoming a maiden government, and that was the openness of the stealing. We had always thought a high sense of personal honor an essential element of chivalry; but among the Romanic races, by which, as the wonderful ethnologist of "De ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... The nation has been unable to achieve any substantial improvement in export earnings because of falling prices for many of its major commodity exports. For rice, traditionally the most important export, the drop in world prices has been accompanied by shrinking markets and a smaller volume of sales. In 1985 teak replaced rice as the largest export and continues to hold this position. The economy is heavily dependent on the agricultural sector, which generates ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... trained to the minute, May well be around when the trouble begins, But you seldom will find he is in it; For they let him alone when they know he is there For any set part in the ramble, To pick out the one who is shrinking and soft And not quite attuned to ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... country of four hundred thousand inhabitants was to be swept clean and left naked and profitless to the invader. Under Hermione's window, as she gazed up and down the street, jostled the army of fugitives, women old and young, shrinking from the bustle and uproar, grandsires on their staves, boys driving the bleating goats or the patient donkeys piled high with pots and panniers, little girls tearfully hugging a pet puppy or hen. But few strong men were seen, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... in his easy-chair, watching with a breaking heart that shrinking of the features that comes with death; Pons looked so worn out with the day's exertions, that ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... — had we not better wait until next week, Josiah?" questioned Mrs. Stanhope timidly. She was a pale, delicate woman of forty, of a shrinking nature, easily ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... everything at once; so I will not say that Emma soon learned to take delight in dusting and sweeping. But bear in mind that that woman is the most queenly, who uses her wisdom and her strength for the benefit of those around her, shrinking from no duty that she should perform, but doing it ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... aloft. By the corral gate Buck Devine drooped cravenly above his damaged saddle; at the door of the bunk house Sandy Sawtelle tottered precariously on one foot, his guitar under his arm, a look of guilty horror on his set face. By the stable door stood the incredibly withered Jimmie Time, shrinking a vast dismay. ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... without any further discourse. Henderson, at length, ventured to put over his hand towards the corner in which his companion sat; but it no sooner came in contact with her person, than he felt her shrinking, as it were, from his very touch. With his usual complacent confidence, however, in his own powers of attraction and strongly impressed, besides, with a belief in his knowledge of the sex, he at once imputed all this to caprice on the behalf of Mave, or rather to that ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... emperor or of myself, if we support our aunt in a just cause."[226] At the same time, formal complaints were made by Charles of the personal treatment of Queen Catherine, and the clouds appeared to be gathering for a storm. Yet here, too, there was an evident shrinking from extremities. A Welsh gentleman had been at Brussels to offer his services against Henry, and had met with apparent coldness. Sir John Hacket wrote, on the 15th of December, that he was assured by well-informed persons, that so long ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... this shrinking from the brutal vivacity and brutal variety of common men is a perfectly reasonable and excusable thing as long as it does not pretend to any point of superiority. It is when it calls itself aristocracy or aestheticism or a superiority to the bourgeoisie that ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... no, it is not nearly so bad as that," she replied, with a smile. "I cannot really say that it is either painful or disagreeable to me to recall it, for I cannot exactly apply either of those words to the thing itself. All that I feel is a sort of shrinking from the subject, strong enough to prevent my ever alluding to it lightly or carelessly. Of all things, I should dislike to have a joke made of it. But with you I have no fear of that. And you trust me, don't you? I don't mean as to truthfulness only; ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... monsieur," she pleaded, a curious shrinking in her very voice. "Do not touch me, monsieur. You do not know—you do ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... us not to esteem courage; for courage is at once the defense against attack of all our possessions and the source, in personal initiative and aggressive action, of newer and larger life. And any shrinking that we may feel against the sternness of the struggle is quenched both by the hero's example and by our recognition of its necessity. Since we are not participants of it, our protest would be futile, and even if we played a part in it, we should be as foolish as we should ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... expecting, and mentally shrinking from, just that. Now that it was out, however, he felt relieved. He gave another ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... narrowly, the rider noted his nervous glance, and his shrinking, dreading manner. Harlan's eyes gleamed with suspicion, and in a flash he was off the black and standing before Laskar, ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... dialect-literature of the last half-century, from Vinje down to Garborg. Aasen continued to enlarge and improve his grammars and his dictionary. He lived very quietly in lodgings in Christiania, surrounded by his books and shrinking from publicity, but his name grew into wide political favour as his ideas about the language of the peasants became more and more the watch-word of the popular party. Quite early in his career, 1842, he had begun to receive a stipend to enable him to give his entire ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... reduced circumstances, for we have, now but twenty francs each, left, to take us to Paris. Our boots, too, after serving us so long, begin to show signs of failing in this hour of adversity. Although we are somewhat accustomed to such circumstances, I cannot help shrinking when I think of the solitary napoleon and the five hundred miles to be passed. Perhaps, however, the coin will do as much as its great namesake, and achieve for us a Marengo ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... likes not only to be mothered but he likes to play the father. Let his wife be a daughter to him; let her be capable of shrinking, so to say, into small space, becoming little and confident and appealing and calling forth every protective impulse of ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... Henry's nervousness again, but it troubled him none the less. He himself was so fearless, so careless of danger, so eager for adventure that he could not understand his son's shrinking ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... by woman's truth made dear, That leans upon itself and knows no fear, And yet a name a shrinking girl might wear, With girlish ease, devoid of thought and care. And she is worthy of this name so true— This girl with thoughtful eyes of darkest hue, This maiden stepping o'er the golden line That separates the child from woman divine. Not yet she feels the longing, vague unrest That ever ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... parent, and his voice was sad and stern, "I detest the slang you're using; will you never, never learn that correct use of our language is a thing to be desired? All your common bughouse phrases make the shrinking highbrow tired. There is nothing more delightful than a pure and careful speech, and the man who weighs his phrases always stacks up as a peach, while the guy who shoots his larynx in a careless slipshod way looms up as a selling plater, people ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... she impartially to them both. Then she, too, seemed to shrink before a possible answer. She even laughed an evasive sort of laugh. "I guess you don't mean anything," said she, but her face wore still the expression of shrinking horror. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... somehow that she was a thing to be protected. He hailed a carriage, and she made no protest—all the time under his lee, so needful of protection. It was a shock when they came into the lights of Marseilles to find a proud, grave woman there and not a shrinking, wide-eyed child.... Her face, poised for flight, like a bird's wing; the beautiful, half-opened mouth, the hands, the little feet in their shoes. She was like some beautiful shy deer. And somewhere hovered disaster, like a familiar spirit.... And ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... though he were stung even to death. His cheeks were flushed, and then as suddenly livid. He seemed to have grown smaller in his chair, to be shrinking away as though I had ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... poor girl, who had been a sort of humble companion of the deceased, as a subject upon whom she could at all times expectorate her bad humour. She was for form's sake dragged into the room by the deceased's favourite female attendant, where, shrinking into a corner as soon as possible, she saw with wonder and affright the intrusive researches of the strangers amongst those recesses to which from childhood she had looked with awful veneration. This girl was regarded with an unfavourable ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... on the ground as he spoke; for Edith, shrinking and unsoftened towards him, held no lap to receive it; and Hilda, to whom Edward had been speaking in a low voice, advanced to the spot and struck the jewel with her staff under the hoofs of the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... started back from the iron in sudden rousing from his brooding silence, fear and hate convulsing his snarling face, shrinking back against the timber of the hitching rack as far as he could withdraw, where he stood with shoulders hunched about his neck, savage as a chained wolf. He began to writhe and kick as Morgan laid hold of his neck to hold him steady for the ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... dispel all doubt as to the identity, the majestic lady suddenly tore aside her veil, and disclosed to the trembling, shrinking Agnes, features already too ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... her mother's frigid kiss of farewell hurting her more poignantly than her drastic punishment of an hour before. For Dinah was intensely sensitive, keenly susceptible to rebuke and coldness, and her warm heart shrank from unkindness with a shrinking that was actual pain. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... Countess of Buchan stood within one of those deep embrasures we have noticed, at times glancing towards the youthful group with an earnestness of sorrowing affection that seemed to have no measure in its depth, no shrinking in its might; at others, fixing a long, unmeaning, yet somewhat anxious gaze on the wide plain and distant ocean, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... that beef is rare, and can't help thinking That the old fable of the Minotaur— From which our modern morals rightly shrinking Condemn the royal lady's taste who wore A cow's shape for a mask—was only (sinking The allegory) a mere type, no more, That Pasiphae promoted breeding cattle, To make the ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... quickly than Lord Lynwood could have expected. Jack thought he had never seen anybody quite like Aunt Betty—he had not known that any such existed. He had made up his mind to tell the truth about himself to Estelle's aunt, but now that he saw her he did not feel the shrinking he had anticipated. 'She would understand,' was the way he ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... we are thinking, our fathers would think; From the death we are shrinking from, they too would shrink; To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling; But it speeds from the earth like a ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... girl, shrinking back from the strange gleam that shone from the woman's eyes, as she made this remark, while her thoughts flew, with the speed of light and with a yearning so intense that it turned her white as snow, to Royal Bryant, ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... to any one claim—instinct, reason, conscience, whatever it is—the ultimate power cuts the knot, and tells you unfailingly where your real life lies. That is the real failure, when owing to some habit, some dread, some shrinking, you do not follow your real life. That, it seems to me, is where the old unflinching doctrines of sin and repentance have done harm. The old self-mortifying saints, who thought so badly of human nature, and who tore themselves to pieces, resisting wholesome impulses—celibate saints ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... there was not the least disagreeable smell proceeding from it; though the climate is one of the hottest, and Tee had been dead above four months. The only remarkable alteration that had happened, was a shrinking of the muscular parts and eyes; but the hair and nails were in their original state, and still adhered firmly; and the several joints were quite pliable, or in that kind of relaxed state which happens to persons who faint suddenly. Such were Mr Anderson's ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... not Falstaff; he is overcome by wine and difficulties as that amazing knight never was; but it is a sad soul which does not roar with Toby in his revels; shout with laughter over the duel which he arranges between the shrinking Viola and the foolish, vain Sir Andrew; and shake in sympathy with his glee over Malvolio's plight when that unlucky man is beguiled into thinking Olivia loves him, and into appearing before her cross-gartered and wreathed in the ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... admiration. But when some glories of the autumn yet remain, and e'er stern winter has usurped the sway,—one wide-wide field of death and desolation is all that's left for man to ponder over;—fading flowers, trembling and shrinking in the raw cold blast;—half naked trees, that day by day present a more weird aspect—fields still green, but stripped of every gem;—whilst still some russet warbler may be heard chirping in sorrow and distress, ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... little debate, that between equals would have been called complimentary, he proposed to me the Presidency of the Council of Finance. But I had good reasons for shrinking from this office. I saw that disordered as the finances had become there was only one remedy by which improvement could be effected; and this was National Bankruptcy. Had I occupied the office, I should have been too strongly tempted to urge this view, and carry it out, but ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... this at last, for the sake of the warmth and the human companionship around the blazing hearth-fires in the parlors. They got a room with a stove in it, so that he could write; and there was a pensive, fleeting coziness in it all, with the shrinking numbers in the vast dining-room grouped at two or three tables for dinner, and then gathered in the light of the evening lamps over the evening papers. In these conditions there came, if not friendship, an intensification of acquaintance, such as is ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... last he understood the girl, and as he thought of her shrinking aloofness standing guard over her eager longing for friends—for affection, something hot and wet blurred his eyes. He was scarcely conscious that the man, who had taken to himself the name with which he had become hatefully familiar during his ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... rational judgment in comparison with the emotional, affective, contemplative parts of man, which underlies the various forms of religious mysticism. If you look closely into our present mood, it is seen to be the product mainly and above all of a shrinking deference to the status quo, not merely as having a claim not to be lightly dealt with, which every serious man concedes, but as being the last word and final test of truth and justice. Physical science ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... Shrinking further behind the cedars he proposed to reconnoitre a little before making himself known. He observed that she was attired in a dark, close-fitting costume suitable for rambling among the hills. At first he thought that ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... having been constructed of the green trees of the forest, cut down and sawed into boards by the bands of the soldiers, they were considerably given to shrinking and warping, thus leaving many a yawning crevice. Stuffing the cracks with cotton batting, and pasting strips of paper over them, formed the employment of many ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie |
