"Smallness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... displayed temper, and shed tears uh rage. When she looked into the cabin and seen the remains uh that cow-critter, there was language it wasn't polite to overhear. She said a lot uh things about you, Andy. One thing they couldn't seem to get over, and that was the smallness uh the blamed shack. Them fourteen or fifteen rooms laid heavy on ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... Euboea on the strait of the Euripus which separates the island of Euboea from the mainland. The smallness of the Roman loss is incredible. Appian considerately add one to the number, and makes it fifteen (Mithridatic War, c. 42, &c.) Sulla was a ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... overgrown with thick bushes. Henry Kingsley's explanation (1859), that the word means shrubbery, is singularly misleading, the English word conveying an idea of smallness and order compared with the size and confusion of the Australian use. Yet he is etymologically correct, for Scrobb is Old English (Anglo-Saxon) for shrub; but the use had disappeared ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... to meet was Charlotte's friend Ellen, and, of course, Ellen did not come to Haworth while Charlotte was away. Branwell, too, was absent. His first engagement was as usher in a school; but, mortified by the boys' sarcasms on his red hair and "downcast smallness," he speedily threw up his situation and returned to Haworth to confide his wounded vanity to the tender mercies of the rough and valiant Emily, or to loaf about the village seeking ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... parsneps may be confounded with it: but these are known by the smallness of the umbels; and they are generally in bloom, so that this ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... removed, but it is thick with fine matter. Nine-tenths of the light scattered by these suspended particles is perfectly polarised in a direction at right angles to the beam, and this release of the particles from the ordinary law of polarisation is a demonstration of their smallness. I should say by far the greater number of the particles concerned in this scattering are wholly beyond the range of the microscope, and no ordinary filter can intercept such particles. It is next to impossible, by artificial means, to produce a pure water. Mr. Hartley, for example, some time ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the double gloom of the night and of the forests. Several times the remnants of these brave battalions, conceiving they were attacked, crawled to their arms. The next morning, when they again fell into their ranks, they were astonished at the smallness of their numbers. ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... and then had with him thirty-two thousand men; but in one night desertions reduced this body to six thousand. It is said that, on the morrow after his return, looking from his window on the field where his forces were encamped overnight, he was panic-struck by the smallness of the number that remained. After deliberation, he resolved on starting in the night for Conway, disguised in the garb of a poor priest of the Friars-Minor, and taking with him only thirteen or fourteen friends. He so planned his journey ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... said William when Whimple apologised for the smallness of the amount. "It'll help some at home, and mebbe I ain't worth no two dollars a ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... your lives to help me to the realization of my hopes of setting free the world. Your lives must not be risked needlessly. Little will be the risk any of you will run in carrying out my plans, so ingeniously are they conceived. But that smallness of risk can be attained only if the nature of the project is unknown to anyone save myself up to the latest possible moment before putting it into effect. Every day, every hour, which elapses between the giving of my instructions and their execution increases the danger of our betrayal. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Samaritan. The foreign sailors cry, in their perplexity, to their gods, and end by acknowledging the God of Israel; the people of Nineveh repent at the prophet's preaching. All this forms a splendid foil to the smallness and obstinacy of Jonah. With his mean views of God, he would not only exclude the heathen from the divine mercy, but rejoice in their destruction. In this the prophet is typical of later Judaism, with its longing for the annihilation of the nations as the obverse of the redemption of Zion. ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... less perfectly dried mica, did not get so good a result as to smallness of residual charge ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... whalers, in the harbor of Porto Grande. They have been out from three to six months, and are here for water, bad though it be, and fresh provisions. Their inducements to visit this port, are the goodness of the harbor, and the smallness of the port charges. No consular fee has been paid until now, when, an agent being appointed, each vessel pays him a ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... was least to be trusted. As Lord Stanhope well says of him "His slender and pliant intellect was well fitted to crawl up to the heights of power through all the crooked mazes and dirty by-paths of intrigue; but having once attained the pinnacle, its smallness and meanness were exposed to all the world." Even his private life had not the virtues which one who reads some of the exalted panegyrics paid to him by contemporary poets and others would be apt to imagine. He ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... we breathe, not having which we die!' Would modern Friends of Progress believe it? Because, in former stages of this War, the Berlin Newspapers have had offensive expressions (scarcely noticeable to the microscope in our day, and below calculation for smallness) upon the Russian and Austrian Sovereigns or Peoples,—the Able Editors (there are only Two) shall now in person, here in the market-place of Berlin, actually run the gantlet for it,—'run the rods (GASSEN-LAUFEN'), as the fashion now is; which is worse than GANTLET, not to speak of the ignominy. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to Hallam, a few weeks later, "the smallness of the majorities in two or three counties is a threat to us and a warning. The county authorities are putting all sorts of absurd provisions into their subscriptions, and they will give us trouble if our construction ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... might have been expected. Paulinus, having chosen a situation favorable to the smallness of his numbers, and encouraged his troops not to dread a multitude whose weight was dangerous only to themselves, piercing into the midst of that disorderly crowd, after a blind and furious resistance, obtained ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... all were patient and quiet; not a groan or complaint escaped them, though I saw some faces twisted into strange contortions with the agony of their wounds. I commenced distributing my oranges right and left, but soon realized the smallness of my basket and the largeness of the demand, and sadly passed by all but the worst cases. In the third car that we entered we found the Colonel, Lieutenant-Colonel, and Adjutant of the Twenty-ninth Ohio, all severely wounded. We ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... the ideas of Columbus. The territories of the Great Khan were the object of his search in all his voyages. Much of the success of his enterprise rested on two happy errors; the imaginary extent of Asia to the east, and the supposed smallness of the earth. Without these errors he would hardly have ventured into the immeasurable waste ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... all corruption becoming-separate." In such a statement we cannot fail to remark that the Greek is fast passing into the track of the Egyptian and the Hindu. In some respects his views recall those of the chaos of Anaximander, as when he says, "Together were all things infinite in number and smallness; nothing was distinguishable. Before they were sorted, while all was together, there was no quality noticeable." To the first moving force which arranged the parts of things out of the chaos, he gave the designation of "the Intellect," rejecting Fate as an empty name, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... at them. The figure of Mirah, with her beauty set off by the quiet, careful dress of an English lady, made a strange pendant to this shabby, foreign-looking, eager, and gesticulating man, who withal had an ineffaceable jauntiness of air, perhaps due to the bushy curls of his grizzled hair, the smallness of his hands and feet, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... three companies in that state for working the mines in the mineral district of Ramirez, and another in that of Trinudco. There is no notice of the amount of funds employed, but it is presumed that they are not considerable, by considering the smallness of the fortunes of the inhabitants ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... comes back to a place that one's memory and imagination have been busy with, there is a feeling of smallness and disappointment, and it is a day or two before one can renew all one's enjoyment. This morning, however, when I went up the gap between Croagh Martin and then back to Slea Head, and saw Inishtooskert and Inishvickillaun ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... only child, he was self-willed and self-indulgent. His wife and daughters were better liked than he. By unfriendly criticics{sic} the Professor was thought to be selfish, fonder of the good things of the table and a good cigar than was consistent with his duty to his family or the smallness of his income. His father, a successful apothecary at Boston, had died in 1833, leaving John, his only son, a fortune of some L10,000. In rather less than ten years Webster had run through the whole of his inheritance. He had built himself a costly mansion in Cambridge, spent ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... their most repulsive forms, are packed away between decks scarcely three feet high, in small vessels of 30 or 40 tons, and thus situated have to encounter the cold and stormy passage round the Cape: the average mortality is of course most frightful, but the smallness of the vessels employed decreases the risk of the speculators in human flesh, who consider themselves amply repaid, if they save one living cargo out of every ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... seems, was his successful rival in a love affair, but otherwise Douglas left Lincoln far behind. Buoyant, good-natured, never easily abashed, his maturity and savoir faire were accentuated by the smallness of his stature. His blue eyes and his dark, abundant hair heightened his physical charm of boyishness; his virile movements, his face, heavy-browed, round, and strong, and his well-formed, uncommonly large head gave him an aspect of intellectual power. ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... and has filled her house as full of it as it can hold, devises a bazaar—a field for her trumpery, and a show-off for all the young ladies; and Flora treats it like an inspiration! Off they trot, to the old Assembly Rooms. I trusted that the smallness of them would have knocked it on the head; but, still worse, Flora's talking of it makes Mr. Rivers think it our pet scheme; so, what does he do but offer his park, and so we are to have a regular fancy fair, and Cocksmoor School ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... didn't matter which—must do something unusual, in order to be talked about, and get a good free advertisement. Nowadays, when professionals vied with each other in the expensiveness of their jewels, the size of their hats, or the smallness of their waists, and the eccentricity of their costumes, it was perhaps rather a new note to wear no jewels at all, and appear in ready-made frocks bought in bargain-sales; while, as for the young woman's air of childlike innocence and inexperience, it might ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... puts the arguments against enclosure very forcibly.[446] The writer's opinion was that it was clearly to the landowner's gain to promote enclosures, but that the impropriator of tithes reaped most benefit and the small freeholder least, because his expenses increased inversely to the smallness of his allotment. As to diminution of employment, he reckoned that enclosed arable employed about ten families per 1,000 acres, open field arable twenty families, a statement opposed to the opinion of nearly all the agricultural writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... were allowed to appear; and which, with their distorted movements, must have produced a highly ludicrous effect, from the contrast in the fixed distortion of the rest of the countenance.] and notwithstanding the smallness of the theatre, I did not find that they were in any way prejudicial to vivacity. The mask was peculiarly favourable for the jokes of the roguish slave: his uncouth physiognomy, as well as his apparel, stamped him at once as a man of a peculiar race, (as in truth the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... I have said that, owing to the smallness of the house-party, luncheon was served in the breakfast-room. The dining-room at Selwoode is very rarely used, because Margaret declares its size makes a meal there equivalent to ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... the female sex, it is necessary first to consider the work of children, and then the nature of the work itself. From the beginning of manufacturing industry, children have been employed in mills, at first almost exclusively by reason of the smallness of the machines, which were later enlarged. Even children from the workhouses were employed in multitudes, being rented out for a number of years to the manufacturers as apprentices. They were lodged, fed, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... prognosticated delays, that little suited his fiery impatience. He accepted the offer of some two or three ships, which William put at his disposal, under pretence to reconnoitre the Northumbrian coasts, and there attempt a rising in his own favour. But his discontent was increased by the smallness of the aid afforded him; for William, ever suspicious, distrusted both his faith and his power. Tostig, with all his vices, was a poor dissimulator, and his sullen spirit betrayed itself when he took leave of ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... smallness of the harbor, Columbus gave it the name of El Retrete, or The Cabinet. He had been betrayed into this inconvenient and dangerous port by the misrepresentations of the seamen sent to examine it, who were always ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... its nail and held it high, Richard Brooks was aware that this was the same girl whom he had glimpsed from the train. He had noted then her slenderness of outline, the grace and freedom of her pose; at closer range he saw her delicate smallness; the bloom on her cheek; the dusky softness of her hair; the length of her lashes; the sapphire deeps of her eyes. Yet it was not these charms which arrested his attention; it was, rather, a certain swift thought of her as superior ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... incorporated the captured Thracian mercenaries of the Pontic king with his troops—to carry the war over the Euphrates with not more than two legions, or at most 15,000 men. This was in itself hazardous; but the smallness of the number might be in some degree compensated by the tried valour of the army consisting throughout of veterans. A far worse feature was the temper of the soldiers, to which Lucullus, in his high aristocratic ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... mother been ailing, and, it seemed to him, little able to bear the shock of such a disclosure. So the honest deception went on. Will was supposed to be managing a London branch of the Applegarth business. Great expenditure on advertising had to account for the smallness of the dividend at first. No one less likely than the ladies at The Haws to make trouble in such a matter. They had what sufficed to them, and were content with it. Thinking over this in shame-faced solitude, Warburton felt a glow of proud thankfulness that his mother and sister were so unlike ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... money-market, the clearing-house of the world, is, in consequence of the smallness of its reserve, exposed to greater fluctuations than that of any other country. These fluctuations may arise from the need of meeting the requirements of other countries for specie or those arising from domestic trade. The recorded ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... help. If you use enough fuel to catch it, you won't get back. You just leave such a ship there forever, like an asteroid, and it's a damn shame about the men trapped aboard. Heroes all, no doubt—but the smallness of the widow's monthly check failed to confirm the heroism, and Nora was bitter about the ...
— Death of a Spaceman • Walter M. Miller
... used to tell a story of Fitzgibbon respecting a client who brought his own brief, and fee, that he might personally apologize for the smallness of the latter. Fitzgibbon, on receiving the fee, looked rather discontented. "I assure you, counsellor," said the client (mournfully) "I am ashamed of its smallness; but in fact it is all I have in the world." "Oh! then," said Fitzgibbon, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... fluctuating boundaries. England's insularity has been the strongest single factor in the growth of her vast colonial empire and in the maintenance of its loyal allegiance and solidarity. The widely strewn plantation of her colonies is the result of that teeming island seed-bed at home; while the very smallness of the mother country is the guarantee of its supremacy over its dependencies, because it is too small either to oppress them or to get along without them. Now an Asiatic variant of English history is promised ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... flask and a half of powder, had been left behind in the Ocean Queen; so that there was no means of obtaining either guanacos or birds. Attempts were made at establishing friendly barter with the natives, but no sooner did these perceive the smallness of the number of the strangers, than they beset them with obstinate hostility. Meantime, Gardiner's object was to reach a certain Button Island, where was a man called Jemmy Button, who had had much intercourse with ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... nor littleness smallness. Nebuchadnezzar's conquest of Judah was, in his eyes, one of the least important of his many victories, but it is the only one of them which survives in the world's memory and keeps his name as a household word. The Jews were a mere handful, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... soldiers moving forward through a criss-cross of trenches; I took them to be fresh men going in to relieve other men who had seen a period of service under fire. At first they suggested moles crawling through plow furrows; then, as they progressed onward, they shrank to the smallness of gray grub-worms, advancing one behind another. My eye strayed beyond them a fair distance and fell on a row of tiny scarlet dots, like cochineal bugs, showing minutely but clearly against the green-yellow face of a ridgy field well inside the forward batteries of ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... long for, yearn for, struggle for, and hold persistently in the mind, we tend to become just in exact proportion to the intensity and persistence of the thought. We think ourselves into smallness, into inferiority by thinking downward. We ought to think upward, then we would reach the heights where superiority dwells. The man whose mind is set firmly toward achievement does not appropriate success, he ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... regard to the beauty of the prospects, the want of rills and streams is a very great defect, not to be compensated either by large pieces of standing water, or by the neighbourhood of the sea, though that; by reason of the smallness of the island, generally makes a part ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... may be said to be in almost constant movement, they are not at all nomads, yet the term has frequently been applied to them. Each family moves back and forth within a certain circumscribed area, and the smallness of this area is one of the most remarkable ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... side a great number of Moros coming down a defile to prevent our retreat to the camp. A few cannon-shots were fired at them, and they quickly hurried back to the hill. His Lordship wished to halt here and await the attack by Nicolas Gonalez, but the smallness of his forces compelled him to retire, which he did, the drums beating, as before, until we reached the camp. The wounded were placed, for that night, in a cabin in front of the mosque; and in the morning we transferred them to the champans, burying ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... scope and ambitions of the Burggrafs increased, and as the smallness of their castle at Nuremberg, and the constant friction with the townspeople, who were able to annoy them in many ways, became more irksome, they gave up living at Nuremberg, and finally were content ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... one's smallness and realize it, one need only go and stand beside the marble cherubs that support the holy-water basins against the first pillar. They look small, if not graceful; but they are of heroic size, and the bowls are as big as ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... that in the old days there used to be only a bamboo and grass monastery there, such a monastery as most jungle villages have; and the then monk was distressed at the smallness of his abode and the little accommodation there was for his school—a monastery is always a school. So one rainy season he planted with great care a number of teak seedlings round about, and he watered them and cared for them. 'When ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... attempts, and very imperfectly successful ones, to open an intercourse with the world." We are speaking here of small things, it must be remembered—of little attempts, little sketches, a little world. But everything is relative, and this smallness of scale must not render less apparent the interesting character of Hawthorne's efforts. As for the Twice-Told Tales themselves, they are an old story now; every one knows them a little, and those who ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... or strangers to the affairs of his family. Some people, imposed upon by the report of the child's death, were drawn in to purchase, thinking themselves safe in the concurrence of his lordship's brother, upon presumption that he was next in remainder to the succession; others, tempted by the smallness of the price, which rarely exceeded half a year's purchase, as appears by many deeds, though they doubted the truth of the boy's being dead, ran small risks, on the contingency of his dying before he should be of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... except a biscuit and a little milk and water during the rest of the day. In the early morning, the special worm medicine is given, and over and over again I have known the worm to be brought away completely after many previous failures. When the smallness of the joints shows that the greater part of the worm has been thrown off, and that little more than the head remains, it is necessary to have recourse to the unpleasant proceeding of mixing the evacuations with water, and then straining them through muslin, in order ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... old chronicler, Robert Knox, "are in great abundance in the woods, from the largeness of a cow to the smallness of a hare, for here is a creature in this land no bigger than the latter, though every part rightly resembleth a deer: it is called meminna, of a grey colour, with white spots and good meat."[1] The little creature which thus dwelt in the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... and vertical lines and triangles in figure represent yellow stain. No other staining in the apron. 42 6 3/4 Background of design unstained, but back fold end of apron and fringe stained yellow. 43 6 3/4 No background staining in the apron. The smallness of the amount of decoration and the substitution of two tails for a fringe are, ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... with his delicate features, the softness of his voice, and the smallness of his hands. There were other points, besides, in the tournure of the boy's figure that had appeared singular to me. I had frequently observed the eyes of this lad bent upon me, when Dubrosc was not present, with a ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... of any tidings whatever of their doings across the water is a proof of this. Who has heard of the legislature of New York or of Massachusetts? It is boasted here that their insignificance is a sign of the well- being of the people; that the smallness of the power necessary for carrying on the machine shows how beautifully the machine is organized, and how well it works. "It is better to have little governors than great governors," an American said ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... only to become more extravagant on a larger scale. We do not condemn Nicaragua because we think Britain ought to be more Nicaraguan. We do not discourage small nationalities because we wish large nationalities to have all their smallness, all their uniformity of outlook, all their exaggeration of spirit. If I differ with the greatest respect from your Nicaraguan enthusiasm, it is not because a nation or ten nations were against you; it is because civilisation was against ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... at dinner. One of the foreign ministers, who is very vain of the smallness of his feet, had donned a pair of patent-leather shoes evidently much too tight for him. During the dinner he relieved his sufferings by slipping his aching toes out of them. All went well until his chair was suddenly drawn from underneath him, as their Majesties were about to pass. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... copied as nearly as possible after that of my father, and had failed to teach to me even that thrift which is a part of the dot of every French girl from the Faubourg St. Germaine to the Boulevard St. Michel. But even in my ignorance the information of Nannette as to the smallness of our fortune gave to ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of them (excepting, naturally, Brunelleschi's dome) very small buildings: the Sacristies of S. Lorenzo and S. Spirito, the chapel of the Pazzi, and the late, but exquisite, small church of the Carceri at Prato. The smallness of these places is fortunate, because it leaves no doubt that the sense of spaciousness—of our being, as it were, enclosed with a great part of world and sky around us—is an artistic illusion got by co-ordination of detail, greatness of proportions, and, most of all, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... owls, geese, white and grey herons, and other water fowl; nightingales and other birds of sweet song, many kinds of which have very beautiful plumage. There is one kind of bird very remarkable for its astonishing smallness, not being larger than a grasshopper or large beetle, which however has several very long feathers in its tail. Along the coast there is a species of very large vulture, the wings of which, when extended, measure fifteen or sixteen palms from tip to tip. These birds ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... recently placed in a tiny oratory, scooped by Guidobaldo II. from the thickness of the wall, a cast of Raphael's skull, which will be studied with interest and veneration. It has the fineness of modelling combined with shapeliness of form and smallness of scale which is said to have ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... still sleepless! "Never have I been so badly treated. I have now discovered what the disappointment of the world means," he murmured, while the boy Kokimi lay down beside him fast asleep. The smallness of his stature, and the graceful waving of his short hair, could not but recall to Genji the beautiful tresses of his sister, and bring her image vividly before him; and, long before the daylight appeared, he rose up, and returned ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... Sanchez objecting to rubies and demanding more emeralds, and Picquet complaining violently concerning the smallness of the diamonds ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... have anchored her life upon some great, strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. But that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire. She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. So, striving to divert her thoughts, Emma determined now to see in this reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to please the eye, and she even ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... enjoyed the fruits of their labor; and as the rolls of tribute were filled only with the names of those citizens who possessed the means of an honorable, or at least of a decent subsistence, the comparative smallness of their numbers explains and justifies the high rate of their capitation. The truth of this assertion may be illustrated by the following example: The AEdui, one of the most powerful and civilized tribes ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... all personal religion, said Shame to Faithful, is an unmanly business. There is a certain touch of smallness and pitifulness, he said, in all religion, but especially in experimental religion. It brings a man into junctures and into companionships, and it puts offices and endurances upon one such as try a man if he has any greatness of spirit about him at all. This life on which you are entering, ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... the people are in no danger of being broken to military subordination. The laws are not accustomed to relaxations, in favor of military exigencies; the civil state remains in full vigor, neither corrupted, nor confounded with the principles or propensities of the other state. The smallness of the army renders the natural strength of the community an overmatch for it; and the citizens, not habituated to look up to the military power for protection, or to submit to its oppressions, neither love nor fear the soldiery; ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... is drawn from the position of eldest son given to him in all the genealogies enumerating the children of Jacob. Stade, on the contrary, is inclined to believe that this place of honour was granted to him on account of the smallness of his family, to prevent any jealousy arising between the more powerful tribes, such as Ephraim and Judah (Ges. des Vollces Isr., ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... by what accident it was, but never had I come so nearly into the presence of the men who founded England. The isolation of the hill, the absence of clamour and false noise and everything modern, the smallness of the village, the solidity and amplitude of the homes and their ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... that of the Christ. The child stands upon the Virgin's knees,[9] one hand raised in the usual attitude of benediction, the other holding a globe. The face looks straightforward, quiet, Jupiter-like, and very sublime, owing to the smallness of the features in proportion to the head, the eyes being placed at about three-sevenths of the whole height, leaving four-sevenths for the brow, and themselves only in length about one-sixth of the breadth ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... scent came to one separately; and, as the most of the foliage is dry and thin just now, these flowers and green bushes were the more effective. Certainly the surroundings were more beautiful than those we have in low ground shooting at home, and the smallness of the bag was balanced by this, and the delightfully unfamiliar sensation of both shooting and right-of-way, being free ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... in the world is like a mustard-seed sown in the ground, both in the smallness of its beginning and the greatness of its increase. The first promise, given at the gate of Eden, contained the Gospel as a seed contains the tree. It fell among Adam's descendants as a mustard-seed ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... world. Any one who has read Browning's longer poems knows how constantly a simile or figure of speech is selected, not among the large, well-recognised figures common in poetry, but from some dusty corner of experience, and how often it is characterised by smallness and a certain quaint exactitude which could not have been found in any more usual example. Thus, for instance, Prince Hohenstiel—Schwangau explains the psychological meaning of all his restless ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... then ride on, as if his destination were elsewhere. Smith, however, decided differently. As his force approached the camp-fire that was burning close to the wagons, he noticed that the rear of his column was not distinguishable in the darkness, and that thus the smallness of their number could not be immediately discovered. He, therefore, asked at once for the captain of the train, and one Dawson stepped forward. Smith directed him to have his men collect their private property at once, as he intended to "put a little fire" into the wagons. "For God's ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... through more radiant clouds? Look, however, how radiant, in the small space allowed out of the blue, they are in reality. You cannot anywhere see a lovelier piece of Giottesque colour, though here you have to mourn over the smallness of the piece, and its isolation. For the face of St. Francis himself is repainted, and all the blue sky; but the clouds and four sustaining angels are hardly retouched at all, and their iridescent and exquisitely graceful wings are ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... composing it have been rushing in this direction and that at an enormous speed, but do not appear to us on the earth to alter their positions in regard to each other. I know of nothing that gives one a more overwhelming sense of the mightiness of the universe and the smallness of ourselves than this fact. From age to age men look on changeless heavens, yet this apparently stable universe is fuller of flux and reflux than is the restless ocean itself, and the very wavelets on the sea are not more numerous ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... that the motive of Judas was totally different from the one hitherto supposed: it was not filthy lucre. The smallness of the price for which he sold his Master—it was less than four pounds of our money, though the value of this sum was much greater then—proves that there must have been another motive. The traditional conception is inconsistent with Christ's ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... maw, and we are drawn in again with her inhaled breath.' Quoth Bulukiya, 'Say me, are there greater serpents than you in Hell?'; and they said, 'Of a truth we are cast out with the expired breath but by reason of our smallness; for in Hell every serpent is so great, that were the biggest of us to pass over its nose it would not feel us.[FN515]' Asked Bulukiya, 'Ye sing the praises of Allah and invoke blessings on Mohammed, whom the Almighty assain and save! Whence wot ye of Mohammed?'; and they answered, 'O Bulukiya, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... promenaded, we showed our clothes, and came home smirking with satisfaction. We had been pointed out everywhere for Americans, which spoke volumes for our clothes and the smallness of ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... the west. Many times they were chased by the Malay proas which infested the islands, but the swiftness of their little peroqua was their security; indeed, the chase was, generally speaking, abandoned as soon as the smallness of the vessel was made out by the pirates, who expected that little or no ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... the altar as unapproachable to the laity: while in the latter case he is reproached with attaching. to sacrifice far too high a value. In the former case, in fine, the Deity and the representative of the Deity act with absolute caprice, confront men stiffly with commands of incredible smallness, and challenge them to opposition; in the latter, the conduct of Samuel is not (supposing it to have been the custom to devote enemies to destruction) unintelligible, nor his demeanour devoid of natural ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... the sole purpose of removing the merchandize belonging to the Portuguese in the factory at Cochin to Cananor and Coulan, and not to defend him against the power of the zamorin; which he was even disposed to think were true, in consideration of the smallness of the fleet under his command. Pacheco felt indignant at the suspicion which the rajah entertained, and endeavoured to convince him that he had been imposed upon by the Moors out of enmity to the Portuguese, assuring him that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... vicissitudes of history. Greatness has often sunk to the dust, and has tempered itself to its new surrounding. Smallness has risen aloft, has flourished for a time, and then has sunk once more. Rich monarchs have become poor monks, brave conquerors have lost their manhood, eunuchs and women have overthrown armies and kingdoms. Surely there is no situation ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and exhibit to mankind the awful spectacle of a nation deprived of neutral salts. This is not the dream of a wild apothecary indulging in his own opium; this is not the distempered fancy of a pounder of drugs, delirious from smallness of profits—but it is the sober, deliberate, and systematic scheme of a man to whom the public safety is entrusted, and whose appointment is considered by many as a masterpiece ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... shorthorns. He sold off his stock some years ago. His farm was only 100 acres, but his stock fetched high prices. One yearling quey brought L54, and a cow L53. The proceeds of the sale amounted to about L1000—a large sum, considering the smallness of the farm. Mr Stronach was for many years a successful competitor at the local shows, and sold a cow to Mr Cruickshank that carried the first prize at one of the Highland Society's shows at Aberdeen. Mr Stronach ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... looks, the darkness of her eyes, the simple arrangement of her coal-black hair—which instead of being confined by comb or fillet, was twisted round a thorn cut from the nearest locust-tree—and by the smallness of her stature, though the lightness and European tinge of her complexion must have instantly disproved ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... give you breakfast," said Bebee, happy as a bird. She felt no shame for the smallness of her home; no confusion at the poverty of her little place; such embarrassments are born of self-consciousness, and Bebee had no more self-consciousness than her own sweet, gray lavender-bush blowing against ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... every element in her nature which was in contradiction to her mystic ardor: in all sincerity her whole being was strained, like a bow, after an ideal of a pure and difficult life, radiant with happiness.... The obstacles, the very smallness and dullness of her future condition in life, were a joy to her. How good and ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... kidnapped. Sometimes the poor islanders were enticed on board under the pretence of trading, others were carried off by force. On several occasions when canoes had come alongside, the men were dragged out of them, and the canoes sunk. In some instances whole islands had been depopulated, when, from the smallness of their number, the inhabitants were unable to defend themselves against the ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... however, a very interesting house. At first, you come to the front next to the road, which you do by a steep descent down the plantation. You are struck, having a great castle in your imagination, with the smallness of the place. It is neither large nor lofty. Your ideal Gothic castle shrinks into a miniature. The house is quite hidden till you are at it, and then you find yourself at a small, castellated gateway, with its crosses cut into the stone pillars on each side, and the little window over it, as for ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... smallness of the human atom, the limit of desire, the existence of other lives as precious as their own, is not the philosophy which makes great kings. Philosophy engenders pity; and one who possesses that can not ride roughshod over men, and that is ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... all manner of precious stones' (Rev 21:19). True, these there are called 'The foundations of the wall of the city,' but it has respect to the matter in hand; for that which is before called a temple, for its comparative smallness, is here called a city, for or because of its great increase: and both the foundations of the wall of the city, as well as of the temple, are 'the twelve apostles of the Lamb' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a few who had an undue estimation of themselves and all connected with them. Was Fairbridge great because of its inhabitants, or were the inhabitants great because of Fairbridge? Who could say? And why was Fairbridge so important that its very smallness overwhelmed that which, by the nature of things, seemed overwhelming? Nobody knew, or rather, so tremendous was the power of the small in the village, that ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that of the Ionic columns of the vestibule of the Propylaea, whence it seems highly probable that the same order was used in the interior of both those contemporary buildings. In the eastern chamber of the Parthenon, the smallness of the diameter of the columns leaves little doubt that there was an upper range, as in the temples of Paestum and AEgina. It is to be lamented that no remains of any of them have been found, as they might have presented some new proofs of the taste and invention ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... to men in spite of her smallness and leanness and incisiveness of manner. She was called mighty smart and dry, which was the shop synonym for witty, and her favors, possibly because she never granted them, were accounted valuable. Abby Atkins had more admirers than many a ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of it covered up the sun like something too good to be seen. The whole was so close about the earth, as to express nothing but a violent secrecy. The very empyrean seemed to be a secret. It expressed that splendid smallness which is the soul of local patriotism. The ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... with foreign states was prohibited, and that with foreign colonies allowed only under rare and disabling conditions. But although the West Indies thus maintained a large part of the mother country's export trade, the smallness of their population, and the simple necessities of the slaves, who formed the great majority of the inhabitants, rendered them as British customers much inferior to the continental colonies; and this disparity was continually increasing, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... into a reverie which, undisturbed by De Morbihan, endured throughout the brief remainder of their drive; for, thanks to the smallness of the hour, the streets were practically deserted and offered no obstacle to speed; while the chauffeur was doubtless eager for ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... a boy, there was one vote polled for the first Abolitionist presidential ticket. The man who gave it did not try to hide his responsibility—in fact, he seemed rather proud of his aloneness—but he was mercilessly guyed on account of the smallness of his party. His rejoinder was that he thought that he and God, who was, he believed, with him, made a pretty good-sized and ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... at the smallness of the particles which caused the tentacles to become greatly inflected that it seemed worth while carefully to ascertain how minute a particle would plainly act. [page 27] Accordingly measured lengths of a narrow strip of blotting paper, of fine ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... probably signs and intimations of something; for Lady Hunter made a circuit round the shop, on some pretence, and stared in at the door of the shoe-parlour, just at the right moment for perceiving, if she so pleased, the beautiful smallness of Hester's foot. Some low, murmuring, conversation then passed at Mrs Howell's counter, when the words "black ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... need, with that word "greatest" intensified beyond all power of description, is in the heathen lands. The vastness of the numbers there, the utter ignorance, the smallness of their chance of getting any of the knowledge and uplift of the Gospel, all go to spell out that word "greatest." The awful cumulative power of sin, unchecked by the common moral standards of life, with the terrific momentum of centuries; the ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... ones, have no need to fight shy of each other when they meet as strangers. We all know more or less about each other by hearsay, or about each other's people; and we're all pretty sure to have some common acquaintances. The smallness of England ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... at all concerned for the smallness of her house. She regarded it as the outward and visible sign of the most creditable action of her life—the action which would—or should—bring her most marks when the recording angel came to ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in a tone of singular boldness and energy—that if the Continent were untrod by a British soldier, there was a still broader field for the arms and the triumphs of England. But his eloquence had more effect in exposing the errors, than in reducing the numbers of his opponents, and the smallness of his majority would have made a feebler mind resign on the spot. The announcement of the numbers was received with an insulting cheer by the minority, and the cabinet was already ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... sugar, and rum; but such other articles as we have and can spare you will be furnished with; but should you consider it will in any way endanger your party going overland without the stores you have asked for, or from the smallness of the number for which you can carry stores, or for protection, I do not consider that it is imperative you should do so, having every reason to believe that Mr. Walker's party will do everything that is possible and necessary to continue following up of Mr. Burke's tracks, ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... always my belief that a certain ratio would be found between the several parts of a telephone, and that the size of the instrument was immaterial; but Professor Peirce was the first to demonstrate the extreme smallness of the magnets which might be employed. And here, in order to show the parallel lines in which we were working, I may mention the fact that two or three days after I had constructed a telephone ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... "For notwithstanding the smallness of the numbers of this people, which by the way, are considerable; and notwithstanding the contemptible view in which they have been, and still are held by the world; yet, you may find it more difficult to prove the falsity of their pretended miracles than at ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... "Dragon without a Tail." We had to make him without a tail owing to the smallness of the stage. He had once had a tail. But that was a long story: added to which there was not time to tell it. Little Sally St. Leonard played his wife, and Robina was his mother-in-law. So much depends upon one's mood. What an ocean of boredom ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... Christmas morn broke upon the pavement, and swept away the summer splendour.—The door was to the outside.—And I said to myself: All the doors that lead inwards to the secret place of the Most High, are doors outwards—out of self—out of smallness—out of wrong. And these were some of the thoughts that came to me through the hole in the door, and made me forget the service, which Mr. Venables mumbled like ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... English and French was landed on the coast of China, whence they marched to Pekin and dictated terms of peace. This expedition is remarkable for the smallness of the numbers which ventured, at such a great distance from their sources of supply and succor, to land upon a hostile shore and penetrate into the midst of the most populous empire ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... hours since they parted, since his last glimpse of her as the black waters swallowed the slim white figure, and seemed to laugh scornfully at its smallness ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... exultation, joyously seeking out the sheep from among the goats. Of course I was a sheep, and my governess and the head gardener goats, so that the results could not fail to be in every way satisfactory. But looking up at the slope and remembering my visions, I laughed at the smallness of the field I had supposed would hold ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp |
