"Diminishing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Examples of Deficiency in the Strength of this Desire. 4. Examples of Excess of this Desire. Chapter IX. Of The Law Of The Increase Of Production From Land. 1. The Law of Production from the Soil, a Law of Diminishing Return in Proportion to the Increased Application of Labor and Capital. 2. Antagonist Principle to the Law of Diminishing Return; the Progress of Improvements in Production. 3. —In Railways. 4. —In Manufactures. 5. Law Holds True of Mining. Chapter X. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... noise that Saint Dodekanus must have had uncommonly good ears. He had. And soon showed his real feelings. Rain fell once more. Instead of diminishing it grew more violent, accompanied by warm blasts of wind. There was sunshine overhead, but the peaks were shrouded in scudding vapours, trees bent under the force of the wind; the sea, a welter of light and shade, was dappled with silvery patches ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... animal, watch the intelligent play of the minute members which compose it; yet this little creature is but a development of the cumbrous clocks of the thirteenth century— it is no deterioration from them. The day may come when clocks, which certainly at the present day are not diminishing in bulk, may be entirely superseded by the universal use of watches, in which case clocks will become extinct like the earlier saurians, while the watch (whose tendency has for some years been rather to decrease ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... hills of Jarvis lies a village of some two hundred wooden houses, where an isolated population lives like a swarm of bees in a forest, without increasing or diminishing; vegetating happily, while wringing their means of living from the breast of a stern Nature. The almost unknown existence of the little hamlet is readily accounted for. Few of its inhabitants were bold enough to risk their lives among the ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... the queen to the society of the Polignacs and Guimenees, "her society," as she sometimes called it,[1] had also a mischievous effect in diminishing her popularity with the great body of the nobles. The custom of former sovereigns had been to hold receptions several evenings in each week, to which the men and women of the highest rank were proud to repair ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... impervious and restless, waiting for the return of the boat that was to take Durant on shore. It had only just put off with the first load of guests—the Manbys—under Georgie Chatterton's escort. As Durant watched it diminishing and vanishing, he thought of how Georgie had described their hostess's method of dealing with exacting friends. She was dropping them, very gently, at the nearest port. Poor Manby! And it would be his own turn next. And yet Georgie had said, "You never know." He must and ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... rose and the honeysuckle itself, the meadow has changed in nothing that delights the eye. The draining, indeed, has made it more comfortable to walk about on, and some of the rougher grasses have gone from the furrows, diminishing at the same time the number of cardamine flowers; but of these there are hundreds by the side of every tiny rivulet of water, and the aquatic grasses flourish in every ditch. The meadow-farmers, dairymen, have not grubbed many hedges—only a few, to ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... consists in thinking first of all of the disinherited and sorrowing throngs, in solacing, airing, enlightening, loving them, in enlarging their horizon to a magnificent extent, in lavishing upon them education in every form, in offering them the example of labor, never the example of idleness, in diminishing the individual burden by enlarging the notion of the universal aim, in setting a limit to poverty without setting a limit to wealth, in creating vast fields of public and popular activity, in having, like Briareus, a hundred hands to extend in all directions to the oppressed and the feeble, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... dignity Mr. Thrush stepped into the room. He was most respectably dressed in a neat black suit, the coat of which looked rather like either a frock coat which was in course of diminishing gradually into what tailors call "a morning coat," or a morning coat which was in course of expanding gently into a frock coat; a speckless collar with points appeared above a pair of dark worsted gloves, and a hat which resembled a square bowler half-way ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Fareham's passion for mud," he explained to her, when she remarked upon his lack of interest in the chase, even when the music of the hounds was ringing through wood and valley, now close beside them, anon diminishing in the distance, thin in the thin air. "If he comes not home at dark plastered with mire from boots to eyebrows he will cry, like Alexander, 'I ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... of prismatic tints, and thickly dotted with brown. At almost every effort of respiration, the little creature tossed its arms in apparent agony, and clung more firmly to the finger; while the dark-brown spots upon the body alternately faded and revived, diminishing in size till they were scarcely perceptible, and then appearing again as large as peas, crowding, and becoming confluent nearly all over the body. At length, the animal being detained too long from its native element, became enfeebled, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... the expression 'worn' advisedly, for a waist nowadays seems to be regarded as an article of apparel to be put on when and where one likes. A long waist always implies shortness of the lower limbs, and, from the artistic point of view, has the effect of diminishing the height; and I am glad to see that many of the most charming women in Paris are returning to the idea of the Directoire style of dress. This style is not by any means perfect, but at least it has the merit of indicating ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... the new house did little towards diminishing the rigors of the daily routine within the old one; no greater insistence upon detail could be encountered at Gibraltar or at Ehrenbreitstein than that which prevailed under the direction of Eliza Marshall, to whom the near breaking of camp was no reason for ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... one-half of them die in childhood? If we are not to believe that this fearful mortality is a part of God's plan, is it wise to refuse to consider all possibilities, even those seemingly most remote, of diminishing it? ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... souls, it looked around itself on its eminence, seeing the vast diorama of the city on one side, and on the other the Pres-Saint-Gervais, and the woods of Romainville waving off to the horizon their diminishing crests of green. A jolly old tavern, the Ile d'Amour, hung out its colored lamps among the trees, and the orchestra sounded, and the feet of gay young lovers, who now are skeletons, beat the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... jump of the barometer, which seemed to mark the beginning of the blizzard much more than the thermometer, which did not rise much. The wind during the night was very high, blowing 72 and 66 miles an hour, for hours at a time, and has not yet shown any sign of diminishing. Now, after lunch, the hut is straining and creaking, while a shower of stones rattles at intervals against it: the drift is generally ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... large balance of superfluous cash on hand, can do no better with it than to pay off its debts; but to do this, when there was every prospect of a Mormon war to raise the expenditure, little prospect of retrenchment in any branch of service, and a daily diminishing revenue at all points,—it was purely a piece of folly, a want of ordinary forecast, to get rid of the cash in hand. Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Cobb were guilty of this folly, and, for the sake of the poor eclat of coming to the relief of the money-market, (which was no great relief, after all,) they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... force, induce an overwhelming lassitude, and are, in my opinion, most unfavourable elements in a climate so generally recommended for pulmonary consumption. Whatever effect the humid mildness of the air may have in diminishing excitability, and in allaying pulmonary irritation in patients of a nervous temperament, it is decidedly injurious in those of a feeble and lymphatic habit.... The delusion of an Italian climate, as regards the cure or prophylaxis of tubercular consumption, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... comprehending distinctly.Some time before they met, Sir Arthur could recognise the old blue-gowned beggar, Edie Ochiltree. It is said that even the brute creation lay aside their animosities and antipathies when pressed by an instant and common danger. The beach under Halket-head, rapidly diminishing in extent by the encroachments of a spring-tide and a north-west wind, was in like manner a neutral field, where even a justice of peace and a strolling mendicant might meet upon ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... you, they amount to about seven millions. We may reckon two of them for the pensions paid to former officials of the pontifical government who were unwilling to take service under Italy; but I must add that this source of expense is diminishing every year as people die off and their pensions become extinguished. Then, broadly speaking, we may put down one million for the Italian sees, another for the Secretariate and the Nunciatures, and another for the Vatican. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... The usual method of strengthening this region is to subpose brackets, suitably proportioned, to increase the available compressive area to a safe figure, as well as the leverage of the steel, at the same time diminishing the intensity of compression. Brackets, however, are frequently objectionable, and are therefore very generally omitted by careless or ignorant designers, no especial compensation being made for ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... the passion for the equine race was first awakened within me—a passion which, up to the present time, has been rather on the increase than diminishing. It is no blind passion; the horse being a noble and generous creature, intended by the All-Wise to be the helper and friend of man, to whom he stands next in the order of creation. On many occasions of my life I have been much indebted to the horse, and have found in him a friend and ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to meet with some judicious experimental treatise, in which the doctrine, with the Scriptures on which it is grounded, is set forth more at large; as likewise the rules by which it may be applied to the purposes of support and comfort, without danger of causing presumption and without diminishing the ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... are continnually diminishing on the face of this continent. Some have already passed entirely out of existence and are forgotten, who once inhabited this part of the country; such as the Mawsh-ko-desh, Urons, Ossaw-gees—who ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... one of the boomerangs to examine. It was a curved piece of wood about two feet two inches from tip to tip, rather more than two inches wide in the middle, and diminishing towards the tips. ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... possess the houses and slaves of the Church in a faithful manner and without diminishing the right of the Church, as the primitive authorities direct, and also the vessels of their ministry as intrusted to them. That is, they should not presume to sell nor alienate by any contracts those things from which the poor ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... do the excuses, which have been hitherto made by the receivers, force a relation of such circumstances, as makes their conduct totally inexcusable, and, instead of diminishing at all, ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... of labour to supplement the ordinary working days at times when work was pressing, as in hay time and harvest. At the bottom of the social ladder in Domesday came the slaves, some 25,000 in number, who in the main had no legal rights, a class which had apparently already diminished and was diminishing in numbers, so that for the cultivation of the demesne the lord was coming to rely more on the labour of his tenants, and consequently the labour services of the villeins were being augmented.[35] The agricultural labourer as we understand him, a landless ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... their surrender would be complete, so that the Cheyennes and Arapahoes could then be pursued, I agreed to the proposition, and the column moved on. All went well that day, but the next it was noticed that the warriors were diminishing, and an investigation showed that a number of them had gone off on various pretexts—the main one being to help along the women and children with the villages. With this I suspected that they were playing me ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... the trail by the river. Butterballs and scoters paddled up at his approach. Bits of rotten ice occasionally swirled down the diminishing stream. The sunshine was clear and bright, but silvery rather than golden, as though a little of the winter's snow,—a last ethereal incarnation,—had lingered in its substance. Around every bend Thorpe looked ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... said, "they were giants. When air and water failed above, they came down here by some means and built this city. You see what enormous chests they must have had. That would be Nature's last struggle to enable them to breathe the diminishing atmosphere. These, of course, were the last descendants of the fittest to breathe it; this was their temple, I suppose, and here they came to die—I wonder how many thousand years ago—perishing of heat, and cold, ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... Dynasty. The paper-currency is spoken of by Odoric (1320-30), by Pegolotti (1330-40), and by Ibn Batuta (1348), as still the chief, if not sole, currency of the Empire. According to the Chinese authorities, the credit of these issues was constantly diminishing, as it is easy to suppose. But it is odd that all the Western Travellers speak as if the notes were as good as gold. Pegolotti, writing for mercantile men, and from the information (as we may suppose) of mercantile men, says explicitly ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... far in excess of 50,000 in number, have been adjudicated with such promptness as to justify in the fullest measure the soundness of the State plan. The balance in the fund December 15, 1914, was $2,418,414.07. The number of accidents is diminishing and the cost to the employer is decreasing; so that both lower rates and larger compensation seem assured. As one who passed through the stormy period that led to the passage of this law, I urge upon you the extreme importance of the highest ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... nation, are supposed to be, at least, more conversant with arithmetic than with any branch of school study, though we do know that 8 > 5, we do not see that 5 3 8, and so we try to cancel the offending -3 by diminishing the 8. But would not the other process be quite as rational? Physical life is only a simple balance of forces, the expenditure and nourishment corresponding exactly to demand and supply in the Science of Political Economy.[2] They tend continually ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... inflowing tidal waters had left them and they had the swift current of the river to breast, while the tropic heat grew more oppressive day by day. It was hard work for the gentlemen rovers in that tropical climate, where the dense forest growth cut off every breath of air and their diminishing bread forced them to be put on short allowance. They began to complain bitterly, and Raleigh had to use all his powers of persuasion to induce ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... affluence of greedy and interested hearts, you will soon see revealed and diminishing; probably your eyes, which are so alert, have already remarked this diminution. The monarch no longer loves you; coolness and inconstancy are maladies of the human heart. In the midst of the most splendid health, our King ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... with an overwhelming force to accomplish its appointed end: the impediments which long hid it are now become testimonies of its power; the very ignorance, and meanness, and error, which still in part adhere to it, increase our sympathy without diminishing our admiration; it seems the triumph, hardly contested, and not wholly carried, but still the triumph, of Mind over Fate, of human ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... the ridge, just below Watson's pasture. Hence he kept due south over the second height which divided the two creeks. It was daylight when he reached the second hogback, and the smoke of the fire was diminishing, but he thought it best to ride on to renew his warning against the use of fire till the autumn rains set in, and he had in mind also a plan to secure from Mrs. Kitsong a specimen of her handwriting and to pick up whatever he could in the way of gossip concerning the feeling ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... of the river, as has been feared. On the contrary, he thinks confining the river within a narrow channel will give it additional velocity, ant serve to scrape out the bottom; while opening artificial outlets, by diminishing the current, will cause the rapid deposition of sediment, and thus produce evil to be guarded against.—A project has been broached for completing the line of railroads from Boston to Halifax, and then to have the Atlantic steamers run between ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... can ride fearlessly! ... Then swiftly, easily, he advances, with a long, powerful breast-stroke,—keeping his bearded head well up to watch for drift,—seeming to slide with a swing from swell to swell,—ascending, sinking,—alternately presenting breast or shoulder to the wave; always diminishing more and more to the eyes of Mateo and Miguel,—till he becomes a moving speck, occasionally hard to follow through the confusion of heaping waters ... You are not afraid of the sharks, Feliu!—no: they are afraid of you; right and left they slunk away from your ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... are pleasurable or painful. But while I cannot acquiesce in much of the hostile criticism this fiction produced at its first appearance, I readily allow that as a mere question of art the story might have been improved in itself, and rendered more acceptable to the reader, by diminishing the gloom of the catastrophe. In this edition I have endeavoured to do so; and the victim whose fate in the former cast of the work most revolted the reader, as a violation of the trite but amiable law of Poetical Justice, is saved from the hands of the Children ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... long, laborious road, dry, empty, and white. It was quite open to the heath on each side, and bisected that vast dark surface like the parting-line on a head of black hair, diminishing and bending away ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... divisions with such facility as to conceal every appearance of difficulty; and so soft and touching was the natural tone of her voice, that she rendered pathetic whatever she sang, in which she had leisure to unfold its whole volume. The art of conducting, sustaining, increasing, and diminishing her tones by minute degrees, acquired for her among professors the title of complete mistress of her art. In a canta-bile air, though the notes she added were few, she never lost a favorable opportunity of enriching the cantilena with all the refinements ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... to me, That, undividable, incorporate, Am better than thy dear self's better part. Ah, do not tear away thyself from me; For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall A drop of water in the breaking gulf, And take unmingled thence that drop again, Without addition or diminishing, As take from me thyself, and not me too. How dearly would it touch thee to the quick, Should'st thou but hear I were licentious, And that this body, consecrate to thee, By ruffian lust should be contaminate! Wouldst thou not spit at me and spurn at me, And hurl the name ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... could overhear him, and now, when he stopped, he stood with his head turned as if listening to be sure that no one was in the hallway. No sounds came, however, except those of the dog, who whined softly in his dreams, and the complaint of the dry wind, which, instead of diminishing with night, had perhaps increased its intensity, and the rattle of the long French windows through which I could see the gnarled old wistaria vine clinging desperately to the iron balcony, its leaves tossing about ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... John had passed his seventh birthday, the small amount of tobacco that was kept in the cellar was not sufficient to fill the demand of the three boys without too rapidly diminishing the uncle's supply, and the ...
— How John Became a Man • Isabel C. Byrum
... of her wedding? Poor child! If that had been all, her indifference would have given you back your place months ago. Jealousy alone is capable of that fierce and insatiable hatred which cannot be disarmed by tears or submission,—that hatred which time increases, instead of diminishing. Between Sarah and you, Miss ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... his pony, screened by bushes and rocks, he observed that the light from the burning buildings to the south-east was fast diminishing. The fire had been rapid, and before long total darkness would rest on the stream and plain again. It would therefore be safe for him to approach the edge of the creek, provided none of the ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... Gyee, but no salt rock occurs. This mineral is said to be found three days' march from Kioukseik on the Nam Theen. The revenue said to accrue from the Serpentine mines, is probably highly exaggerated; and the supply of the stone is said to be diminishing yearly. Casually found on the Nam Toroon, a Sterculia arborea, florib-masculis clavato, infundibul. coccineis, pubescentibus: a Sophora, floribus albidis pallidissima ceruleo tinctis, of which the flowers alone were seen; Prenanthis flosentis citrinis, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... Christian Emperor has the worship of his subjects and of a large part of the Christian world outside of his domains; but he is a matter of indifference to all China. A king, class A, has an extensive worship; a king, class B, has a less extensive worship; class C, class D, class E get a steadily diminishing share of worship; class L (Sultan of Zanzibar), class P (Sultan of Sulu), and class W (half-king of Samoa), get no worship at all outside their own little ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... about him was diminishing, entered the little hall that contained the picture of Las Meninas. There was Tekli in front of the famous canvas that occupies the whole back of the room, seated before his easel, with his white hat pushed back to leave free his throbbing brow that ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... reticence, and made her action bold. She started from her seat. If the little breach, quarrel, or whatever it might be called, of yesterday, was to be healed up it must be done by her on the instant. She crossed into the orchard, and clambered through the gap after Giles, just as he was diminishing to a faun-like figure under the green canopy and over the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... to Rangoon, an independent province, but on the whole the current of opposition was diminishing. Lord Wellesley and Mr. Pitt had prevailed upon Government not to permit the College at Fort William to be broken up, though it was reduced and remodelled. Mr. Carey was a gainer by the change, for he was promoted to a professorship, with an increase of ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... above the hall also creaked at intervals. Two young girls, respectively about fourteen and fifteen, were craning necks out of nightdresses over the balusters in a shadowy angle of the staircase. On the floor above them three other little girls of gradually diminishing ages slept, unconscious of the issues being decided between their big brother and their eldest sister on the one side, and their father and mother on the other, in the ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... CO., Chemists, 289. Strand. have, by an improved mode of Iodizing, succeeded in producing a Collodion equal, they may say superior, in sensitiveness and density of Negative, to any other hitherto published; without diminishing the keeping properties and appreciation of half tint for which their manufacture has ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... appeared not to wish to cultivate them. It may be added that many of the women—the numbers are diminishing rapidly—were field-workers who had never been brought up to much domesticity. Far beyond the valley they had to go to earn money at hop-tying, haymaking, harvesting, potato-picking, swede-trimming, ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... month of August; the snow was diminishing and melting away among the Alps; and the king, with the main body of the army, joined at Embrun the Constable de Bourbon, who commanded the advance-guard. But the two passes of Mount Cenis and Mount Ginevra were strongly guarded by the Swiss, and others were sought for a little more to the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... had been quietly endured long enough. With the warning whistle of the approaching engine, Billy, lowering his head, darted furiously up the track, intending to butt the offending thunderer into Kingdom Come. When, a few seconds later, the amazed spectators were gazing after the diminishing train, Hen Waters, addressing the spot where the redoubtable goat had last been seen, drawled out: "Billy, I admire your ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... apply themselves to increasing the size of horses, or diminishing in sheep the size of the head. It is impossible to say precisely to what point they will arrive in this. No one can say that he has seen the largest horse or the smallest sheep's head that will ever appear in ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... saw a herd of nimba, or pallah; I had the good fortune to shoot one, which was a welcome addition to our fast diminishing store of dried meats, prepared in our camp on the Gombe. By the quantity of bois de vaches, we judged buffaloes were plentiful here, as well as elephant and rhinoceros. The feathered species were well represented by ibis, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... was the end to be desired, the dispersion of the negroes over a wider area among additional Territories, eventually to become States, and in climates unfavorable to slave-labor, instead of hindering, would have promoted this object by diminishing the difficulties in ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... Mistress Kate, with her beautiful face, and the pretty clothes which she took care to provide at once for herself, spending lavishly out of the diminishing sum her husband had sent her, and thinking not of the morrow, nor the day when the board bills would be due, became well known. The musty little parlor of the ancient relative was daily filled with visitors, and every evening ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Lithuania in 2006; 1997 boundary delimitation treaty with Ukraine remains unratified over unresolved financial claims, preventing demarcation and diminishing border security ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... withdraw with the whole body of their countrymen to the eminences which overhung his camp, from which they had a safe retreat along a chain of hills to the Romans. Hasdrubal, perceiving that the strength of the enemy was increasing by such large accessions, while his own was diminishing, and that events would continue to flow in the same course they had taken, unless by a bold effort he effected some alteration, resolved to come to an engagement as soon as possible. Scipio was still more eager for a battle, as well from hope which the success attending his operations ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... the value of it increasing or diminishing?—I do not see any thing to make land decrease, though of course the purchase of the good-will will bear a proportion to the rent that the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... should know each other only as animals and enemies. He continued to take off his gloves, while round him fragments of fog that had come in with him hung in the warm air like his familiar spirits, and then bent over the lamp. She watched his face grow yellow in the diminishing glare, and moaned, knowing herself weak with motherhood. Then in the blackness his weight threshed down on her. Even his form was a deceit, for his vast bulk was not obesity but iron-hard strength. All consciousness soon left her, except only pain, and she wandered in ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... these!" observed Quicksilver, as he swallowed one after another, without apparently diminishing his cluster. "Pray, my good host, whence did ...
— The Miraculous Pitcher - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... people. He accordingly made preparations for his coronation. The event was celebrated with great pomp, in the city of Chartres, on the 27th of February, 1594. The Leaguers were now quite disheartened. Every day their ranks were diminishing. The Duke of Mayenne, apprehensive that his own partisans might surrender Paris to the king, and that thus he might be taken prisoner, on the 6th of March, with his wife and children, left the city, under the pretense of being called away ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... the unfortunate Catocala had been safely bottled and they stood examining it in the library, Scott's rapidly diminishing conceit found utterance: ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... temperate climates tends to reach its maximum at the beginning of the hot season, usually in June. Thus, in Belgium, the minimum is in February; the maximum in June, thence gradually diminishing (Lentz, Bulletin Societe Medecine Mentale Belgique, March, 1901). In France, Lacassagne has summated the data extending over more than 40 years, and finds that for all crimes June is the maximum month, the minimum being reached in November. He also gives the figures for each class of crime separately, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... waiting. Then "Lord Jim," with about seventeen pages already written at odd times, put in his claim which was irresistible. Thus every stroke of the pen was taking me further away from the abandoned "Rescue," not without some compunction on my part but with a gradually diminishing resistance; till at last I let myself go as if recognizing a superior influence against which it was useless ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... thoughts upon, hoping to find Ganem, though they ought not to have fancied that he was in a city where the caliph resided; but they hoped, because they wished it; their affection for him increasing instead of diminishing, with their misfortunes. Their conversation was generally about him, and they inquired for him of all they met. But let us leave Jalib al Koolloob and her mother, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... and lost three-quarters of the fortune left to me by my father, and the remaining fourth was rapidly diminishing under the ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... among your good resolutions for the New Year the decision not to allow your readers to participate in your special information as to which horse will come in first. Tell them all you like about yesterday's sport, but dangle no more "security tips" before their diminishing purses. If they must bet—which of course they must, as betting is now the principal national industry—let them at least have the fun ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 29, 1920 • Various
... against me {and I will make you smart for it."} She then led me, unresisting, back into the priestess's room, pushed me down upon the bed, snatched a cane that hung upon the door, and gave me another thrashing: I remained silent and, had the cane not splintered at the first stroke, thereby diminishing the force of the blow, she might easily have broken my arms or my head. I groaned dismally, and especially when she manipulated my member and, shedding a flood of tears, I covered my head with my right arm and huddled ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Arabian writers are here in agreement with Eutychius of Alexandria, and declare that the malady was of the most aggravated character, carrying off one half, or at any rate one third, of the inhabitants of the provinces which were affected, and diminishing the population of Persia by several hundreds of thousands. Scourges of this kind are of no rare occurrence in the East; and the return of a mixed multitude to Persia, under circumstances involving privation, from the cities of Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, was well calculated to engender such ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... Bank finds this process beginning, and sees that its business is much diminishing, it lowers the rate, so as to secure a reasonable portion of the business to itself, and to keep a fair part of its deposits employed. At Dutch auctions an upset or maximum price used to be fixed by the seller, and he came down in his bidding till ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... foreigners,—so that a large retail trade had grown up under the patronage of the wholesale trade. The retail trade of the settlements was evidently doomed. Some of its branches had disappeared; the rest were visibly diminishing. ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... brave fellows of his troop, was afraid of diminishing it too much by pursuing this plan to get information of the residence of their plunderer. He found by their example that their heads were not so good as their hands on such occasions; and therefore resolved to take upon himself the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... employed in circulating the Scriptures amongst the lower classes. I might have turned the services of this individual to far greater account had the quantity of books at my disposal been greater; but they were now diminishing rapidly, and as I had no hopes of a fresh supply, I was almost tempted to be niggard of the few which remained. This agent was a Greek bricklayer, by name Johannes Chrysostom, who had been introduced to me by Dionysius. He was a native of the Morea, but had been upwards of ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... be made when nobody but some poor shepherd of the neighborhood is about. In former times the eruptions were much more frequent than they are now, occurring at least every six hours, and often at periods of only three or four. Gradually they have been diminishing in force and frequency, and it is not improbable they will cease altogether before the lapse of another century. According to the measurements given by various travelers, among whom may be mentioned Dr. Henderson, Sir George Mackenzie, Forbes, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... still frequent these waters. The rapacity of the blacks is a rapidly diminishing factor in their extermination, and the rushing to and fro of steamers, which it was thought would scare away those which remain, is becoming too familiar to be fearsome. Even in the narrow limits of Hinchinbrook Channel, through which the passing of steamers is of everyday occurrence, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... were still unfulfilled. The thought, that year after year had passed away, and my resolutions to run away had failed and faded—that I was still a slave, and a slave, too, with chances for gaining my freedom diminished and still diminishing—was not a matter to be slept over easily; nor did I easily sleep ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... and soul. So much abstraction, imagination. As for God, it is impossible to know in what way He is, if He is at all. Formerly, He used to cause the wind, the thunderstorms, revolutions. At present, He is diminishing. Besides, I don't ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... social progress. But these lower classes or elements in human society are constantly decreasing, especially in America, where the tendency to individual improvement is so marked. Again, Malthus's theory, so far as it depends upon the economic law of diminishing returns in agriculture, has also certain elements of truth in it, and in so far as it merely asserts that the struggle for existence in human society is, in the last analysis, a struggle for food. Finally, Malthus meant his theory chiefly as a ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... bring themselves to refrain from their attitude of dislike, and are always rejoicing in being suspicious of every action of the Imperial Government. They contribute in this fashion appreciably to render weak the new tone of diminishing misunderstanding which has arisen between the two countries. If I fear that under these circumstances it will be a long time before mutual understanding has grown up to the point at which it stood more than a century ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... Uchermann the ratio is 690 or 6.9 per cent, including marriages between second cousins and nearer.[17] Dr. Peer says that 4 per cent of the marriages in Saxony are consanguineous.[18] The ratio seems to be increasing in France but diminishing in Alsace and Italy, as ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... fondness she had imbibed from her father for empiricism and alchemy; she made elixirs, tinctures, balsams, pretended to secrets, and prepared magestry; while quacks and pretenders, profiting by her weakness, destroyed her property among furnaces, drugs and minerals, diminishing those charms and accomplishments which might have been the delight of the most elegant circles. But though these interested wretches took advantage of her ill-applied education to obscure her natural good sense, her excellent ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... begged her for a loan of two thousand roubles for a very short period. Grushenka left that letter, too, unanswered. A whole series of letters had followed—one every day—all as pompous and rhetorical, but the loan asked for, gradually diminishing, dropped to a hundred roubles, then to twenty-five, to ten, and finally Grushenka received a letter in which both the Poles begged her for only one rouble and included a receipt ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of a divinity. But while the Shilluk hold their kings in high, indeed religious reverence and take every precaution against their accidental death, nevertheless they cherish "the conviction that the king must not be allowed to become ill or senile, lest with his diminishing vigour the cattle should sicken and fail to bear their increase, the crops should rot in the fields, and man, stricken with disease, should die in ever-increasing numbers." To prevent these calamities it used to be the regular custom with the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... grizzly, then she suddenly cried out, "Oh! I thought that shot hit him! It must have been that first shot from the rifle that sent him back from the cliff. Then, the bear tracked him and had the fight back here in the forest. That is when we heard the sounds diminishing. ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... would pass us, sometimes a fishing-smack; but it was a lonely journey. The air was soft and sweet—not like that of spring, but like that of a world which lives in the promise of a coming spring and can wait. There were no sounds but one sweet and familiar—the whisper, swelling and diminishing but never dying, of foam at ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... understanding: she educated herself, that she might be able to fulfil the important duty of educating a child. Hers was not the foolish fondness of a foolish aunt; she loved her nephew, and she wished to educate him, so that her affection might increase, instead of diminishing, as he grew up. By associating early pleasure with reading, little Charles soon became fond of it: he was never forced to read books which he did not understand; his aunt used, when he was very young, to read aloud ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... out a roll-call, and by unanimous consent it was agreed to arrange the class as it then stood, or rather squatted, with the Herculean Ben at the top, and gradually diminishing in size till it reached the vanishing point with Cacta, who was ten and the least terrifying ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... to enlarge mentally our momentary experiences by ADDING to them the consequences conceived; but unfortunately, that function is not only too often forgotten by philosophers in their reasonings, but is often converted into its exact opposite, and made a means of diminishing the original experience by DENYING (implicitly or explicitly) all its features save the one specially abstracted to ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... Hebrews, was informed of this, he went down to the city Gilgal, and made proclamation over all the country, that they should try to regain their liberty; and called them to the war against the Philistines, diminishing their forces, and despising them as not very considerable, and as not so great but they might hazard a battle with them. But when the people about Saul observed how numerous the Philistines were, they were under a great consternation; and some of them hid themselves in caves and in dens under ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Bird sings with equal animation whether it be May or August, the vertical sun of the dog days having no diminishing effect upon his enthusiasm. It is well known that in certain lights his plumage appears of a rich sky blue, varying to a tint of vivid verdigris green, so that the bird, flitting from one place to another, appears to undergo an ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... indissoluble Ties of mutual Affection, that no Difference or Jarring shall ever happen between 'em. She shall never hear any Thing from him, but my Life; nor he from her, but my Soul: Nay: and even old Age itself, shall be so far from diminishing that, that it shall ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... Honorius, we find that one vital point could only be defended by withdrawing troops from another. The difficulty of increasing the numbers was twofold. First, the army was mercenary, and taxation was already strained to the point of diminishing returns. Secondly, it was difficult to raise recruits among the provincials. The old principle of universal service had been abandoned by Valentinian I (364-375); and although compulsory levies were still made from certain classes, the Government had thought fit to prohibit the enlistment of ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... Below the level of the oars, balks of timber were propped out from their sides at the water-line, and it was hoped that these barricades would break the full force of an enemy's "beak." But the invention had the drawback of diminishing the speed of the ship, and making quick turning more difficult, and thus it increased the very danger it ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... swiftness of their prey; they count on their own resistance in order to tire the game; some of them also manage their pursuit in the most intelligent way, so as to preserve their own strength while the tracked animal's strength goes on diminishing until exhaustion and fatigue place him at ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... roar across the rapidly diminishing distance between the two boats, for the sloop was running with ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... subsided—indeed, a kind of fool-hardiness succeeded. To be sure, in some instances the panic still held possession of individuals to an exaggerated extent. But the number of patients in the hospital was rapidly diminishing, and, for money, those were to be found who could supply Ruth's place. But to her it was owing that the overwrought fear of the town was subdued; it was she who had gone voluntarily, and, with no thought of greed ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... sanctifies. Thus it is not engaged in lust, where satisfaction ends the chapter; and it is engaged in love, where no satisfaction can blunt the edge of the desire, and where age, sickness, or alienation may deface what was desirable without diminishing the sentiment. This something, which is the man, is a permanence which abides through the vicissitudes of passion, now overwhelmed and now triumphant, now unconscious of itself in the immediate distress of appetite or pain, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Things that were moving around in my mind, though I didn't know quite what to call them. For one thing, it has made me—realize," her eyes darkened, "that my time for really being—a woman—not in the copybook sense—is diminishing. Getting short. Oh, you and Mr. Billett will have to reconcile your knowledge of Sargent's and my situation with whatever moral ideas you may happen to have on fathers-in-law and friends' fathers for some time yet—I'm ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... that some infuriated person is trying to thrash Bentley. Nobody has ever succeeded, though almost everybody has tried. [He seats himself comfortably close to the writing table, and sets to work to collect the fragments of the punchbowl in the wastepaper basket whilst Johnny, with diminishing difficulty, collects himself]. Bentley is a problem which I confess I have never been able to solve. He was born to be a great success at the age of fifty. Most Englishmen of his class seem to be born to be great successes at the age of twenty-four ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... only has it been maintained, but it is still maintained. Congress says so; many of the newspapers (now happily diminishing in number) say so; a large portion of the public say so; indeed, the city theory is by far the more ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... paused and wiped his forehead; his hair clung to it, wet with perspiration; his eyes were fixed on the red embers of the fire, the brows not contracted, but raised next the temples; diminishing the grim aspect of his countenance, but imparting a peculiar look of trouble, and a painful appearance of mental tension towards one absorbing subject. He only half addressed me, and I maintained silence. I didn't like to hear him talk! After ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... thousand millions of molecules. Each of these must receive in the space of a millimetre about ten thousand shocks, and be ten thousand times thrust out of its course. The free path of a molecule is then very small, but it can be singularly augmented by diminishing the number of them. Tait and Dewar have calculated that, in a good modern vacuum, the length of the free path of the remaining molecules not taken away by the air-pump easily reaches a ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... the Jeffersonian Democracy on Washington, his principles, his life, and his habits, exercised a potent influence in diminishing the general respect for his abilities felt by the preceding generation; and Washington came to be regarded as a worthy, honest, well-meaning gentleman, but with no capacity for military and only mediocre ability in civil affairs. ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... the first, or almost the first, ceremony in reference to the infant in Japan is, or used to be, the shaving of its head thirty days after birth, after which it was taken to the temple to make its first offering, a pecuniary one, to the gods. This shaving of babies is no doubt diminishing, at any rate in the large towns. Indeed, everything in regard to the dressing of and dealing with the hair in Japan is, if I may use the term, in a state ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... extinction of the Persian Empire by Alexander of Macedon restrained from outrage? Was not the pretext for this latter system of spoliation derived immediately from the former? Had revenge in this instance any other effect than to increase, instead of diminishing, the mass of malice and evil already existing in the world? The emptiness and folly of retaliation are apparent from every example which can be brought forward." Shelley writes much further on retaliation, which he denounces as "futile superstition." Simple violence ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney |
