"Leanness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not a small woman, her height being five feet five and a half inches, she weighed only 4 st. 7 lbs., and I could easily make my thumb and forefinger meet round the thickest part of the calf of her leg. The curvature of the spine said to exist was a deceptive appearance, produced by her excessive leanness, and the consequent unnatural prominence of the spinous processes of the vertebrae. I could detect no organic disease of any kind. The appetite was entirely wanting, and she consumed hardly any food beyond a little milk, a few mouthfuls of bread, and the like. From the first the ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... follow the course that wise grace and gracious wisdom hath prescribed; we will not open our mouth wide, that he might fill us; nor go to him with our narrowed or closed mouths, that grace might make way for grace, and widen the mouth for receiving of more grace; but lie by in our leanness and weakness. And, alas! we love too well to be so. O but grace be ill wared on us who carry so unworthily with it as we do; yet it is well with the gracious soul that he is under grace's tutory and care; for grace will care for him when he careth not much for it, nor yet seeth well ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... Cavetown to Boonsboro', where he bivouacked for the night. Stuart, it was ascertained, marched till about midnight to the small town of Leitersburgh, where he rested his worn and wearied command. His condition was really pitiable. A large number of his men were mounted on shoeless horses, whose leanness showed that they had made many a long march through and from Virginia. Or, as was the case with a large proportion of them, they had fat horses, which were stolen from the fields and stalls of the invaded States, but, being entirely unused to such hard and ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... on with the infuriating interview. It ended as it began, except that Rowley was in tears, and that I had acquired one fact. The man was drawn for me as being of any height you like to mention, and of any degree of corpulence or leanness; clean-shaved or not, as the case might be; the colour of his hair Rowley 'could not take it upon himself to put a name on'; that of his eyes he thought to have been blue—nay, it was the one point on which he attained to a kind ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with original vigour of constitution, yet betrayed itself in the veins on the hands and temples, the occasional quiver of the upper lip! His was the frame above all others the most alive to pleasure—deep-chested, compact, sinewy, but thin to leanness—delicate in its texture and extremities, almost to effeminacy. The indifference of the posture, the very habit of the dress—not slovenly, indeed, but easy, loose, careless—seemed to speak of the man's manner of thought and life—his ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that the Scripture saith, the whole law is fulfilled in love: and if so, then where love is wanting, it needs must follow the whole law is broken. It is where love grows cold that sin abounds; and therefore the want of unity and peace is the cause of that leanness and barrenness that is among us; it is true in spirituals as well as temporals, that peace ...
— An Exhortation to Peace and Unity • Attributed (incorrectly) to John Bunyan
... make out a pointed shape, like a mounted picture, silhouetted against the curtains, which slightly blacken the window. It is as though the quilt were lifted from underneath by a stick, for my Aunt Josephine is leanness itself. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... not worth talking about. Mr. Wendover asked her if she liked English society and if it were superior to American; also if the tone were very high in London. She thought his questions 'academic'—the term she used to see applied in the Times to certain speeches in Parliament. Bending his long leanness over her (she had never seen a man whose material presence was so insubstantial, so unoppressive) and walking almost sidewise, to give her a proper attention, he struck her as innocent, as incapable of guessing ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... legs a frilled armour, ingeniously fashioned to represent the ribbed leanness of the insect's shank, encased his hands and feet in covers to a like purpose, and pressing upon him a wooden club indicated that the time had come for him to prove his merit by venturing alone into the midst ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... the steaming marrow gazed at his approaching host. Bushy whiskers and yellowish gray hair, stained by camp smoke, concealed most of the face, but failed wholly to hide the gaunt, almost cadaverous, cheeks. It was a healthy leanness, Smoke decided, as he noted the wide flare of the nostrils and the breadth and depth of chest that gave spaciousness to the guaranty ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... American women prided themselves on their fragility. To be healthy, strong or plump was thought to be the height of vulgarity, and refinement was held to be inseparable from leanness and consumption. These views still obtain—so it is said—in Boston, and especially in Bostonian literary circles; but elsewhere the American woman is growing plump and healthy, and is actually proud of it. While wise men are heartily glad of this change in female sentiment and tissue, it ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... good morning. Renwick nodded curtly. He had planned another nap and hardly relished sitting awake and staring at the sepulchral visitor. Where last night's weariness had sealed his eyes to the ever-present sense of danger, morning brought counsel of caution and alertness. The leanness of the huge intruder was of the kind that suggested endurance rather than malnutrition, a person who for all his pacific and rather gloomy exterior, could be counted on ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs |
