"Shortness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the case of isolated poles, in practise it does not generally apply on account of the large diameter and relative shortness ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... arms and gazed on Gomez Arias with seeming indifference.—Don Lope felt a moment's hesitation: there was something in this mysterious transaction that imparted misgiving to his mind; but the shortness of the time at his disposal, and the imminency of the danger, quickly silenced his rising doubts. Roque, who perceived the inward conflict sustained by his master, attempted, by a gentle remonstrance, to persuade him to ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... Though he was to act as yamstchik he had to leave the putting in of the horses to larger specimens of the human species, but he took care that all was done properly. Putting one of his big boots a little in advance, and drawing himself up to his full shortness, he watched the operation attentively, as if the smallness of his stature had nothing to do with his inactivity. When all was ready, he climbed up to his seat, and at a signal from the station-keeper, who watched with paternal pride all the movements of ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... two Palaeozoic genera, as we have seen, seed-like organs are known to have been developed, resembling true seeds in the presence of an integument and of a single functional embryo-sac, as well as in some other points. We will call these organs "seeds" for the sake of shortness. In one genus (Lepidocarpon) the seeds were borne on a cone indistinguishable from that of the ordinary cryptogamic Lepidodendreae, the typical Lycopods of the period, while the seed itself retained much of the detailed structure of the sporangium of that family. In the second genus, Miadesmia, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... new-found friend?" he asked me, with a shortness which may have been a matter of breath. At all events, it was habitual with ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... Scots traveller named for the time being the Baron Hay once had the privilege of sharing a glass coach with your uncle between Paris and Dunkerque; 'tis a story that will keep. Meanwhile, as I say, M. Montaiglon will pardon the shortness of our notice; in these wilds one's dancing shoes are presumed to be ever airing at the fire. You must consider these doors as open as the woods so long as your are in this neighbourhood. I have some things I should like to show you ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... not), and again when the rescuers reach the ground by the ladder. They made no use at all of the ladders, which were too short, and Willie, says the ballad, lay "in the LOWER prison." They came in and went out by a door; but the trumpets are not apocryphal. They, and the shortness of the ladders, are mentioned in a MS. quoted by Scott, and in Birrell's contemporary Diary, i. p. 57. In the MS. Buccleuch causes the trumpets to be sounded from below, by a detachment "in the plain field," securing the retreat. His motive is to encourage his ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... nature of a mutiny marred the voyage, Flinders' journal shows that Bligh's harshness occasioned discontent. There was a shortness of water on the run from the Pacific to the West Indies, and as the breadfruit plants had to be watered, and their safe carriage was the main object of the voyage, the men had to suffer. Flinders and others ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... the ridge, and the measurement began. As Blake required only a rough approximation, they soon crossed the ridge and chained down through the trees to the edge of Deep Canyon. Ashton was astonished at the shortness of the distance. The canyon at this point ran towards the mesa escarpment as if it had originally intended to drive through into Dry Fork Gulch, but twisted sharp about and curved back across the plateau. Even ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... brushing, and hold it to the light, so that no particle of dust may escape your eye. The coat is then folded exactly in half lengthwise, sleeve to sleeve, the lining on the outside. With evening coats it is sometimes necessary to fold the sleeves in half, owing to the shortness of the waist. In packing a trunk the same method is used, only the sleeves are stuffed with tissue paper to ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... a public which is content twice a week to read, not exciting events or entertaining personalities, but sober essays on the most ancient and apparently threadbare of topics. Here are Johnson's subjects for the ten Ramblers which appeared between November 20 and December 22, 1750: the shortness of life, the value of good-humour, the folly of heirs who live on their expectations, peevishness, the impossibility of knowing mankind till one has experienced misfortune, the self-deceptions of conscience, the moral responsibilities of men of genius, the power ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... complexion, a languid eye, a loathing stomach, and an uncertain appetite, which, if not immediately satisfied, is irremediably lost—Heartburning, bilious vomitings, belchings, pains in the pit of the stomach, and shortness of breath—Dizziness, inveterate pains in the temples and other parts of the head, a tingling noise in the ear, a throbbing of the brain, especially of the temporal arteries—Symptoms of asthma, tickling coughs, visible inflations, and unusual scents affecting ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... the just application of machinery, even at an increased expense, arises where the shortness of time in which the article is produced, has an important influence on its value. In the publication of our daily newspapers, it frequently happens that the debates in the Houses of Parliament ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... increase in duration will usually produce an increase in the respectability of the candidates offering themselves for election; an opinion in which I am fully borne out by many of the wisest heads who assisted in framing the government of the United States, and who deplored excessively the shortness of the period for which the senators were elected.[AP] I cannot believe, either, that the removing the power of nomination entirely from the Crown will prove beneficial to the colony. Had the experiment been commenced ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... that the chisel may dispute the pre-eminence with the pencil, a truth in the fine arts which cannot on this side of the Alps be felt or understood. At home I had taken some lessons of Italian on the spot I read, with a learned native, the classics of the Tuscan idiom: but the shortness of my time, and the use of the French language, prevented my acquiring any facility of speaking; and I was a silent spectator in the conversations of our envoy, Sir Horace Mann, whose most serious business was that of entertaining the ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... and other islands of the West and East Indies, are great creatures five or six feet long, but they are not difficult to capture, for when once they have been turned over on their backs, the shell is so heavy that they cannot, owing to the shortness of their legs, turn themselves back again, but lie helpless ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... the bulgy roundness of his person and the shortness of his legs in any way detracted from his personal importance, these trifling defects were, he was well aware, more than atoned for by the peculiar dignity of his countenance. If his legs were short, his face was not; if there ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... of this remarkable people would not be complete without some reference to their religion; but owing to their reticence on sacred subjects, and the shortness of our visit, I was unable to learn much about it. They believe, however, in a Supreme Being, whom they only name by epithets such as "The Giver" or "The Divine Artist." They also believe in the immortality of the soul. One of their proverbs, "Life ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... despatches of the 4th and 18th of September last, and the 13th of October. It gives me much uneasiness to find by them, that your health is not yet confirmed, particularly as the extreme shortness of your letters, compared with the importance of the matter, gives me reason to fear, that it has suffered more than you ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... kitchen. The work was done both earlier and better than usual. During the study hour, the voice of prayer sounded very sweetly in every room. When the girls walked in the yard, it was very quiet, and so when they came in. Our noon prayer meeting was very pleasant; Miss Rice said a few words on the shortness of time. While Hanee prayed, some wept. When Miss Rice dismissed us, no one moved; all were bowed on their desks, weeping. She then gave opportunity for prayer, and while I prayed, all were in tears. The girls have kept all the rules well ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... comparative extent to which the voice is prolonged, the division of vowels and syllables into long and short has been established: the o in note being long, the o in not being short. And the longness or shortness of a vowel or syllable is ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... 1880, Mr. Rust's attention was attracted by a pair of mantis, whether Mantis religiosa or not, he was not sure, but from the length of the body and the shortness of the wings he was inclined to think them of some other species. The female had her arms tightly clasped around the head of the male, while his left arm was around her neck. Mr. Rust watched intently to see whether the embrace was one ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... roomful of women preoccupied with their spring bonnets all she thought she knew about Greek art. The ladies assembled to hear her had given me to understand that she was "doing it for the baby," and this fact, together with the shortness of her upper lip and the bewildering co-operation of her dimple, disposed me to listen leniently to her dissertation. Happily, at that time Greek art was still, if I may use the phrase, easily handled: it was as simple as walking down a museum- gallery lined with pleasant familiar ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... by the influence of the particular climate in which they are grown. It is, therefore, useless to attempt to maintain these characters wholly unchanged in other climates. Hardiness, earliness, certainty of heading, protection of the head by leaves, and shortness of stem, can all be increased by selection, but, as they are all likewise influenced by climate, the selection is more effective in some climates than in others. The varieties of the south of Europe are as a whole characterized by a long period of growth, tall stems, great vigor and hardiness, and ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... towards the north-east; the town is exceedingly picturesque, and many of the houses are very ancient and built in the Moorish fashion. I wished much to examine the relics of Moorish sway on the upper part of the mountain, but time pressed, and the shortness of our stay in this place did not permit me ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... are: Threnos (in The Phoenix and the Turtle), Herbert's Trinity Sunday, Quarles' Shortness of Life, Browning's A Toccata of Galuppi's, Tennyson's The Two Voices, Swinburne's After a Reading, and Clear the Way; and (with a ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... hits on a railroad. Every master has found his materials collected, and his power lay in his sympathy with his people and in his love of the materials he wrought in. What an economy of power! and what a compensation for the shortness of life! All is done to his hand. The world has brought him thus far on his way. The human race has gone out before him, sunk the hills, filled the hollows, and bridged the rivers. Men, nations, poets, artisans, women, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... interviewers, faces that would have been oddly humanoid were it not for the elongated snouts and pointed, sharp-toothed jaws. The average Tepoktan was slightly under Kinton's height of five-feet-ten, with a long, supple trunk. Under the robes their scholars affected, the shortness of their two bowed legs was not obvious; but the sight of the short, thick arms carried high before their chests still left Kinton with a feeling ...
— Exile • Horace Brown Fyfe
... him Rogerick Rutledge for shortness. My Grandpa REAL name Jim. First time I big enough to realect (recollect) him he have on no pants but something built kinder like overall and have a apron. Apron button up here where my overall buckle ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... 2 by 2 inch stuff, halved at the corners. Cut out the top and bottom of the two sides; lay them on the floor so as to form a perfect rectangle, and nail them together. The strut is then prepared, care being taken to get a good fit, as any shortness of strut will sooner or later mean sagging of the door. Cut the angles as squarely as possible, to ensure the strut being of the same length ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... having waked to life, lay on in bed. She heard the summons, was strong to answer it; but was held back as by a high surrounding wall. She was like a tied bird, unfolding wings with the heart to soar, and continually brought down by the shortness of her tether. ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... we can, Mister David, to make up for the shortness of time we've got to do it in," observed Pat, as he rolled himself up in ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... responsibility. The latter idea is conveyed by the word 'judgment,' which throughout the Old Testament stands for the irreconcilable antagonism between good and evil, and the certain overthrow of evil: the recognition of this makes action responsible. With this limitation, the author urges that the very shortness of life and youth is so much incentive to make joyful what days ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... Now perhaps the time is come to revive the withering hopes of those, who, guided by more profound contemplations, have fathomed all the fallacies of the new observations and recognized their impossibility! I cannot resolve what to say in a chance so strange, so new, so unexpected. The shortness of time, the unexampled occurrence, the weakness of my intellect, the terror of being mistaken, have greatly ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... people of the Scandinavian and Iberian peninsulas, whom he finds marked "by a certain instability and fickleness of character," owing to the fact that in Norway and Sweden agricultural labor experiences long interruptions, due to the severity of the winter and the shortness of the days; in Spain and Portugal owing to the heat and drought of summer.[1440] The extreme continental climate of northern of Russia with its violent contrast of the seasons, its severe and protracted winters, enables Leroy-Beaulieu to make ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... notice of one or two Instances of the Shortness and Clearness of his Narrations; as that which Tully mentions. Funus interim procedit sequimur, ad Sepulchrum venimus, in ignem posita est, Fletur. Another may be that in Phormio. Persuasum est homini, factum est, ventum ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... upper lip frequently seen among the lower classes of the Irish is a modified quadrumanous character. Many people, especially those of the Sclavic races, have more or less embryonic noses. A retreating chin is a marked monkey character. Shortness of stature is mostly due to shortness of the femur, or thigh; the inequalities of people sitting are much less than those of people standing. A short femur is embryonic; so is a very large head. The ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... of the amendment that they did not take the trouble to go to the polls to vote for it; illegal changes in the numbering and position of the amendment on the ballots of the various counties; the absence from the State of about 200,000 soldiers; unfavorable weather conditions; the shortness of the time allowed for the campaign, and, chief of all, the organized opposition of the foreign-born and negro voters. The Texas suffragists won a clear-cut victory January 28 when the State Supreme Court upheld the decisions ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... throat and slender white arms. Her hands were small and white and her fingernails were highly polished. Sheer silk stockings and neat, expensive shoes. A hint of cheapness about her; perhaps it was the unnatural thinness of the delicately arched eyebrows, John thought; or perhaps the shortness of her skirt; but ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... gone—solemn thought! As we glance at the record of its events, and contemplate its changes, we can but feel a realizing sense of the shortness of time, and the necessity of improving the present to the best possible advantage. One after another has dropped from our little circle, till we are left but few in number; but enough to claim the precious promise of the blessed Saviour, that he will be with us if we meet in his name. And, my ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... it varies in brightness is very great, for it changes from the second to the ninth magnitude. For the other leading type of variable star, Algol, of which mention has already been made, is the best instance. The shortness of the period in which the changes of brightness in such stars go their round, is the chief characteristic of this latter class. The period of Algol is a little under three days. This star when at its brightest is of about the second magnitude, and when least bright is reduced ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... was only waiting the return of the expedition from motives of humanity. The further care of Lieutenant Grey and his comrades was at once undertaken by Captain Wickham, by whom it was determined, owing to the shortness of provisions on board the Beagle, to proceed to Timor on the return of the boats, in the hope of being able to revictual there, leaving some conspicuous record of his recent visit, with hidden letters declaratory of ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... increased in these few weeks (though it is silly to talk about it. Don't mention it!), and I feel very tired and indolent. No wonder I seem to "go softly." But I am unusually happy down in the depths, only the surface troubled. I hope that it is not fancy only that makes the shortness and uncertainty of this life a ground of comfort and joy. Perhaps it is, indeed I think it is, very much a mere cowardly ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... considering the whole nature of excess and defect, and then we shall have a rational ground on which we may praise or blame too much length or too much shortness in discussions ...
— Statesman • Plato
... spectacle of a crowd of English ladies, each of whom is employed in eyeing the lady next her and asking who she is, and comical as the point of view appears to any one who reflects on the shortness of human life and the littleness of human character, the effect of these feminine weaknesses is one which no one can be sure of escaping. We are afraid that half of the Englishmen who are snobs are made so by Englishwomen. It is impossible ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... whose name was William Berry rose and stretched himself and was introduced to the newcomer. He was a short, genial man, of some thirty years, with blond, curly hair and mustache. On account of his shortness and high color he was often referred to as the Billberry shortcake. His fat cheeks had a color as definite as that of the blossoms on his shirt, now rather soiled. His prominent nose shared their glow of ruddy opulence. His gray eyes wore a look of apology. He walked rather ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... proceeded from the narrowness and shortness of the way, through which the procession has lately passed. As it is narrow, it admits of very few spectators; as it is short, it is soon passed. The first part of the train reaches the Abbey, before the whole has left the palace; and the nobility of England, in their ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... vibrios of the same diameter, but of much smaller length, whirling round with great rapidity, and darting backwards and forwards; these were probably identical with the longer ones, and possessed greater freedom of movement, no doubt in consequence of their shortness. Not one of these vibrios could be found throughout ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... the muscles of enfeebled people being less, and the intervals between those contractions being less also, accounts for the quick pulse in fevers with debility, and in dying animals. The shortness of the intervals between one contraction and another in weak constitutions, is probably owing to the general deficiency of the quantity of the spirit of animation, and that therefore there is a less quantity of it to be received at each interval of the activity of the fibres. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Mademoiselle Galley had reached my heart, but I dared not mention it, and the proposal could not reasonably come from her. On the way, we expressed our sorrow that the day was over, but far from complaining of the shortness of its duration, we were conscious of having prolonged ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... The shortness of his means, with a wife and the near prospect of a family to provide for, no doubt had a good deal to do with Bach's decision to resign his post at St. Blasius' at once. He had, in fact, already received the offer of a more important engagement. ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... him think that?" demanded the consul, with some shortness. Young Mr. Stedman looked nervously at the consul and at Albert, and said that he guessed some one ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... The shortness, as well as the dramatic weakness, of the fifth act is conspicuous even in proportion to the modest limits of the whole. It runs to less than one hundred and fifty lines, and merely relates how Aminta's fall was broken, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... parallel the Carthaginian story. But I do not know whether it was deliberate or unconscious repetition that made Flaubert give us something like a duplicate of the suffete Hanno in Vitellius. There is no lack of the old power, and the shortness of the story is at least partly an advantage. But perhaps the Devil's Advocate, borrowing from, but reversing, Hugo on Baudelaire, might say, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... sense seeing life, as he personally needed to see it, not in its passion and mystery, but in its lighter moods of humor and sentiment. Paris frankly seemed to him at this time the most profitable place in the world. Two months after his arrival, he wrote airily, "You will excuse the shortness and hastiness of this letter, for which I can only plead as an excuse that I am a young man and in Paris." He had momentary fancies as to a possible direction for his talents. A sudden intimacy at Rome with Washington Allston made him think for a time of turning painter. ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... of the shortness of the lobe of the ear, which is supposed to be a characteristic of a Cagot, seems to be only worthy of the laughter which accompanied its first announcement to me; yet it is an old tradition, and has long ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... contracted by the action of the muscle of accommodation in its effort to give a clearer picture to the brain. This has a tendency to elongate the eyeball, and as a permanent result we have near sightedness. Where the eyeball has an unnatural shortness this same action manifests itself by headaches, chorea, nausea, dyspepsia, and ultimately a prematurely breaking down of health. The first symptom of failing sight is a hyper-secretion of tears, burning of the eyelids, loss ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... befallen Hugh's letters to herself. For some time past, before the drawing of lots, she had noticed that Hugh's letters had become less frequent and shorter in length. She understood the reason now. Half of them had been intercepted. How that fact could account for the shortness of the remainder may not be immediately apparent to the prosaic mind, but it was obvious to Lady Newhaven. That Hugh had begun to weary of her could not force the narrow entrance to her mind. Such a possibility had never been even considered ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... following Monday afternoon Cicely Bourne, to whom Walden had so successfully telegraphed Maryllia's commands, arrived. She was rather an odd-looking young person. Her long thin legs were much too long for the shortness of her black cashmere frock, which was made 'en demoiselle,' after the fashion adhered to in French convents, where girls are compelled to look as ugly as possible, in order that they may eschew the sin of personal vanity,—her hair, of a rich raven black, was plaited in a stiff thick braid resembling ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... into little knots, and the worthy philosopher found it necessary to take his seat. He felt himself in a state of mind which he could not understand; but the delicious flavor of the water still clung to him, and, owing to his shortness of sight, and the doctor's wicked wit,—if wit it could be called,—he continued drinking spirits and water until he became perfectly—or, in the ordinary phrase—blind drunk, and was obliged to be carried ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... you what is most material, and you being wise and judicious, I am satisfied there is nothing of it but what you understand, and therefore will not be more prolix. Thus much may serve to satisfy your curiosity, it being as much as the shortness of time and my business would permit me to say. So, I remain most ready to satisfy and serve his Highness to the utmost, in all the commands he ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... tolerably even valleys, though of necessity the general direction is upward, and for most of the distance through a country that admits of cultivation, though the meagreness of the soil, and the shortness of the seasons, render but an indifferent return to the toil of the husbandman. In this respect it differs from most of the other Alpine passes; but if it wants the variety, wildness, and sublimity of the Splugen. ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... closed by rolling a heavy rock before it. She put her strength in pressure against the stone, without avail. It was too heavy for her muscles. She realized that by this simple means she was shut within her prison. It was almost with relief that she began to creep backward—to be astounded by the shortness of the way. It was scarcely a minute before she was in the chamber again. To guard against surprise in the darkness, she pushed the couch of boughs a little way along the wall, so that it projected across the mouth of the ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... problem which had arisen through the shortness of the shears. By means of the watch-tackle (I had made a new one), I heaved the butt of the foremast across the rail and then lowered it to the deck. Next, by means of the shears, I hoisted the main boom on board. Its ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... to pass another twelve years in the woods. Whether it is due to forgetfulness (on their part) induced by desire of dominion, or whether it is a mistake of ours, it behoveth Bhishma to calculate the shortness or excess (of the promised period). When an object of desire may or may not be attained, a doubt necessarily attaches to one of the alternatives, and what is decided in one way often ends differently. [55] Even moralists are puzzled in judging of their own acts. [56] As regards ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... his shortness, his bushy little grey whiskers and his pepper and salt suit with its flapping pockets, Mr. Simcox was very like one of those funny little jack-in-the-boxes they used to sell. He said to her, regarding her with very apparent pleasure and esteem, "Well, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... succeeds is on the Shortness of Life, addressed to Paulinus. In this excellent treatise the author endeavours to show, that the complaint of the shortness of life is not founded in truth: that it is men who make life short, either by passing it in indolence, or otherwise improperly. He inveighs against indolence, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... changed my clothes, which the serjeant's civility enabled me to do, by furnishing me with a complete suit of his own, we were invited to sit down to dinner, which I have no doubt was the best he could procure; and, considering the shortness of time he had to provide it, was managed with some ingenuity. As there was not time to prepare soup and bouilli, we had in their stead some cold beef, sliced, with hot water poured over it. We had next a large bird roasted, of a species with which I was unacquainted, but ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... The advantage gained for the Federal cause by the possession of Savannah is yet to be shown. To Sherman and his army 'the change of base' is indisputably a change for the better. Assuming that his position at Atlanta was as desperate as shortness of supplies and an interrupted line of retreat could make it, the command of a point near the sea-coast and free communication with the fleet is obviously an improvement. At the least the army secures full means of subsistence, and a point from which further operations ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... Newton Towne was taken ill and died. Edward Green was terrified, though he considered himself, in spite of his shortness of breath, a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... accompanied by Madame D'Aubrey, Marion and Louisa returned home in order to make the best preparations, which the shortness of the time would allow, to quit their country ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... famous Falls of Gairsoppa, in Mysore, can easily be reached. Just now the waters of the river Kauri are rather low; else, I think, we should have made an effort to visit the falls (which have a drop of 1,000 feet in one place) notwithstanding the shortness of the time and the difficulties of the journey, which can only be performed in rough ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... correctly descriptive of the Mafulu earring, is apparently something like it), to their use of pigs' tails as ear ornaments, to their plaiting of the hair and the decoration of the plaited hair with teeth and shells, to their small charm bags and to the shortness of their bows. Also to the construction of their houses, with the roof carried down to the ground, with a fireplace about 2 feet wide extending down the centre of the building from one end to the other, and having an inclined floor on each side, and ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... assuredly held by many not ignoble persons, and it is a sign of the last depravity in the Church itself, when it assumes that such a belief is inconsistent with either purity of character, or energy of hand. The shortness of life is not, to any rational person, a conclusive reason for wasting the space of it which may be granted him; nor does the anticipation of death to-morrow suggest, to any one but a drunkard, the expediency of drunkenness to-day. To teach that there is no device ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... day the king took Huntingdon; the foot which were left in the town, as I observed by their horse, had posted themselves at the foot of the bridge, and fortified the pass, with such things as the haste and shortness of the time would allow; and in this posture they seemed resolute to defend themselves. I confess, had they in time planted a good force here, they might have put a full stop to our little army; for the river is large and deep, ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... truth in some of these theories. We should eat less meat and more grain. We should not bolt the best food elements out of wheat; we should not bleach rice and take out its nutritious element. Certainly, our lives are very unscientific. Most men live merely by accident. The shortness of life is not surprising to one who understands how irrationally most ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... of their vernal blossoms, a promise that the season of immortal fruit is near. It is a frailty, almost an instance of humanity, to aim at concealing that from others, of which ourselves are painfully conscious. The herculean Johnson keenly resented the least allusion to the shortness of his sight. So entirely is man a social animal, so dependent are all his feelings for their very existence upon communication and sympathy, that the "fee griefs," which none but ourselves are privy to, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... I shall do with this beautiful bunch of grapes," said Reka Lane as she sat on the bench near the arbor. Her real name was Rebecca; but they called her, for shortness, Reka. ...
— The Nursery, September 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 3 • Various
... went swiftly across the sands and up the slope. He watched her with an admiring eye; and well he might, for it was the very poetry of motion. Hazel in his hours of health had almost given up walking; he ran from point to point, without fatigue or shortness of breath. Helen, equally pressed for time, did not run; but she went almost as fast. By rising with the dawn, by three meals a day of animal food, by constant work, and heavenly air, she was in a condition women rarely attain to. She was trained. Ten miles was no more to her ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... add to your faults. Alas! if ever you deserve a punishment, its bitterness will all belong to me. Fortune befriended us when last we met; but don't you find time pass too quickly when we are together? I have always a thousand things to say to you; it is not, perhaps, the shortness of the time—it is, that the more I say to you the more I wish to say. In the same way, the more kisses I give you, the more I wish to give; all the feelings you inspire are in extremes. How you ought to love me if you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... of Heaven; but before he can be admitted among the blessed, another conductor must be provided, to whom the way to the Divine Presence shall be freely open. This, of course, can only be knowledge informed by faith, or, as we may say for shortness, theology, not in the sense of a formal science, but in one approaching more nearly to what Aristotle calls Theoria, or contemplation. From certain expressions in the earliest cantos of the poem, it is clear ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... girdles by red ribands, or among the more opulent and showy classes by brass, and even silver, chains, indubitable tokens of thrifty housewives and industrious spinsters. I cannot say much in vindication of the shortness of the petticoats; it doubtless was introduced for the purpose of giving the stockings a chance to be seen, which were generally of blue worsted, with magnificent red clocks; or perhaps to display a well-turned ankle, and a neat though serviceable ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... he began a pamphlet treating of the gods with the words: "Concerning the gods I can say nothing, neither that they exist nor that they do not exist, nor of what form they are; because there are many things which prevent one from knowing that, namely, both the uncertainty of the matter and the shortness of man's life." On this account, it is said, he was charged with impiety at Athens and was outlawed, and his works were publicly burned. The date of this trial is not known for certain; but it is reasonably supposed to have coincided with that of Diagoras, namely, in 415. At any rate it ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... revered sovereign. I ordered a banquet to be got ready for the following evening, under the trees before my house, and invited the whole town. The mysterious power of my purse, Bendel's exertions, and Rascal's ready invention made the shortness of the time seem ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... have to apply to me, not her. In consequence the cab was at the door before she was fully garmented in my plainest clothes and I arrayed in her beautiful ones, and regretfully she looked at me. I am taller and slenderer than Madeleine, but fashion was in my favor, and the absence of fit and shortness of skirt gave emphasis of adherence to its requirements. I looked the ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... grunted, with a shortness that bespoke his disapproval; whereupon he fell back and ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... already noted—came into view at the point where he was first observed. Instead of pausing as before, he continued to advance toward the plateau on which stood the Castle. His pace was an ordinary one, showing neither haste nor hesitation. It was a striking proof of the shortness of the tropical twilight that although the flickering figure steadily drew nearer, it as steadily grew more indistinct. When his head and shoulders rose over the edge of the plateau, it was almost impossible to see his countenance, though no doubt remained that he was an Atlamalcan ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... out by the Jew, and, as he was a man of action, he insisted on a tailor being instantly sent for. In ten minutes afterwards the well-known artist Paolo Muhajiar made his appearance, and, though he was somewhat astounded at the shortness of the time allowed him to rig the Greek stranger in a suit of mufti, a show of some broad gold pieces overcame all difficulties, and he promised to set every hand at his establishment on ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... give no tick at the Telegraft Orfis, Sir," observed Private Billings, who, as quondam "trained observer" of his troop, had noted the length of the telegram and the shortness ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... unworthy exercise of benevolence. We hold that the life of brutes perishes with their breath, and that they are never to be clothed again with consciousness. The inevitable shortness then of their existence should plead for them touchingly. The insects on the surface of the water, poor ephemeral things, who would needlessly abridge their dancing pleasure of to-day? Such feelings we should have towards the ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... length and shortness of speech may be used commendably in their time; as mariners sometimes sail with larger spread, and sometimes with narrower-gathered sails. But as some are large in speech out of abundance of matter, and upon due consideration; so the most multiply words, either from weakness or vanity. Wise men ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... since I talked with you shortly after the adjournment of the Congress. Tonight I continue that report, though, because of the shortness of time, I must defer a number of subjects to a ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... design clasping to his bosom" the magnanimous Captain Wickes, who subsequently "seemed very low," when a French privateer was in sight. Jeffrey was, it seems, a little afraid of these well-deserved exposures, which, from the necessity of abundant quotation, are an exception to the general shortness of Sydney's articles. Sydney's interest in certain subjects led him constantly to take up fresh books on them; and thus a series of series might be made out of his papers, with some advantage to the reader perhaps, if a new edition of ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... first formation were doubtless constituted by their imitative power. As Taine has said, at the first they arose in contact with the objects; they imitated them by the grimaces of mouth and nose which accompanied their sound, by the roughness, smoothness, length, or shortness of this sound, by the rattle or whistle of the throat, by the inflation ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... on shore, however, or on special occasions such as this, that women played the sailor. A naval commander, accounting to the Admiralty for his shortness of complement, attributes it mainly to sickness, partly to desertion, and incidentally to the discharge of one of the ship's company, "who was discovered to be a woman." [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 1503—Capt. ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... see clearly enough that letters or collocations of letters do by various degrees of strength or weakness, length or shortness, emphasis or pitch, become the natural expressions of the finer parts of human feeling or thought. And not only so, but letters themselves have a significance; as Plato observes that the letter rho accent is expressive of motion, the letters delta and tau of ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... indicating the relations which subsist between the two portions of the group, I shall, for the sake of shortness, speak only of the lost sheep and the prodigal, including under the first term also its twin parable of the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... drawers this year are made very short, and some have lace ruffles." Some fashion reporter has evidently been looking over our back fence at the clothes line. But they got awfully fooled. The shortness of those drawers was caused by the flannel shrinking and the "lace ruffles" the reporter noticed is where a calf chewed them when they were hanging out to dry last fall on Black Hawk Island, when a gun kicked us out of a boat. Some of these fashion reporters ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... they had wasted ten minutes of the public time, and that they escape as swift suppression in the House of Lords is much more creditable to the courtesy of that body than to its just appreciation of the shortness of human life. There is rarely a debate of importance in the House of Lords during which some one of the Chesterton family does not contribute his morsel of pompous imbecility, or unfold his budget of obsolete and exploded prejudices, or add his mite of curious misinformation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... apology is due here in some measure. The work which I quote as of Professor Chamberlin ("Geology," 1903) is really by two authors, Professors Chamberlin and Salisbury. I merely quote Professor Chamberlin for shortness, and because the particular ideas I refer to are expounded by him in separate papers. The work is the finest manual in modern geological literature. I have used it much, in conjunction with the latest editions of Geikie, Le Conte, and Lupparent, and such recent ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... man, we're all right so far as the entertainment is concerned. That don't bother me a little bit. But the Gotown Academy sits heavily on my mind, and all on account of minor considerations and the shortness of time in the way of lighting, tickets, seats for the audience and scenery. We can't act in the dark, the people who pay for reserved seats won't care for standing two or three hours, no matter how good our bill of fare is, and there ought to be something in ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... "Now mind, Elizabeth," he said, turning to me at the church door, "there is no coming out again in the middle. Having insisted on being brought, thou shalt now sit patiently till the end." "Oh, yes, oh, yes," I promised eagerly, and went in filled with holy fire. The shortness of my legs, hanging helplessly for two hours midway between the seat and the floor, was the weapon chosen by Satan for my destruction. In German churches you do not kneel, and seldom stand, but sit nearly the whole time, praying ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... this our transgression. We both forgot the command and remembered not to tell her sister." Replied the King, "It mattereth not! ask her to-day and bring me word tomorrow." But it so happened that on that day also they forgot the message yet the King was not annoyed at their shortness of memory, but taking from his pocket three little balls of gold, and tying them in a kerchief of sillk he handed them to Prince Bahman saying, "Put these balls in thy waist shawl, so shalt thou not forget to ask thy sister; and if perchance ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... manner, but with no pause long enough for Godfrey to make it a pretext for taking up the word again. He felt that his father meant to ward off any request for money on the ground of the misfortune with Wildfire, and that the emphasis he had thus been led to lay on his shortness of cash and his arrears was likely to produce an attitude of mind the utmost unfavourable for his own disclosure. But he must go on, now he ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... friend," continued Tomlinson; "bear up against your present afflictions. What, to a man who fortifies himself by reason and by reflection on the shortness of life, are the little calamities of the body? What is imprisonment or persecution or cold or hunger? By the by, you did not forget to put ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... admiral, in the Queen's name, conferring knighthood on Hawkins, Frobisher and several other of the captains who had taken a leading part in the fighting. It was decided not to engage the enemy again till the fleets had reached the Straits of Dover. Shortness of ammunition was the reason ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... a 'threadpaper'; and to this thinned form his massive forehead, with hollows at the temples, gave more dignity than ever. He was very well aware that he ought to see the doctor, but liberty was too sweet. He could not afford to pet his frequent shortness of breath and the pain in his side at the expense of liberty. Return to the vegetable existence he had led among the agricultural journals with the life-size mangold wurzels, before this new attraction came into his life—no! He exceeded his allowance ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... I, in amazement. "Q. M., you are beside yourself." (We always called the Quartermaster Q. M. for shortness.) "There was a pass sent to your wife, but nothing was ever said about ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the fort. A few white men were surprised without and killed, but, except for shortness of provisions and powder and ball, we are safe enough here. Tomorrow you will see how impregnable is the Rock from ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... Latin names are given. For instance, it would be vulgarly ridiculous to call a "cat" by its right name; and when one says "cat," a dogmatic naturalist is justified in thinking one means a lion or tiger, both these belonging to the category of "cats;" hence, a "cat" is denominated, for shortness, felis AEgyptiacus; an ass is turned into a horse, by being an equus; a woman into a man, for with him she is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... on the shortness of time! What's time to us children of eternity? But what shall we give to ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... of two children is really the whole of marriage. The superfluous pleasures of marriage are not only profligate, but involve an immense loss to the man, as I will now demonstrate. Compare then with this poverty of result, and shortness of duration, the daily and perpetual urgency of other needs of our existence. Nature reminds us every hour of our real needs; and, on the other hand, refuses absolutely to grant the excess which our imagination sometimes craves in love. It is, therefore, the last of our needs, and the only one which ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... things, and others, as a beginning, I began to add page to page, phase to phase; and, in a time the shortness of which astonished myself, I had pretty well covered the whole of the first ten years of our friendship. Maschka called rather less, and Schofield rather more frequently, than I could have wished; and my surmise that he, at least, was in love with her, quickly became a certainty. This was ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... devotees seems a clumsy stumbling by comparison. Some only join their hands; others clap them three times loudly and slowly; then they bow their heads, pray silently for a moment, and rise and depart. The shortness of the prayers impresses me as something novel and interesting. From time to time I hear the clink and rattle of brazen coin cast into the great wooden ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... sagacity had been a guide, and his zeal a stimulus and support, missed him; but it was only for a short time. How often has it been remarked, that few things are as capable of making us feel our insignificance, as the shortness of time in which we are forgotten. Active, prominent, influential as he had been, Spikeman was soon remembered only as yesterday is remembered. There were no loves twining around his memory, reaching ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... you, in order that you may receive the fruit of your tribulations, that you assume the armour of patience. And should it seem very hard to you to endure your many troubles, bear in memory three things, that you may endure more patiently. First, I want you to think of the shortness of your time, for on one day you are not certain of the morrow. We may truly say that we do not feel past trouble, nor that which is to come, but only the moment of time at which we are. Surely, then, we ought to endure patiently, since the ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... of such a man as I consider the late Mr. Barry to have been, have that weight of authority in them which staggers at first hearing, even a long preconceived opinion. When I read his pathetic admonition concerning the shortness of life, and how much better the little leisure of it were laid out upon "that species of art which is employed about the amiable and the admirable;" and Hogarth's "method," proscribed as a "dangerous or worthless pursuit," ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... fact that cereals remove comparatively little nitrogen from the soil, it is somewhat striking to find that they are chiefly benefited by the application of nitrogenous manures. This fact may be explained by the shortness of the period of their growth, and the fact that they assimilate their nitrogen in spring and early summer, and are thus unable to utilise to the full the nitrates which accumulate in the soil during later summer and autumn. ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... thrust inside the covers of the books; and all books without covers were jammed into all the covers without books that seemed likely to fit. Then all the pens and pencils were put into a pencil case, and if any happened to be too long, they were broken to the required shortness. This being satisfactorily done, Jack used next to turn his attention to the miscellaneous articles of food of which he found himself possessed. The sandwiches, if not more than a week old, he either ate or ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... needed to create England; Wykeham and Wycliffe both have a place in the roll of its "Makers." At all events, if Wykeham obtained his wealth by secular service, he spent it for the promoting of the welfare of the Church, as he conceived it. The purpose of his two colleges was to remedy the shortness of clergy in his day, and to assist the /militia clericalis/, which had been grievously reduced /pestilentiis, guerris et aliis mundi miseriis/ (an obvious reference to ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... which they call Nature,—that he wrote himself quite into his works, bodily, just as he was, every thought that came and went, and every expression that flew to his pen,—leaving out only a few for shortness. They are so thoroughly beguiled by the very quality they do not see, that they are like spectators who mistake the scene on the stage for reality; they cannot fancy that a man put it all there, and that it is by the artistic and poetic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... for knowledge and asks in vain. Is it not a shameful thing that happy men, lodged warm and clear in the Interpreter's house, should hear the groping in the dark without, know that their fellows are searching, in pain and with shortness of breath, for the key which let the fortunate in, and make no stir to aid those luckless ones? Give of your abundance, or your abundance will decay in your hands and turn to that ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... Serbia chose wrongly in refusing to bite the dust, then the guilt is still chargeable to Austria for forcing her little neighbour to take a choice in haste. Sir Edward Grey emphasized in his speech of July 27th the shortness of the time which all the Powers had had at their disposal to formulate a plan, by which the conflict could be restricted to ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... for shortness, Pat—was a very stupid little man; he reared pigs, and had he been sober, would have by this time saved a little property; but, no, Pat liked beer and strong drink: so that upon market-days he was far less sensible than his own jackass—which did ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... great solemnity by the congregation, and then the good old man offered a prayer; after which he addressed the slaves on the shortness of human life and the certainty of death, and more than once hinted at the hardness of their lot, assuring, however, his fellow-slaves, that if they were good and faithful, all would be right hereafter. His master, Col. Alexander, was deeply affected ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... old steel-clad men of the Manzecca had become what were called "Signorotti"—lords of a height or two, swooping down to raid passing convoys, waging petty wars against the neighboring castles, and at times, like bantams, too arrogant to bear in mind the shortness of their spurs, defying even Florence. In the end, as I recalled the matter, Florence had chastened the Manzecca, together with all the other lordlings of that region. The survivors had come to live in the city, where, through these hundreds of years, many changes of fortune had befallen ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... system is really contemporaneous with the first appearance of life, my theory must be abandoned, both inasmuch as it limits from shortness of time the total number of forms which can have existed on this world, and because the organisms, as fish, mollusca{315} and star-fish found in its lower beds, cannot be considered as the parent forms of all the successive species in these classes. But no ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... doing this before," said she, when she suggested it to her brother, "because I have tried to make the whole trip comparatively inexpensive, remembering the shortness of the dear doctor's purse. Now, of course, ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt |
