"Shrink back" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our worldly business or in our spiritual career, we start off on a very dark path. We must go. The flesh may shrink back, but there is a voice within, or a voice from above, saying, "You must go;" and we have to drink the gall, and we have to carry the cross, and we have to traverse the desert and we are pounded and flailed ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... unexpected and had come with such suddenness—it was rarely in these later days that the colonel was to be found here in the afternoon: he was either riding or receiving visitors—that Harry's first thought was to shrink back out of sight, or, if discovered, to make some excuse for his intrusion and retire. Then his mind changed and he stepped boldly in. This was what he had come for and this was ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of an angry snake, the flames seemed to shrink back at the touch of the elements to which they were opposed. The fan of fire, shooting from the windows, appeared to die ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... he swung it round his head, and made as though he would knock Oolalik down with it, causing that young Eskimo to shrink back in feigned alarm. ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... condones. But the heart of the people does not condone them: and if a great voice does not say this, we shall wonder and be sorry. In the mean while let the parents and guardians of the young, and let the young themselves, shrink back from civilization as a guide to their way and as a power for keeping them safe, in the ...
— Is The Young Man Absalom Safe? • David Wright
... motioned forwards by Aunt Barbara always made Kate shrink back into herself, and the presence of a little girl before elders likewise rendered her shy and bashful, so she came forth as if intensely disgusted, put out her hand as if she were going to poke, and muttered her favourite "—do" ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... number of friends whom she would not have chosen herself, and of whose doings and belongings she was in complete ignorance. However, if she gave offence she was unconscious of it, and it came very naturally to her to shrink back into the shadow of her household gods. Ian and the baby were almost sufficient in themselves to fill her life. There was just room on the outskirts of it for a few relations and old friends, and Aunt Beatrice still ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... Pope's malignant clan, He'll do whatever Prince or Hero can; Retrieve that martial Fame by Britons lost, And prove that Faith which graceless Christians boast. O! make his Cause, ye Powers above! your Care; Let Guilt shrink back, and Innocence appear. But, now, with State Affairs I must have done, And to the Business of my Lamps must run; When Sun and Moon from you do hide their Head, Your busy Streets with artful Lights are spread, And gives you Light with great indulgent Care, Makes the dark Night like the bright ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... of her tone, and if he did not shrink back, gave some involuntary gesture of reluctance. Pelagia ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... am no dire inquisitor, seeking to distort thy words to thine own peril. I am no bitter and morose ascetic. Beneath these robes still beats a human heart that can sympathise with human sorrows. Confide in me without fear. Dost thou not dread the fate they would force upon thee? Dost thou not shrink back? ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... restrained himself, people would have gone on blowing their noses and it would have passed off somehow. Perhaps he expected applause in response to his question, but there was no sound of applause; on the contrary, every one seemed to subside and shrink back in dismay. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... The huge, dim-white sails were filling: "The Curlew" gathered way, and stood out to sea. The chilling breeze, the motion, the ink-black waves, and their sharp cracking on the beach, were altogether a little disheartening at first, coming so suddenly from sleep. We felt not a little inclined to shrink back to our warm blankets; but, mastering this feeling, braced our courage, and drew breath for our long ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... bent forward there gazing at that horrible head Saxe did not know, but by degrees he began to shrink back slowly, getting farther and farther away, till he dared to turn and run with all his might to the tent door, and creep in, fully expecting that the monster was about to spring upon him till he was inside, when he fastened the canvas door with trembling fingers, and crept to ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... man who fired the fatal shot; and though it was shown that the night was dark and recognition next to impossible, this evidence was held conclusive to prove the crime, and nothing now remained but to condemn the culprit. The judge's words came slowly forth, making the stoutest there shrink back and let that arrow from the bow of death glance by and set its mark on him upon whose face the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... He would stand there a long time, covering his left eye with his hand as children do and peering with his right at the white wall of the corridor. But whenever a passer-by darkened his outlook, he would shrink back startled. If he had to go out to attend to his flowers, he opened the door slowly and silently and walked backward, fixing his eyes on Engelhardt's door, until he reached the steps. There he would turn quickly and hurry away, possessed by the ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... brush of an Alban or a Raphael to paint their bliss, or the pen of the divine Milton to describe the pleasures of love and innocence! Not so; let such hollow arts shrink back before the sacred truth of nature. In tenderness and pureness of heart let your imagination freely trace the raptures of these young lovers, who under the eyes of parents and tutor, abandon themselves to their blissful ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... the gaiety of my guests spoiled because of this old dotard? Take him to prison." The attendants rushed in and seized Monterone, while he turned again upon the dwarf and cursed him roundly. Not only did the dwarf shrink back, the whole company became affrighted, while the old man was silenced at last by the guards, and Rigoletto hurried, ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... gift or the courage to deal faithfully yet lovingly with an erring soul, but she did not shrink back even from this service to those she loved. I can bear witness to the wisdom, penetration, skill, and fidelity with which she probed a terribly wounded spirit, and then said with tender solemnity, "I think you need a great ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... scarce one moon since the revolted sea Cast you ashore, seducer and seduced; And yet e 'en now these folk flee from thy face, And horror follows wheresoe'er thou goest. The people shudder at the Colchian witch With fearful whispers of her magic dark. Where thou dost show thyself, there all shrink back And curse thee. May the same curse smite them all!— As for thy lord, the Colchian princess' spouse, Him, too, they hate, for his sake, and for thine. Did not his uncle drive him from his palace? Was he not banished from his fatherland What time that uncle perished, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... parrot angrily, and this caused the Pinkies to shrink back in alarm, for they had never seen ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... to his feet angrily, and cry, "If that's all ye're good fer, git! Git out, I tell ye!" And Sonny, heartsore and bewildered, would shrink back hopelessly to his kennel. When this, or something much like it, had happened several times, even Ann, for all her finer perceptions, began to feel that Sonny might be a bit nicer to the Kid, and, as a consequence, to stint her kindness. But to Sonny, sunk in his misery and ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... sort of talk, Adam Ward." Peter Martin was on his feet, and there was that in his usually stolid countenance which made the Mill owner shrink back. "I was a fool, as you say. But my mistake was that I trusted you. I believed in your pretended friendship for me. I thought you were as honest and honorable as you seemed to be. I didn't know that your religion was all such ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... not shrink back, although that strange, unknown, grey face was very close to her. "Yes. At first he wouldn't. He refused anything. But I would.... I wanted to be. I hate you. I've ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... poring upon musty authors, while the dispatchful fool shall rush blundy on, and have done the business, while the other is thinking of it. For the two greatest lets and impediments to the issue of any performance are modesty, which casts a mist before men's eyes; and fear, which makes them shrink back, and recede from any proposal: both these are banished and cashiered by Folly, and in their stead such a habit of fool-hardiness introduced, as mightily contributes to the success of all enterprizes. Farther, if you will have wisdom taken in the other sense, of being a right judgment of things, ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... in truth she was but an undersized damsel, with high shoulders, low spirits, chilled elbows, and a rasped surface of nose, who seemed to take occasional frosty peeps out of childhood into womanhood, and to shrink back again, overcome by her mother's head-dress and her father from head to foot—crushed by the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Yea, song! shrink back to my spirit's lone deep, Let others hear only thy moan — But I — I forever shall hear the grand sweep Of thy mighty ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... public punishment of an assassin who failed to strike me, only instigates ten others to try if they cannot hit me better. But the noiseless disappearance of a culprit fills their cowardly souls with horror and dismay, and the ten men shrink back from the intended deed, merely because they do not know in what manner their eleventh accomplice has expiated his crime. The disappearance of prisoners, the oubliettes, are just what is needed. You must quietly ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... mystery Of his arrival, and the time; the account, too, The Intendant gave (for I have not beheld her) Of his wife's dignified but foreign aspect; Besides the antipathy with which we met, As snakes and lions shrink back from each other By secret instinct that both must be foes Deadly, without being natural prey to either; 280 All—all—confirm it to my mind. However, We'll grapple, ne'ertheless. In a few hours The order comes from Frankfort, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... giant cannon been discharged somewhere in the vicinity of his home it could have caused but little more astonishment to Mr. Damon and Professor Bumper than did the simple announcement of the young inventor. The professor seemed to shrink back in his chair, collapsing like an automobile tire when the air is let out. As for Mr. Damon he ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... Fortunately for his art, Shakespeare lived in an age extremely susceptible of noble and tender impressions, but which had still enough of the firmness inherited from a vigorous olden time not to shrink back with dismay from every strong and violent picture. We have lived to see tragedies of which the catastrophe consists in the swoon of an enamoured princess. If Shakespeare falls occasionally into the opposite ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... allow himself to be cleansed by [Pg 271] Him. But no one will desire to be cleansed by Him, who does not put his whole trust in Him, who does not recognize Him as his King and Lord. To the contempt and horror with which the Jews shrink back from the Messiah in His humiliation, would thus be opposed the faithful, humble confidence, with which the heathens draw near to the glorified Messiah. But the fact that the real contrast to the [Hebrew: wmmv] is not [Hebrew: izh], but rather [Hebrew: iqpcv], ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... [All shrink back horrified. REZON retires into the temple; the crowd melts away, wailing; TSARPI is among the first to go, followed by her attendants, except RUAHMAH, who crouches, with her face covered, ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... so reasonable that Hubertine immediately handed her the cup she herself held. Whilst she cut two large slices of bread and buttered them, the child, still mistrustful, continued to shrink back; but her hunger was too great, and soon she ate and drank ravenously. That there need not be a restraint upon her, the husband and wife were silent, and were touched to tears on seeing her little hand tremble to such a degree ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... Ruby, drawing himself up with a look of defiance and a laugh of contempt, that caused the two men to shrink back in ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... The horrified sans-culottes shrink back in terror as the Gray Wolf seizes Maria by the hair and cuts her into twenty-nine pieces, ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... among the reporters caused Mildred to shrink back in sudden self-consciousness, her ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... thousands already mentioned, but the many more thousands of dear relatives mourning their loss;—not by death, for that were tolerable—but by an everlasting destruction from the presence of all purity or excellence. Would he not shrink back from the door which he was about to enter, ashamed and aghast, and resolve in the strength of his Creator, never more to indulge a thought of a crime ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... love does not shrink back into itself because in the confused pell-mell of human life the alien souls which destiny has chosen for its companions do not satisfy, in this detail or the other detail, the desire of its heart. The emotion of love is always centrifugal, always ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... natural philosophy, that we can ever hope to arrive at the knowledge of a general law. The crown of all creation is man; therefore while we investigate so acutely all other creatures, let us not shrink back from the strange and unknown depths of our own nature which magnetism has opened ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... city, then, and at its various forms of corruption, I am not willing to rest with the mere assertion, that all this is the fruit of personal sin and folly on the part of those who have yielded to temptation. It is the fruit of personal sin and folly. And we, perhaps, in our serene respectabilities, shrink back and wonder at it. It is strange—is it not?—that the young, the fair, the gifted, should yield themselves to that arch-deceit which has allured and ruined men for six thousand years? Is it not the same old guilt, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... and now comes swirling along in dark and angry mood, rising higher and higher in its banks, eating into them, and threatening to overtop them and carry death and destruction far and wide. Men no longer go down to meet it. They shrink back from it. They uneasily watch it till the fulness of its strength is spent and it has returned ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... his satchel from the buggy and, opening it, took out two deadly looking revolvers that made the children shrink back in alarm ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... brutish. It showed itself rather by wild outbursts of happiness. He used to make foolish remarks, and sing loudly for hours together as he drummed on the table, and sometimes he insisted on dancing with Louisa and the children. Jean-Christophe saw that his mother looked sad. She would shrink back and bend her face over her work; she avoided the drunkard's eyes, and used to try gently to quiet him when he said coarse things that made her blush. But Jean-Christophe did not understand, and he was in such need of gaiety that these noisy home-comings ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... a whizz and whistle, passing through my hat and sweeping it away all folded up. My soft hat fluttered far down the stream, before I had time to go after it, and with the help of both wind and water, was fifty yards gone in a moment. At this I had just enough mind left to shrink back very suddenly, and lurk very still and closely; for I knew what a narrow escape it had been, as I heard the bullet, hard set by the powder, sing mournfully down the chasm, like a drone banished out of the hive. And as I peered through my little cranny, I saw a wreath of ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... the room, and then stopped abruptly. Following his eyes, I saw that the cobra had also awakened from its trance, and was regarding us steadily and hissing slightly. The adept smiled as he saw us shrink back. ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... the mastiff trotted on home in disgust. Just then a powerful yellow cur sprang out of the darkness over the railroad track, and Satan sprang to meet him, and so nearly had the life scared out of him by the snarl and flashing fangs of the new-comer that he hardly had the strength to shrink back behind his new friend, ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... revised, lest they should provoke censures from the fastidious critics of the present time, who are prone to detect evil of which the authors, whose works they analyse, are quite unconscious. Innocence sometimes leads young writers to a freedom of expression from which experienced ones would shrink back in alarm; and the perusal of the old dramatists gives a knowledge of passions, and of sins, known only through their medium, but the skilful developement of which, subjects a female writer, and more particularly a youthful one, to ungenerous animadversion. It is to be hoped, that the friends ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... they ran down heedlessly, all unawares they came upon a sight which made them shrink back with astonishment. It was something antique and wrinkled that sat or stood, it was difficult to tell which, in the pool of crystal water. It was like a little old man with enormous white eyebrows, wearing a stupendous mask shaped like a beak. The thing turned its head and looked ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... smoke-filled compartment men lean forward, eagerly—anxiously. They instinctively shrink back as the breech plug slowly moves. Then, when it finally opens, revealing the brass head of the cartridge inside the firing chamber, a sigh ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... this island who doesn't fear me. That woman above yonder, curse her, shuddered away from me as I looked at her dying. But your hand is steady. You and old Ben Hornigold are the only ones who don't shrink back, hey, Carib? Is it love or hate?" he mused, as the man made no answer. "More," he cried, again lifting the glass which he had ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... O sons of Sparta! Ye are sons of men born free: Press the charge; 'tis where the shields lock, That your sires would have you be! Honour's cheaply sold for life, Press the charge, and join the strife: Let the coward cling to breath, Let the base shrink back from death, Press ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... if I could stoop to vengeance, what would I not exact from you as the price of this murdered man's blood. (They shrink back, appalled and disconcerted.) Was he not my son-in-law, my ancient friend, for 20 years the master of great Rome, for 30 years the compeller of victory? Did not I, as a Roman, share his glory? Was the Fate that forced us to fight for the mastery of the world, ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... him unmoved—he hanged the murderer Palatoff with his own hands. Yet in that operation someone saw him turn very pale and shrink back from his victim. Afterwards the reason was discovered. The condemned man had had the front of his rough shirt fastened with a safety-pin which had worked loose. The point had ripped a little gash in the inexperienced finger of the ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... tortoise, with dry corn within, and he came up rattling this, and dancing with all his might, and with such gesticulations that, though assured that he intended no injury, it was impossible not to shrink back as this savage ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... certain races. In Switzerland and Greenland the signs of the action of a glacier can be traced and recognized just as we trace the proofs of the action of water in a dry channel. Visit the front of a glacier in autumn after the summer heat has made it shrink back, you will see (1) rounded rocks, as if planed on the top, with (2) a mixed mass of stones and gravel like a rubbish-heap, scattered on (3) a mass of clay and sand, containing boulders. The same three tests are frequently found in countries where there have been no ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... Craig only a few steps past the place of worship, now a silent vault of impenetrable blackness when, turning a corner, the American felt her shrink back. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... Calm your eyes, and come to me. For long ago, in some palmed forest, I too felt claws curling Within my fingers . . . Moons wax and wane; My eyes, too, once narrowed and widened Why do you shrink back? Come to me: let me pat you— Come, vast-eyed one . . . Or I will spring upon you And with steel-hook fingers Tear you limb from limb. . ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... our nature is so material, and our very essence so engrossed and identified with earth, that it is only when the startling realities of their existence become manifest in those visible emblems of their nature—darkness and death—that we shrink back in horror, lest our very being should suffer contact ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... roved over and took in the splendid furs, the make of the gown, and the bead-work of the moccasins which peeped from beneath. And in view of all this, and of the fact that the face was unfamiliar, she felt an instinctive desire to shrink back. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... who lightly tosses around him the seeds of evil in his writings, or his enduring thoughts, or his chance words—could he see how, haply, they are to spring up in distant time and poison the air, and putrefy, and cause to sicken—would he not shrink back in horror? A bad principle, jestingly spoken—a falsehood, but of a word—may taint a whole nation! Let the man to whom the great Master has given the might of mind, beware how he uses that might. If for the furtherance of bad ends, what can be expected but that, as the hour ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... terrible and deathlike as it was—suiting well the countenance of the speaker, and seeming rather the voice of some bodiless wanderer of the Styx than living mortal, would have made Ione shrink back into the pitiless fury of the storm, but Glaucus, though not without some misgiving, drew her ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... drunkard is always the subject of suspicion and distrust, and is not supposed to be possessed of those finer feelings that find men as friends. Thus, instead of identifying myself with the joys and sorrows of others, and exchanging the delicious gifts of confidential sympathy, I was compelled to shrink back and listen to the horrid words, You are a drunkard—words the very mention or thought of which has ten thousand times carried despair to my heart, and made me gasp and pant for breath. Thus it was at the very opening of life, and thus it ever ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... "menstealers," which word may be translated "slavedealers." But you may say, we all despise slavedealers as much as any one can; they are never admitted into genteel or respectable society. And why not? Is it not because even you shrink back from the idea of associating with those who make their fortunes by trading in the bodies and souls of men, women, and children? whose daily work it is to break human hearts, by tearing wives from their husbands, and children from their parents? But why hold slavedealers as ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... from the sound appeared to shrink back for a second, but the next minute they rushed down in a body; there was a second report of the captain's gun, and I received, unbeknown to him, poor fellow—for he didn't intend it, I know—a slug right in my eye here; and for some time I was in such agony that I didn't know ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... Arctic shore. He too returns, after a long period, but he brings with him the fatal gift of his Northern bride—a hand of ice. He may be strong and brave still, as he was when he went away; but he is no longer the peerless and envied warrior. Men look upon him with a ghostly shudder, and women shrink back from his chilling presence. Not even Freja can thaw away all the ice that has gathered in his veins. He may chastise the robber Ruric from the hills, and sleep once more in the warm embrace of Isoldane; ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Charmian had read it she felt almost alarmed at the gravity of the task which she had chosen to confront. It had been easy to have energy for Claude in London. She feared it would be less easy to have energy for herself in Mustapha. But she resolved not to shrink back now. Rather vaguely she imagined that through theosophy lay the path to serenity and patience. Just now—indeed, for a long time to come, she needed, would need above all things, patience. In calm must be made the long preparations for that which some day would fill her life and Claude's ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... all the soldiers which were there, divers of them being inwardly terrified, did shrink back and make room for the assailant: all this did Gymnast very well remark and consider; and therefore, making as if he would have alighted from off his horse, as he was poising himself on the mounting side, he most nimbly (with his short sword by this thigh) shifting ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... being recruited by such a process, may acquire strength; so now I, since this argument seems generally too severe and forbidding to those by whom it has not been handled, and since the multitude shrink back from it, was desirous to set forth my chain of reasoning to thee, O Memmius, in sweetly-speaking Pierian verse, and, as it were, tinge it with the honey ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... christened it the boomerangelungen. It is the monarch, the Jumbo of all musical instruments. The cuspidor end of it protrudes into one of the proscenium-boxes. The fair occupants of the box are frightened, and timidly shrink back. ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... all the dangers lay, That Europe or the western world affords; Were it to combat Cerberus himself, Or scale the brazen walls of Pluto's court, When as there is so fair a prize propos'd; If I shrink back, or leave it unperform'd, Let the world canonise me for a coward: Appoint the time, and leave ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... carelessly. He was rather a good-looking man, he thought, with his closely-cropped gray hair and black moustache; but his scrutiny proceeded no further, for just then he caught sight of a familiar face and figure on the platform that made him shrink back into his corner, and wish that he, too, had a newspaper, behind ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... when he wandered through the forests and cane brakes of Kentucky, like a raging cat o' mountain in his hatred of the pale-faces. There were depths in the nature of the youth which were rarely sounded; but now and then he caught glimpses of the possibilities within himself which caused him to shrink back, as if from the presence of ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... No hesitation! It will prove A cordial, and your heart inspire! What! with the devil hand and glove, And yet shrink back afraid ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... was close to hers, but Barbara did not shrink back. She just shook her head; and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... contrivance opened directly upon the small triangular chamber where Mrs. Honeyball each day laid the meals for herself and husband, transacted her rent-collecting, and received occasional visitors during late afternoon, self-effacing ladies of mature age who seemed to shrink back into the panelling behind them and who assumed the anxious immobility of figures in high relief, if the phrase may be allowed to pass. At this early hour, however, no one is in sight save Mrs. Honeyball herself, a slight elderly person with ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... for the most part, shrink from their work—put it off as long as may be; and even when the paper is spread out and the pen all right, and the ink within easy reach, how they keep back from the final plunge! And after they have begun to write, how they dally with their subject; shrink back as long as possible from grappling with its difficulties; twist about and about, talking of many irrelevant matters, before they can summon up resolution to go at the real point they have got to write ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd |
