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Shun   /ʃən/   Listen
Shun

verb
(past & past part. shunned; pres. part. shunning)
1.
Avoid and stay away from deliberately; stay clear of.  Synonym: eschew.
2.
Expel from a community or group.  Synonyms: ban, banish, blackball, cast out, ostracise, ostracize.



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"Shun" Quotes from Famous Books



... masterpiece, which I hoped would annihilate all those enemies of mine by the force of genius and not the sword. [2] The sorcerer on his side went on urging: "Nay, prithee, Benvenuto, come with me and shun a great disaster which I see impending over you." However, I had made my mind up, come what would, to finish my medal, and we were now approaching the end of the month. I was so absorbed and enamoured by my work that I thought no more about Angelica or anything of that kind, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... if I were successful I would pay him back, and if I was not I would never cross the street to shun him when I came to Chicago, but would surely call on him ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston

... aw sed or did, Or what aw left undone: 'At made thi hook it, an' get wed, To one tha used to shun. ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley

... to be. Her father, by a hundred tacit signs, rejected her affection. He had shunned her presence from the first: and she had grown now to shun him. She told Arthur ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... not a peculiarity of great ones. Prejudices are like household vermin, and the human mind is like the traps we set for them. They get in with the greatest facility, but find it impossible to get out. Beware of entertaining them yourself, Lizzie. Shun everything like repining at what you call your position as a sewing-girl. Take care of your conscience, for it will be your crown. Labor for contented thoughts and aspirations, for they will bring you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... below it: but content yourself with telling these APOSTLES that you know they are not, serious; that you have a much better opinion of them than they would have you have; and that, you are very sure, they would not practice the doctrine they preach. But put your private mark upon them, and shun ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... be an abuse of his constancy. It would set him wrong with his brother, and, as dear Edward's affairs stand, we have no right to carry the supposed disgrace into a family that would believe it, though he does not. If I were ever so well, I should not think it right to marry. I shall not shun the sight of him; it is delightful to me, and a less painful cure to him than sending him away would be. It is in the nature of things that he should cool into a friendly kindly feeling, and I shall try to bear it. Or if he does marry, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... ambiguity of the report which awards two first prizes to the competing engines, is no less apparent than the desire to shun responsibility. ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... fellow," said the doctor, "is one ever alone in a wood? Countless little presences surround us. Bright eyes peep down from the branches; furry tails flick in and out of holes; things unseen move in the dead leaves at our feet. If you seek solitude, shun the woods." ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... to be done, Or warns me not to do, This teach me more than hell to shun, That more ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... ground; but when he would essay to fetch the final fling, the nimble savage, let his legs be ever so high in the air and wide apart, was always sure to bring the very foot down to the very place to stay his fall, though as quickly to jerk it up again, to shun the leveling sweep of those enormous black feet, so persistently making at his ankles. The combat had waged for many seconds without any decided advantage gained on either side, when, chancing to glance over Black Thunder's shoulder, Burl spied a new danger ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... taught you to prove, What a folly it is, Out of fear to shun bliss. To the joy that's forbidden we eagerly move; It inhances the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... from other nations, and in the inhabitants of a city which had been so often plundered and burnt by the Tartars. With these examples before their eyes, they could not await an impious and ferocious enemy but for the purpose of fighting him: the rest must necessarily shun his approach with horror, if they would save themselves in this life and in the next: obedience, honour, religion, fear, every thing in short enjoined them to flee, with all that ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... some good people whose zeal not being sufficiently tempered with knowledge, as soon as they desire to give themselves up to a devout life, fly from society and from intercourse with others as owls shun the company of birds that fly by day. Their morose and unsociable conduct causes a dislike to be taken to devotion instead of rendering it sweet and attractive to all. Our Blessed Father was altogether opposed to such moroseness, wishing His devout children to be ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... that one thing, the example of your betters: and I hope those children will shun it too. A father is to be treated with great veneration, but above all is our Heavenly Father and His law; and that law, what is it?—what has it been this eighteen hundred years and more? ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... scholar, translates it to shun derision; and, giving it this sense, quotes Stillingfleet to illustrate the thought which, for want of practical familiarity with the language, he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... would we shun the battleground! . . . The winds in our defence Shall seem to blow; to us the hills shall lend Their firmness and their calm, And in our stiffened sinews we shall blend The strength of pine and palm! Call up the clashing elements around And test the right and wrong! ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... cause tell me why thou dost not shun The here descending down into this centre, From the vast place ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri

... of these plans. If I fired the cannon it would bring a posse of curious, prying people to the island, and probably I should be taken away to St. Peter Port upon a coroner's quest. If I buried the man I should always shun that part of the island, and should have a constant memorial of my "night of horror" to depress me; while if I committed the body to the waves I should for ever have it on my conscience that I refused ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... such darkness lay conceal'd Within thy beams, O Sun! Or who could find, Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect, stood reveal'd, That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind? Why do we then shun death with anxious strife? If light can thus deceive—wherefore ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various

... All the Spanish and Italian tragedies I have yet seen are writ in rhyme. * * * Shakspeare (who, with some errors not to be avoided in that age, had undoubtedly a larger soul of poesy than ever any of our nation,) was the first who, to shun the pains of continual rhyming, invented that kind of writing which we call blank verse, but the French more properly prose mesuree; into which the English tongue so naturally glides, that in writing prose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... it is implied by what goes before, that you will read no work of Divinity just at present. Be counselled, on no account, to read any. Above all, shun the partial, ill-digested pamphlet,—and the one-sided review,—and the controversial letter,—and the Essay which seems to have been written in order to prove nothing. Be content, for the next three years, to study no book of Divinity but ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... waited in tense anxiety for the word to fire. Maj. Ohr was standing a few paces in the rear of the center of the regiment, watching the advance of the enemy. Finally, when they were in fair musket range, came the order, cool and deliberate, without a trace of excitement: "At-ten-shun, bat-tal-yun! Fire by file! Ready!—Commence firing!" and down the line crackled the musketry. Concurrently with us, the old 43rd Illinois on the right joined in the serenade. In the front file of the Confederate column was one of the usual fellows ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... have pledged their property and their lives to give you back to your people," said Orloff; "we have solemnly sworn it upon the altar of God, and for the attainment of this end no one of us will shun want or death, treason or revolt. Look at me, Natalie! I stand before you a traitor to this empress, to whom I have sworn faith and obedience; she has heaped favors upon me, and at one time I was even passionately devoted to her! But Count Paulo awoke me from that intoxication; he ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... water shun him and the fruits fly from him when he tried to seize them? The writer of the "Odyssey" gives us no hint that he was dying of thirst or hunger. The pores of his skin would absorb enough water to prevent the first, and we may ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... we shall fail. I will not count On aught but being faithful. . . . I will seek nothing but to shun base joy. The saints were cowards who stood by to see Christ crucified. They should have thrown themselves Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain. The grandest death, to die in vain, for love Greater than rules the courses of the world. Such ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown

... when they heard the word of command. I said, 'You've got to come along with me.' I didn't know how on earth I was going to take them if they wouldn't go. And they'd started dodging. So I tried it on again: 'Halt!' Regular parade stunt. And they halted again all right. Then I harangued them. I said, 'Shun, you blighters! I'm a special constable, and I've got a warrant ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair

... name of the Erinyes, or Furies, persecute and torment the criminal. Their breath is foul with the blood on which they feed; from their rheumy eyes a horrible humour drops; daughters of night and clad in black they fly without wings; god and man and the very beasts shun them; their place is with punishment and torture, mutilation, stoning and breaking of necks. And into their mouth the poet has put words which seem to breathe the very spirit of the ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... been something wrong therein, and yet he could not exactly define the boundary of the wrong. Viviette's sad and amazing sequel to that chapter had still a fearful, catastrophic aspect in his eyes; but instead of musing over it and its bearings he shunned the subject, as we shun by night the shady scene of a disaster, and keep to the ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... if you "do me down," I have my lyre, And I shall trumpet (at the normal Press wage) Such things about that house, and with such fire, That all men ever after shall conspire To shun the said demesne ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various

... Lark," replied Agnella, "all this goodness cannot prevent my poor, unhappy son from being disgusting and like a wild beast. His very playmates will shun him ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur

... gone through. And now to be cast down! I, too, am in this cell, far more weak a man than you, and Giant Despair dealt his blows at me as well as you, and keeps me from food and light. Let us both (if but to shun the shame) bear up as ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin

... caught cold. The result was the "going in" of the eruption and a beautiful cough. I succeeded in my efforts and the next day he had the erysipelas going along nicely, but no cough. I write this so you will take proper care of yourself and shun conjurers and ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... made an answering fire, or set some of their bunting above the superstructure, so that our gaze should be arrested upon the instant we chanced to glance towards the hulk. But so far from this, there appeared even a purpose to shun our attention; for that light which we had viewed in the past night was more in the way of an accident, than of the nature of ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson

... any other, nor any one a handle of private persecution by his open anathema. Moreover, he should abstain from that particularity in secular themes which so easily wanders from all sight of spiritual law amid regions of uncertainty and speculative conjecture. He should shun explorations less fit for prophets than for experts. He should lay his finger on no details in which questions of right and wrong are not plainly involved. He must be public-spirited; he cannot be more concerned for his country and his race, that righteousness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... shun or be overtaken by Fate, we return to Glendower. It is needless to say that Crauford visited him no more; and, indeed, shortly afterwards Glendower again changed his home. But every day and every hour brought new strength to the disease which was creeping ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... suffer'd for his sake; Some tender spirit, humble, faithful, true, Such, my dear master! must be sought for you. Six months had pass'd, and not a lady seen, With just this love, 'twixt fifty and fifteen; All seem'd his doctrine or his pride to shun, All would be woo'd before they would be won; When the chance naming of a race and fair Our 'Squire disposed to take his pleasure there, The Friend profess'd, "although he first began To hint the thing, it seem'd a thoughtless plan; The roads, he fear'd, were foul, the days ...
— Tales • George Crabbe

... first tried to shun Chobei's questions; but at last, touched by the honesty and kindness of his speech, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... Ezra Gold, my dear. Shun all people who bear his name. I know them. I have cause to know them. ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray

... of being brilliant, the writer of these pages has endeavored to shun the path of those whose aim appears to have been to dazzle, rather than to instruct. As he has aimed not so much at originality as utility, he has adopted the thoughts of his predecessors whose labors have become public stock, whenever he could not, in his opinion, furnish ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... on, thou fine fellow, Shoot as thou hast begun; If thou shoot here a summer's day, Thy mark I will not shun. ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown

... unable to gain a living might become the dependent of some rich and powerful neighbor, who agreed to feed, clothe, and protect him on condition that he should engage to be faithful to his patron, "love all that he loved and shun ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... of Ireland, where the arsenal is, amongst a perfect labyrinth of shoals, through which the Mudian pilot conned the ship with great skill, taking his stand, to our no small wonderment, not at the gangway or poop, as usual, but on the bowsprit end, so that he might see the rocks under foot, and shun them accordingly, for they are so steep and numerous, (they look like large fish in the clear water,) and the channel is so intricate, that you have to go quite close to them. At noon we arrived at the anchorage, and hauled ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... senior in command, The charge I might not shun Devolved, to see the doom of death Upon the culprit done. The place—a league from camp; the hour— The morrow's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... relentless action. We will deny terrorists the sponsorship, support, and sanctuary they need to survive. We will win the war of ideas and diminish the underlying conditions that promote the despair and the destructive visions of political change that lead people to embrace, rather than shun, terrorism. And throughout, we will use all the means at our disposal to defend against terrorist attacks on the United States, our citizens, and our interests around ...
— National Strategy for Combating Terrorism - February 2003 • United States

... remembrance on the part of the living on the resting-places of the poor were a few wild flowers stuck in a gallipot. Away in a corner was the solid monument of the deceased members of a county family. They appeared, even in death, to shun companionship with those of their species they had avoided in life. It, also, seemed as if most of the dead were as gregarious as the living; well-to-do and poor appeared to want company; hence, the graves were all huddled together. There ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... in prayer, and changelessness of daily life. Some precepts of the Imitatio came into my mind: 'Be never wholly idle; read or write, pray or meditate, or work with diligence for the common needs.' 'Praiseworthy is it for the religious man to go abroad but seldom, and to seem to shun, and keep his eyes from men.' 'Sweet is the cell when it is often sought, but if we gad about, it wearies us by its seclusion.' Then I thought of the monks so living in this solitude; their cell windows looking across the valley to the sea, through summer and winter, under sun and stars. Then ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... offices of friendship, I thought I ought not to omit that of urging upon you and beseeching you to remember that you are a human being and a gallant man—that is, that you should bear philosophically accidents which are common to all and incalculable, which none of us mortals can shun or forestall by any means whatever: should confront with courage such grief as fortune brings: and should reflect that not in our state alone, but in all others that have acquired an empire, such disasters have in many instances befallen ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... go. You will find in that way very soon that your voice will increase in compass and power, and you will do better than by a habit of straining the voice beyond its natural capacity. Be careful to avoid falsetto. Shun imitating the tricks of speech of other orators, even of famous and successful orators. These may do for them, but not for you. You will do no better in attempting to imitate the tricks of speech of other men in public ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... appearances, we are under the influence of our own and every other person's wrong thought. We say of some people, 'how happy I am in their company, how it uplifts me to be in their presence.' With others we feel a nameless depression, a fearful, unhappy feeling, and shun their company. As Emerson so aptly says: 'With some I walk among the stars, whilst others ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... hostilities, if they do not altogether cease, will henceforth lose their terror. Fortifications in those quarters to any extent will not be necessary, and the expense of attending them may be saved. A people accustomed to the use of firearms only, as the Indian tribes are, will shun even moderate works which are defended by cannon. Great fortifications will therefore be requisite only in future along the coast and at some points in the interior connected with it. On these will the safety of our towns and the commerce of our great rivers, from the Bay of Fundy to the Mississippi, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Monroe • James Monroe

... Li Tz{u}-ch'eng had reduced the whole of the province of Shensi; whereupon he began to advance on Peking, proclaiming himself first Emperor of the Great Shun Dynasty, the term shun implying harmony between rulers and ruled. Terror reigned at the Chinese court, especially as meteorological and other portents appeared in unusually large numbers, as though ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... sergeant. "Now then, men. 'Shun! And forget those dope sticks for a minute. How'll you have 'em, ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford

... dealings with underlings of all kinds, who are rarely addressed with the bluntness and brusqueness of the older civilisations. Hence the father and mother are apt to lay almost too much stress on the separate and individual entity of their child, to shun too scrupulously anything approaching the violent coercion of another's will. That the results are not more disastrous seems owing to a saving quality in the child himself. The characteristic American shrewdness and common sense ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... or Ch'ien Shun-chue, retired from public life at the downfall of the Sung dynasty. He was a member of a group of the faithful over which Chao presided, but, more decided than the latter in his opposition to the new dynasty, he was indignant at his confrere's defection and refused to follow his ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci

... the rougher going back, that's the worst of it,' says he. 'Good God! what fools, idiots, raving lunatics, we've all been! Why, but for our own infernal folly, should we be forced to shun our fellow-men, and hide from the light like beasts of prey? What are we better? Better?—nay, a hundred times worse. Some day I shall shoot myself, I know I shall. What a muff Sir Ferdinand must be, he's ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... indignant from her temple glide. With draggling robe, slip-shod, her buskin loose, She flies a barren people's cold abuse; Summons her sister, who forbears to smile, And leaves to rats the desecrated pile, Which dogs and nags already had begun, Unless by blows and hunger driv'n, to shun: For well-bred curs and steeds genteel contemn A stage which Taste had sunk too low for them; Whereon the town had seen, without remorse, A herd of bisons ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... present shun Further notice; lest suspicion Should betray what we would smother; Every day we 'll see each other, When I 'll execute my mission: I, to cure sin's primal scath, Will at fitting time baptize you, Taking care to catechise you In the principles of the faith; Only now one admonition Must I give; ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... eyes on his book. The print danced before his gaze: letter rushed into letter, word merged mistily into word, line into line, till all was a grey blur. A blink of the eyes—an effort of the will—a sort of "squad, shun!" to the type before him—and the words jumped back into their places, letters separated from their entanglement and stood like soldiers at spruce attention. A relaxing of the effort—and dismiss! helter-skelter, pell-mell went letter, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... clad, had the face of a more than ordinarily unscrupulous adventuress, while her companion was one of those saturnine-faced men we sometimes meet, whose first look puts us on our guard and whom, if we hope nothing from him, we instinctively shun. Third, they did not look like inhabitants of the house and rooms in which he found them. Nothing beyond the necessary articles of furniture was to be seen there; not a trunk, not an article of clothing, nor any of the little things that ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green

... when you read these sad lines, for I have wished to flee as quickly as possible to shun the temptation of seeing you again. No weakness! I shall return, and perhaps later on we shall talk together very coldly of our old ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... colonists shun the French bush lopers under Charles de La Tour down at Fort St. Louis on Cape Sable. The seventy Scotch colonists go on up the Annapolis Basin and build their fort four miles from old Port Royal. How did they pass the pioneer years—these Scotch retainers of the {62} Nova Scotia Baronets? ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... talk each other down, but to improve the mind, which, unguided, is apt to get frivolous at the convivial board. It is notorious that men by themselves at lunch or dinner usually shun grave topics and indulge in persiflage, and even descend to talk about wine and the made dishes. The women's lunch of this summer takes higher ground. It will give Mr. Browning his final estimate; it will settle ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... you think the world will follow you here? Don't you suppose it is here, ready to welcome you home with all those prejudices you hope you can shun? Every old gossip of the neighborhood will point Suzette out, as the daughter of a man who is serving his term in jail for fraud. The great world forgets, but this little world around you here would ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... beneath the mourner's hood? Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices, Image of Image, Ghost of Ghostly Elf, That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold? Yet what and whence thy gain, if thou withhold 25 These costless shadows of thy shadowy self? Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun! Thou hast no reason why! Thou canst have none; Thy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... lodge, having sworn to the missionaries that I would never see thee more. Here, too, I am in terror of my life, for if it were known that I held intercourse with Mitri, they would cast me off. Well, thou hast no more hope from them, thanks to thy rashness. Why couldst thou not shun the priest here, as I told thee to? Now, with all the Orthodox boasting of thy conversion, thou art more than ever accursed in their sight. Even at me they look askance, I fancy, as if I had a finger in the mess. Come indoors ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... then, to read no mean books. Shun the spawn of the press on the gossip of the hour. Do not read what you shall learn without asking, in the street and the train. Dr. Johnson said, "he always went into stately shops"; and good travellers stop ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... mistaken, consider, though it seem ever so pleasant, yet if thou do not find that in the very middle of the road there is written with the heart blood of Christ, that he came into the world to save sinners, and that we are justified, though we are ungodly, shun that way. For this it is which the apostle meaneth when he saith, we have "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he hath consecrated for us through the vail, that is to say, his flesh." How easy a matter is it in ...
— The Heavenly Footman • John Bunyan

... his voice, the rights pledged to the South by the Constitution. This, at the period when he declared himself, was an easy thing to do. But when it became more difficult, when the first imperceptible murmur of agitation had grown almost to a convulsion, his course was still the same. Nor did he ever shun the obloquy that sometimes threatened to pursue the Northern man who dared to love that great and sacred reality—his whole united country—better than the mistiness of ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... whole of the preceding period, He had had two aims distinctly in view. One was to shun publicity; and the other was to damp down the heated, vulgar anticipations of the multitude, who expected a temporal king. And now here He deliberately, and of set purpose, takes a step which is like flinging a spark into a powder barrel. The nation was assembled ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... Sex have been gradually betrayed from innocent Freedoms to Ruin and Infamy; and how many Millions of ours have begun with Flatteries, Protestations and Endearments, but ended with Reproaches, Perjury, and Perfidiousness; they would shun like Death the very first Approaches of one that might lead them into inextricable Labyrinths of Guilt and Misery. I must so far give up the Cause of the Male World, as to exhort the Female Sex in the Language of Chamont ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... the end." And rising up to mend the fire our friend Seemed trying to shun comment; but in vain: The exacting guest came at him once again; "You must be going to fall down, I thought, There at the climax, when your story brought The skipper home alive and well. But no, You saved yourself with honor." The girl said, "Oh," Who spoke ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells

... of least use Where wanted most: "The lordly attributes Of will and choice," I bitterly exclaimed, "What are they but a mockery of a Being Who hath in no concerns of his a test Of good and evil; knows not what to fear Or hope for, what to covet or to shun: And who, if those could be discerned, would yet Be little profited, would see, and ask, Where is the obligation ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... fairly gets away from Haworth. I pity him inexpressibly. We never meet nor speak, nor dare I look at him; silent pity is just all that I can give him, and as he knows nothing about that, it does not comfort. He is now grown so gloomy and reserved that nobody seems to like him. His fellow-curates shun trouble in that shape; the lower orders dislike it. Papa has a perfect antipathy to him, and he, I fear, to papa. Martha hates him. I think he might almost be dying and they would not speak a friendly ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... the dew fell fast, And the wind blew from the sky; And strange things took place that shun the day's face, Because they ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald

... bearing his name? Would they want to listen to his gospel? Frankly, Jonathan, I doubt it. A few Socialists would be found in nearly every church ready to receive him and to call him "Comrade," but the majority of church-goers would shun him and ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo

... happiness. Yet how to reconcile it with what had passed at their last meeting she knew not; she had then every reason to believe that his heart was in her power, and that courage, or an opportunity more seasonable, was all he wanted to make known his devotion to her; why, then, shun if he loved her? why, if he loved her not, seem so perturbed at the explanation ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... Your furious chiding stay; Let Zephyr only breathe And with her tresses play. —The winds all silent are, And Phoebus in his chair Ensaffroning sea and air Makes vanish every star: Night like a drunkard reels Beyond the hills, to shun his flaming wheels: The fields with flowers are deck'd in every hue, The clouds with orient gold spangle their blue; Here is the pleasant place— And nothing wanting is, save ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... Not by a very long chalk, my son. You're going through some of the most refined torture you've ever known. But be calm. I am with you. 'Shun! Dress! ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... with thy flocks to Cleitor's bounds thou'st hied, Take from this fount a draught, and grant a rest To all thy goats the water nymphs beside. But bathe not in't when full of drunken cheer, Lest the mere vapour may bring thee to bane; Shun my vine-hating spring—Melampus here From madness once washed Proetus' daughters sane, And all th' offscouring here did hide, when they From ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... not that the kingdom in our days go out of the family who from father to son have long held it, while such good means may be taken to shun that as now can be. King Olaf has two sons, and we will have one of them for king. There is, however, a great difference between them; one is nobly born and Swedish on both sides, the other is a ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... quarrelsome; and therefore he forbade it. The beverage, however, was very different in its effects: some of them it rendered lazy and inactive; others, too, would defy the whole world, when heated by its influence. But why should he order us to shun it? He in fact allows us to use it, so long as we do not abuse it; and as we are all good companions, and avoid brawls in every possible way, there is no danger ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... which they move. These belong to social life, and are its blessings. Many persons—and it is beautiful that it should be so—are of this description. I, however, belonged neither to the joyous and enlivening, nor yet to the patient and unpretending. On this account I began to shun social life, which occasioned in me, still more and more, a moral weariness; yet, nevertheless, I was driven into it, to avoid the disquiet and discomfort which I experienced at home. I was a labourer who concealed his desire for labour, who had buried his talent ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... It would be better for the health of the entire community if every individual would be as careful in the same matter as he is now. Those who are sick should, ere taking medicine, consult a physician of experience and skill; but, above all things, they should shun advertised nostrums, in the sale of which the manufacturers and vendors are interested. Often testimonials as to their efficacy are mere forgeries. Health is too vital a thing to be risked ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur

... friendship life cannot be, if one only means to live in some form or measure respectably. [Footnote: Latin liberaliter that is, worthily of a free man.] For friendship somehow twines through all lives and leaves no mode of being without its presence. Even if one be of so rude and savage a nature as to shun and hate the society of men, as we have learned was the case with that Timon of Athens, [Footnote: Plutarch says that Timon had an associate, virtually a friend, not unlike himself, Apemantus, on whom he freely vented his spite and scorn for all the world beside and that he also ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis

... dear author, yet it true is, That down from Pharamond to Louis All covet life, yet call it pain: All feel the ill, yet shun the cure; Can sense this paradox endure? Resolve ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... untouched, nature were to give them the intelligence and the weapons wherewith to conquer us, I confess that I should distrust the hasty vengeance of the horse, the obstinate reprisals of the ass and the maddened meekness of the sheep. I should shun the cat as I should shun the tiger; and even the good cow, solemn and somnolent, would inspire me with but a wary confidence. As for the hen, with her round, quick eye, as when discovering a slug or a worm, I am sure that she would devour ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck

... looked about him dazedly. He was alone. Outside, he heard a sharp voice call "Atten-shun!" He ran down the ladder and fell in at the end of the line under the angry glare of the lieutenant's small eyes, which were placed very close together on either side of a lean nose, black and hard, like ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... been accustomed to think of Judas as one whose crime has put him far in front of all others in the enormity of his guilt. Dante draws an awful picture of him as alone even in hell, shunned by all other sinners, as Turkish prisoners will shun Christians, though sharing the same cell. But let us remember that he did not come to such a pitch of evil at a single bound. There was a time, no doubt, when, amid the cornfields, vineyards, and pastoral villages of his native Kerioth, he was regarded as a promising youth, quick at figures, ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... improved by the seasoning process of the siege. Most of them have become so ridiculous, that they shun the public eye, and listen to the roar of the rifles from safe places which cannot be discovered. And yet fully half of them are able-bodied men, who might do valuable work; who might even take rifles and shoot. But it is they who give a ridiculous side, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... was pillaging madly. Erelong the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry, a negro regiment under Colonel C.F. Adams, Jr., paraded through the streets, and then the Southern whites hid themselves within doors to shun the repulsive spectacle. It may be that armed and hostile negroes brought to them the dread terror of retaliation and massacre in the wild hour of triumph. But if so, their fear was groundless; the errand of the Northern troops was, in fact, one of safety and charity; they began at once ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... pleased. I will, however, leave the burden of the proof upon my friend here, who has detected me already in quoting from Pope's Iliad instead of Homer's. I am sure he will manage the ancient figures of rhetoric better than I should; however, if I can fight behind his shield I shall not shun the combat." ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... seems waiting some wild blow, Dreaded, but far too close to ward or shun. Scared birds aloft fly aimless, and below Naught stirs in fields whence light and life are gone, Save floating leaves, with wisps of straw and down, Upon the heavy air; 'neath blue-black skies, Livid and yellow ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... he chills me while he aids,— My benefactor, not my brother man! Yet even this, this cold beneficence Praise, praise it, O my Soul! oft as thou scann'st The Sluggard Pity's vision-weaving tribe! Who sigh for wretchedness, yet shun the wretched, Nursing in some delicious solitude Their slothful loves and dainty sympathies! I therefore go, and join head, heart, and hand, Active and firm, to fight the bloodless fight Of Science, freedom, and the truth in Christ. Yet oft when after honourable toil Rests the tired mind, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... him and call upon his name; and that not only he should leave and abandon them to rot alone with their wives in a sempiternal solitariness, without the benefit of the diversion of any copes-mate or corrival at all, but should withal shun and eschew them, fly from them, and eternally forsake and reject them as impious heretics and sacrilegious persons, according to the accustomed manner of other gods towards such as are too slack in ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... the king will be kind to my poor Marie Antoinette!" exclaimed the empress, ready to burst into tears. "They promised to love her; and it is but natural and womanly that they should shun the party which upholds the profligate woman who ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... ants demand a special coach If one ant-eater goes; The dormouse wants a sleeping car; The chickens shun the crows; ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner

... makes thee sick? And China bloom at best is sorry food? And Rowland's Kalydor, if laid on thick, Poisons the thirsty wretch that bores for blood? Go! 'twas a just reward that met thy crime— But shun the sacrilege ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... ever seek to shun, O tyranny of fate, O wild desires! My virtue's only crown can but be won In that last ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... personally than before, and recommended them to make haste and quit office, lest the punishment due to their crimes should speedily overtake them! He concluded thus:—"Since they have neither sagacity to foresee, nor justice and humanity to shun, these calamities—since not even severe experience can make them feel, nor the imminent ruin of their country awaken them from their stupefaction—the guardian care of parliament must interpose. I shall, therefore, propose an amendment to the address, to recommend an ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... certain of attaining all the knowledge to the acquisition of which I was competent, as well as the largest amount of what is truly good which I could ever hope to secure Inasmuch as we neither seek nor shun any object except in so far as our understanding represents it as good or bad, all that is necessary to right action is right judgment, and to the best action the most correct judgment, that is, to the acquisition ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes

... Methuen's pet theories is that the soul in the human body lies near the center of gravity; this is, I believe, one of the tenets of the Buddhist faith, and for a long time I eschewed it as one might shun a vile thing, for I feared lest I should become identified even remotely with any faith or ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... let me say now. You have seemed to avoid me of late; I can not guess why. And to-day, as I listened to your song, a new thought, a new fear, has entered my mind. Claire, tell me, have you read the love that has been in my heart since I first saw your face, and have you sought to shun me because you ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... wayward spirit, and calm him often, when passion struggled for the mastery. Often did she venture to hope he had indeed given himself to his Savior, and her conversations with him from time to time, showed so much desire to conquer every evil passion, and to shun every false way with so much affectionate reverence for his God and Redeemer, that the mother's heart was sweetly comforted ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... of future foes exiles my present joy, And Wit me warns to shun snares as threaten mine annoy; For falshood now doth flowe, and subject faith doth ebbe, Which would not be, if reason rul'd, or wisdom weav'd the webbe. But clouds of tois untried do choake aspiring mindes, Which turn'd to rain of late repent by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various

... avoid mere habits of display, which are unworthy of a man who aspires to be a gentleman and not an athlete. Another indispensable quality is gracefulness in all he does and says. In order to secure this elegance, he must beware of every form of affectation: 'Let him shun affectation, as though it were a most perilous rock; and let him seek in everything a certain carelessness, to hide his art, and show that what he says or does comes from him without effort or deliberation.' This ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... part; and I thank God, who gives me light enough to perceive, and strength enough to withstand, your folly as well as my own. Farewell, then, Julian; but first take the solemn advice which I called you hither to impart to you:—Shun my father—you cannot walk in his paths, and be true to gratitude and to honour. What he doth from pure and honourable motives, you cannot aid him in, except upon the suggestion of a silly and interested passion, at variance with ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... die. The apparent line of his argument is that in youth we have not the instinct of life so strongly but that we willingly risk life. Then, until we live to a hundred and thirty or forty or so, we have the instinct of life so strongly that we are anxious to shun death; lastly the instinct of death grows in us and we are eager to lay down life. I don't see how or why this should be. As a matter of fact, children dread death far more than men who are not yet old enough to have developed ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... the others may be eaten. Some of them may taste like gall and wormwood, or living and enduring fire, and an occasional specimen may make the experimenter feel briefly unwell, but if he will acquaint himself with the virulent amanita varieties, and shun them, he will not die—not from poison. I do not ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... talked long and tenderly of her. Gervaise was much troubled by these whispered conversations in the corner of her shop. The name of Lantier made her faint and sick at heart. She believed herself to be an honest woman. She meant, in every way, to do right and to shun the wrong, because she felt that only in doing so could she be happy. She did not think much of Coupeau because she was conscious of no shortcomings toward him. But she thought of her friend at the forge, and it seemed to ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... tell me, sir, for you seem to be an educated man, what I have said or done to make you all shun me?" ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... Margaret rendered her verdict, "and none of our rules in any way could oppose that. The only thing is, we girls would be obliged to shun the woods because we are ordered, you know, to avoid unnecessary danger, and cave men are supposed to ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis

... reason too to fear this night's adventure, for as ill fate would have it (loaded with other thoughts) I told not Melinda of your adventure last night with Monsieur the Count, who meeting her early this morning, had like to have made a discovery, if he have not really so already; she strove to shun him, but he cried out—'Melinda, you cannot fly me by light, as you did last night in the dark—'She turned and begged his pardon, for neither coming nor designing to come, since she had resolved never to violate her vows to Alexis: 'Not coming?' cried he, 'not returning ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... up your room, your house, or personal surroundings, have good, comfortable furniture for rest and for work, but not for show. Be simple, even to the extent of being severe. The fewer things you have, the better off you are. Shun all other possessions as the devil would holy water. Have nothing that is not for a definite purpose and that you do not actually use. The criterion to be applied to these is not what you can find use for, but what you cannot get along without. A traveller ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"

... from the scene away With a concerted shrug, will say: "H'm, Scarabaeus Sisyphus— What interest has that to us? We can't admire at all, at all, A tumble-bug without its ball." And then a sage will rise and say: "Good friends, you err—turn back, I pray: This freak that you unwisely shun Is bug and ball ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... and humble man, Welsh was cool, courageous, and self-possessed, with, apparently, a dash of humour in him—as was evidenced by his preaching on one occasion in the middle of the frozen Tweed, so that either he "might shun giving offence to both nations, or that two kingdoms might ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne

... have so far been obliged to endure. The opera has one great advantage over concerts: it is more attractive to the uninitiated. It appeals to the eye as well as the ear. The scenic splendors will attract many unmusical and semi-musical people who shun the purely intellectual atmosphere of a classical concert as a great bore; and while they gaze at the wonders of the scenery they unconsciously drink in the music, so that in course of time they learn to appreciate that for its own sake. When Lohengrin ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... misfortunes that can befal a state, as in time it destroys almost every public virtue of the men. Hence all wise legislators have strictly enforced upon the sex a particular purity of manners; and not satisfied that they should abstain from vice only, have required them even to shun ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... architect; Mr. Saizo Tajima; Prof. Yoshitaro Wantanabe; Mr. Mosuke Matsumura, secretary education department; Mr. Kannosuke Miyashima, expert home department. Secretaries (resident): Mr. Harukazu Miyabe, Mr. Michio Hattori, Mr. Toyozo Kobayashi. Attaches (resident): Mr. Shun Suzuki, Mr. Kiro Harada, Mr. Teiichiro Gejyo, Mr. ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... happened to Shakspeare from the occasional suspension of his powers happened to Dryden from constant impotence. He, like his confederate Lee, had judgment enough to appreciate the great poets of the preceding age, but not judgment enough to shun competition with them. He felt and admired their wild and daring sublimity. That it belonged to another age than that in which he lived and required other talents than those which he possessed, that, in aspiring ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... force, either on resentment, gratitude, or ambition, had no influence on his uncorrupted mind. It is said, that when he first engaged in the study of the law, his father exhorted him with great earnestness to shun the practice, too common in that profession, of straining every point in favor of prerogative, and perverting so useful a science to the oppression of liberty; and in the midst of these rational and virtuous counsels, which he reiterated, he was suddenly seized with an apoplexy, and expired in his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... she appears on the scene amid the dark conflict of crime and vengeance, and supernatural terrors, we know what must be her destiny. Once, at Murano, I saw a dove caught in a tempest; perhaps it was young, and either lacked strength of wing to reach its home, or the instinct which teaches to shun the brooding storm; but so it was—and I watched it, pitying, as it flitted, poor bird hither and thither, with its silver pinions shining against the black thunder-cloud, till, after a few giddy whirls, it fell blinded, affrighted, and bewildered, into the turbid ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... you, for ever and ever, dearest Mary," he said, taking her in his arms and kissing her again and again. It was to be the last, and she did not seem to shun him. Then he left her, went as far as the door,—and returned again. "Dearest, dearest Mary. You will give me one ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope



Words linked to "Shun" :   throw out, expel, avoid, kick out



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