"Thin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reading. He received me very civilly, and almost immediately took me into another room, where I had a long conversation with him. He seems to be between fifty and sixty years of age, short, pale, and thin, and not at all remarkable in countenance or manner. He spoke English with extraordinary fluency and correctness, and with a very slight accent. I endeavoured to detect some inaccuracy of expression, but could not, though perhaps his phraseology was occasionally more stiff ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... very thin spire, that peers up near the mass of the Nicholas Church, reminds me of others of British race, who had their day in Prague and, I feel sure, contributed to its reputation for religion and piety. These were the Englische Fraeulein, as the German chronicler calls them; this means English virgins ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... missed nothing and told nothing. McKildrick was a fine type of the self-taught American. He possessed a thorough knowledge of his profession, executive skill, the gift of handling men, and the added glory of having "worked his way up." He was tall, lean, thin-lipped, between thirty and forty years of age. During business hours he spoke only to give an order or to put a question. Out of working hours, in his manner to his assistants and workmen, he was genially democratic. He had, apparently, a dread of being ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... compose the finished garment are determined by changes in style which vary from the minor modifications occurring yearly in men's clothing to the radical changes in the style of women's clothing. A wide variety of fabrics is employed, ranging from thick to thin, smooth to rough, closely woven to loosely woven and from plain weave to fancy weave. In one season a single establishment will make garments from as many as 200 different fabrics, and each operator is likely to work upon 60 or more different kinds ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... it, by Bishop Juxon. To Fox-hall, where to the Spring garden; but I do not see one guest there, the town being so empty of any body to come thither. I by coach home, not meeting with but two coaches, and but two carts from White Hall to my own house, that I could observe; and the streets mighty thin of people. All the news is great: that we must of necessity fall out with France, for He will side with the Dutch against us. That alderman Backewell is gone over (which indeed he is,) with money, and that Ostend is in our present possession. But it is strange to see how poor Alderman Backewell ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... was a sweet flowing spring, and there with his strong bow the lord, the son of Zeus, killed the bloated, great she-dragon, a fierce monster wont to do great mischief to men upon earth, to men themselves and to their thin-shanked sheep; for she was a very bloody plague. She it was who once received from gold-throned Hera and brought up fell, cruel Typhaon to be a plague to men. Once on a time Hera bare him because she was angry with father Zeus, when the Son of Cronos bare all-glorious Athena ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... virtue of certain limitations in his own nature of which he is obviously in entire ignorance. The conscious skill of Voltaire was delicate, subtle, full of vitality; but the unconscious side of his nature was essentially shallow, thin, largely undeveloped; and it is the preponderance of the unconscious over the conscious in a man's life which makes him great in himself and equips him for work of the highest quality. No man can put his skill to the highest use and give his knowledge the ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... always been, that it was a wonder he lived so long. His weakness of body seems to have acted upon his strong mind, which must account for much that is satirical and splenetic in his writings. Very short, thin, and ill-shaped, his person wanted the compactness necessary to stand alone, until it was encased in stays. He needed a high chair at table, such as children use; but he was an epicure, and a fastidious ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... drawer beneath one of the book-cases. Young Corby watched her breathlessly. With a tremulous hand she turned over the dusty documents that seemed to fill the drawer. "Is this it?" she said, holding out a thin discolored volume. ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... forward very slowly with their hoes, axes, and picks, piling up, as they advance, masses of roots, saplings, stumps, and brush, which, when dry, are set on fire and consumed. The soil exposed is a rich but thin loam of decayed leaves, in which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... A thin field-mouse had by chance crept through a narrow cranny into a chest of grain; and, having feasted itself, in vain attempted to come out again, with its body now stuffed full. To which a weasel at a distance cries, "If you would escape thence, repair lean to the narrow ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... holding the door ajar, a lank little figure, dressed with reckless slovenliness in a suit of old-fashioned black; a loose neck-cloth fell stringing down his shirt front, which his unbuttoned waistcoat exposed, with its stains from the tobacco upon which his thin little jaws worked mechanically, as he stared into the room with flamy blue eyes; his silk hat was pushed back from a high, clear forehead; he had yesterday's stubble on his beardless cheeks; a heavy moustache and imperial gave dash to a cast of countenance that might otherwise ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... scream came over her, but the tight muscles of her throat let out no sound. But if Wilbur were not here, where had he gone? He could not have vanished into thin air. The ripple of the water washing on the sand replied. Yes, that current might have ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... Society to apply to Mr. Clement for liberty to publish a full description of it; and Mr. Varley's paper was the result.[3] It may be briefly stated that this engineer's plane differs greatly from the carpenter's plane, the cutter of which is only allowed to project so far as to admit of a thin shaving to be sliced off,—the plane working flat in proportion to the width of the tool, and its length and straightness preventing the cutter from descending into any hollows in the wood. The engineer's plane more resembles the turning-lathe, ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... for her: she was more than satisfied with her many-coloured one; its floor had hills and tiny dales, pools and streams, and it was walled by greater hills and roofed by sky. On it there grew thorn-bushes which thrust out thin hands, begging for food, in winter, and which wore a lady's lovely dress in summertime and a warm red coat for autumn nights. There was bracken, like little walking-sticks in spring, and when the leaves uncurled themselves and spread, they made ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... said that he had been an attorney's clerk, and had certainly resided for a long time in Paris. He was a little man of fifty years of age, clean shaved, and with a sharp and cunning expression of countenance. His long nose, sharp, restless eyes, and thin lips, attracted attention at first sight. His whole aspect aroused a feeling of distrust. He had come to Bevron, some fifteen years before, with all his provisions in a cotton handkerchief slung over his shoulder. He was willing to make money in any way, and he prospered ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... in one anxiety, repeats verbatim his former question. Poor king! He more than half knew the answer, before it was given. The Cushite with some tenderness veils the fate of Absalom in the wish that all the king's enemies may be 'as that young man is.' But the veil was thin, and the attempt to console by reminding of the fact that the dead man was an enemy as well as a son, was swept away like a straw before the father's torrent ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... deer and some of the coarser kind of the Peruvian sheep were slaughtered; their skins were reserved for the various useful manufactures to which they are ordinarily applied, and their flesh, cut into thin slices, was distributed among the people, who converted it into charqui, the dried meat of the country, which constituted then the sole, as it has since the principal, animal food of the lower classes of ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... done, when they have become cold, they are taken out and carefully ground, adding to them a third part of the blood of a red man, which blood has been dried and ground. These two compositions are tempered with sharp acid in a clean vessel; they then take very thin sheets of the purest red copper, and anoint this composition over them on both sides, and place them in the fire. And when they have become glowing, they take them out and quench and wash them in the same confection; and ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... then had a full view of her face—figure very thin and melancholy dark eyes, long sallow cheeks, compressed thin lips, two or three black ringlets on a high forehead, a cap that Mrs. Grier might wear—altogether in appearance of fallen fortunes, worn-out health, and excessive but guarded irritability. ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... inspired many a City apprentice, and spurred him onward to become an 'honourable of the land;' it is, moreover, the very type of this 'red-letter day' in the City; and, costly as it is, with its disappearance, even portly aldermen will vanish into thin air. ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... thin company, fled to Venusia; Aemilius Paulus, unable any longer to oppose the flight of his men, or the pursuit of the enemy, his body all covered with wounds, and his soul no less wounded with grief, sat himself down upon a stone, expecting the kindness of a ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... asleep in the folding chair Dr. Whiting had sent, with a mattress to make it soft. The back could be raised or lowered at will; but only a few inches had been gained as yet, and the thin hair pillow was all she could bear. She looked very pretty as she lay, with dark lashes against the feverish cheeks, lips apart, and a cloud of curly black locks all about the face pillowed on one arm. She seemed like a brilliant little flower in that dull place,—for ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... a few years ago (wrong side up, for the window had been reversed), I looked at once in the Triennial to find them, for the epithet showed that they were probably students. I found them all under the years 1771 and 1773. Does it please their thin ghosts thus to be dragged to the light of day? Has "Stultus" forgiven the indignity of ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... appearance was most woe-begone. Neither Manchester, the Speaker of the Lords, was to be found, nor Lenthall, the Speaker of the Commons; there were but eight Lords in the one House; and the benches in the other were unusually thin. Nevertheless they proceeded in all due form. Each House elected a new Speaker—the Peers Lord Willoughby of Parham for the day, and the Commons Henry Pelham, Esq., M.P. for Grantham, in permanence; each took notice of its absentees, and commanded their immediate re-attendance—the Commons also ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... other she and you and I will be together again. But stayin' here and seein' nobody but each other and broodin' don't do us any good. It's doin' you harm; that's plain enough. You don't write and you don't eat—that is, not much—and you're gettin' bluer and more thin and peaked every day. You have just got to go away from here, no matter whether I do or not. And I've reached the point where I'm willin' to go, too. Not for good, maybe. We'll come back here again. Our lease isn't up until October and we can leave the servants here and give them our address ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and our Liberal friends warn us not to rely upon it as a promise of the ballot to women. What it is, we know even better than others. We recognize its meagerness; we see in it the timidity of politicians; but beyond and through all, we see a promise of the future. It is the thin side of the entering wedge which shall break woman's slavery in pieces and make us at last a nation truly free—a nation in which the caste of sex shall fall down by the caste of color, and humanity alone be the criterion of all human rights. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... mates—was a semi-drunken man, who appeared to be a house-painter, sitting on the form near the shove-ha'penny board. He was wearing a battered bowler hat and the usual shabby clothes. This individual had a very thin, pale face, with a large, high-bridged nose, and bore a striking resemblance to the portraits of the first Duke of Wellington. He was not a regular customer here, having dropped in casually about two o'clock and had remained ever since. He was beginning to show the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... all that day on foot, but at a great pace, showing their safe conduct twice to French soldiers, and so thin was the line of settlements along the St. Lawrence that when night came they were beyond the cultivated fields and had entered the deep woods. The three, in addition to their weapons, carried on their backs packs containing blankets and food, ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... house on fire? . . . No: outside the half-open window lay spread the moonlight, pale and tranquil. The night wind entering, scarcely stirred the thin dimity curtains. This was no weather for sudden hail-storms or for shipwreck. Cai flung back the bedclothes, jumped out—and uttered a sharp cry of pain. His naked foot had trodden on a ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... elastic word, madame. You can narrow it down, so that in the degree above nothing it means luxury. My necessary food is sometimes thin air. If I don't deprive myself of that, it's because ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... short—rather thin—quiet and graceful in all his movements—dressed plainly, in perfect taste. How can I describe him? When his friend brought him on board, he stood at the side of the vessel, looking out thoughtfully ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... presence a first impression was likely to be disappointing. His figure at this time was tall, gaunt, and lean—and he steadily lost weight during his service in England; his head was finely shaped—it was large, with a high forehead, his thin gray hair rather increasing its intellectual aspect; and his big frank brown eyes reflected that keen zest for life, that unsleeping interest in everything about him, that ever-working intelligence and sympathy ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... to her feet, and up the wet and slippery steps to the level of the wharf. It was now quite dark, there being no moon, and thin clouds obscuring the stars. The touch of her hand, which I perforce held since I must guide her over the long, narrow, and unrailed trestle, chilled me, and her breathing was hurried, but she moved by my side through the gross darkness unfalteringly ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... each week, and about one hundred pounds of vegetables, in the preparation of the food. The bread is steamed and eaten hot, and the midday meal generally consists of flour and water, made into a paste, rolled out very thin, and cut into long strips which are boiled for a few minutes, and when cooked resemble macaroni. If a man's greatness consists in the small number of his needs, the Chinaman must rank high. A bowl and ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... hopes, nor, under the guise of friendship, invited them to conferences destined only to betray them."[1269] But, in spite of this somewhat uncourteous reception, the well-known and trusted integrity of the great Huguenot captain soon broke through the thin crust of coolness, which, after all, was rather assumed than really felt. La Noue was suffered to enter the city, and at the echevinage, or city hall, was permitted to lay before the general assembly, or municipal government, as well as the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... dear Captain, no more Delays, unless thou thinkest he will invite us to Dinner; for this fine thin sharp Air of Madrid has a most notable Faculty of provoking an Appetite: Prithee let's to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... board eagerly watched the approach of the canoe. It was soon alongside, and the little girl we had been looking for was handed up on deck, followed by the old chief. She was dressed in a clean white frock, and her hair was neatly braided, and ornamented with flowers and feathers; but she looked thin and ill, and sadly scared. When my mother approached the gangway she flew towards her, and threw herself into her arms, as if she was sure that she should find in her a ...
— Mary Liddiard - The Missionary's Daughter • W.H.G. Kingston
... five sets of mass-vestments, made of a stuff woven of all the liturgical colours together, a dozen books, a box of medals, another of Agnus Deis—little wax medallions stamped with the figure of a Lamb supporting a banner—a bunch of beads, and a heavy little square package of very thin altar-stones. ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... or coffee, and three to four slices of bread and butter. I worked for one sweater who almost starved the men; the smallest eater there would not have had enough if he had got three times as much. They had only three thin slices of bread and butter, not sufficient for a child, and the tea was both weak and bad. The whole meal could not have stood him in 2d. a head, and what made it worse was, that the men who worked there couldn't afford to have dinners, so that they were starved to the bone. The sweater's ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... us, we were on the sofa, my arm was round her waist; through the thin folds of her light dress I could feel her firm haunches and well-moulded body; I talked baudy, squeezed her to me, pressed her thighs with one hand, and put the other down her bosom. Every now and then there was ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... spirit within me bids me. Not without the gods' will has this man come to the house of Odysseus; methinks at least that the torchlight flares forth from {*} that head of his, for there are no hairs on it, nay never so thin.' ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... them he experienced a distinct shock. The first was a man with dark hair, weighing perhaps one hundred and fifty pounds, and having a close-cropped mustache; the fake detective beyond a doubt. The second was a thin, wiry individual with a beard, and a swollen, red nose. He was the man who had escaped from his and Hugh's hands at the factory, Bob decided. His nose was swollen where Hugh had hit him. This must be the man who had set off ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... tea-tree is thick in proportion to the size of the tree, and is composed of a great number of layers of very thin bark, in appearance not unlike the bark of the birch-tree; but it is so very soft, that nothing this country affords can be better calculated for the purpose for which it was intended: Bannelong, however, desired to have a blanket for the child, which was ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... up to his name; he didn't bat an eye. He handed me a thin folder; three of its sheets were facsimile extrapolations of probot reports; the fourth was an evaluation-and-assignment draft; all were from Galactic Survey Headquarters, NAF, in Montreal. The top three were identical, excepting ...
— Attrition • Jim Wannamaker
... act?—Through the blood of the mother. Only a very delicate membrane separates the vital fluid of the mother from that of the infant in her womb. There is a constant interchange of the blood in its body with that in hers through this exceedingly thin membrane; and thus all nervous impressions which have produced an alteration of either a temporary or permanent character in the circulating fluid of the mother, are communicated to the child. Since the mother, as has been ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... the long ground swell, sweeping round in a long curve that brought her all but alongside the wallowing ship; a brief interchange of hails between her bridge and the Concordia's poop, the sudden snaking out of a whirling heaving-line from the forecastle of the latter, followed by the thin but tremendously strong steel towing hawser; and as the few remaining sheets of the ship's canvas shrivelled in to the masts and yards the tug passed ahead, the towrope rose dripping out of the water, tautened to the semblance ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... met hers, the twain stood hush'd, With the dead between them there; But the blood to her snowy temples rush'd Till it tinged the roots of her hair, Then paled, but a thin red streak still flush'd In the ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... were once used and approved by some old writer, must now be exalted to the stars. Yet another takes his stand upon the false or the true orthography, and so on, with various similar nonsense only worthy of contempt. They fast, they become thin and emaciated, they scourge the skin, and lengthen the beard, they rot, and in these things they place the anchor of their highest good. They despise fortune, and put up these as shield and refuge against the strokes of fate. ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... digged, I think, out of the bowels of the surely not harmless earth. And the man himself! He was primly and precisely dressed, but he had an indefinable resemblance to a goat; his hair curled like horns; and he had the thin, restless, sneering lips, the impudent, inexpressive eyes of the goat. I found myself curiously oppressed by him. I hated his slow, deliberate movements; the idea that the air he breathed should mingle with the ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... some sacrifice by way of requital to the shade of the servant slain in his cause. Drawing him by those appeals, and warily noting the right spot to plant his blow, he turned the other edge of his sword to the front, fearing that the thin side of his blade was too frail for his strength, and smote with a piercing stroke through the prince's body. When Wermund heard it, he said that the sound of his sword "Skrep" had reached his ear for the second time. Then, when the judges announced that his son had killed ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... but remarked these details when the door again opened, to admit a short, slender man in whose black hair and beard the hand of time had scattered but little of that white dust that marks its passage. His face was pale, thin, and wrinkled, and his grey eyes had a nervous, restless look that dwelt not long on anything. He was dressed in black, with simple elegance, and his deep collar and ruffles were ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... seems to me to be worth notice. He is tall and thin, and looks quite the fifty years that his gray hairs proclaim him to be. His characteristic expression is one of haughtiness, or rather disdain, composed in equal parts of love of all things English and contempt for all things that are not. This type is occasionally so insupportable, ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... was more or less noteworthy—unpleasantly so, I am obliged to add. One was red-faced and obese, the other was tall, thin and wiry and showed as many seams in his face as a blighted apple. Neither of the two had anything to recommend him either in appearance or address, save a certain veneer of polite assumption as transparent ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... you will notice, has no fear of a dramatic, even melodramatic, situation; handles it, indeed, with a skill that the most popular might envy. Thence onwards the story, perhaps a trifle slow in starting, gathers force. The two visits to the camp at X—— (a very thin disguise for a place that no Englishman of our time will ever forget) are admirably vivid; the last chapters especially being as moving as anything that Mrs. WARD has given us, whether in her popular, profound or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various
... the aborigines, hundreds of years ago, are the only points of refuge for miles. When we arrived we found them crowded with stock, all of which was thin and hardly able to stand up. They were mixed together, sheep, hogs, horses, mules, and cattle. One of these mounds has been used for many years as the grave-yard, and to-day we saw attenuated cows lying against the marble tomb-stones, chewing their cud in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... my dear, it is a gentleman for you. He says he is your uncle,' she said, and her thin voice quite trembled ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... to one of the rooms adjoining the operating room. The hospital was a very large place, and there were a great many odours she did not like. She hated herself for being so silly about things! Through the open door she saw many faces: white faces, thin faces, faces drawn with pain, faces robbed of hope, faces fretful, and faces indifferent, and she caught sight of one girl whose very happy eyes looked out from a face which bore the record of much pain. ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... who fled consulted the gods on the plain, and Gat answer Fret[Sec.] from that the day was propitious to battle; There the war-leader saw how mighty were the corse-ribs; The gods of the temple would thin lives in Gautland. A Sword-Thing held the Earl there where no man afore him With shield on arm had durst to harry; No one ere this so far inland had borne That shield of gold; all Gautland had he o'errun. With heaps of the fallen the warriors piled the plain ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... it is still and red and dense with grains. They call it sand because the thin wind whips it, and whirls its dusty skim away to the tight ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... was left alone. I rose and stole from the room,—stole out into the dewy night, under the heavy, drooping shade-boughs, and sat down wearily, leaning my head against the hard, rough bark. Never had I seen a more enchanting night. A thin mist rose from the bosom of the valley and hovered like a veil of silvery gauze over its rich depth of verdure. It floated round the edge of the horizon, subduing its outline of dazzling blue, and rolled off among the hills in soft, yet darkening ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... so,' said the Curator, smiling. 'Suffer me now to acquire merit. We be craftsmen together, thou and I. Here is a new book of white English paper: here be sharpened pencils two and three—thick and thin, all good for a scribe. Now lend me ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... on the Siberian coast of the Polar Sea. All remarked "that the Aurora flashed forth in the most vivid beams when masses of cirrous strata were hovering in the upper regions of the air, and when these were so thin that their presence could only be recognized by the formation of a halo round the moon." These clouds sometimes range themselves, even by day in a similar manner to the beams of the Aurora, and then disturb the course of the magnetic needle ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... because I had not expected to see her; perhaps because I found myself sitting opposite to her; perhaps because of something really remarkable in her. She had black hair and eager black eyes, and was thin, and had a scar upon her lip. It was an old scar—I should rather call it seam, for it was not discoloured, and had healed years ago—which had once cut through her mouth, downward towards the chin, but was now barely visible across the table, except ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... the circumstances. But the difficulty was how to distribute them amongst the field-cornets. The men all said they wanted them very urgently, and at once found the cattle belonging to each cart to be too thin and too weak to move. Yet the twenty-four could only be put into two carts, and I had to solve the ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... painted all day, and drank beer and WOULD eat starches or whatever it is that is fattening. But he adored Bella, and he was madly jealous of her. At dinners he used to glare at the man who took her in, although it did not make him thin. Bella was flirting, too, and by the time they had been married a year, people hitched their chairs together and dropped their voices ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Wilfred's glove better than my whole person. There she stands to avouch it—Nay, blush not, kinswoman, there is no shame in loving a courtly knight better than a country franklin—and do not laugh neither, Rowena, for grave-clothes and a thin visage are, God knows, no matter of merriment—Nay, an thou wilt needs laugh, I will find thee a better jest—Give me thy hand, or rather lend it me, for I but ask it in the way of friendship.—Here, cousin ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... calcareous rock, mostly in loose pieces; but the stone which forms the basis of the island is heavy and of a close grain, and was judged to be porphyry. In the crevices of a low calcareous cliff, at the south-east side of the bay, I found some thin cakes of good salt, incrusted upon a stone ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... a hollow channel, along which rivulets of rain water are wont to discharge themselves. The bending willows cover the lower parts of the cavity, and smooth sedges, and marshy rushes, and oziers, and thin reeds with their long stalks. Aroused from this spot, the boar rushes violently into the midst of the enemy, like lightning darted from the bursting clouds. In his onset the grove is laid level, and the wood, borne down, makes a crashing ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... light, cheerful room, but which was in all the dreariness of gray cinders, exhausted night-light, curtained windows, and fragments of the last meal. In each of two cane cribs was sitting up a forlorn child, with loose locks of dishevelled hair, pale thin cheeks glazed with tears, staring eyes, and mouths rounded with amaze at the apparition. One dropped down and hid under the bed-clothes; the other remained transfixed, as her visitor advanced, saying, 'Well, my dear, you called Mary, and ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mishka, tell the sergeants, Svistunov and Derzhimorda, to come here. They are near the gate. [After a pause of silence.] The world has turned into a queer place. If at least the people were visible so you could see them; but they are such a skinny, thin race. How in the world could you tell what he is? After all you can tell a military man; but when he wears a frock-coat, it's like a fly with clipped wings. He kept it up a long time in the inn, got off a lot of allegories and ambiguities so that you couldn't make out head or ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... Sir George Saville, limiting the duration of the bill to seven years. In the month of December a bill was brought into the house of commons by Lord Mountstuart for establishing a militia in Scotland; but the house was so thin at the time, that it was scarcely discussed. The bill was reproduced in the course of the session, and was eagerly patronized by the Scotch members; but it met with a strong opposition from the English ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... touches the ice; at those points at once a formation of vapor takes place, which prevents an intimate contact between the glass and the ice, so that they do not really touch each other, consequently the heat can pass into the ice but slowly, having to work its way through the thin layer of rarefied vapor between the two. As soon as pressure is admitted by admitting atmospheric air, vapors can no longer form; an intimate contact will take place between the glass and the ice, and consequently ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... must earn their own bread and "help support the family"; who "work their way through college," and during vacations put in a good year's labor to get the money for the next college year; who, the day after graduation, thin as a wolf and as hardy, must start right in then and there to earn that very day's meals and that very night's resting-place—such men, as a usual thing, develop the glorious qualities of gratitude, consideration, ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... ghastly hue; and the ceremony was performed beneath the light of torches, which threw their funeral glare upon the mortuary tablets and reliefs that decorate the interior of the sacred edifice. As the newly-married pair were about to step into the carriage at the door, a thin figure in black approached the bride, and laid its hand upon her arm. The countenance was not visible. The bride uttered a sharp cry of pain and terror, and the figure ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... length threw off the thin mask he had hitherto worn, and declared that the majority being in favour of Rome, the settlement must become what he called a Catholic colony. The Protestants complained loudly of the governor's treachery; and several of them were arrested on charge of mutiny, and for plotting ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... old or young, of figure ever so stout, thin, stumpy, homely, indulging in looking-glass reflections with that hideous ribbon and cross called V. C. on his coat, would he not be proud? and his family, would they not be prouder? For your nobleman there is the famous old blue garter ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is of course extensively cultivated in Piedmont, as everywhere in Italy, but not so universally as in the hilly, rocky region extending from the great valley to this city (some thirty or forty miles). This has a warm though a thin soil, which must be highly favorable to the Vine to induce so exclusive a devotion to it. I think half of the arable soil I saw between this and Arquata, where the plain and (for the present) the Railroad stop, and the hills and the diligence begin, was devoted to ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... at her and saw that she was wan and thin and weak, and he did not dare to preach to her the old family sermon as to his rank and station. "But, Anna, why do you tell ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... one way was the more impressive, because it seemed to proceed so entirely from within. Nay, the inward beauty would sometimes quite transform the outward harshness; there would be moments when the thin hands that entwined themselves in their eagerness, the earnest figure that bowed forward to speak and hear, the deep gaze moving from one face to another with a grave appeal,—all these seemed ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... her seat again between Oscar and me, before the door was softly opened from the outside. A long thin nervous hand stole in through the opening; took the servant by the arm; and drew her out into the passage. In her place, a man entered the room with his hat on. The ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... I say that, armed, as I hope to be, with God's aid and yours, gentlest ladies, and with fair patience, I will fare on with this that I have begun, turning my back to the wind aforesaid and letting it blow, for that I see not that aught can betide me other than that which betideth thin dust, the which a whirlwind, whenas it bloweth, either stirreth not from the earth, or, an it stir it, carrieth it aloft and leaveth it oftentimes upon the heads of men and upon the crowns of kings and emperors, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... to fascinate a big, strong, simple creature like that Yes, of course, Alice is cheap and tawdry and vulgar, with no substance to her mind." She tried to think of Arthur, but her mental image of him had become as thin ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... reply. He was rudely and unmistakably giving the impression of not having heard a word she said; but this attempt on his part, instead of offending his thin and voluble companion, only seemed to ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... out his unmistakable intention of saying more, Katie was airily off into a story about the cook, dragging it in with a thin hook about the late dinner, and the cook in the present case suggested a former cook in Washington whom Katie held, and sought to prove, nature had ordained for a great humorist. The ever faithful subject ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... entered the chateau silently, handed their horses to a melancholy-looking groom, and directed their steps, conducted by a huntsman in black, to the great dining-room, where Mousqueton received them at the door. Mousqueton had become so thin in two days that his clothes moved upon him like an ill-fitting scabbard in which the sword-blade dances at each motion. His face, composed of red and white, like that of the Madonna of Vandyke, was furrowed by two silver rivulets which had dug their beds in his cheeks, as ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... it very much—thought it was the finest school story I had ever read." Gordon felt rather nervous. He was aware that he was on thin ice, and timidly blurted out: "But, sir, was it true to ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... the time I speak of, close upon seventy years of age, scarcely five feet in height, and even that diminutive stature lessened by a stoop. His face was thin, pointed, and russet-colored; his nose so aquiline as nearly to meet his projecting chin, and his small gray eyes, red and bleary, peered beneath his well-worn cap with a glance of mingled fear and suspicion. His dress was a suit of the rustiest black, threadbare, and patched in several ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... upon Jack, just riding out from the stable upon Surry, his lips drew tight and thin. But he merely waved his hand and went on to tell Jose that he wanted Manuel to give the signals, for then all would be sure that there ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... up to her and stood gazing down at the long, thin hands outspread to the warmth. Then with an unaccustomed display of feeling he thrust one arm through hers, and his strong hand clasped ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... it till I was fairly "in the dark"; and then groping against one side, I found a recess, in which I ensconced myself. By peeping round the rock, I could see out of the cave and some distance over the bottom of the barranca, where the bushes grew thin and straggling. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... dressed, and makes an excellent roast for family use, and may be eaten warm or cold, or corned and dressed as the breast mentioned above. The shoulder is best from a large carcass of Southdown, Cheviot, or Leicester, the black-faced being too thin for the purpose; and it was probably because English mutton is usually large that the practice of removing it originated. The neckpiece is partly laid bare by the removal of the shoulder, the fore-part being fitted for boiling and making into broth, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... nothing of our want—we have had the OPERA this winter; had it in great variety and perfection, and, as many a reader can testify, with by no means thin houses. Grau has been busy—the most courteous and indefatigable polyglot and active of impresarios, with the good-natured Gosche, heralding a troupe of all the stars, D'Angri, Hinckley, Kellogg, Brignoli, Susini, and all the rest, including divers new singing birds. Maretzek has led, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... she was eighteen and has produced a result every year and a half since. She loves him mildly and he loves her after a fashion, but her endurance is wearing thin. His mother had seven children and he thinks that an ideal number, though she was one generation nearer the pioneer woman and also had a nurse trained in slavery who was a wizard with children. Mark ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... hand. It looked rather white and thin, as Theodora's brown, strong fingers closed ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... zigzags. The cider-mug was emptied for the ninth time, the music-books were arranged, and the pieces finally decided upon. The boys in the meantime put the old horn-lanterns in order, cut candles into short lengths to fit the lanterns; and, a thin fleece of snow having fallen since the early part of the evening, those who had no leggings went to the stable and wound wisps of hay round their ankles to keep the insidious flakes from the ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... arbitrament of brute force. And yet—was not Christianity a diviner breath than this passing through the ages? "Ye are the light of the world." Even the "roughs" sneered at the fighting parsons. It was too late to think now. He pushed back his thin yellow hair, his homesick eyes wandering upwards, his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... had ever struck out generous fire; secret and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime on his head, and on his ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... smartly towards the binnacle-light, as he spoke, and, holding an arm close to it, found that his sleeve was sprinkled with a thin ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... boy, how are you? I am glad to see you, very glad," he said, as his son entered the room; and when Grey sat down by him, and taking his thin, white hand, pressed it gently and said, "Poor father, you are not well, are you?" he did a most astonishing thing. He laid his head on his son's ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... of its own. Not only had it been advised by Sir Henry Wilson that the German offensive would come on the British front, but it had been warned that if it came where it was anticipated, that front, thin as it was, could not be expected to hold unless reinforcements, for which repeated requests were made, were dispatched. Remonstrances fell on deaf ears, although there were nearly 300,000 troops available in England. Mr. Lloyd George afterwards called them first-class troops, ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... The captain learned that the attack had developed about six, and the judge had grown steadily worse since. The upper windows of the Knowles house were bright with lights as they drove in at the yard gate. Mrs. Tidditt met them at the door. Her thin, hard face was ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... of the sound of the theme with the appearance of the person indicated. Its appropriateness is generally pretty obvious. Thus, the entry of the giants is made to a vigorous stumping, tramping measure. Mimmy, being a quaint, weird old creature, has a quaint, weird theme of two thin chords that creep down eerily one to the other. Gutrune's theme is pretty and caressing: Gunther's bold, rough, and commonplace. It is a favorite trick of Wagner's, when one of his characters is killed ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... a fleshy vermiform appendix (v.ap.). The figure will indicate how the parts are related better than any verbal description can. Between the coiling alimentary tube and the body walls is a space, into which the student cuts when he begins dissecting; this is the peritoneal cavity (pt.). A thin, transparent membrane, the mesentery, holds the intestines in place, and binds them to the dorsal wall ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... or the shape of a hat. His world was far above St. James's Street and the clubs. He was dressed plainly, though in a style peculiar to himself,—a white neck-cloth (which was not at that day quite so uncommon for morning use as it is now), trousers without straps, thin shoes, and gaiters. In his manner there was nothing of the supercilious apathy which characterizes the dandy introduced to some one whom he doubts if he can nod to from the bow-window at White's,—none of such vulgar coxcombries had Lord Castleton; and yet a young gentleman more emphatically coxcomb ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... their own way; but all the power of his example was at work in drawing the people from the old faith. He hesitated not to supplant evangelical professors and pastors by free-thinkers, and at any time to bring ridicule on any religious fact or custom. That thin-visaged man in top boots and cocked hat, surrounded by his infidels and his dogs at Sans Souci, dictated faith to Berlin and to Europe. He would have no one within the sunshine of royalty whom he could not use as he wished; and ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... boyhood, in which you, Natalie, can readily perceive innumerable songs of woe, was needful to explain to you its influence on my future life. At twenty years of age, and affected by many morbid elements, I was still small and thin and pale. My soul, filled with the will to do, struggled with a body that seemed weakly, but which, in the words of an old physician at Tours, was undergoing its final fusion into a temperament of iron. Child in body and old in mind, I had read and thought so much that I knew life metaphysically ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... the ruins of many, that had been very large. We proceeded along the shore; which forms a bay, called Oaitipeha, and at last we found the chief sitting near some pretty canoe awnings, under which, we supposed, he and his attendants slept. He was a thin old man, with a very white head and beard, and had with him a comely woman, about five-and-twenty years old, whose name was Toudidde. We had often heard the name of this woman, and, from report and observation, we had reason to think that she was the Oberea ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... extricate her from the cruelty of Perez. Making himself, therefore, as fascinating as possible, he marched directly to the house, or rather cabin, of Juana Donilla, and stood before her, smiling and watching her small, thin fingers plaitting straw for hats, some minutes ere she was aware of his presence. "Pedro!" exclaimed she, with a countenance and voice of pleasure, as she recognised the intruder.—"Ay, Pedro it is, indeed, Juana; but, improved as I am. O, mercy upon me, how black you are looking!"—"Black, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... long life. At the same time, the mouth and eyes of the father wear an intelligent, lively, energetic, and clever expression. He has also, as his son Martin observed, retained to old age a 'strong and hardy frame.' The mother looks more wearied by life, but resigned, quiet, and meditative. Her thin face, with its large bones, presents a mixture of mildness and gravity. Spalatin was amazed, on seeing her for the first time in 1522, how much Luther resembled her in bearing and features. Indeed, a certain likeness is observable between him and her portrait, in the eyes and the ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... world curiously compounded of imagination and reality. At first sight one can see nothing there but a kind of conventional fantasy, playing charmingly round impossible situations and queer delightful personages, who would vanish in a moment into thin air at the slightest contact with actual flesh and blood. But if Marivaux had been simply fantastic and nothing more, his achievement would have been insignificant; his great merit lies in his exquisite instinct ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... and their forty years, said it proved that an Englishman is to a Frenchman as 40 x 40 to 3, or as 1600 to 3. Boswell, who was no great hand at arithmetic, made him say that an Englishman is to a Frenchman as 3 to 1600. When I pointed this out, the supposed Johnson was defended through thick and thin ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... then building the family mansion, and resided in a pretty little decorated cottage which was afterward converted into domestic offices. We passed through a thick wood, the mountains at every break meeting our eyes, covered with thin clouds, and rising in a sublime altitude above the valley. A more romantic space of scenery never met the human eye! I felt my mind inspired with a pensive melancholy, and was only awakened from my reverie by the postboy stopping at the ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... had admired her greatly and loved to wander with her amid the Alpine scenery, listening to her wild bursts of enthusiasm, and watching the kindling light in her blue eyes, and the color coming to her thin, pale cheeks, as she gazed upon some scene of grandeur, nestling close to him as for protection, when the ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... moving very carefully for fear of falling; and everything about her was gigantic, from Jane Nettles, the nurse, at whose skirt she tugged when she wanted to attract attention, to the brown wallflower and the purple larkspur which she could not reach to pull. There was a thin hedge at the end of the garden, through which she looked out on a path across a field, and a thick hedge on her left, in which a thrush had built a nest at an immense height above her head. Jane lifted her up to look into the ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... about "quaintness," and "vivid picture of the past," and similar nonsense. But the Wizard Past casts wonderful spells. And then there is the tenderness and piety due to those poor dead people, once strutting majestically in power, beauty, wit, or genius; and now left shivering, poor, thin, transparent ghosts in those faded, thrice-crossed paper rags! I feel rebuked for my inhuman irreverence. Out upon it! I will speak only pious words about the letters ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... benefit, your mind must remain undiverted from your studies, and you must be kept free from everything that will detract from your health and strength. Parties will excite you, deprive you of sleep, fill your mind with foolish fancies, retard you in your school work, and make you thin, pale, and irritable. We should sadly miss our bright, blooming Nellie. Do you wonder we refuse to ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... home, received one day a large, square, thin package. She saw the mark of the Annapolis express office, and hastily snatched up scissors to cut the string. Out ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... still doggedly applying friction and restoratives without having made an inch of progress for his pains. Darkness had fallen by now, and the one lamp, set well away from the bed, made a pallid oasis in its own vicinity. Desmond had flung aside his coat, and his thin shirt clung in patches to his damp body. His face was set in rigid lines; and the little doctor, who carried a heart of flesh under a porcupine exterior, was haunted for days by the despair ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... occupied by the brigade Head-quarters. Everywhere about us swarmed the little "chasseurs Alpins" in blue Tam o'Shanters and leather gaiters. For a year we had been reading of these heroes of the hills, and here we were among them, looking into their thin weather-beaten faces and meeting the twinkle of their friendly eyes. Very friendly they all were, and yet, for Frenchmen, inarticulate and shy. All over the world, no doubt, the mountain silences breed this kind of reserve, this shrinking ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... sure. It's mesilf as heard it, and thin if ye'll look over the Baltimore papers, ye'll see her name Morgianna Lane, the daughter of Captain Felix Lane of Mariana, whose entree into society is to be the ninth, chaperoned by ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... flushing up to the temples, as he took a step toward the speaker, and with flashing eyes looked him up and down. "Well, if you come to that, so do you, with your broad skirts, salt-box pockets, lace, and tied-up hair. See what thin legs you've ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn |
