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More "Shrinking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there had been a buzz of curiosity over the belated arrival of a new boy—an Indian—weedy-looking and noticeably dark, with a sullen mouth and shifty eyes. Roy, though keenly interested, had not felt drawn to him; and a new self-protective shrinking had withheld him from proferring advances that might only embroil them both. He had never imagined the boy's colour would tell against him. Was that ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... winning voice in the service of their cause. Cowper disliked the task, but he wrote two or three anti-Slave-Trade ballads. The Slave Trader in the Dumps, with its ghastly array of horrors dancing a jig to a ballad metre, justifies the shrinking of an artist from a subject ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... before him. This perfect sunshine, so harmonious with every feeling, thrilled him with a virile longing to go out and proclaim his defiance against the waiting hordes in Life's eternal battle. No road could be so rough as to leave him shrinking, no fight so fierce that he was not confident of victory, no trouble so great that it could not be borne with perfect cheerfulness. As he had awakened to love so had he awakened to life, ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... work, he cannot but have partaken fully of the satisfaction this gave to them, whilst they were, as yet, buried amidst the mass of East-End misery. It was shortly before the foundation of the Work that he was converted at one of his mother's own Meetings. The shrinking from publicity, which seems an essential part of every conscientious person, held him long back from resolving to become one of their Officers. But during all the years between his being saved and ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... determine on this adventure with light hearts, I remember. Paris loomed big and awesome in the eyes of all of us. The glamour of the court rather frightened than allured us. We felt that shrinking from contact with the world which a country life engenders, as well as that dread of seeming unlike other people which is peculiar to youth. It was a great plunge, and a dangerous which we meditated. And we trembled. If we had known ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... Collins, Burns, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, and many other poets. His native faculty, indeed, seems rather fine than powerful—rather timid than daring, and resembles rather the petal of a rose peeping out into the summer air, which seems scarce warm enough for its shrinking loveliness, than the feather of the wing of a great eagle, dipping into the night tempest, which raves around the inaccessible rock of his birthplace. He was not eminently original in his thinking. In proof of this, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... to clear out he lifted up his head and became vituperative. After that there was nothing for it but to cut him into convenient lengths with a shovel, upon which he was afterwards removed for interment. Shrinking from a possible interview with his widow the C.O. sought another resting-place, and a fairly roomy dug-out was excavated for him in the open ground a few yards north of the hedge. But when he removed to it a large party of the flies insisted on accompanying ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... round the dreary, deserted yard. The noon sun bit the naked stones; and everything, hiding and shrinking from that glowing sun-fire, seemed dead. The drivers sat slumbering on the boxes of their cabs; the horses stood on three legs, their heads down, crookedwise between the shafts, and now and then they gave a short stamp, to keep off the flies, which were terribly active. A group ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... caprice, and pardon my irresolution, when you find me shrinking with terror from the promise I have made, and no longer either able or willing to perform it. The reproaches of your family I should very ill endure; but the reproaches of my own heart for an action I can neither approve nor defend, would ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... opportunity, and the sight does not appear to excite the slightest curiosity. Nobody bestows any tokens of respect on the funeral procession, and scarcely anybody gives it even a passing glance. This does not apparently arise from superstitious shrinking from the ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... been strange indeed if peace had dwelt in a heart where was neither "glory to God" nor "good-will to men." And while her veneration for her mother's memory was heightened by her aunt's narrative, her feeling towards her father, originally a shrinking timidity, had changed now into active hatred. Had she at that moment been summoned to his deathbed, she would either have refused to go near him at all, or ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... girl, recovering herself with an evident effort. "I cannot doubt it. I do not," and she threw her aims about Miss Ludington's neck in an embrace in which, nevertheless, a subtle shrinking still mingled with the impulse of tenderness ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... white thing in the window?" said Valmai, in a frightened whisper, and shrinking a little nearer to ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... the darkness, with his eyes open, somewhat disturbed, almost afraid of that body, hidden under the same sheet, lying a short distance from him, which avoided touching him, shrinking with manifest repulsion. ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... rose unwillingly, and Anne took her up to the spacious chamber where firelight was dancing on the wall and Lydia had completed all sorts of hospitable offices. Lydia was there still, shrinking shyly into the background, as having no means of communication with an Esther to whom she had been hostile. But Esther turned them both out firmly, if ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... source,—jesting, laughing, lamenting. It is singular that, in all these aspects of his character, there is no want of true dignity, though there is an utter absence of state,—and that we behold nothing of the man Lincoln was once doubted to be, but only a person of noble simplicity, cautious but steadfast, shrinking from none of the burdens that almost crushed him, profoundly true to his faith in the people, while surveying the awful calamity of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... up and shrinking away at the suggestion. "No, he can't be. He's quite warm," he added, going down on his knee again to shake the recumbent man, who now ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... his heir, and bring him up to have better notions of hospitality and good manners than could be learned at Howth Castle. Then she hurried back to her ship, with the poor little lordling who seemed too frightened to cry, and hid his face against her bosom, as though shrinking from the look of her dark, angry eyes. Immediately she ordered all sails to be set, and sped away toward Connaught. The nurse ran up to the castle with the news, but as she could not be admitted till the Earl had dined and ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... we not better wait until next week, Josiah?" questioned Mrs. Stanhope timidly. She was a pale, delicate woman of forty, of a shrinking nature, ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... contiguity of rivers, the fertility of its soil, from alliances and intermarriages with the neighboring people; never having suffered from foreign wars, but a sad sufferer from civil dissensions. Antonius, shrinking from the infamy of this horrible transaction (for the detestation it excited was increasing), issued an edict forbidding all manner of persons to detain the citizens of Cremona as prisoners of war. At the same time the booty was rendered valueless by a resolution adopted ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... Stanton's red face and forceful gestures attested to heat on his part. Flo evidently was weary of argument, and in answer to a sharp reproach she retorted, "Shore I was different after he came." To which Stanton responded by a quick passionate shrinking as if ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... by the holy mass! I scorn your proffers; Is there no crimson blush to tell of fame And shrinking womanhood! Oh shame! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... genius so shrinking and rare That you hardly at first see the strength that is there; A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet, So earnest, so graceful, so lithe, and so fleet, Is worth a descent ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... the crowd on Broadway, one will frequently see, in some shabbily dressed individual, who, with his hat drawn down close over his eyes, is evidently shrinking from the possibility of being recognized, the man who but a few weeks ago was one of the wealthiest in the city. Then he was surrounded with splendor. Now he hardly knows where to get bread for his family. Then he lived in an elegant mansion. Now one or two rooms on the upper floor ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... temperament nor previous life had been such as to arm poor Gilbert to meet the King of Terrors; and as day by day he felt the cold grasp tightening on him, he had fluttered like a bird in the snare of the fowler, physically affrighted at the death-pang, shrinking from the lonely entrance into the unknown future, and despairing of the acceptableness of his own repentance. He believed that he had too often relapsed, and he could not take heart to grasp the hope ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said Brandon, in answer to his niece's disclaiming and shrinking gratitude; "I do honour to myself, not you; and now bless you, my dear girl. Farewell! Should any occasion present itself in which you require an immediate adviser, at once kind and wise, I beseech you, my dearest ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... meeting the unflinching glance direct, became suddenly aware of the fact that the timid little love-sick girl with half-shut, sleepy eyes he had had such a fancy for, and this young lady, modestly shrinking in every inch of her sensitive frame, but undaunted in spirit, nevertheless, were two very different people. There had been misapprehension of character on both sides, it seemed, but he liked pluck, and, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... children of bishops carry about with them an austere and repulsive air, indicative of claims not generally acknowledged, a sort of noli me tangere manner, nervously apprehensive of too familiar approach, and shrinking with the sensitiveness of a gouty man from all contact with the [Greek text]. Doubtless, a powerful understanding, or unusual goodness of nature, will preserve a man from such weakness, but in general the truth ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... been gay, spirituette, and coquettish; gradually, she became quiet and reserved. The giddy school-girl had given place to the shrinking virgin. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... surprise that there should be so great a resentment shown against religious disbelief in general and against Atheism in particular. We have here more than the mere rejection of a theory or view of life. There is a certain emotional resentment, a shrinking from the one who is guilty of disbelief, such as is not explainable on ordinary grounds. The attitude is ridiculous, so ridiculous that many who adopt it are ashamed to openly acknowledge it, but it is there, and its ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... rest of Asia Minor, Cilicia was saved by the Assyrians from the ravages of the Cimmerians. Their leader, Dugdamme, whom the Greeks called Lygdamis, is said to have met his death on the frontier hills of Taurus, which, no doubt, he failed to pass. Thus, when Ashurbanipal's death and the shrinking of Ninevite power permitted distant vassals to resume independence, the unimpaired wealth of Cilicia soon gained for her considerable importance. The kings of Tarsus now extended their power into adjoining lands, such as Kue on the east and Tabal on the north, and probably over even the holding ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... 380 Whence comes it, Diomede, that we forget Our wonted courage? Hither, O my friend! And, fighting at my side, ward off the shame That must be ours, should Hector seize the fleet. To whom the valiant Diomede replied. 385 I will be firm; trust me thou shalt not find Me shrinking; yet small fruit of our attempts Shall follow, for the Thunderer, not to us, But to the Trojan, gives the glorious day. The Hero spake, and from his chariot cast 390 Thymbraeus to the ground pierced through the pap, While by Ulysses' hand his charioteer Godlike Molion, fell. The warfare thus Of ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... crop; the tariff discussion, ending with the McKinley Bill on October 6th, and the low bank reserves and money pressure beginning in August and lasting pretty steadily till December, and an immense shrinking of securities, were the chief features of the year; and failures beginning with that of Decker, Howell, & Co., in New York, on November 11th, and reaching a climax with the embarrassment of Baring Brothers [Footnote: Meanwhile Messrs. Charles ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... whole thing but as a sparrows' squabble: worst of all, perhaps, the rare pity! The after humiliation when, finally released, I would dart away, followed by shouted taunts and laughter; every eye turned to watch me, shrinking by; my whole small carcass shaking with dry sobs of ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... they ate and drank before—the very people who had talked with him this day; the very table at which he had sat this morning. Oh! they were so heartless and selfish: every one was; life itself was. I did not know where to turn for comfort. I had a feeling of dreading every one, of shrinking ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... sensation was a dread of the coming night, which all too soon would be upon me. For several hours I sat, pale and nerveless, in my room, despising myself for a weakness and a fear which I could not possibly avoid. I was no longer my own master; I was the slave, the shrinking chattel of a ghost, and the thought of my condition was ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... physical contact with her stepmother was almost the last straw for the girl. She obeyed in silence, shrinking back as far as she could from the stout, over-scented body and the powdered face with the thin lips. Mrs. Rainham watched ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... our hearts we know that the Kingdom of Heaven is the higher of the two and the better worth living and dying for, and that, if it is to be won, it must be sought steadfastly and in singleness of heart by those who put all else on one side and, shrinking from no sacrifice, are ready to face shame, poverty and torture here rather than abandon the hope of the prize of their high calling. Nobody who doubts any of this is worth ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... heat out of a man's heart." It was by no means a new experience to Winifred Anstice. As a younger girl, although no coquette, she had found a certain charm of romance in finding herself the heroine of a love-affair in real life; but as she grew older she felt more and more shrinking from such sentimental crises, and a more and more genuine regret as she saw the candid comradeship of one friendship after another sacrificed to the ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... wisest, resolution of his life was to abandon the provinces which it would have exhausted the power of the Empire to retain. He travelled over every portion of his dominion within the limits he himself had set to it, shrinking from neither frost nor heat, and he tried to be as thoroughly acquainted with every portion of it as if the Empire were a small estate he had inherited. His duties as a sovereign forced him to travel, and his love of travel lightened ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... manner to his inferiors. It was these things that made him so universally beloved. The coldest natures, if thrown in contact with him, unconsciously to themselves kindled into warmth; vice itself could not meet the glance of that piercing eye without shrinking, for the ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... him, waiting in the parlor and very near the window, her shrinking little figure looked pathetic enough, as glancing in at the taxi, and finding it empty, she realized who might be awaiting her under her mother's eye. He remembered his grandchild, and made up his mind, as she slid nervously in, that no matter what happened he would keep ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... to be held a thing impossible that the Christian Religion, instead of shrinking into itself, (!) may again embrace the thoughts of men upon the earth?" (that is to say, "embrace the thoughts" of—Mr. Jowett!)—"Or is it true that since the Reformation 'all intellect has gone the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... that hero who from mine eyes averts his own: in shrinking shame my gaze he shuns— Say, ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner
... did not win the shadow of a reply,—again and again. She laid her hand then upon Mrs. Rossitur's shoulder, but the very significant answer to that was a shrinking gesture of the shoulder and neck, away from the hand. Fleda growing desperate then implored an answer in words—prayed for an explanation—with an intensity of distress in voice and manner, that no one whose ears were not stopped with a stronger feeling could have been deaf to; but Mrs. ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... for their habitation. But after they had sailed y^t course aboute half y^e day, they fell amongst deangerous shoulds and roring breakers, and they were so farr intangled ther with as they conceived them selves in great danger; & y^e wind shrinking upon them withall, they resolved to bear up againe for the Cape, and thought them selves hapy to gett out of those dangers before night overtooke them, as by Gods providence they did. And y^e next day they gott into y^e Cape-harbor wher they ridd in saftie.[2] A word or too by y^e ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... my brother's keeper?" Yes, of a truth! Thine asking is thine answer. That self-condemning cry of Cain Has been the plea of every selfish soul since then, Which hath its brother slain. God's word is plain, And doth thy shrinking soul arraign. ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... street, What a hell-vapor breaking. Rolls on through the street, And higher and higher Aloft moves the column of fire! Through the vistas and rows Like a whirlwind it goes, And the air like the stream from the furnace glows. Beams are crackling—posts are shrinking Walls are sinking—windows clinking— Children crying— Mothers flying— And the beast (the black ruin yet smouldering under) Yells the howl of its pain and its ghastly wonder! Hurry and skurry—away—away, The face of the night is as clear as day! As the links ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... "Stop it!" he cried in a croaking whisper. "Stop it! It's his skull—it's Loge's skull come alive. Stop it, I say, it's come alive and getting bigger." With a violent effort he raised himself before the nurse could prevent him, shrinking back from the horrid hallucination which pressed towards him, and then fell prone ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... to every sense of shame, Unfit to gird the warrior's sword around Your shrinking loins! Men are ye but in name. Well, I myself shall be the first to sound The depths of this enchantment, and proclaim Unto this Christian that my heart unawed Nor dreads his incantations nor his God! [Egerius advances to the cave, and on entering sinks into it with much noise, flames rise ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... in his voice betrayed the tension, the anxiety which until now he had hidden so well; and hot shame burned me for my shrinking, my dread of again ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... cannot!" cried Eleanor, shrinking; "Robert is so much to me that I cannot run the risk of having even a doubt disturb the perfect understanding that ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... off for that now, Sir Giles, I trust.' 'No; of course not,' he returned quickly, with the usual shrinking from the slightest allusion to what is called the other world.—'Is there anything I can do for you? You are a literary man, they tell me. There are a good many books of one sort and another lying at the Hall. Some of them might be of use to you. They are at your ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... one week's anguish That can have changed her so; Joy has not died here lately, Struck down by one quick blow; But cruel months have needed Their long relentless chain, To teach that shrinking manner ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... murmur, not a movement betrayed an instant's shrinking from her fate, as the cold heap of clay covered Beatrice to the very neck. Her face was still above ground, and the infuriated bigot, whose word was to save her or stifle her voice for ever, once more approached. He knelt beside her thrust his crucifix close ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... nice," he muttered, shrinking up against the rock. "I don't think any wild creature would harm me unless he tumbled over the top of the rock there and dropped on my head. Even then I think I should wake up soon enough to use my gun on him. But then, I guess I ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... sleep. What did I do? what did I say?" she asked, trembling and shrinking as she dropped ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... this place?" I asked, clinging to the others and shrinking back in alarm from its sheer edge and bottomless depth, for that this was enormous we could see by the shaft of light which flowed downwards farther than ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... on the horrible quest, shrinking where others stared. For it was a pitiless time, and the squadron of the Queen-mother were as lost to womanhood as the fishwomen of two centuries later. But Diane saw no corpse at once so tall, so young, and so fair, though blond Normans and blue-blooded Franks, lads ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one's emotion miss the mark of either laughter or tears. Nothing more humiliating! And this for the reason that should the mark be missed, should the open display of emotion fail to move, then it must perish unavoidably in disgust or contempt. No artist can be reproached for shrinking from a risk which only fools run to meet and only genius dare confront with impunity. In a task which mainly consists in laying one's soul more or less bare to the world, a regard for decency, even at the cost of success, is but the regard for one's own dignity ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... the angry look was for her, and that it could be justified by any word that she had ever spoken or any duty that she had neglected? With one hand lightly resting upon the table, her right foot thrown forward in impulsive readiness to spring into his extended arms, but her whole form drooping and shrinking with dismay, her face pale, and the smile which she had called upon it now faintly and painfully flickering in a deathlike manner about her whitened lips, as it glided from her control and began to give place to ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... me the paper in the left-hand drawer. Quick! quick, for Heaven's sake!" said Mrs. Scatchard, shrinking further back in terror. ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... take it, hardly spelled stage-fright. At the same time, it is improbable that one so sensitive to criticism meant to convey the impression that it was of his audience alone he thought in shrinking from the effort. ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... and sixteen, her figure as yet undeveloped, her dresses a little too short. Her face was small and white, her mouth had a most pathetic droop, and in her eyes—wonderful, deep blue eyes—there was a curious look of shrinking fear, beneath which flashed every now and then a gleam of positive terror. Her dark hair was arranged in a thick straight fringe upon her forehead, and in a long plait behind, after the schoolgirl fashion. Notwithstanding the gaucherie of her years and her apparent unhappiness, she carried ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cut $ 130 billion in spending by shrinking departments, extending our freeze on domestic spending, cutting 60 public housing programs down to 3, getting rid of over a hundred programs we do not need like the Interstate Commerce Commission and the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... combination, ma foi!" said Merlin, with an oath, as he turned to the two other women, who sat pale and shrinking in a corner of the room, not understanding what was going on, not knowing what to think or what to believe. They had known nothing of Deroulede's plans for the escape of Marie Antoinette, they didn't know what the ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... was fierce and swift, as it could not help being with such a mass of combustibles,—loose straw from the mattress, dry old furniture, and old warped floors which had been parching and shrinking for a score or two of years. The whole house was, in the common language of the newspaper reports, "a perfect tinder-box," and would probably be a heap of ashes in half an hour. And there was this unfortunate deserted ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... prove to me that I'd better put myself under your protection?" She burst into a laugh that had in it all the piercing echoes of her Murrett past, and her face, at the same moment, underwent the same change, shrinking into a small malevolent white mask in which the eyes burned black. "Thank you—thank you most awfully for telling me! And for all your other kind intentions! The plan's delightful—really quite delightful, and I'm ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... Cataraqui. In his discourses, however, he laid stress upon the ease with which he had mounted the rapids and launched barges upon Lake Ontario. The sum and substance of all his harangues was this: 'I am your good, kind father, loving {44} peace and shrinking from war. But you can see my power and I give you fair warning. If you choose war, you are guilty of self-destruction; your fate is in your ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... shrinking back into a corner. "Don't touch me, for I am almost mad. What do I care for your pride? What do I care for the old graveyard? You have tried to break my heart, but I will marry him. He is worth ten thousand such men as your cold-blooded ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... short-lived. Suddenly, a shrinking figure was expelled from the group of men, as if shot from a cannon's mouth. The searchlight from the Nark was playing full ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... day. She had come to look upon him as a new piece of furniture that she found in place in front of her every afternoon; an automaton, who appeared as regularly as a clock strikes, to spend hours and hours staring at her, pale, shrinking with an absurd consciousness of inferiority, and often answering her questions with stupid phrases ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... turned away from the pump, I saw in the doorway the station-master, of whom I had twice made complaints to his superiors, turning up the collar of his coat, shrinking from the wind and the snow. He came up to me, and putting two fingers to the peak of his cap, told me with an expression of helpless confusion, strained respectfulness, and hatred on his face, that the train was twenty ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... could have explained the mystery. She knew that, several years ago, Winifred's name had been blighted by a scandal, and that the girl's shrinking from every proposal of marriage was due, in part perhaps, to the memory of love betrayed, in part to a sense of honour, and to the suspicion that men, knowing her disgrace, condoned it for the sake of her wealth. Interest made Mrs. Damerel generous; she admitted every excuse for Winifred, and ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... in the case of a fat man. A man of abnormal weight, 250 lbs., lost fifty pounds in two weeks following the operation, during which time he remained at the hospital, feeling well and strong, but shrinking in girth amazingly. When he left the hospital his clothes hung about him in bags and folds. The fat woman's spirits seem to rise as her weight decreases, and she feels as if she had indeed regained the buoyancy of ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... floor, and those nearest him turned up their moon eyes with an expression of submission and supplication that was grotesque. He motioned us to join him and, imitating him, we began to pat and smooth the shrinking bodies until, understanding that we would not hurt them, they ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... the Old North State were hardly better in the main, but some men among them seemed not unlike the militia that had fought so well at Roanoke Island. Green and awkward; shrinking away from the chaff of passing regulars; looking a little sheepish for being conscripts, "Zeb Vance's boys" yet proved not unworthy the companionship of the men of Bethel, of Manassas and ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... aimed than common!" exclaimed Duncan, involuntarily shrinking from a shot which struck the rock at his side with a ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... which theories, as men ought physically to have dwindled long ago into pygmies, so, on the other hand, morally they must by this time have left Sodom and Gomorrah far behind. What a strange animal must man upon this scheme offer to our contemplation; shrinking in size, by graduated process, through every century, until at last he would not rise an inch from the ground; and, on the other hand, as regards villany, towering evermore and more up to the heavens. What a dwarf! ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... colder, where none else can grow, is the omnipresent gray-green reindeer-moss that gives its color to the upland. The hollows are still filled with snow, though now it is June. But each of these white expanses is shrinking, spending itself in ice-cold streams that somehow reach the lake. These snoe-flaks show no sign of life, not even the 'red-snow' tinge, and around each is a belt of barren earth, to testify that life and warmth can ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... soon. And if you can help shrinking when my aunt kisses you, it will be better for us. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her imagination. The pretended ghost then advanced in front of her bed, while lights were slowly introduced, which first shone faintly, until they were ushered into the room by the private door, exhibiting the person before her in all his horrific appearances. On her shrieking, and shrinking into the bed, the lights were suddenly extinguished, and the person, after commanding her to be gone in a hoarse voice, passed again to the foot of the bed, shook it violently, and made a seeming attempt to get upon it, when, perceiving her to be springing up, he fled out of the ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... I did not see that he took it to himself, and I kept feeling a curious shrinking sensation as some better-aimed arrow than usual struck the box close to ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... merely some private soldier straying out of bounds with a woman of the camp as companion, he had thrown himself from the saddle to investigate. Whatever was to be done must be accomplished quickly, or it would prove all too late. To think was to act. Stepping instantly in front of the shrinking girl and facing him, ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... be the matter!" exclaimed by aunt, shrinking from me, and following with her frightened eyes the direction of mine. My breath was coming in short, quick gasps now, and my excitement was almost uncontrollable. My ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... protection for their converts. The plan which they have laid for their own proceedings is perfectly prudent and unexceptionable, and there is as little fear of their provoking martyrdom as there would be of their shrinking from it, if the cause of God and man require the sacrifice. But the converts ought to be protected from violence, and all cramming with cow-dung prohibited on pain of ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... his pipe, staring into the darkness. Why not go and get it over, instead of troubling to send an excuse? Surely that were the simpler plan? One moment he thought he would, and the next he found himself shrinking unaccountably, warned again by Diana's chaff. He knew quite well she was right. He was a man, or a bear if she preferred it, with two faces; but the trouble was that she should so thoroughly have grasped the fact. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... story—his shrinking from the message given him. We know not why; but perhaps from faint-hearted fear, or from a sense of his unworthiness and unfitness for the task. His own words about God as long-suffering seem to suggest another reason, that he feared to go with a message of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... think! 'T is the lack of thought that bringeth Man to where he needs relief; 'T is the lack of thought that wringeth All his inner self with grief. Would he give a moment's thinking Ere his every step is made, He would not from light be shrinking, Groping on in Error's shade! Think, immortal! thou art treading On a path laid thick with snares, Where mischievous minds are spreading Nets to catch thee unawares. Pause and think! the next step taken May be that which leads to death; Rouse thee! let thy spirit waken; List to, heed ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... all hands of us went to work upon the canvas, clewing up and hauling down all our lighter sails, until we had stripped the ship to topsails, courses, fore-topmast staysail, jib, and mizzen. At this stage of the proceedings another glance at the barometer showed that the mercury was still shrinking in the tube, while the atmosphere had assumed a hazy appearance that rendered it difficult to distinguish the horizon. There could no longer be any doubt that a change of weather was impending, although there was nothing at present to indicate very precisely ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... clean— For washing would not cleanse them, even if I dipped them in thy blood. Away! Away! So stood'st thou not to deal the deadly blow, Thy wolfish eyes fixed on him steadily, With fiendish grin disclosing thy intent Before the time! But slyly didst thou creep Behind him, ever shrinking from his gaze, As wild beasts do that fear the human eye, And peered to find the spot, that I—Thou dog, What was thine oath ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... patient sheep and kine, Close shrinking from the sun's hot flame, Had man's gift—"power of speech divine," They surely would repeat the same— Each blade of grass, each fainting flower, Would whisper to the shrubs and trees, How much they longed for evening's hour, With ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... had refused him only to give herself to God, was of all circumstances the one most likely to console him. The presence of Antoinette—who honestly believed all Dolores had said concerning the state of her heart and the purely sisterly affection she felt for her adopted brother—and the timid, shrinking love of the young girl also aided not a little in assuaging his grief. However ardent your passion may be, you become reconciled to disappointment when the object of your love refuses your affection only to consecrate herself to God, and when she leaves with you as a comforter a companion ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... the great lakes. If not Noah's flood, then evidently some other very wet spell, of which this is a tradition, lies far behind us. Something like the drought of summer is beginning upon the earth; the great floods have dried up; the rivers are slowly shrinking; the water is penetrating farther and farther into the cooling crust of the earth; and what was ample to drench and cover its surface, even to make a Noah's flood, will be but a drop in the bucket to the vast interior of ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... usually disagreeable to the uninterested bystander to see an excessive desire for praise, even under the guise of just recognition of work done. Words of complaint, whether heard or read, strike a discord to one who himself at the moment is satisfied with his surroundings. We all have an instinctive shrinking from the tones of a grumbler. Nelson's insistence upon his grievances has no exemption from this common experience; yet it must be remembered that these assertions of the importance of his own services, and dissatisfaction ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... bank upon which we were, a volley burst upon them before which they wavered and swerved backward a few paces, as here and there a man reeled and staggered or sank to the earth. There was no panic—not a back turned—only that instinctive shrinking which Life sometimes feels when Death unexpectedly thrusts out his ghastly face through the smoke of battle. A color-bearer sprang forward with the battle-flag. He halted beside me and rested the end of the flagstaff on the ground. He half-faced ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... enough, trees on the side of a hill; but the objects in the middle distance were a railway line and a ditch full of muddy water. In the foreground there were two incinerators, a dump of old tins, and a Salvation Army hut. I dare say the artist was right in shrinking from ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... faithfulness to duty, the form of 'Justice' which is possible for a constitutional monarch. We have little notion of how pressing and numerous and continual the royal duties must necessarily be. They have been discharged, even when the blow that struck all sunshine out of life left an irrepressible shrinking from pageantry and pomp. Joys come; joys go. Duties abide, and they have ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... thunders, and rages, sad there's no end to it! Hoooo... it's like the noise of a forest.... Hoooo.... The wind is wailing like a dog.... [Shrinking back] It's cold! My clothes are wet, it's all coming in through the open door... you might put me through a wringer.... [Plays softly] My concertina's damp, and so there's no music for you, my Orthodox brethren, or ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... expression of thoughtfulness and composure was very interesting. Her handwriting accorded well with the character of her mind. It was clear, elegant, and womanly. Her manners differed with circumstances. Her shrinking sensitiveness might embarrass one visitor; while another would be charmed with her easy, significant, and vivacious conversation. It depended much on whom she talked with. The abiding certainty was, that she had strength for the hardest of human trials, and the composure which belongs ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... well-shapen of body she was; but her face forbidding; her lower lip thrust out, her cheeks flaggy and drooping, her eyes little more than half open; to be short, a face both proud, foolish, and cruel; terrible indeed, sitting in judgment in that place on a shrinking naked creature. ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... those who heard his words believed him. A mild old man raised his sad blue eyes, gazed at him, and while trying to draw back, gently shook his head. A pale woman, whose sickly features were half veiled in the folds of a torn black shawl, moved as far as she could, shrinking as the very poor and miserable shrink when they are expected to make way before the rich and the strong. A lad of fifteen stood upon tiptoe to make himself even slighter than he was and thus to widen the way, and the Wanderer found himself, ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... which will in the end achieve good results in this as in other fields of activity. The task is a great one and underlies the task of dealing with the whole industrial problem. But the fact that it is a great problem does not warrant us in shrinking from the attempt to solve it. At present we face such utter lack of supervision, such freedom from the restraints of law, that excellent men have often been literally forced into doing what they deplored because otherwise they ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... learn the latest European news, which a steamer, just arrived, had brought in. Many passed her with a glance of surprise; some laughed, and gazed into her face with looks of insolent curiosity: while others regarded her with unconcern and indifference. "It is strange," thought May, shrinking back into a doorway, "I was so sure of the way; but it will never do to stand here, yet how am I to get on? Sir," she said to a benevolent-looking old gentleman, whose white hairs and respectable appearance were a guarantee of protection ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... and graceful figure; wings not spread out flat, when resting, but folded lengthwise in two; the abdomen a sort of chemist's retort, which swells into a gourd and is fastened to the thorax by a long neck, first distending into a pear, then shrinking to a thread; a leisurely and silent flight; lonely habits. There we have a summary sketch of the Eumenes. My part of the country possesses two species: the larger, Eumenes Amedei, Lep., measures nearly an inch in length; the other, Eumenes pomiformis, Fabr., ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... destruction; but still they advanced, and that his own might be preserved they must fall. To shorten the bloody contest, his direful weapons were worked with redoubled energy; and so mortal a shower fell that the heavens seemed to rain iron. The crushed and stricken enemy, shrinking under the ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... a believer in strict discipline, sternly addressed her little daughter, who sat wofully shrinking in the dentist's chair as the ogre ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... Amyas had a shrinking, which all will understand, from drawing bow in cool blood on men so utterly unsuspicious and defenceless, even though in the very act of devilish cruelty—for devilish cruelty it was, as three or four drivers armed with whips lingered up and down the slowly staggering ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... conservative. It drifted rather to the moderate reforms of the New Learning than to any radical reconstruction of the Church. There was a general disinclination indeed to push matters to either extreme, a general shrinking from the persecution which the Catholic called for as from the destruction which the Protestant was desiring. It was significant that a new heresy bill which passed through the Lords in 1545 quietly disappeared when it reached the Commons. But this ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... hide you, Netta! there's Mr Jonathan Prothero,' says Mrs Jenkins, shrinking back into the corner of ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... quite absurd, while that the area of the fissures could be one-half or more than one-half that of the land would be in a proportionate degree unthinkable. If we suppose the elevation to be due to the shrinking or subsidence of the land all round our assumed circle, we arrive equally at the conclusion that the area of the open fissures would be altogether insignificant as compared with that ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... an example of what could be done by not shrinking from the duty of life; but you can get greatness, too, from some of the joys of life, and from none more than from a keen sense of the beauty of the world and a love for it. I found it so during the war. Our feelings were indeed ...
— Recreation • Edward Grey
... my Lady," said the woman curtseying. "Here, Tommy, come 'vor, and take off your hat to her Ladyship," and she pulled forward a frightened shrinking boy in a suit of corduroy, who had hidden himself behind her. "Look to mun, my Lady, he that was the most rompageous boy in Ashacombe, so quiet as a snail. And he can't spake, my Lady, he ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... book-learnin' and so many accomplishments,' something would say. 'Ay, that's the mischief of it. Such things always make bad folks envy those that possess them, and Annie is so tender-hearted and shrinking, I'm afeard, I'm afeard ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... to the torture, he said that Admiral de Coligny, Theodore de Beze, La Rochefoucauld, Soubise, and other Huguenot chiefs had incited him to murder the Duke of Guise, persecutor of the faithful, "as a meritorious deed in the eyes of God and men." Coligny repudiated this allegation point blank. Shrinking from the very appearance of hypocrisy, he abstained from any regret at the death of the Duke of Guise. "The greatest blessing," said he, "which could come to this realm and to the church of God, especially to myself and all my house;" and he referred to conversations ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... through. When, for example, I imagine such carrion as the Brockton murder, I cannot conceive it as an act by which the universe, as a whole, logically and necessarily expresses its nature without shrinking from complicity with such a whole. And I deliberately refuse to keep on terms of loyalty with the universe by saying blankly that the murder, since it does flow from the nature of the whole, is not carrion. There are some instinctive reactions which {178} I, for one, will not tamper ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... worst is over; and a fellow with any good humour at all may pass through a perfect hail of witty criticism, every bare place on his soul hit to the quick with a shrewd missile, and reappear, as if after a dive, tingling with a fine moral reaction, and ready, with a shrinking readiness, one-third loath, for a repetition of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are thinking, our fathers would think; From the death we are shrinking from, they too would shrink; To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling; But it speeds from the earth like a bird on ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... conditions and temperature. It is characterised objectively by a swelling of the mucous membrane, which is pink or red in appearance and of a soft consistence, pitting when touched with the probe, and shrinking on the application of a 5 per cent. solution of cocain. Its soft consistence and the fact that it becomes smaller when painted with cocain differentiate it from true hypertrophy of the mucous membrane. Its situation and immobility, its pink colour, and the shrinkage under cocain, ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... engines of death and anguish more barbaric than any known to the red Indians, or the most savage tribes of Asia. Neither of these devices, nor for that matter the cognate one of fire spurted like a liquid from a hose upon a shrinking enemy, can be shown to have had any appreciable effect upon the fortunes of any great battle. Each, as soon as employed by any one belligerent, was quickly seized by the adversary, and the respiratory mask followed fast upon the appearance of the chlorine gas. Whatever the outcome of the ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... of the Solomon Derby marked a new era in Baldy's life. His home-coming had been made both joyous and miserable by the various attentions he had received. With his sensitive, shrinking nature, it was a sore trial to be the center of attraction, and the object of constant discussion. "Scotty" had warmly commended his record to Ben Edwards, which was compensation even for the Woman's newly ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... doubting posture, such as one might suppose a creature of mist would assume ere it vanished, and then meeting the eye of Conanchet, the uplifted foot retouched the earth, and her whole form sunk into the modest and shrinking attitude of an Indian girl, who stood in the presence of a Sachem of her tribe. As this female is to enact no mean part in that which follows, the reader may be thankful for a more minute ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... you were constantly hinting You were really afraid we were losing our way. I seemed to be catching two glimpses of heaven, As I gazed at the sky and kept looking at you; For the party that started by being just seven Had a curious habit of shrinking ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... were when they prepared themselves to receive the burthens laid on them by the Spaniards. They came to them naked, their Privities only vail'd, their Shoulders loaden with food; only covered with a Net, they laid themselves quietly on the ground, and shrinking in their Bodies like poor Wretches, exposed themselves to their Swords: Thus being all gathered together in ther Yards, some of the Spaniards Armed held the doors to drive them away if attempting ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... all right," the girl said, shrinking a little from the woman's touch, yet without feeling any real fear of ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... output declined by an average of 4%-5% or more annually during 1989-97 because of systemic problems and disruptions in economic and technological links with the former USSR and China. The leadership has insisted on maintaining its high level of military outlays from a shrinking economic pie. Moreover, a serious drawdown in inventories and critical shortages in the energy sector have led to increasing interruptions in industrial production. Abundant mineral resources and hydropower have formed the basis of industrial development since World War ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... motionless in the middle of the room—not like a living woman—like a machine waiting to be set in movement. Finding it useless to speak to her, he touched her (with a strange sensation of shrinking in him as he did it), and pointed to the ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... stop for breath, and Old Man Shaw found his opportunity. He had listened, dazed and shrinking, as if she were dealing him physical blows, but now a swift change swept over him. His blue eyes flashed ominously, straight into Mrs. Blewett's straggling, ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... living Lady of Tremaine. And the chin, with its dimples, as in health, might it not be hers?—but had she then grown taller since her malady? What inexpressible madness seized me with that thought? One bound, and I had reached her feet! Shrinking from my touch, she let fall from her head, unloosened, the ghastly cerements which had confined it, and there streamed forth, into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber, huge masses of long and dishevelled hair; it was blacker ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Makest stormy prophecies; well, lift them higher, Till morning on the forehead of the day Presses a seal of fire Dearer to me the scene Of nature shrinking from thy rough embrace, Than Summer, with her rustling robe of green, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... dividing-line, where the path parted to the men's and to the ladies' dressing-rooms, he perceived a ghostly figure in the obscurity which also prevailed here from the general extinction of the illuminant. He was about shrinking back and fleeing in another direction when eyes blazed in the dark like a cat's, and the sweet, unmistakable voice of the singer, who had ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... be, a few years later, the most notorious woman of her class—set eyes on the girl than her brows were knitted and her lips and nostrils went white. Her cheeks on the other hand blazed with fury. She gripped the shrinking girl and twisted her round. Then she thrust her face within a ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... decorous paragraph among the society notes, and had figured himself receiving with dignified composure the congratulations of his associates and club-fellows. He had never considered the possibility of shrinking from these publicities, nor fancied himself in the light of finding excuses to justify or explain his marriage. He now clearly foresaw, foreheard the comment, the surprise, the ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... close and laughed down upon the shrinking form—her terror further roused the brute in him; all that was decent and fine in him—and both were there—fell into darkness; "you'll pay, by heaven! before you ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... throbs with the mystery of this influence. A little girl slumping by her mother's side awoke in a severe thunder-storm, and, nestling in terror near to the mother, and shrinking into the smallest possible space, said, trembling, "Mother, are you afraid?" "No, my dear," answered the lady, calmly. "Oh, well," said the child, assuming her full proportions, and again disposing herself for sleep, "if you're ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... had spent in India I had seen a good deal of both sides of that motley, amazing fabric which we call life. I had felt the throbbing of its great loom. I had touched with my own shrinking hand the closeness of the texture, had marked the interweaving of the alien strands, had marvelled and been dismayed, had marvelled and been awed, had seen the dye of my own blood on one dim thread, the gold of my own joy on another. The sheltered life ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... now; but he had two reasons for not attempting it. The first was definite and prudential. He was unwilling to risk anything that could connect him ever so indirectly with the life of Norrie Ford. Secondly, he was conscious of a vague shrinking from the payment of this debt otherwise than face to face. Apart from considerations of safety, he was unwilling to resort to the commonplace channels of business as long as there was a possibility of taking ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... Then it had all happened! With a low shuddering sob I threw myself down upon the couch at the foot of the bed, and lay there for some minutes, my limbs trembling, and my soul shrinking within me. A mist of evil, fearful and loathsome, had descended upon my girlhood's life, sullying its ignorant innocence, saddening its brightness, as I felt, for ever. I lay there till my teeth began to chatter, and I realized that I was bitterly ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... on account of it. I excused myself and dropped to the rear of the procession, sad at heart, willing to go hence from this troubled life, this vale of tears, this brief day of broken rest, of cloud and storm, of weary struggle and monotonous defeat; and yet shrinking from the change, as remembering how long eternity is, and how many have wended thither ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... precise equality; and this inequality is chief among the "portentous consequences" for which he declares that improvements should be arrested. No, sir. When the President intimates that something in the way of improvements may properly be done by the General Government, he is shrinking from the conclusions to which his own arguments would force him. He feels that the improvements of this broad and goodly land are a mighty interest; and he is unwilling to confess to the people, or perhaps to himself, that he has built an argument ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... affected. Diffidence is self-distrust; modesty, a humble estimate of oneself in comparison with others, or with the demands of some undertaking. Modesty has also the specific meaning of a sensitive shrinking from anything indelicate. Shyness is a tendency to shrink from observation; timidity, a distinct fear of criticism, error, or failure. Reserve is the holding oneself aloof from others, or holding back one's ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... suddenly it turned and confronted him. There in the old-world garden that was every moment growing more distinct and definite, he looked once more upon his wife's face in the moonlight, saw her eyes of shrinking horror raised to his, heard her low-spoken words: ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... at Bedford was thus, in a kind of a vision, presented to me. I saw as if they were on the sunny side of some high mountain, there refreshing themselves with the pleasant beams of the sun, whilst I was shivering and shrinking in the cold, afflicted with frost, snow, and dark clouds. Methought also, between me and them I saw a wall that did compass about this mountain. Now, through this mountain my soul did greatly desire to pass; concluding that if I could, I would even go into the very midst of them and there ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... You don't make no doubt of that, do you, sir?" The man spoke in a hushed voice, with a shrinking glance back ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... parent, and his voice was sad and stern, "I detest the slang you're using; will you never, never learn that correct use of our language is a thing to be desired? All your common bughouse phrases make the shrinking highbrow tired. There is nothing more delightful than a pure and careful speech, and the man who weighs his phrases always stacks up as a peach, while the guy who shoots his larynx in a careless slipshod way looms up as a selling plater, people brand him for a jay. ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... one hand, leaned on Maud's shoulder with the other and laughed and laughed, only to see her maid's terrified face, a regular fat freak shrinking before the belt. My! She would have fallen with laughing, if Glass-Eye had not held her up; she plugged her lips with her scented handkerchief, slapped her thighs. She had never laughed so much in her life. She already felt consoled ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... exceedingly well-bred children. Even the little fellow in his father's arms, though but eighteen months old, made no objection to hold out his fat hand graciously, and showed no shyness when Lady Barbara kissed him! and the others all waited quietly over their several occupations, neither shrinking foolishly from notice, nor putting themselves forward to claim it. Only the four sisters came up, and took their own special visitor into the midst of them as their own property; the elder of them, however, at a sign from her mamma, taking the baby in her arms, and ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... treadmill. Thus they lived eight weeks and more of the wet fag-end of last summer under the open sky with their families, with no further shelter for themselves and their little ones than the calico curtains of their beds; with no other help than the scanty allowances of their Union and the fast shrinking credit with the small dealers. Hereupon Lord Londonderry, who owns considerable mines in Durham, threatened the small tradesmen in "his" town of Seaham with his most high displeasure if they should ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... stood and roared over him. Then I was mad with horror, and, scarce knowing what I did, I grasped my spear and with a shout I charged. As I charged the lion lifted himself up above me. He smote at me with his paw; but with all my strength I drove the broad spear into his throat, and, shrinking from the agony of the steel, his blow fell short and did no more than rip my skin. Back he fell, the great spear far in his throat; then rising, he roared in pain and leapt twice the height of a man straight into the air, smiting at ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... had settled down among them, and when they did speak it was about some indifferent matter, all shrinking from anything concerning their approaching fate, when Mark, who was stooping to pat the poor wounded dog at his feet, where he lay curled in company with shivering Jack, suddenly laid his ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... mind, companions base, A shrinking from a duty known, A sly deceit, a brazen face, A lying tongue, a sullen tone, Lead toward a wreck on Strand Despair, And none but self can move the helm To change the course for scenes more fair, To ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... fair and you will meet honest dealing, and a look that heeds no lordling's frown—for the Wexford men have neither the base bend nor the baser craft of slaves. Go to the hustings, and you will see open and honest voting; no man shrinking or crying for concealment, or extorting a bribe under the name of "his expenses." Go to their farms and you will see a snug homestead, kept clean, prettily sheltered (much what you'd see in Down); more green crops than even in Ulster; the National School and the Repeal ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... from foot. Substitute: ([Greek: b]) to restrain the said appetite in its irascible part from shrinking from danger. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... I would have it so. It cost me a little difficulty, and a little shrinking, I remember, to choose this and to hold to it in the face of the other two. It was the last battle of that campaign. I had my way; but I wondered privately to myself whether I was going to look very unlike the children of other ladies in my mother's position: and whether such severity ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... wealth from the enemy for his own enjoyment and pleasure, but that it was treasured up with him as the common reward of courage, and that he was rich only in proportion as he rewarded deserving soldiers; and in the next place by readily undergoing every danger and never shrinking from any toil. Now they did not so much admire Caesar's courage, knowing his love of glory; but his endurance of labour beyond his body's apparent power of sustaining it, was a matter of astonishment, for he was of a spare ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... there I shall keep my divine part tranquil, that is, content, if it can feel and act comformably to its proper constitution. Is this [change of place] sufficient reason why my soul should be unhappy and worse than it was, depressed, expanded, shrinking, affrighted? and what wilt thou find which is sufficient ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... fills thy lap with leaves; Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air, Affrights thy shrinking train, And rudely ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... shifting of business, the perpetual transformations in industrial organisation, the rise and fall of industries, localities or firms, the changes of fashion and the ebb and flow of demand, and even a relative diminution of reputation may not lead to a shrinking of the deposits and current account balances of any one bank, or even of each bank in turn. Accordingly, every bank has to maintain an uninvested, or, at least, a specially liquid, reserve to meet such a possible withdrawal. The smaller, the more numerous, ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... only came always nearer, till at last his strong arms closed round her shrinking form and drew her to him as easily as though she were a babe. And then all at once she seemed to yield. That embrace was the outward sign of his cruel mastery, and she struggled ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... — N. decrease, diminution; lessening &c v.; subtraction &c 38; reduction, abatement, declension; shrinking &c (contraction.) 195; coarctation^; abridgment &c (shortening) 201; extenuation. subsidence, wane, ebb, decline; ebbing; descent &c 306; decrement, reflux, depreciation; deterioration &c 659; anticlimax; mitigation ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... palace walls; the one bringing sweet clear tones of trustful praise from his harp, the other shaking his huge spear in his madness; the one ready for action and prosperous in it all, the other paralyzed, shrinking from all work, and leaving the conduct of the war to the servant whom he feared; the one conscious of the Divine presence making him strong and calm, the other writhing in the gripe of his evil spirit, and either foaming in fury, or stiffened ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... countries; so strong and true are the friendships; so brave and kind are the men I meet—so beautiful the whole world of the Singing Mouse, that when it is over, and in a chill I start up, I scarce can bear the shrinking in of the walls, and the grayness of the once red fire, and my gold turned to earthenware, and my pictures turned to splotches. In my hand everything I touch feels awkward. A pen—a pen—to talk of that? If one could ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... boil in my veins. Suddenly I caught sight of a golden locket on her neck, and I asked her whose portrait it contained. She refused to tell me. In the madness of my rage I tried to snatch it from her. She caught it in her hands, and, shrinking back from me, fell into ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... to me! Don't touch me!" she exclaimed, shrinking back from all of us (I declare like some hunted animal!) into a corner of the room. "This is my fault! I must set it right. I have sacrificed myself—I had a right to do that, if I liked. But to let an innocent man be ruined; to keep a ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... the Kingdom of Heaven is the higher of the two and the better worth living and dying for, and that, if it is to be won, it must be sought steadfastly and in singleness of heart by those who put all else on one side and, shrinking from no sacrifice, are ready to face shame, poverty and torture here rather than abandon the hope of the prize of their high calling. Nobody who doubts any of ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... how considerate, how anxious for me, how full of generous warning he has been! always putting me in mind, at every step, of the difference in years between us; never thinking of himself, and shrinking so much from even seeming to control me or sway me, that I don't know really whether I have ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... speech, in patriotism, and in incorruptible probity—nor ought I now to be treated as culpable for giving such advice, when in point of fact the war was unavoidable and there would have been still greater danger in shrinking from it. I am the same man, still unchanged—but ye in your misfortunes cannot stand to the convictions which ye adopted when yet unhurt. Extreme and unforeseen, indeed, are the sorrows which have fallen upon you: yet inhabiting as ye do a great city, and brought up in dispositions suitable to it, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... capitalize such personal advantages in his political relations. Apart from his intimates he is shy and reserved. The antithesis of Roosevelt, who loved to meet new individualities, Wilson has the college professor's shrinking from social contacts, and is not at ease in the presence of those with whom he is not familiar. Naturally, therefore, he lacks completely Roosevelt's capacity to make friends, and there is in him no trace of his predecessor's power to find exactly the right compliment for the right ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... extraordinary personal advantages, all his dispositions were so gentle and affectionate, that it was not I in human nature to entertain harsh feeling toward him. Although modest and shrinking, even to diffidence, he possessed a mind full of intellect and enthusiasm: his imagination, too, overflowed with creative power, and sought the dreamy solitudes of noon, that it might, far from the bustle ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... cocoa-tree, or peacock's train didst tinge With dazzling hues. Methought thou wert a prince, But now Lilith should humbly kneel, since Thou art far higher than she deemed, if thou Madest these wondrous things." And lowly now As she would kneel, she drew anigh. But he Cried, shrinking, "Nay, I made them not." And she Low questioned, "Eblis, tell me who then, did make Them all. Who set the creeping hooded snake And stealthy pard within the thorny brake, And spread the sea, and wreathed ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... been able to take the situation lightly then—this curious situation of the "freed" American wife, with or without children, drifting through Europe, aimless, and generally better off when friendless. But she began to be sorry for the type. Instead of shrinking from Gertie in the presence of the discerning compatriots, as she was at first inclined to do, she made it a point to be seen with her, championing the sisterhood of loneliness. There were moments when this association might not have been discreet; but they were also moments in ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... her principle that a woman's best work is done beneath the surface, I think her own labours will eventually make themselves felt with a good result in the world. But the life she has chosen for herself is martyrdom, and her womanly shrinking from the suffering she would alleviate is never lessened by use. Yet she does not waver. Other women admire her devotion, and follow in her footsteps; they do not doubt but that she has chosen the better part; but I fancy that most men who have seen her draw the little children ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... sympathise, as the joys and sorrows of the growing youth became ever more serious. From this relation he retained a touch of womanliness in his character, even after he had left home to enter the regiment: a shrinking from everything coarse, a reserve before all that was unlovely. This instinctive feeling did not, indeed, altogether protect him from temptation, but it withheld him from yielding to excess. He joined in the little drink and love follies of the other young subalterns from a sense of comradeship; ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... force of gentleness and kindness. Me!' said Alice, shrinking with her face behind her hand, 'and made me human by woman's looks and words, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... scheme is the very latest thing in decorative art. There is nothing shrinking about us, for we come boldly forth in orange and yellows in true cigar-ribbon style—even our motor licenses of last year had poppies on them. Speaking of poppies, I heard the other day of a lady who voiced her opinion in ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... during the dance, and decided that he must be one of the guests unknown to us, who had come with some country neighbour, and that he had lost his way amongst the almost interminable passages of the place.' He saw himself and Jane making for the leather-covered door which led to the bridge, and the shrinking stranger, with his hopelessly timid manner, who had drawn back at their approach; and he thought he heard himself saying, 'Shall I get him some partners, or leave the people who brought him to the dance to ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... others; but my periods of starvation have been brief. By practicing on the 'Veterinarians' Guide' and other similar fakes, I learned how to talk to people so as to make them believe what I said about things, with the result, usually, of wooing the shrinking and cloistered dollar from its lair. When a fellow gets this trick down fine, he can always find a market for his services. I handled hotel registers, city directories, and like literature, including ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... through the billows, and shoals of dolphins filled the waves with their splendid pea-green and azure. It was an ocean fete, a bal-pare of the finny tribe, a gala-day of nature; while miserable men and women were shrinking, and shivering, and sinking in heart, in the midst of the animation, enjoyment, and magnificence of the world of waters. On the third night of their sailing, the wind became higher, and the swell from the south stronger than ever. They pitched about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... a perfect fright lest he should guess right too soon; shrinking away, as she held the basket toward him; curling up her pretty shoulders; stopping her ear with her hand, as if by so doing she could keep the right word out of Toby's lips; and laughing ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... an easy transition of thought to the new guest at Castleford. Where had he seen her face? and with what was he associated in her mind? Nothing agreeable; of that he was quite sure. The vivid blush and indescribable shrinking he had noticed more than once (and Errington, like most quiet men, was a close observer) seemed unaccountable. Miss Liddell was far from shy; she was well-bred and evidently accustomed to society; her ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... used to the savage ways of the world she had always lived in, made answer, shrinking and crouching, "He's hunted us down, and ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... how discouraged the stammerer may be, no matter how tired or nervous or self-conscious—no matter how shy or shrinking from the gaze of others—no matter how timid or filled-with-fear the mind, the attitude begins to change within an hour after ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... organized in 1818, while shrinking from even the gaze of men, and spurning from the depths of his soul the arts of politicians, he managed in some way to be designated one of the judges of the Supreme Court of the new State. His admiration for the dispensing hand appears as follows: "Wisdom and integrity, with other noble qualities, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... me by surprise, for I seemed to have forgotten any other life than that I was then living; and dressing the most frightful wounds was as natural as eating. I felt no disgust, no shrinking, and mere conventional delicacy is withdrawn when the Angel of Death ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... Sensitive Plants, on account of the leaves of several of the species of this genus shrinking when touched. They grow well in loam and peat with a little sand, but require to be planted in a warm situation or to have greenhouse care. Cuttings of the young wood root readily in sand under a glass. They may also be raised from seed. ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... is: in proportion as the length of the part d a diminishes the normal size so does the opposite upper part increase beyond its [normal] size. The navel does not change its position to the male organ; and this shrinking arises because when a figure stands on one foot, that foot becomes the centre [of gravity] of the superimposed weight. This being so, the middle between the shoulders is thrust above it out of it perpendicular line, and this line, which forms the central line of the external parts of the body, becomes ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... which we like to think of as typically American, and which will in the end achieve good results in this as in other fields of activity. The task is a great one and underlies the task of dealing with the whole industrial problem. But the fact that it is a great problem does not warrant us in shrinking from the attempt to solve it. At present we face such utter lack of supervision, such freedom from the restraints of law, that excellent men have often been literally forced into doing what they deplored because otherwise they were ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... with the same ruthlessness and with an added pedantry which makes them more inhuman. The perpetrators of the crime calculated quite correctly that they need fear no reluctance on the part of the nation, no qualms of conscience, no compassionate shrinking, no remorse. It must, indeed, be a bad cause that cannot count on the support of the large majority of the people at the beginning of a war. Pugnacity, greed, mere excitement, the contagion of a crowd, will fill the streets of almost any capital with a shouting and jubilant ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... of leaves bound round it atop for a cornice. The Astrea viridis, a coral of the tropics, presents on a ground of velvety brown myriads of deep green florets, that ever and anon start up from the level in their tower-like shape, contract and expand their petals, and then, shrinking back into their cells, straightway became florets again. The Lower Lias presented in one of its opening scenes, in this part of the world, appearances of similar beauty widely spread. For miles together,—we know not how many,—the bottom of a clear shallow sea was paved with living Astreae: ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... least in her refusal to formulate it, content to take his friendship and ask herself no questions. Truly womanly again is her attitude when he speaks out at last and thrusts upon her the knowledge of his passion,—her shrinking withdrawal, her instant ordering in of the lights, and her firm refusal then, in her hour of need, to profit by the affection he ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... blood, and confiscate his estate, upon parole evidence; especially of such a wretch who, by his own confession, had been engaged in a crime of the blackest nature, not a convert to the dictates of conscience, but a coward, shrinking from the danger by which he had been environed, and even now drudging for a pardon. He invalidated the evidence of Goodman's examination. He observed that the indictment mentioned a conspiracy to call in a foreign power; but as this conspiracy had not ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the environment of a hollow square formed by the royal guard. Within was the Pharaoh, shrinking by the side of his messenger. The messenger, taller, more powerful, it seemed, by the heightening and strengthening force of righteous wrath, faced the mightiest man in the kingdom. Har-hat, though a little surprised and puzzled, was none the less complacent, confident, nonchalant. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... I'm selfish enough, but I can at least understand and appreciate generous and kindly sympathy, and could be won by it. But this cool and inflexible elaboration of character, where only the end is considered, and all our timid shrinking and human weakness are ignored,—this austere asceticism which despises the present world and life,—is to me unnatural and monstrous. I confess I never read the Bible very much, and have not listened when it was read. I have half forgotten ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... all doubt as to the identity, the majestic lady suddenly tore aside her veil, and disclosed to the trembling, shrinking Agnes, features already ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... brown and bearded cheek which nearly touched her head. To the pretty young thing who had paused on the threshold, watching what passed, it seemed a peaceful picture, cosy and complete, needing no adjuncts, defying intruders; but Miss Jane caught a glimpse of the shrinking figure, and beckoned ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... from under the stone, wound round his body, and had just raised her head to kiss him, when—he himself knew not how it happened—he pushed the lucky egg into her mouth. His heart froze within him, but he stood firm, without shrinking, till the snake had kissed him three times. A tremendous flash and crash followed, as if the stone had been struck by lightning, and amid the loud pealing of the thunder, Paertel fell on the ground like one dead, and knew nothing more of what ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... released his hold, shrinking back with a wild, fierce look in his face, such as I had never ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... She drew back, shrinking against the dresser as the lamplight fell on the stranger. Taffy turned and stared too. The man's face was running with blood; and looking at his own hands he saw that ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... knew full well, 'Henry Mohun,' she perceived that he meant to convince her that it was useless to try to dissuade him, as he thought the patience and forbearance his brother had shown to him must be repaid by his not shrinking from the task he had imposed upon himself with his young brothers, though he was often obliged to sit up part of the night ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... very much upon this older sister. Hers was a more delicate organization; she was timid and shrinking, and with her fair complexion, deep blue eyes, golden hair, and look of refinement, was really quite ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... please don't!" she gasped, shrinking from him with quivering lips, and holding up her white hands as though to ward him off. "You must not speak to ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... up the bank upon which we were, a volley burst upon them before which they wavered and swerved backward a few paces, as here and there a man reeled and staggered or sank to the earth. There was no panic—not a back turned—only that instinctive shrinking which Life sometimes feels when Death unexpectedly thrusts out his ghastly face through the smoke of battle. A color-bearer sprang forward with the battle-flag. He halted beside me and rested the end of the flagstaff on the ground. He half-faced about toward the men. His ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... minute, with the feeling of shrinking gone, he was standing in the mess-room, in one corner of which, partially hidden by a screen and some palms, was the band, while close to him, leaning back in his chair, was a fine, florid-looking, grey officer, evidently the colonel or major of the regiment, ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... quest, shrinking where others stared. For it was a pitiless time, and the squadron of the Queen-mother were as lost to womanhood as the fishwomen of two centuries later. But Diane saw no corpse at once so tall, so young, and so fair, though blond Normans ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be. The herdsman carried the child to a lonely mountain-side, but once there, his heart failed him. Hardly daring to disobey the king's command, yet shrinking from murder, he hung the little creature by his feet to the branches of a tree, and left ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... woman, shrinking back into a corner, for nothing but sudden madness could explain ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... do if Mrs. Long had not herself recognized the necessity of it, for her own full enjoyment of John's society. But it was a hard thing; my aunt, the ostensible head of our house, was a quiet woman who had nothing whatever to do with society, and who felt in the outset a great shrinking from the brilliant Mrs. Long. I had never been on intimate terms with her, so that John and Alice were really the only members of the household who could keep up precisely the old relation. And so it gradually came about that to most of our meetings under each other's ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... manner described, and that it was written by a Quaker lad, named Whittier, who was daily at work on the shoemaker's bench, with hammer and lapstone, at East Haverhill. Jumping into a vehicle, I lost no time in driving to see the youthful rustic bard, who came into the room with shrinking diffidence, almost unable to speak, and blushing like a maiden. Giving him some words of encouragement, I addressed myself more particularly to his parents, and urged them with great earnestness to ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... coat is very tight for Milor," Isidor said, still having his eye on the frogs; but his master heard him not: his thoughts were elsewhere: now glowing, maddening, upon the contemplation of the enchanting Rebecca: anon shrinking guiltily before the vision of the jealous Rawdon Crawley, with his curling, fierce mustachios, and his terrible ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... odd to you, but it was two days before I could follow up the new-found clue in what was manifestly the proper way. I felt a peculiar shrinking from those pallid bodies. They were just the half-bleached colour of the worms and things one sees preserved in spirit in a zoological museum. And they were filthily cold to the touch. Probably my shrinking was largely due to the sympathetic influence of the Eloi, whose disgust of the Morlocks ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... thinking, not reading, is now my occupation—I feel that, whether I be growing richer or not, I am growing a wiser man, which is far better. Pain, poverty, and all the other wild beasts of life which so affrighten others, I am so bold as to think I could look in the face without shrinking, without losing respect for myself, faith in man's high destinies, or trust in God. There is a point which it costs much mental toil and struggling to gain, but which, when once gained, a man can look down from, as a traveller from a lofty mountain, on storms raging below, while he is walking in ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... shock. It seemed lifeless, or like the scratching of a beetle. Suddenly the woman's glittering gaze, her expressionless face stiff with paint, the blaze of her barbaric colors, filled Sidsall with a shrinking that was ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... broadcloth sleeve, carefully brought around two slender shoulders, and a handsome manly countenance leaning a little towards a blushing maiden's face. Worse than all, he too happened to look into the glass at the same moment, and our eyes in shrinking from one another's glance met under an awkward circumstance. He looked steadily at Amey Hampden in mirrorland, and then said in a very conventional tone, turning his eyes towards ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... dangling over the forward edge of the cabin, looking at the glory of the moon on the vast river, at the endless forest crown, at the haze which hung like silver dust under the high bluffs on the American side. We slept. We awoke again as the moon was shrinking abashed before the light that glowed above these cliffs, and the river was turned from brown to gold and then to burnished copper, the forest to a thousand shades of green from crest to the banks where the river was licking the twisted ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sector of light stood Wutzler, shrinking and apologetic, like a man caught in a fault, his wrinkled face eloquent of fear, his gesture eloquent of excuse. Round him, as round a conjurer, scores of little shadowy things moved in a huddling dance, fitfully hopping like sparrows ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... with Sir Sagramor and was challenged of him on account of it. I excused myself and dropped to the rear of the procession, sad at heart, willing to go hence from this troubled life, this vale of tears, this brief day of broken rest, of cloud and storm, of weary struggle and monotonous defeat; and yet shrinking from the change, as remembering how long eternity is, and how many have wended ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "Oh," protested Caroline, shrinking back, while Isabella's eyes grew round as a frightened child's. "None that we ever heard of. She wasn't that kind of a woman, was she, Belle? It wasn't for any such ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... trivial ceremonies, with which he had been received. He had been friendly, though the Cranford ladies had been cool; he had answered small sarcastic compliments in good faith; and with his manly frankness had overpowered all the shrinking which met him as a man who was not ashamed to be poor. And, at last, his excellent masculine common sense, and his facility in devising expedients to overcome domestic dilemmas, had gained him an extraordinary place as authority among the Cranford ladies. He himself ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... whenever Holt had tentatively mentioned her name before. The sight of his familiar beloved books had softened his harsh spirit, and the hideous chasm between his present and his past seemed visibly shrinking. His tones, however, had not softened when he asked ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... through a perfect hail of witty criticism, every bare place on his soul hit to the quick with a shrewd missile, and reappear, as if after a dive, tingling with a fine moral reaction, and ready, with a shrinking readiness, one- third loath, for a repetition ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bending down beneath the shrine as it passes; cripples, they are, all three have beautiful faces, the one who is apparently the worst cripple of the three, (his legs and feet are horribly twisted), has especially a wonderfully delicate face, timid and shrinking, though faithful: behind the shrine come the people, walking slowly together with reverent faces; a woman with a little child holding her hand are the last figures in this history of St. Honore: they both have their faces turned full south, the woman has ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... when the moment for the introduction arrived, and I stood face to face with Miss Magendie, I felt an extraordinary shrinking from her. I have never been able to understand it, but my blood ran cold, and my pulses almost ceased to beat. I would have avoided her; an instinct within me seemed suddenly to cry out against her. But it was too ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... necessity of saving Linda from the wrath to come by breaking her spirit in regard to things of this world, and crushing her into atoms here, that those atoms might be remoulded in a form that would be capable of a future and a better life. Instead therefore of shrinking from cruelty, Madame Staubach was continually instigating herself to be cruel. She knew that the image of the town-clerk was one simply disgusting to Linda, and therefore she was determined to force that image upon her. She ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... myself." —Thus the returning prodigal who cries Unclothed and empty, "Father! I have sinn'd, And am not worthy to be called thy son," Finds full forgiveness, and a free embrace, While the best robe his shrinking ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... silent chamber's deep recesses, Gray Fathers of the State, unwillingly I come; and, shrinking from your gaze, uplift The veil that shades my widowed brows: the light And glory of my days is fled forever! And best in solitude and kindred gloom To hide these sable weeds, this grief-worn frame, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... couldn't stand it here in this room," said Lightbody bitterly. His fingers wandered lightly over the familiar objects on the desk, shrinking from each fiery contact. He sat down. "You're ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... to Venza, back there on the asteroid. The wandering little world was already shrinking to a convex surface beneath us. Venza, with her last unknown play, gone to failure. Had I failed my cue? Whatever my part, it seemed now that I must have horribly ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... upon those who mourn, because he had not where to lay his head, was despised and rejected of men, and cried out in bitter agony from the cross. He could not have been our exemplar by despising sorrow-by treating it with contempt; but only by shrinking from its pain, and becoming intimate with its anguish,—only as "a man of sorrows, and acquainted ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... a shrinking prey the rush of kindling breaths; They tap and sap the threatened walls, and bear uncounted deaths; And 'neath caresses scorching hot the palaces decay— Oh, that I, too, could thus caress, and burn, and ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... and admiration. All agreed that partial drowning seemed to suit the girl, for a new Ruth had risen like Venus from the sea. A softer beauty was in her fresh face now, a gentler sort of pride possessed her, and a still more modest shrinking from praise and publicity became her well. No one guessed the cause, and she was soon forgotten; for the season was over, the summer guests departed, and the Point was left to the few cottagers who loved to ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... entered, somewhat sulkily, her beauty clouded by a shade of reluctance—Phoebe, shrinking, palpitant, staying ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... a rare disease, the exact nature of which is not understood. It is characterized by the appearance of numerous disseminated, freckle-like pigment-spots, telangiectases, atrophied muscles, more or less shrinking and contraction of the integument, and followed, in most instances, by epitheliomatous tumors and ulceration, and finally death. It is usually slow in its course, beginning in childhood and lasting for years. It is not infrequently seen in several children ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... ordered, after having made a prolonged inspection of my shrinking back. "I guess you'll do, but you are only getting through on a technicality—there's one ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... glandular trouble in the bowels are—weariness and pallor, lack of appetite, softness and shrinking of limbs, with swelling of the belly. In its earlier stages, before consumption sets in, this trouble may be perfectly cured. We have seen even apparently hopeless cases recover under proper treatment. In its essence the trouble is a failure of power in the nervous centres ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... of anything happening, the darkness in places, the faint glow from partly extinct fires, and the curious shadows cast on the whitewashed walls were all disposed to be startling; and, well as I knew the place, I often found myself shrinking as I came suddenly upon some piece of machinery that assumed in the darkness the aspect of some horrible monster about to seize me as I ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... ignoble fraud, and principally that our pity is appealed to by the coarse sympathy with physical pain: the rags that covered the sores, the tainted corruption of the ulcers, are brought to bear, not so much on the mind as on the nerves; and when the hero is represented as shrinking with corporeal agony—the blood oozing from his foot, the livid sweat rolling down the brow—we sicken and turn away from the spectacle; we have no longer that pleasure in our own pain which ought to be the characteristic of true tragedy. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tobacco. As silent as two mummies in the crypts of Karnac they sat side by side; and twice when the officer touched her arm and asked if she would take some refreshments, she merely shook her head, and tightened the folds of her veil; shrinking closer to the window against which she leaned. Not until they approached X—-, and she recognized some features of the landscape, were ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... faltered his sister, shrinking beneath his anger—she had never seen him so aroused before. "Mamma was so unhappy, and I was so—so unreconciled, that we determined to wait until you ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... at the luncheon-table when nearly all the others had withdrawn, playing with crumbs, and doubtless shrinking from the ennui that lay before him until dinner-time. Near him, Mrs. Denyer, Barbara, and Zillah were standing in conversation about some photographs that had this ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... first clouding of the water with the wine's red fire, or the final resolution of the two into one humane consistence: the intermediate course is, like all times of process, brumous and hesitant. After a dinner in the white piazza, shrinking slowly to blue under the keen young moon's eye, watched over jealously by the frowning bulk of Brunelleschi's globe—after a dinner of pasta con brodo, veal cutlets, olives, and a bottle of right Barbera, let me give you a pastel (this is the medium for such evanescences) ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... standing between his companions, though a little in advance of them, Elfride being on his right hand, and Stephen Smith on his left. The white daylight on his right side gleamed faintly in, and was toned to a blueness by contrast with the yellow rays from the candle against the wall. Elfride, timidly shrinking back, and nearest the entrance, received most of the light therefrom, whilst Stephen was entirely in candlelight, and to him the spot of outer sky visible above the steps was as a steely blue patch, ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... lay between those words. If the world were to be saved, if God were to be glorified, it was not possible. Did He not know that who asked it with strong crying and tears? Was not the asking done to teach us two things—that He was very man, like ourselves, shrinking from pain and death as much as the very weakest of us can shrink, and also that we may ask anything and everything, if only we desire beyond it that God's ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... the children's congress, and that is in front of the bathing-machines. Rows of little faces wait for their turn, watching the dash of the waves beneath the wheels, peeping at the black-robed figures who are bobbing up and down in the sea, half longing for their dip, half shrinking as the inevitable moment comes nearer and nearer, dashing forward joyously at last as the door opens and the bathing woman's "Now, my dear," summons them to the quaint little box. One lingers over the sight as one lingers over a bed ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... that he will never speak again—never search for news of that other poor old man?" She went softly into the next room, followed by Newton, and approaching the bed, laid her hand gently on his brow. "How awfully cold!" she whispered, shrinking back in spite of herself at the unutterable chill of death. "But he looks so peaceful, so different from what he did in life!" She stood gazing at ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... priest, the theme of the rebellious son, the son who will live his own life no matter what may be his parents' will. It is only allied to it, however, not to be identified with it, because Maurice is too fearful of disappointing his parents, and too shrinking and ineffectual, to go against his parents' will. In Ireland, as I have said elsewhere, such parental will, by a survival of authority from the days of the clan system, was law until yesterday, and there will therefore be those, I have no doubt, who will find ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... is equally marked in the case of a fat man. A man of abnormal weight, 250 lbs., lost fifty pounds in two weeks following the operation, during which time he remained at the hospital, feeling well and strong, but shrinking in girth amazingly. When he left the hospital his clothes hung about him in bags and folds. The fat woman's spirits seem to rise as her weight decreases, and she feels as if she had indeed regained the ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... beauty?" softly queried a tragic-faced youth, sensitive and shrinking, crowned with an abominably trimmed ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... said he, shrinking from her eye, "we're sort o' troubled with noises at night. P'raps you'll be skeered, but it's no more 'n noise,—onpleasant, but never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... and this is what we saw: A man—tall, strong, powerful, with a face purple with passion—bending over the crouching form of a girl, whose slender body was quivering, shrinking, and writhing as the man's hand, armed with a short stick, fell, smiting her defenceless ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... swelling his throat. From the corner of his eye, he saw Truesdale shrinking back against the bulkhead. He glanced about desperately for something with which to parry ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe
... have better notions of hospitality and good manners than could be learned at Howth Castle. Then she hurried back to her ship, with the poor little lordling who seemed too frightened to cry, and hid his face against her bosom, as though shrinking from the look of her dark, angry eyes. Immediately she ordered all sails to be set, and sped away toward Connaught. The nurse ran up to the castle with the news, but as she could not be admitted till the Earl had dined and drunk his punch, so much time was lost that, before his galley ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... in his doorway, night-capped and fur-gowned, shrinking from the hostile crowd. The ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody
... the missionary Gehring was present at the marriage of a girl of ten to an adult man amongst the Tamil Mohammedans. The story of the child's shrinking terror is very pathetic. When her veil was withdrawn she fainted from nervousness and excitement. Those present showed no pity for her, but crowded around to enjoy the opportunity of gazing at her. They saw no reason why she was to ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... my muscles are shrinking and I'm losing weight. But, of course, that's nothing to anybody but myself. And then, another side: I want to think of you people first and raise your salaries and so on—especially yours, for you ought to have pounds where you ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... Vatel, shrinking from monseigneur to monsieur with a degree of disdain: "your cellar is so well stocked that when certain of your guests dine with you ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... better, dear, when you have rested a bit," said Dame Hartley, smoothing the girl's fair hair with a motherly touch, and not seeming to notice her angry shrinking away. "It's the best thing you can do, to lie down and take a good nap; then you'll wake up fresh as a lark, and ready to enjoy yourself. Good-by, dearie! I'll bring up your tea in an hour or so." And with a parting nod and smile, the good woman departed, leaving ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand, Far, far away, thy children leave the land. Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... from their accomplishment, renders them fearful to the patient who has the fear, the phobia of these acts, just as he has the terror of that depression which gives the feeling of the diminution of life. The shrinking of activity and conscience, phobias, negativisms, generally take their starting point in this fear of exhaustion caused by some difficult action. In other cases the patient feels incapable of accomplishing correctly the reflected acts necessary to social and moral life, and ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... Antonia's Mother. With persuasive eloquence He calmed every fear, and dissipated every scruple: He bad her reflect on the infinite mercy of her Judge, despoiled Death of his darts and terrors, and taught her to view without shrinking the abyss of eternity, on whose brink She then stood. Elvira was absorbed in attention and delight: While She listened to his exhortations, confidence and comfort stole insensibly into her mind. She unbosomed to him without hesitation her ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... of Cactuses, very large specimens, when imported from their native haunts to be placed in our glass houses, soon perish. At Kew, there have been, at various times, very fine specimens of some of the largest-growing ones, but they have never lived longer than a year or so, always gradually shrinking in size till, finally, owing to the absence of proper nourishment, and to other untoward conditions, they have broken down and rotted. This rotting of the tissue, or flesh, of these plants is the great enemy to their cultivation in England. When it appears, it should be carefully cut out with ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... farther apart, and sometimes they were dry, and there were anxious hours when we were not sure of water for ourselves, still less for the horses. One well near a salt lake was rather brackish. This lake is a landmark in the entire region round; it seems to be slowly shrinking, and many caravans camp here to collect the salt, which is taken south. The weather, too, had changed; the days were hotter and dryer, but the nights were ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... at the graceful curve and taper spars of the vessel, and began to wonder at the way in which she seemed to grow as they drew nearer; or was it that the boat in which he was gliding onward was shrinking? ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... his death must be equally feasible now; but he had two reasons for not attempting it. The first was definite and prudential. He was unwilling to risk anything that could connect him ever so indirectly with the life of Norrie Ford. Secondly, he was conscious of a vague shrinking from the payment of this debt otherwise than face to face. Apart from considerations of safety, he was unwilling to resort to the commonplace channels of business as long as there was a possibility ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... above all, the hot, suggestive fume of its breath, brought the first scream from the lips of Miss Amy. It was real and convincing; the horses joined in it; the three screamed together! The bear hesitated for an instant, then, catching sight of the honey-pot on the front seat, which the shrinking-back of the young girl had disclosed, he slowly reached forward his other paw and attempted to grasp it. This exceedingly simple movement, however, at once doubled up the front seat, sent the honey-pot a dozen feet into the air, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... the nether gods, if it were mine some of you should feed the lampreys," said the Emperor, looking round with his fierce eyes at the shrinking slaves. "You were always overmerciful, Emilius. It is the common talk that your catenoe are rusted for want of use. But surely this is beyond all bounds. Let me see how you handle the matter. Whom do ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... little past noon, and the shadows of the tree-tops fell blue on the rapidly shrinking snow. The air was full of faint trickling noises, and thin tinklings where the snow veiled the slopes of little rocky hollows. Under the snow and under the rotting patches of ice, innumerable small streams ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... black robe of delegated authority, and loomed above him, gigantic and absurd and powerful, and brought him to death. Deeper than his horror, than any fear of physical consequences, lay the instinctive shrinking from the obliteration of his individual being, the loss of ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Cotton," said the old man, beaming on the shrinking Jim; "but at least you've not been ploughing Herodotus with the help of your ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... up just here, in the most isolated way, for generations, with no chance of improvement, and there is not a single mulatto[23] on the place—they are black as the blackest, and perfect children—docile, and with "faith enough to live by," W—— G—— says. I find I have no shrinking from them, and hope I shall be able to do my part. I take this school off his hands—he has two other plantations to teach on and has been working like a beaver. I made my first attempt this afternoon ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... wailing—not the pibroch loud and shrill, That, with hope of bloody banquet, lured the ravens from the hill— But a dirge both low and solemn, fit for ears of dying men, Marshall'd for their latest battle, never more to fight again. Madness—madness! Why this shrinking? Were we less inured to war When our reapers swept the harvest from the field of red Dunbar? Fetch my horse, and blow the trumpet!—Call the riders of Fitz-James, Let Lord Lewis bring the muster!—Valiant chiefs of mighty names— Trusty Keppoch! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... requires continual redistribution. That redistribution is at present automatically effected largely through the rise and fall of wages. A rise in the wages of industries which require more labour, and a decline in the wages of industries which require less labour, cause labour to turn from shrinking to growing industries. When wages are no longer fixed with reference to commercial demand and supply, how will the periodical and necessary redistribution of labour be effected? Some Socialist leaders think: "As the workers, of course, will not be drafted ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... forward, her towering form was stretched to its highest stature, the muscles started into action on her bare arms as she raised them above her head. For one instant, she fixed her glaring eyes steadily on the girl's shrinking form—the next, she rushed up and struck furiously with the knife at her bare neck. As the weapon descended, Hermanric caught her wrist. She struggled violently to disengage herself from ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... I had done so terribly wrong," moaned the girl, shrinking back from those angry, fiery eyes that glowered down so fiercely into ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... bore her out when she fell out of a reasonably safe boat. The actor's wet, white flannels clung tight about his massive legs; he threw back his head with masculine arrogance, then kissed the lady. Una was dizzy with that kiss. She was shrinking before Walter's lips again. She could feel her respectable, typewriter-hardened fingers stroke the actor's swarthy, virile jaw. She gasped with the vividness of the feeling. She was shocked at herself; told herself she was not being ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... as the hopelessness and the helplessness were getting to be almost more than they could bear, the two children suddenly felt that extraordinary shrinking feeling that you always have when you are just going to vanish. And the next moment they had vanished, and the Reverend Septimus was left ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... often taken in vain, about calamities, private and public. Rational men of the world, therefore, may be excused for begging at times not to hear any more of Divine Providence; excused for doubting the existence of final causes; excused for shrinking, whenever they hear a preacher begin to interpret the will of God about this event or that. They dread a repetition of the mistake—to call it by the very gentlest term—which priests, in all ages, have been but too ready to commit. For all priesthoods—whether heathen or Christian, whether ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... is important. It is no use roughly smacking a shrinking, sensitive child. And yet, if a child is too shrinking, too sensitive, it may do it a world of good cheerfully to spank its posterior. Not brutally, not cruelly, but with real sound, good-natured exasperation. And let the adult take the full responsibility, half humorously, without ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... than in those of Terrestrial common sense. It conveyed, however, a real if not sufficient consolation to Eveena; the idea it implied being not wholly unfamiliar to a daughter of the Star. I was surprised that, almost shrinking from my last embrace, Eveena suddenly dropped her veil around her; till, turning, I saw that Ergimo was standing at the top of the ladder leading to the deck, and just ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... fiery-tongued dragons painted upon a bowl or stitched upon a fire-screen, now to a fleshy cluster of orchids, now to a dromedary of inlaid silver-work with ruby eyes, which kept company, upon her mantelpiece, with a toad carved in jade, she would pretend now to be shrinking from the ferocity of the monsters or laughing at their absurdity, now blushing at the indecency of the flowers, now carried away by an irresistible desire to run across and kiss the toad and dromedary, calling them 'darlings.' And these affectations were in sharp contrast to the sincerity ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... we have just named formed the crowning result of infidelity.(563) Voltaire showed philosophy shrinking from the hard materialism, morality from the fatalism, and religion from the atheism, to which they afterwards attained. In these steps, as witnessed in the circle of intellect just sketched, we see the ramification ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... of the cross is the incomparable sympathy of the Victim. How shall we account for His recoil from the thought of dying, for His shrinking from this death as from something which sickened Him, for the darkness and anguish of His soul in Gethsemane at the prospect, and for the abysmal sense of forsakenness on the cross? His sensitiveness of heart made Him feel ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... and the picture will crack. If the vehicle is the same as was used in the under-painting, and the drying qualities of both paintings are the same, there is no danger. But when color dries, it shrinks and flattens, and two kinds of colors shrinking differently are sure to pull apart, and that causes cracking. If the under-painting is well dry, but not hard and glossy on the surface, and is capable of still absorbing enough of the new color's vehicle to ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... were on me now, fascinated and terrified like those of a bird before a rattlesnake. I saw again the shapeless features of the man in the Tube station, the residuum of shrinking mortality behind his disguises. He seemed to be slipping something from his pocket towards his mouth, but Geordie Hamilton caught ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... it to be taken for granted that Mr. Bingle slept well on this night before Christmas. Neither he nor his wife went to bed until far along in the wee sma' hours. The great house was as still as the grave, save for the occasional crack of shrinking woodwork and the rattle of dislodged icicles on the window-ledges outside. The wind had died away. It seemed that all nature, respecting their mood, had hushed its every noise in order that they might think, and think, and think on without hope or a ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... sweeping down those mighty waters which open into regions of such matchless fertility and beauty." "Some now within these walls may, before they die, witness scenes more wonderful than these; and in aftertimes may cherish delightful recollections of this day, when America, almost shrinking from the 'shadows of coming events,' first placed her feet upon untrodden ground, scarcely daring to anticipate the grandeur which awaited her." Tucker, of Virginia, agreed that settlement "marches ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... said to one of the young sailors who held back, "get aboard the small boat," and the fellow, who was shrinking from the knives, took the opportunity to get away. This made Chips hesitate, and in another moment I had two more of the ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... several places, and Shahtah became quite heated with trying to make himself as small as possible. "If your Majesty would let out your breath," said Kaddel, "I think we might get it on." So Shahtah let out his breath as well as he could, at the same time shrinking in his skin, and the Sixteen Coat-Tails seized the opportunity to give a final push to the coat, so that it was at last fairly on, two hours and five minutes after it was taken out of the box. But Shahtah, the King, could not possibly do without ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... letters is full of bleaching bones that tell where many of your sex as well as of mine fell and perished miserably, even before the noon of life. Ambitious spirit, come, rest in peace in the cool, quiet, happy, palm-grove that I offer you. My shrinking violet, sweeter than all Paestum boasts! You cannot cope successfully with the world of selfish men and frivolous, heartless women, of whom you know absolutely nothing. To-day I found a passage which you had marked in one of my books, and it echoes ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... improvement in export earnings because of falling prices for many of its major commodity exports. For rice, traditionally the most important export, the drop in world prices has been accompanied by shrinking markets and a smaller volume of sales. In 1985 teak replaced rice as the largest export and continues to hold this position. The economy is heavily dependent on the agricultural sector, which generates about 40% of GDP and provides ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... nevertheless persisted in forcing himself upon her as a species of family connection: and she had weakly sanctioned the intrusion, solely from the dread that he would otherwise introduce himself to Mr. Vanstone's notice, and take unblushing advantage of Mr. Vanstone's generosity. Shrinking, naturally, from allowing her husband to be annoyed, and probably cheated as well, by any person who claimed, however preposterously, a family connection with herself, it had been her practice, for many years past, to assist the captain from her own purse, on the condition that he should ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... heard at the kirk, she could tell the text. But she did not tell that she had learned it by overhearing it repeated by an old man to his neighbour, as they came after her up the road. Nor did she tell that, being late at the kirk door, and shrinking from the thought of going in alone among so many strange folk, she had passed the time occupied by the preaching sitting on a broken headstone in ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... of those pagan worshippers, and in their shame of self they were sublime. I leave both the truth and the error to Him who alone can soar to the bright heights of the one and sound the dark depths of the other, and take to myself the lesson, to be read in the shrinking forms and hidden faces of those patient waiters for a far-off glimmering Light,—the lesson wherefrom I learn, in thanking God for the light of Christianity, to thank him for its ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... carried, there had always been some hope to hold: as if she had never looked poverty full in the face and seen its cold and pitiless look before. She looked anxiously down the road, with a horrible shrinking and dread at the thought of being asked, out of pity, to join in some Thanksgiving feast, but there was nobody coming with gifts in hand. Once she had been full of love for such days, whether at home or abroad, but something chilled her very ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... from a distance, until he has become accustomed to them, and, from seeing them handled by others, shall at last handle them himself. If during his infancy he has seen without fear frogs, serpents, crawfishes, he will, when grown up, see without shrinking any animal that may be shown him. For one who daily sees frightful objects, there are ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... this chapter I have occason to speak of fear. There I mean by fear a sort of shrinking demeanor or disposition to accept insults and other petty persecutions as just dues, or to leave them unpunished from actual cowardice, to which fear some have been pleased to attribute my generally good treatment. This latter fact has been by many, to my ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... not figured on herself as an instrument in furthering the hope to the point of actual realisation. What could be more incongruous, more theatric,—yes, more bizarre, than her attitude at this moment? It seemed impossible that this shrinking, inert heap at her side was a living thing; a woman who had slain a fellow creature, and that creature the man who had been her husband for six years. It seemed utterly beyond sense or reason that she should be helping this murderess to escape, ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... Naturally shrinking, she says, "I find it an awful thing to rise amongst a large assembly, and, unless much covered with love and power, hardly know how to venture." But she seemed always to be "covered with love and power," for she prayed much and ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... and shrinking off; "we can't live, if the little brown house goes. Oh, Mamsie! Mamsie!" and she sobbed as if her heart would break, and covered her face with ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... matron standing in the door resplendent in her red woolen petticoat and fanciful head-dress, knitting a pair of stockings, or some such token of love, for her absent lord—there, a pretty little village, with a church, a wharf, and a few store-houses, shrinking back behind the protecting wing of some huge and rugged citadel of rocks, the white cottages glittering pleasantly in the rays of the evening sun, and the smoke curling up peacefully over the surrounding foliage, and floating off ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Nancy asked faintly, shrinking a little beneath the intentness of his look. "How—how do ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... of Wingrove is at first shrinking; but a slight smile curling upon his lip, betokens that there is not much pain in the situation. A reflection, however, made at the moment, chases away the smile. It is this:—"'Tarnal earthquakes! were Marian to see me now! She'd never believe but ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
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