"Diminutiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
... expresses it exactly. It is an "appendix," an afterthought; and it is "vermiformis," a worm-like creature,—and, like the worm, will sometimes turn when trodden on. Its worm-likeness is significant in another sense also, in that it is this very diminutiveness in size—the coils into which it is thrown, the spongy thickness of its walls, and the readiness with which its calibre or its circulation is blocked—that is the fundamental cause of ... — Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... larger in these tropics than elsewhere, and here, too, the male was smaller than the female. Being seized and slain and devoured by his lady love even in the very transports of husbandly affection, it had been bitten in on his subconscious sensibilities that diminutiveness was life-saving, and natural selection had made him inferior in size to his cannibal mate. He had a very shrinking attitude in her presence, as Socrates must ... — Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... scared Lord of Session. She was but wild, witty Nelly Carnegie, whom no precise, stern mother could tame, no hard life at her embroidery or her spinet could subdue. She was brown as a gipsy, skin, eyes, and hair—the last a rich, ruddy chestnut brown—with nothing to distinguish her figure but its diminutiveness and the nimbleness of the shapely hands and feet; while her mother's lace lappets were higher by half a foot than the crown of many a manikin on whom she looked down, and her back that never bent or leant for a second on rail or cushion, was straight as an arrow, ... — Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler |