"Lean" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the tavern or in enjoying the more substantial culinary delights of the Boston hotels. Thus though I made no shabby friends I acquired few genteel ones, and I began to feel keenly the disadvantages of a lean purse. I was elected into none of the clubs, nor did I receive any invitations to the numerous balls given in Boston or even to those in Cambridge. This piqued my pride, to be sure, but only intensified my resolution to become a man of fashion ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... Myles Falworth about this time. The very next day after this interview in the bed-chamber, word came to him that Sir James Lee wished to speak with him in the office. He found the lean, grizzled old knight alone, sitting at the heavy oaken table with a tankard of spiced ale at his elbow, and a dish of wafers and some fragments of cheese on a pewter platter before him. He pointed to his clerk's seat—a joint stool somewhat ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... of furniture as the tester-bed or the sideboard. Perhaps not all of these mysterious visitants were as quiet as the shadowy lady of the Brice house, who would glide softly in at the hour of gloaming and, with her head on her hand, lean against the mantel, look sadly into the faces of the occupants of the room, and vanish without a sound—of course, it is undeniable that Annapolis ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... without knowing for certain who has come in, and goes on with the engraving he has in hand. I settle down at the end of the room, on the sofa with the faded cover, and, until Lampron deigns to grant me audience, I am free to sleep, or smoke, or turn over the wonderful drawings that lean against the walls. Among them are treasures beyond price; for Lampron is a genius whose only mistake is to live and act with modesty, so that as yet people only say that he has "immense talent." No painter or engraver of repute—and he is both—has served a more ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... a five-franc piece in a column. Lousteau's politics consist in a belief that Napoleon will return, and (and this seems to me to be still more simple) in a confidence in the gratitude and patriotism of their worships the gentlemen of the Left. As a Rubempre, Lucien's sympathies should lean towards the aristocracy; as a journalist, he ought to be for authority, or he will never be either ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... picked band of warriors, there was not a man in it under six feet in height, and all were lean, but muscled powerfully and with great shoulders and chests. They had an intense pride in physical strength and prowess, such necessary qualities to them, and they would show the white prisoner, large as he was and strong as he looked, how much inferior ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... shut herself up pretty nearly altogether in her room. She had an old, rather grim, Irish servant-woman in attendance upon her. This domestic was tall, lean, and religious, and the Captain knew instinctively she hated him; and he hated her in return, often threatened to put her out of the house, and sometimes even to kick her out of the window. And whenever a wet day ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... already taken their places at the time that the Romans began to form, when Hasdrubal, riding down his lines to make sure that everything was done according to his orders, noticed that among the enemy's array clad in shining armour were a band with rusty shields, and a bevy of horses which looked lean and ill-groomed. Glancing from the horses to their riders, he saw that their skins were brown with the sun of the south and their faces weary. No more was needed to tell him that reinforcements had come, and that it would ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... "Lean on me, James," said the Bailie, nervously, as the figure came with a heavy lurch on the pavement. "The faintness may pass off. Take care of your feet," and the Bailie shouldered his double to the ticket-office and propped it against ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... to let Tommy go for her, and I've seen her goin' past and stoppin' every two or three steps to rest. Well, I stood it as long as I could, but one day I see her comin' with her arms full and stoppin' to lean against the Babbit fence, and I run out and took her bundles and carried them to her house. Then I went home and never spoke one word to her though she called after me dreadful kind of pitiful. Well, that night I was taken sick with ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... and out of sight, he slackened his pace still more. Very slowly, more bent than when he came, lean, hungry, and disheartened, he made his way back ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... couch. The door suggested an inner room, and he got up promptly to explore it. It proved to be cramped and dark, lighted only from the larger apartment, which in its turn had but the one high north window of the ordinary studio. The small room was little more than a shed or "lean-to", serving the purposes of kitchen and storeroom combined. The arrangements of the whole cabin showed that some one had built it with a view to passing in seclusion a few days at a time without forsaking the simpler amenities of civilized life; and it was ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... to her natural delicacy of feeling and natural intensity of aversion to the slightest personal display of her own wealth. Neither Mrs. Vesey nor Miss Halcombe could ever induce her to let the advantage in dress desert the two ladies who were poor, to lean to the side of the one ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... Robert Weston's age is a mystery to me; I might venture to guess that it is between thirty and fifty. Past thirty all men begin to dry up or fatten, and he was certainly a lean person. His face was hidden beneath a beard of bristling, bushy red, and he had a sharp hook nose and small, bright eyes. From his appearance you could not tell whether he was a good man or a bad one, wise or stupid, ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... It had been so quickly done! He felt that the cursed weight and fear that he experienced in the presence of this moustached and lean bandit had, as it were, slipped off and rolled away from him. Could he escape, now? Breathing freely, he looked around him. On the left rose a black hull without masts, like an immense empty, deserted coffin. The waves beating against its sides awakened heavy echoes therein, resembling ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... Resurrection, which stands just beyond the Puerta del Campo, in Valladolid, there issued one day a soldier, who, by the excessive paleness of his countenance, and the weakness of his limbs, which obliged him to, lean upon his sword, showed clearly to all who set eyes on him that, though the weather was not very warm, he must have sweated a good deal in the last few weeks. He had scarcely entered the gate of the city, with tottering ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... and came back, stopping to examine branch roads for its wheel-tracks, losing the ground he had made up. Some seven miles back, he came to a road leading to a great gap in the hills. A little girl was feeding a few lean sheep at the corner of it. No: she had seen no carriage; she had only been here a little while: the road ran up to Camporossa. Tinker considered it, and it invited his search. It went high into the hills, and he saw little towns here and there on their sides. ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... in compliance with this notion (which was most amusing to those whom she tired out in her tramps), whenever she thought of it—that is, when the bird voice was still for a moment—she would seek a sloping bank, or a place beside a tree where she could lean, and then throw herself down, determined to rest. But always in one minute or less, the warbler would be sure to begin again, when away went good resolutions and fatigue, and she sprang up like a Jack-in-the-box, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... the stretcher down at the top of the steps that led to the door of the dugout, so that Martin found himself looking into the lean, sensitive face, stained a little with blood about the mouth, of the wounded man. His eyes followed along the shapeless bundles of blood-flecked uniform till they suddenly turned away. Where the middle of the man had been, where had been the curved belly and the ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... much in fashion, that Miss Chudleigh has called for the council books of the subscription concert, and has struck off the name of Mrs. Naylor.(120) I have some thoughts of remonstrating, that General Waldegrave is too lean for to be a groom of the bedchamber. Mr. Chute has sold his house to Miss Speed for three thousand pounds, and has taken one for a year ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... She had to lean forward and strain her ears to hear him. It was evident that he did not recognize the existence of the gallery, for he did not raise his voice from beginning to end; and yet it was of that strong rich quality ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... nowhere upon the earth, or above the earth, a heaven for hogs, where they were requited for all this suffering? Each one of these hogs was a separate creature. Some were white hogs, some were black; some were brown, some were spotted; some were old, some young; some were long and lean, some were monstrous. And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... slaughtered many a steer, But Master Pennewip is still living, I hear; Some are lean, and some are well-fed, He has slipped his wig to the ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... ill-looking fellow in full flight, hotly pursued by Peggy Montfort. When he turned to bay, it was within a foot of the spot where Colney sat under the hedge; and without more ado Colney stretched out her long, lean hand, and, grabbing the fellow by the ankles, "tripped up his heels, and ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... it?" She says, "Well, do go to bed and get some rest." I said, "Not till that poor, noble young man has got his money." So I set up all night, and this morning out I shot, and the first man I struck told me you had shipped on the "Grand Turk" and gone to New Orleans. Well, sir, I had to lean up against a building and cry. So help me goodness, I couldn't help it. The man that owned the place come out cleaning up with a rag, and said he didn't like to have people cry against his building, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... for a soldier, and was shot; the other had learned the craft of a weaver, but being too fond of his pot, had broken his neck by falling into a quarry, as he went home one night from a carousal. Hans was left the sole staff for the old man to lean upon; and truly a worthy son he proved himself. He was as gentle as a dove, and as tender as a lamb. A cross word from his father, when he had made a cross stitch, would almost break his heart; but half a word of kindness revived him again—and he seldom went long without it; for the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... lean shape of a rakish space ship was resting on the soil some three hundred yards from the ranch-house, and between were the hazy figures of six men, busily dragging as many boxes towards their craft. The boxes contained the whole half-year's ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... up.—"You're not going?" asked Jimmy, staring at the ceiling.—"No," said Donkin, impulsively, and instead of going out leaned his back against the closed door. He looked at James Wait, and saw him long, lean, dried up, as though all his flesh had shrivelled on his bones in the heat of a white furnace; the meagre fingers of one hand moved lightly upon the edge of the bunk playing an endless tune. To look at him ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... with the conflicting emotions with which he had been battling, he missed his footing and fell, twisting his ankle, on the side of the embankment. He rose with an effort and put his foot to the ground, but a sharp pain obliged him to lean against the trunk of a neighboring ash-tree. His foot felt as heavy as lead, and every time he tried to straighten it his sufferings were intolerable. All he could do was to drag himself along from one tree to another until ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... idiosyncrasy) put her tongue out at them, too. The taller of the two (he was in evening clothes under a light wide-open overcoat) with great presence of mind chucked her under the chin, giving me the view at the same time of a flash of white teeth in his dark, lean face. The other man was very different; fair, with smooth, ruddy cheeks and burly shoulders. He was wearing a grey suit, obviously bought ready-made, for it seemed too tight for his ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... the repast as one might who fancied that she dreamed. Cautiously she touched the food with her lean fingers, then she clutched it and ate ravenously, desperately fearing that it ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... of them standing in the room, five shapes like men, yet curiously, strangely, different. They were tall of stature, narrow across the shoulders, muscular in a lean, attenuated fashion. But their faces! McGuire found his eyes returning in horrified fascination to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... did; didn't he, Philip? and Pa and Ma both laughed at him; and I wasn't so sleepy but that I saw Pa get Kirby and Spence's 'Tomology' down to read, and lean back in his ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... that had the devil's own mockery in it. "Monsieur le bon Dieu is very impartial! Some serve Him by constant over-feeding, others by constant over-starving; it is all one to Him apparently! How do you know which among His servants He likes best, the fat or the lean?" ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... "How pretty she is, and how clever," she thought tenderly. "And the best part of it is that she doesn't know what an adorable dear she is. I hope she gets an honorable mention, even if she can't hit the prize. She deserves a lot of good times, after all those lean years when she took ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... the uplands, but they soon began to rise, and before seven o'clock the sky was cloudless; along the road were passing hundreds of people (though it was only five in the morning) in detachments of from two to nine, with cattle, sheep, pigs, and goats, picturesque enough but miserably lean and gaunt: we leave them to proceed to the fair, and after a three miles' level walk through a straight poplar avenue, commence ascending far above the Romanche; all day long we slowly ascend, stopping occasionally ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... air) do you good, Bloom said, meaning also the walk, in a moment. The only thing is to walk then you'll feel a different man. Come. It's not far. Lean on me. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... under Gregory the Great that the Papacy acquired its great supremacy over the Provincial Churches. As the power of the Church grew after the death of Charlemagne, partly from the inclination of weak kings to lean on ecclesiastical support, the Papal claims to authority developed and began to be maintained by the penalties ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... deserves a new paragraph. Long, lean and hollow cheeked, the term "gangling" fits him better than any other. Mr. Luther Barr's black suit hung on him as baggily as the garments of a cornfield scarecrow and Mr. Luther Barr's sharp features were not improved by a small growth of gray hair; of the kind known ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... difference trims:— Using head instead of limbs, You have read what I have seen; Using limbs instead of head, I have seen what you have read— Which way does the balance lean? ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Hooker's Bend, drawn in a rough semicircle around the Big Hill, lies Niggertown. In all the half-moon there are perhaps not two upright buildings. The grimy cabins lean at crazy angles, some propped with poles, while others hold out against gravitation ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... calesa. It is more picturesque than the Neapolitan corricolo; it is all ribs and bones, and is much given to inward groaning as it jerks and jolts along. Such a trap we took; the driver lazily clambered on the shafts, and away hobbled our lean steed. ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... and engaged a ramshackle Perugian cab; for the public vehicles of Perugia are perhaps, as a class, the most precarious and incoherent known to science. However, the luggage was bundled on to the top by Our Lady's grace, without dissolution of continuity; the lean-limbed horses were induced by explosive volleys of sound Tuscan oaths to make a feeble and spasmodic effort; and bit by bit the sad little cavalcade began slowly to ascend the interminable hill that rises by long loops to the platform ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... make an experiment on the arm of a man, either using such a fillet as is employed in blood-letting or grasping the limb tightly with his hand, the best subject for it being one who is lean, and who has large veins, and the best time after exercise, when the body is warm, the pulse is full, and the blood carried in large quantities to the extremities, for all then is more conspicuous; under such circumstances let a ligature be thrown about the extremity and drawn as tightly as can ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... I haven't your brilliant faculty of scientific analysis, Kennedy. No, I shall have to lean on you, in that, not ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... of Lord Delacour and his coronet: I have done her injustice," thought Lady Delacour, and instantly she despatched Sir Philip out of the room, for a catalogue of the pictures, begged Mr. Rochfort to get her something else, and, drawing Miss Portman's arm within hers, she said, in a low voice, "Lean upon me, my dearest Belinda: depend upon it, Clarence will never be such a fool as to marry the girl—Virginia Hervey ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... been spent in looking for a pick and hammer, and in the incidental "chaffing" with Bridget. At ten o'clock I went to overlook his work; it was a rash action, as it caused him to respectfully doff his hat, discontinue his labors, and lean back against the fence in cheerful and easy conservation. "Are you fond uv blackberries, Captain?" I told him that the children were in the habit of getting them from the meadow beyond, hoping to estop ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... took to their heels. At night, the few that came or would come, had a meeting on the texts; and the next day we ended this troublesome month with the watch-word, "He that believeth shall not make haste." "Grant me to lean ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... as we noted above: Compute then how many fair pike-staves, perches, and other useful materials, that will amount to in an acre, if planted at five foot interval: But a fat and moist soil, requires indeed more space, than a lean or dryer; namely, six or eight ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... portions of lean flesh, usually a little flattened and somewhat rounded at their edges, and terminating at one end—often at both—in a harder, flatter, white substance, called tendon, which is fastened to ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... one of the largest porticos in Rome began to lean to one side and was set upright in a remarkable way by a certain architect whose name no one knows, because Tiberius, jealous of his wonderful achievement, would not permit it to be entered in the records. This architect, accordingly, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... there, and her mother, a dried-up old lady who knew nothing about all these dreadful world movements, but whose pleadings had no effect upon her inspired daughter; also Ada's cousin, a lean old-maid school teacher, secretary of the Peoples' Council; also Miriam Yankovitch, and Sadie Todd, and Donald Gordon. On the way Peter had met Tom Duggan, and the mournful poet revealed that he had composed a new poem ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... an instinctive consciousness that it was out of such ordeals his strength and glory were to arise, as his whole life was passed in courting agitation and difficulties; and whenever the scenes around him were too tame to furnish such excitement, he flew to fancy or memory for "thorns" whereon to "lean his breast." ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... is not well to depend on others. If it is part of our lot to be surrounded by servants, let us accept their offices with grace and kindliness, but never allow ourselves to lean on them. We should know how to do everything for ourselves, and be prepared to do it whenever it is necessary. Of course, with some of us, it is essential that we should have servants, that we may be set free to do the special work of our lives. Nothing would ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... rough lean-to under the shelter of a great white plaster-rock, and there in a heap of fragrant branches, the child wrapped closely in the lad's arms, the lonely pair slept warm and secure. The next day was mild and our travelers ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... when the camissal foamed all white with bloom and the welter of yellow violets ran in the grass under it like fire, Greenhow built a lean-to to his house and made the discovery that the oak which jutted out from the barranca behind it was of just the right height from the ground to make a swing for a child, which caused him ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... about it, Aunt Em'ly?" Mrs. Bucknor asked the lean old colored woman who appeared in the doorway. "Here comes Miss Ann Peyton, and the young ladies want to put her in the little hall bedroom because they have planned to put their company ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... took his paunch and himself away into retirement, leaving Dr. Dean and young Murray facing each other, a singular pair enough in the contrast of their appearance and dress,—the one small, lean and wiry, in plain-cut, loose-flowing academic gown; the other tall, broad and muscular, clad in the rich attire of mediaeval Florence, and looking for all the world like a fine picture of that period stepped out from, its frame. There was a silence between them ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... urchin's sole delight was to lean over the bow and watch the fish and coral groves over which they skimmed. In this he was imitated by Nigel who, ungallantly permitting his companion to row, also leaned over the side and gazed down into the clear crystal depths ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... on the deck," she continued, "and lean against the rail. You are too big to talk to up there. So! Now you can come underneath my rug. Tell me, are they afraid of me, ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... chopped lean mutton, including some of the bone, one pint cold water, pinch of salt. Cook for three hours over a slow fire down to half a pint, adding water if necessary; strain through muslin, and when cold carefully remove the fat, adding more salt if required. ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... let her hold my hand in one of her lean claws while she lightly passed the spread fingers of the other down the length of mine from the tips to the joining with the palm, and then along the palm itself, up and down and across. It was like having a feather ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... had been watched for through the stained glass of its windows, the door was flung violently open. A white-clad figure darted across the porch, but not before Bert had untangled the lean six feet of him from under the flivver's wheel and bounded up ...
— Wanderer of Infinity • Harl Vincent
... all your resources to make a wide highroad. If you keep sufficient credit to ward off all these disagreeables, you might as well keep your money, for it will cost you no more to keep it. Riches and credit lean upon each other, the one can ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... hand, those whose influence is to divide and separate, causing the hearts of men to lean away from each other, make themselves the children of the evil one: born of God and not of the devil, they turn from God, and adopt the devil their father. They set their God-born life against God, against the whole ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... the girl with a twinkle in his grey eyes, and lit a cheroot. The relationships between Patricia Hamilton and Bones were a source of constant joy to him. Taciturn and a thought dour as he was, Pat would never have suspected the bubbling laughter which arose behind that lean brown face, unmovable and, in his moments ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... know that as in former days, as was eloquently declared by Webster, the nation's most gifted statesman, Massachusetts and South Carolina went "shoulder to shoulder through the Revolution" and stood hand in hand "around the Administration of Washington and felt his own great arm lean on them for support," so will they again, with like magnanimity, devotion, and power, stand round your Administration and cause you to feel that you may also lean ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... any other lie So monstrous, wicked, gross, improbable, That weak men found it easier to believe Than the invention; while the bad in heart, By true worth most offended, felt relief, Protesting still they wish'd it were not so, With that lean babble, custom's scant half-mask, Worn uselessly by hatred. Think me not Of these—nor yet too rash in sympathy. I would reflect well ere I draw the sword To fling the sheath away; I bid you now A ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... was ready and waiting to lean over and lend them a hand, keeping the while a steady purchase to his feet by the aid of his malacca stick, which possibly had never been of such service before; and, presently, the coastguardsmen, the ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Clark and eighteen men went down the river in search of game. The hunters, after being out nine days, returned and reported that they had killed forty deer, three buffalo, and sixteen elk. But much of the game was lean and poor, and the wolves, who devour everything left out at night, had stolen a quantity of the flesh. Four men, with sleds, were sent out to bring into camp the meat, which had been secured against wolves by being stored in pens. These men were attacked by ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... he couldn't quite say it, for it occurred to him that he was a poor stick for any body to lean on in the present state of his fortune, and that the woman before him was at least as independent ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... my person pay their court: I cough like Horace, and, though lean, am short, Ammon's great son one shoulder had too high, Such Ovid's nose, and 'Sir! you have an eye'— Go on, obliging creatures, make me see All that disgraced my betters, met in me. Say for my comfort, languishing in bed, 'Just so immortal ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... come and go—black, elegant fellows, with broad-rimmed hats, pretty canes, good clothes, good fits; absinthe-drinkers, with heavy jaws and dreamy, evil eyes. Billiard-balls are clicking in the back room; cards and dominoes are being played; cold-blooded, demoralized people lean forward, gossip and gesticulate—men who would man a barricade on occasion or put a sword-blade ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... into the church. It was a wedding evidently, although the groom was a tall, lean, middle-aged individual ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... hand and dragged him, panting and exhausted, to the shore, where he fell weakly on the turf, unable for a moment to utter a word. The man who leaned over him was lean, as dark as an Indian, and in a day when smoothly shaven features were the rule, his face was marked by a tangled growth of iron-gray beard. His hair hung to the fringed collar of his deerskin shirt, and straggled ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... due to the sovereign, pretending to chimerical and dangerous prerogatives, which none are suffered to question, without risking the displeasure of the Almighty. And so well have the priesthood managed this matter, that in many countries we actually see the people more inclined to lean to the authority of the Vicars of Jesus Christ than to that of the civil government. The priesthood claim the right of commanding monarchs themselves, and sustained by their emissaries and the credulity of the people, ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... should be cast over. She ballasted the boat, and for Bompard she was something to lean against. ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... life had he tasted bread so sweet!—and the strips of boiled bacon in between came surely from a most unusual pig—a porker of sorts, without a doubt, and of most extraordinary attainment in the nice balancing of lean and fat, and the induing of both with vital juices of the utmost strength and sweetness. Truly, a most celestial pig!—and he ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... stood like one thunder-struck, when opening my bosom, I trembling, cry'd out; "At last, Fortune, you have ruin'd every part of me:" for Gito, my better half, lean'd on my breast, as if he had breath'd his last: when our sweating through fear, had a little recover'd our spirits: I fell at Eumolpus feet, and intreated him to have compassion of two dying wretches: that is, ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... to explore Woodbury, he kindly consented, and went with me. I located many of the most interesting objects in the town. The large, well-built stone house of Daniel Sherman was still standing, made after the usual pattern, two stories high with a lean-to roof in the rear, and with low ceilings. He had lived there during most of his active life, and had entertained Washington and Lafayette, when they at different times visited the French vessels at Newport. The fortified house of Rev. Anthony Stoddard was in a good state of preservation, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... fires, and there was a flare of torches in the centre. I saw an immense multitude of lean, dark faces—how many I cannot tell, but ten thousand at the least. It took all my faith to withstand the awe of the sight. For these men were not the common Indian breed, but a race nurtured and armed for great wars, disciplined to follow one man, and sharpened ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... sullenly up and down, shaking that horrid ring of enormous keys, while with angry eye I measured his gigantic, lean, and aged figure. His features, though not decidedly vulgar, bore the most repulsive expression of brutal severity which I ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... was silly from being struck on the head with a railroad tie somewhere down the long trail of years behind him, gulped his lean Adam's apple into a laugh, and began to gobble a long, rambling tale about a feller he knew once in Minnesota who could locate mines with a crooked stick, and wherever he pinted the ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... a disadvantage, and he knew it. Breathing hard, his face red, his little eyes darting about the room, he took it all in—the members of the Committee; the boss, figuring at the table, with an air of exasperating coolness about his lean back; and last of all, James, standing in the shadow. It was the sight of the new man that checked the storm of words that was pressing on Grady's tongue. But he finally gathered himself and stepped forward, pushing ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... And, second, if it could be, It would not be any fun! And, third, and most conclusive And admitting no reply, You would have to change your nature! We should like to see you try!" They chuckled then triumphantly, These lean and hairy shapes, For these things passed as arguments With ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... a mob of shabby fellows, (illotum vulgus,) who were at length quieted after two or three had been somewhat roughly handled (gladio jugulati). The speaker was the well-known Mark Tully, Eq.,—the subject, Old Age. Mr. T. has a lean and scraggy person, with a very unpleasant excrescence upon his nasal feature, from which his nickname of chick-pea (Cicero) is said by some to be derived. As a lecturer is public property, we may remark, that his outer garment (toga) was of cheap stuff and somewhat worn, and that his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... proud man, who is a law unto himself, he brings infidelity as the grand temptation: 'Ye shall be as gods'—'Yea, hath God said?'—and lastly, 'There is no God.' To the weaker nature, which demands authority to lean on, he brings Popery, offering to decide for you all the difficult questions of heart and life with authority—offering you the romantic fancy of a semi-goddess in its worship of the Virgin, in whose gentle bosom you may repose every trouble, and an infallible Church which can set everything ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... His lean face was streaming with perspiration, and when he took off his overcoat there rose the sweetish sourish scent of a hot goatskin waistcoat. It reached below his waist, and would have kept cold out ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... have translated this according to the reading of Sintenis. Compare the Life of Brutus, c. 8. Caesar was very lean. As to the writings compare Dion ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... of the three remaining travellers. On asking the meaning of this separation, Waverley was told that the Lowlander must go to a hamlet about three miles off for the night; for unless it was some very particular friend, Donald Bean Lean, the worthy person whom they supposed to be possessed of the cattle, did not much approve of strangers approaching his retreat. This seemed reasonable, and silenced a qualm of suspicion which came across Edward's mind, when he saw himself, at such a ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... or the "covenant of works," is much of a piece with superstition. It, again, is always a burden to be borne. Its mark is "drudgery and servility." It is a "lean and lifeless form of external performances." Its "law" is always something outside the soul itself. It is a way of acquiring "merit," of getting reckoned among "heaven's darlings," but it is not a way of life or ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... sloping side of the connecting ridge; and, turning to the right, made straight for the "Pins," below which was spread a fleck of lean and languid green. The ascent was comparatively mild, except where it became a sheet of smooth and slippery granite; but when he reached a clump of large junipers, his course was arrested by a bergschrund, which divides this block—evidently a second outlier—from the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... September. He would wait till the harvest was gathered in, place troops in fortresses, and continue hostilities through the winter. He adopted this course because 'in the cold Irish springs, the fields were bare, the cattle were lean, and the weather was so uncertain that neither man nor horse could bear it, whereas in August food everywhere was abundant, and the soldiers would have time to become hardened to their work.' They could winter somewhere on the Bann; harry Tyrone ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... voices, male and female, in the lean-to kitchen. Pat came in and glared at the intruder. There was a rising fury in his manner, but no ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... steady fellow; but we have only his own word for that,"—as Mr Whittlestaff observed to himself. There could not be a doubt but that Mr Whittlestaff himself was the safer staff of the two on which a young lady might lean. He did make all these excuses for himself, and determined that they were of such a nature that he might rely upon them with safety. But still there was a pang in his bosom—a silent secret—which kept on whispering to him that he was not the best beloved. He had, however, resolved steadfastly ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... person she is tall and lean, and very ill shaped; she hath bad features, and a worse complexion; she hath a stinking breath, and twenty ill smells about her besides; which are yet more insufferable by her natural sluttishness; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... glacier mother sleeps between Her granite walls. The mountains lean Above her, trailing skirts ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... support but itself. When the earth trembles and seems to be passing away, then they triumph because Jehovah alone is exalted. They do not preach on set texts; they speak out of the spirit which judges all things and itself is judged of no man. Where do they ever lean on any other authority than the truth of what they say; where do they rest on any other foundation than their own certainty? It belongs to the notion of prophecy of true revelation, that Jehovah, overlooking all the media of ordinances and institutions, communicates ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... causes intervene as well to cut, down the animal population below even that low standard. If we take the horses and cattle which are grazing all the winter through in the Steppes of Transbaikalia, we find them very lean and exhausted at the end of the winter. But they grow exhausted not because there is not enough food for all of them—the grass buried under a thin sheet of snow is everywhere in abundance— but because of the difficulty of getting it from beneath the snow, and this difficulty is the same for all ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... following morning, Mek Nimmur sent us two camel-loads of corn; a large gourd of honey, weighing about fifty pounds; and four cows that must have been a detachment of Pharaoh's lean kine, with a polite message that I was to select the FATTEST. These cattle were specimens of the poisonous qualities of the water; but, although disappointed in the substance of the present, my people were delighted with the acquisition, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... its branches seen, Midmost its leafage, covered all with green. Tis gazed at for its slender swaying shape And cherished for its symmetry and sheen. Lovely with longing for its love's embrace, The fear of his estrangement makes it lean. ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... more "anti-pathetic" to Easterns than lean hips and flat hinder-cheeks in women and they are right in insisting upon the characteristic difference of the male and female figure. Our modern sculptors and painters, whose study of the nude is usually most perfunctory, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... that same officer and gentleman, you never were mugged—treated as a prospective criminal; no four thousand posters bearing your picture will now be sent broadcast over the country; no fifty dollars is offered lean detectives for your capture; you're in no chance of being thrown into prison and have your government do all in its power to wring the manhood out of you! Oh no—an officer and a gentleman—you resign your commission and go ahead with your life. But ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... near the center of the village, John and Jane Clemens established their household. It was a humble one-story affair, with two main rooms and a lean-to kitchen, though comfortable enough for its size, and comparatively new. It is still standing and occupied when these lines are written, and it should be preserved and guarded as a shrine for the American people; for it was here that ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... celery into small pieces and boil it in three pints of water with one-fourth pound of lean ham minced; simmer gently for an hour. Strain through a sieve and return to the pan adding one quart of milk, salt and pepper; thicken with two tablespoonfuls of butter and two tablespoonfuls of flour rubbed to a paste. Serve with ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various
... Wilderness afforded; although the extreme right rested on no obstacle which superiority in numbers could not overcome. And a heavy force, massed in the clearing at Dowdall's as a point d'appui, was indispensable to safety, inasmuch as the conformation of the ground afforded nothing for this flank to lean upon. ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... others who, although the real coursing season had not yet begun in our neighbourhood, had been asked by Grampus to come to try their greyhounds upon his land. Those of them who walked for the most part held two long, lean dogs on a string, while one or two carried dead hares. They were dreadful-looking hares that seemed to have been bitten all over; at least their coats were wet and broken. I shivered at the sight of them, feeling sure that I was ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... him, and, moreover, a don has only to continue any of his bad habits long enough to make them a part of the British Constitution. The bad habits of Emerson Eames were to sit up all night and to be a student of Schopenhauer. Personally, he was a lean, lounging sort of man, with a blond pointed beard, not so very much older than his pupil Smith in the matter of mere years, but older by centuries in the two essential respects of having a European reputation and ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... so dear, because many villages being pulled down, and all country labour being much neglected, there are none who make it their business to breed them. The rich do not breed cattle as they do sheep, but buy them lean, and at low prices; and after they have fattened them on their grounds, sell them again at high rates. And I do not think that all the inconveniences this will produce are yet observed; for as they sell the cattle dear, so if they are consumed faster than the breeding countries from which ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various |
