"Shrink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it; and all fear was gone. She could not shrink from the great blessedness that was laid upon her, any more than Nature could refuse to wear her coronation robes, that trailed their radiance in this ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... that although I must shrink from her, I still love her in my heart, and can still be jealous, and therefore that I should protect her from all men. It was she who set me on that lord whom my dogs tore awhile ago, because he was powerful and sought her favour ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... lessening of the balance at one time, and the cheering and delightful growth of it at another—what absorbing reading! The best novel that ever was written isn't to be mentioned in a breath with it. I can not, Richard, I really can not, see my nice round balance shrink up to half the figure that I have been used to for a lifetime. It may be weak of me," proceeded Sir Joseph, evidently feeling that it was not weak of him at all, "but we all have our tender place, and my Banker's Book is ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... culture, who would be able heroically, without the quivering of a single muscle, to look straight in the face of death; who are capable for the sake of an idea of bearing unconceivable privations and sufferings, equal to torture; but then, these people are lost before the haughtiness of a doorman; shrink from the yelling of a laundress; while into a police station they enter in an insufferable and timid distress. And precisely such a one was Lichonin. On the following day (yesterday it had been impossible ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... (like an earthquake in a nunnery) would set at liberty even the timid, fluttering Grecian women, those doves of the dove-cot, and would call some of them into action. But which? Precisely those of energetic and masculine minds; the timid and feminine would but shrink the more from public gaze and from tumult. Thus it happened, that such female characters as were exhibited in Greece, could not but be the harsh and the severe. If a gentle Ismene appeared for a moment in contest with some energetic sister Antigone, (and ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Away, deliver it. Exit Pero. O may my lines, 20 Fill'd with the poyson of a womans hate, When he shall open them, shrink up his curst eyes With torturous darknesse, such as stands in hell, Stuck full of inward horrors, never lighted; With which are all things to be ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... is Edward Among his flatterers. Lan.And there let him be, Till he pay dearly for their company. War. And shall, or Warwick's sword shall smite in vain. K. Edw. What, rebels, do you shrink and sound retreat? Y. Mor. No, Edward, no; thy flatterers faint and fly. Lan. They'd best betimes forsake thee and their trains, For they'll betray thee, traitors as they are. Y. Spen. Traitor on thy face, rebellious Lancaster! Pem. Away, ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... love thee? oh, heaven! thou, my soul! my life! best half of my existence! but come, let us quit this hated place— let us away, and— (to Veronica) nay, lady, shrink not at my approach: how you may answer to the viceroy, be that your care; but dread no reproaches from me! I shall respect that sacred habit, though you have felt for it so little reverence; I shall still remember your sex, though you seem yourself to have forgotten it. Give me the means ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... a low, authoritative manner, which made the man shrink. "Do you wish me to report that I found you sleeping at your post? Silence! no words. There is a large boat of some kind approaching; be on the look-out and challenge, and ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... know, possibly I am mistaken, but it seems to me that I have known people ready for large sacrifices, who yet would shrink painfully from ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... active conquer difficulties, By daring to attempt them. Sloth and folly Shiver and shrink at sight of toil and hazard, And make th' impossibility ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... of Peace? The victor's meed Lies underneath your nose—why not continue? Because humanity makes your bosom bleed; So, though you have a giant's strength within you, Your gentle heart would shrink To use it like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... throng'd, intrude? Yet ah! thou poorest of the sons of earth, For once, I e'en to thee feel gratitude. Despair the power of sense did well-nigh blast, And thou didst save me ere I sank dismay'd, So giant-like the vision seem'd, so vast, I felt myself shrink ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... says Moll. "Pressed by his necessities, he came hither to claim assistance of his kinsman; but finding he was dead and none here but me, his pride did shrink from begging of a mere maid that which he might with justice have demanded from a man. And then, for shame at being handled ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... mean. I'd go anywhere. Where is she to find a home till,—till she is married?' He had paused at the word; but was determined not to shrink from it, and bolted it out in a loud, sharp tone so that both he and she recognized all the meaning of the word all that was conveyed in the idea. He hated himself when he endeavoured to conceal from his own mind any of the misery that was coming ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... Philipstown. It will be seen, therefore, that, while deprecating the actual occupation of the Drakensberg Passes and of the Colesberg and Bethulie bridges over the Orange river, which had been proposed by his predecessor and approved by Lord Wolseley, Sir William Butler did not shrink from the forward policy of endeavouring to bluff the enemy with weak detachments stationed in ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... appeared before the committee in advocacy of the pending measure, would defy all obstacles in the way of their casting the ballot, yet the great mass of the intelligent, refined and judicious, with the becoming modesty of their sex, would shrink from the rude contact of the crowd and, with the exceptions mentioned, leave the ignorant and vile the exclusive right to speak for the gentler sex in ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... weak to express the fears and feelings which prevailed. There was no village too remote to escape the shock, and there was, probably, no house in town some occupant of which did not shrink from the morrow. The Statesman started to find his new Bank Charter so sadly and so suddenly tried; the peer, who had so thoughtlessly invested, saw ruin opening to his view. Men hurried with bated breath to their brokers; the allottee was uneasy and suspicious, the ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... needn't shrink; I shan't ask you to do anything vulgar, or even anything that, with your present prejudices, you might consider actively criminal. You can help me, you see, in your own profession as a journalist; and in other ways. And my enterprise is greater than you ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... could quite understand that apart from general views on the marriage question, Lady Bridget O'Hara might well shrink from further ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... projection from a gun into a besieged town would instantly induce the garrison to evacuate the place and quit; but the barbarity which would be involved in subjecting even an enemy to direct contact with the Bradley Sausage is so frightful that we shrink from recommending its use, excepting in extreme cases. The odor disseminated by the stink-pot used in war by the Chinese is fragrant and balmy compared with the perfume which belongs to this article. ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... be proved!" said Mademoiselle von Haak. "This is no time to shrink or be silent. You have a great, strong heart, and you love him. You must know all! Listen, therefore, princess. I also love; I also look to the future with hope! My love is calm, for it is without danger; it has my mother's consent and blessing. Our only hope is, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... to raise his head and watch her shrink with horror. It was only an instant. Then she was beside him again, and one arm around him, while she turned her head and glanced fearfully back at the lighted schoolhouse. ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... arms I felt that she began to tremble. I let her go, and she slipped from the room with the soft, cushioned step that was habitual with her. And, strangely enough, my thoughts recurred to the day, long ago, when I first held the great white cat on my knees, and felt its body shrink from my touch with a nameless horror. The uneasy movement of the woman recalled to me so strongly and so strangely the uneasy movement ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... and our cause is all the darker and more painful to me because I, as a member of the Government of the South African Republic, was one of the persons who entered into the war with England. A man may, however, not shrink from the consequences of his acts, and on an occasion like this, we must restrain all private feelings, and decide only and exclusively with a view to the permanent interests of the Africander people. These are great moments ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... is quite ready, at once, to share His heaven with this poor defiled creature, the first trophy of the cross. Again—what a lesson of love!—how different, all this, from the common inclination to shrink away from contact and intercourse with the vile! Oh, shame, that there can ever have been such a shrinking in our poor guilty hearts! The servant is not above his Lord. He came to sinners. Let us go ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... were, and although they seemed to present the fortunate opportunity for carrying into execution his cherished plan of autocracy, Ivan held back. He alone of all Russia was intimidated. His project of empire was so lofty and comprehensive that he appeared to shrink from any collision that could even remotely peril its ultimate success. He was so dismayed that he forced the Princess to fly from Moscow and seek a temporary shelter in the North. Terror-struck and unmanned, he deserted the army, and shut himself up in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... horse will not shrink back, Though death confront him in his track, The Arab horse will not shrink back, And shall his rider's arm be slack? No!—By the God who gave us life, Our souls are ready for the strife. We need no serried lines, to show A gallant bearing to the foe. We need ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... had known trouble. He well remembered the days when he had had to learn to dance, and what it was to shrink from blows, and to howl with pain and fear under punishment. Times were not so bad for him now, because his education was over, but still he had to work hard for his living. In every town they passed he must stiffen his long thin ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... impassively. The calm determination in her did not shrink before those insults and ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... said George, "we must all of us do our duty, and I shall not shrink from mine—but I have arrested this man on a charge of poaching, and must give my reasons; the case cannot be dropped, and it must be heard in public. Am I, or am I not, to have the sworn depositions of both you gentlemen to the fact that ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... the rights of nations. Our country has before preferred them to the degraded condition which was the alternative when the sword was drawn in the cause which gave birth to our national independence, and none who contemplate the magnitude and feel the value of that glorious event will shrink from a struggle to maintain the high and happy ground on which it ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... them with a genuine scientific equipment. It should, however, be clear that an attitude of hostility to science, veiled or open, cannot be maintained. Mere authority has fallen on evil days, and in all directions is being freely challenged. There is increasing dislike to systems of thought that shrink from examination, and to conclusions that cannot withstand the most rigorous investigation. And if science really has anything of value to say on this question it cannot be held to silence for ever. Sooner or later the need for its assistance will be felt, and the self-elected ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... a lightning flash seemed to dart from his eyes. Fouquet felt that he was lost, but he was not one to shrink when the voice of honor spoke loudly within him. He bore the king's wrathful gaze; the latter swallowed his rage, and after a few moments' silence, said, "Are we going to return ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... the sacrifice of the God-Man—l'Homme-Dieu. These truths are explicitly stated by the Author in his former course of lectures—La Vie Eternelle,[1] in which, while discoursing eloquently on that eternal life which is the portion of the righteous, he does not shrink from declaring his belief in its awful counterpart, the eternal ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... Philip said as they reached the street, which was ablaze with torches. "Above all things do not shrink, or seem as if ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... Raffles never alluded to the subject again, and for my part I had entirely forgotten his wild ideas connecting the organ-grinders with the Camorra, and imagining them upon his own tracks. I heard no more of it, and thought as little, as I say. Then one night in the autumn—I shrink from shocking the susceptible for nothing—but there was a certain house in Palace Gardens, and when we got there Raffles would pass on. I could see no soul in sight, no glimmer in the windows. But Raffles had my arm, and on we went without talking about it. Sharp to the left on the ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... best fitted to take part in affairs, and consequently most sensitive to the ill-will that barred them from power and success, there should be aroused, despite all conscious efforts neither to surrender nor to shrink, an unconscious desire to escape the consequences of the thing that stamped them in the eyes of the general as individuals of an inferior sort; to inhibit any spiritual gesture that might arouse hostility; and to ward off any subjective sense of personal inferiority ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... axis of the cylinder straight, so that Jeans has only to concern himself with the stability of the form of the section of the cylinder, which as I have said is a circle with the axis of rotation at the centre. He then supposes the liquid forming the cylinder to shrink in diameter, just as we have done, and finds that the speed of rotation must increase so as to keep up the constancy of the rotational momentum. The circularity of section is at first stable, but as the shrinkage proceeds the stability ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... heat is greater in that place than in the other parts of the oven and the loaves should therefore be changed to another position. Proper care given to bread while baking will produce loaves that are an even brown on the bottom, sides, and top and that shrink from the sides of ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... tastefully dressed. Now, if she goes to take the cars, she is not permitted to go into a clean car with decent people, but is ordered into one that is repellent, and is forced into company that any refined woman would shrink from. But along comes a flauntingly dressed woman, of known disreputable character, whom my wife would be disgraced to know, and she takes any place that money will buy. It is this sort of thing ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... wound her, like sharp swords, With words of contumely, and mocking taunts, Scoffs at her woman's heart 'mid manhood's guise, Threats, rude defiances on every side. At first she clomb, nigh stunn'd with wrathful cries, Now at her side, whilst she would shrink in fear To feel the sword's point pierce her fluttering heart, Now from afar, below her and above, Till she scarce breath'd, awaiting o'erturn'd rocks To crush her in their fury as she went. Yet, minding well the Dervise, still she held Her ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... to define, but I certainly don't mean pernicketty. Of course, there is a fastidiousness which makes one shrink from unpleasant things, but Harry's is the other kind. It impels him to do them ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... cornices and coping, the tops of their frowning walls, appear piled from both sides to the center of the street. It seems that a touch would now send the shattered masses left standing, down upon the people below, who look up to them and shrink together as the tremor of the earthquake again passes under them, and the mysterious reverberations swell and roll along, like some infernal drumbeat summoning them to die. It passes away, and again is experienced the blessed feeling of deliverance ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... sovereign beauty will be ours. 'Be ye imitators of God as dear children' is the pure and comprehensive dictate which expresses the aim of all devout men. 'To keep His commandments' goes deeper than the mere external deeds. Were it not so, Paul's grand words would shrink to a very poor conception of religion, which would then have its shrine and sphere removed from the sacred recesses of the inmost spirit to the dusty Babel of the market-place and the streets. But ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... he had horrible sensations of sinking at the middle and of giving way altogether at the knees. He had been afraid of seeing her suffer; now he knew that what he was really afraid of was her fear of seeing him. He expected to see her face set in abhorrence of his sympathy, her body shrink in anticipation of ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... weakness, pity, beauty, courage, and eloquence. "Strike me, O my father!" His quick, clear sagacity measured instantly all the danger in that challenge; and though his voice was thick and agitated (for, monster as he was at that moment, he could not but shrink from striking at every mother's heart at his feet), he nervously gave the word to remove the child, and bind her. The united strength of several women was not more than enough to loose the clasp of those loving arms from the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... upon the president's express opinion, should proceed to take possession of the country. His lordship expressed an anxious hope, that, while whatever could be justly claimed by the United States should be readily conceded, government would not shrink from vindicating, if necessary, the nation's honour, and upholding her interests. In reply, Lord Aberdeen said that our position was precisely the same as it had been for the last eighteen years, under the treaty of 1827. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... some Russian soldiers reaping in the fields, and when he came near they ran away in terror, leaving two hundred scythes in the field, which he seized. But a great calamity befel this Lion. He had an only son. When he first led the boy to the wars, he charged him never to shrink from the enemy, but to cut his way through the very midst. One day Guz Beg had ridden into the thick of the Russian soldiers, when suddenly a ball pierced his horse, and he was thrown headlong on the ground. There lay the Lion among the hunters. In another moment he would have been killed, when ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... doors. Not so the other. He turned quickly, and whipped two revolvers out of his pockets, which he presented at the astonished crowd. There had been a movement on the part of every one to leave the room, but the sight of these deadly weapons confronting them made each one shrink into ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... cook. Occasionally, accompanied by proper officers, the convicts should be taken to the Italian Opera, or allowed to dance at Papanti's. The object would be so to refine their tastes that they should shrink from theft and murder, simply because they were ungentlemanly. Readmitted to society, these gentlemen would give tone to ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak; They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think: They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... recluse and student, he had great experiences with life. He was born among the higher ranks of society. He inherited an ample patrimony. He did not shrink from public affairs. He was intensely patriotic, like Michael Angelo; he gave himself up to the good of his country, like Savonarola. Florence was small, but it was important; it was already a capital, and a centre of industry. He represented its interests ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... equal to more than half the population of England and a menace to that country, as one of its statesmen incautiously admitted—was a conviction not shared by the bulk of his colleagues. They shrank from it as men will shrink from a conclusion that horrifies the human nature in them. Mitchel went outside the Confederation to preach his policy, and he might have preached it without result had not the French Revolution turned men's ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... a piece of yellow cloth cut out in the shape of a duck's foot, was adopted. If any Cagot was found in any town or village without his badge, he had to pay a fine of five sous, and to lose his dress. He was expected to shrink away from any passer-by, for fear that their clothes should touch each other; or else to stand still in some corner or by-place. If the Cagots were thirsty during the days which they passed in those towns where their presence was barely suffered, they had no means of quenching ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... it insipid, uninteresting. True;—the man of study has not fought for hire—he has not slaughtered at the command of a master: he would disdain to do so. Though unaccompanied with the glaring actions of public men, which confound and dazzle by their publicity, but shrink from the estimation of moral truth, it would present a far nobler picture; yes, and a more instructive one:—the calm disciple of reason meditates in silence; he walks his road with innoxious humility; he is poor, but his mind is his treasure; he cultivates his reason, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... persons. And he wouldn't get intoxicated, which is a beastly way of amusin oneself, I must say. I like a little beer now and then, and when the teetotallers inform us, as they frekently do, that it is vile stuff, and that even the swine shrink from it, I say it only shows that the swine is a ass who don't know what's good; but to pour gin and brandy down one's throat as freely as though it were fresh milk, is the most idiotic way of goin' to the devil that I ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne
... speak out! I understand you; it is I who am the apparently injured husband. Marie! Great God of heaven! that man should dare couple her pure name with ignominy! Marie! my Marie! the seemingly guilty wife! Well, put forth your tale: I am not the man to shrink from my own words. Speak truth, and I will hear you; and—and, if I can, not spurn you from me as ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink, to decide cases properly brought before them; and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions into political purposes. One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... latter he dared not do, for he felt that Basil was watching him. Never for an instant did he lose the consciousness that the beady, black eyes were upon him. He felt them like two hot points in the middle of his back; they burned and bored, and the flesh seemed to shrink away from them beneath the ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... hearty clasp. They were young and generous. The delights of life even as a prisoner now came in a swelling tide upon Henry. He had not known before that air could be so pure and keen, such a delight and such a source of strength to the lungs. The figure that had seemed to shrink within the narrow walls suddenly expanded and felt capable of anything. Strength flowed back in renewed volume into every muscle. Before him beyond the walls curved the dark green world, vital, intense, full of everything that he loved. It was ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... among the reporters caused Mildred to shrink back in sudden self-consciousness, her ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... it craves the staking out of as many word areas as possible, or, conversely, has the mechanical imposition of a flood of French and Latin loan-words, unrooted in our earlier tradition, so dulled our feeling for the possibilities of our native resources that we are allowing these to shrink by default? I suspect that both propositions are true. Each feeds on the other. I do not think it likely, however, that the borrowings in English have been as mechanical and external a process as they ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... plumed: of the beautiful turban, of the tall white crown: the gods love thy presence: when the double crown is set upon thy head: thy love pervades the earth: thy beams arise ... men are cheered by thy rising: the beasts shrink from thy beams: thy love is over the southern heaven: thy heart is not (unmindful of) the northern heaven: thy goodness ... (all) hearts: love subdues (all) hands: thy creations are fair overcoming (all) the earth: (all) hearts ...
— Egyptian Literature
... small cake, the oven should be hot enough to brown a piece of unglazed paper or a tablespoonful of flour in three minutes. Bake a small cake from twenty to thirty minutes. When done, the cake will shrink from the sides of the pan; the crust will spring back when touched with the finger; the loud ticking sound will cease; a fine knitting-needle will come out clean if the cake is pierced; and the crust will ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... sits[84], Her dusky shadow mounts too high, And o'er the changing aspect flits, And clouds the brow, or fills the eye: Heed not that gloom, which soon shall sink; My Thoughts their dungeon know too well— Back to my breast the wanderers shrink, And bleed within ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... shrink and wither, or are blasted and die, in the company of idleness; and, without firmness of will, the noblest principles and purest sentiments sometimes wear the livery of vice, and often they give encouragement to it. Good principles, good purposes, good ideas, are made fruitful by ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... think to accept Christ as the Master of their lives means to take away or paralyze their powers—to deprive them of some special activeness they possess and which they shrink from giving up. Bless you, there could not be a worse mistake. To accept Christ means to have those same powers, even though they might have been devoted to evil, now turned into channels of finest, highest service—the ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... and show good form after having been badly hit. For a time a great deal of determination, and the exercise of a considerable amount of will power, are necessary to conquer the natural inclination to shrink from a possible repetition of the injury; and those who watched the dogged manner in which Thurston continued to defend his wicket, being themselves practical cricketers, rewarded him with loud ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... course, such a thing as individual courage, which has a value in war, but familiarity with danger, experience in war and its common attendants, and personal habit, are equally valuable traits, and these are the qualities with which we usually have to deal in war. All men naturally shrink from pain and danger, and only incur their risk from some higher motive, or from habit; so that I would define true courage to be a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to incur it, rather than that insensibility to danger of which I have heard far more ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... wife, are there not people who would caress me as a white woman who would shrink from me in scorn if they knew I had one drop of negro blood in my veins? When mistaken for a white woman, I should hear things alleged against the race at which my blood would boil. No, Doctor, I am not willing to live under a shadow of concealment which I thoroughly hate as if the ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... a week of My Lady's Honour and was doing well enough among a certain class of hardy readers who did not shrink from problems. Some of the less grateful passages had been censored by Medora's own hand and the unfriendlier of the critics thus partially disarmed in advance. But Regeneration was no longer a burning matter; Medora's thoughts were on the great, new, different thing that Abner was now shaping. ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... had known Peter Butler all his life, and she had often received him in a very different place from the low room into which he passed, but never with a more kindly welcome than she gave him now. She had none of that kind of pride which would make her shrink from a necessary exposure of her poverty to eyes that had seen her prosperity; and it was with no trace of embarrassment that she rose, and offered him the armchair to rest himself in after his long walk; but he declined it with ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... rational architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble. Undefined in its slope of roof, height of shaft, breadth of arch, or disposition of ground plan, it can shrink into a turret, expand into a hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegraded grace and unexhausted energy; and whenever it finds occasion for change in its form or purpose, it submits to it without the slightest sense of loss either to its unity ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... shrink, then, from saying all that is in our mind: we must ask ourselves the great questions of all art. We must investigate the How of them, and even face ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... mirror in which she saw the misery of the low of her kind, including, alas! her brother Cornelius. He had never before so plainly revealed to her his heartlessness, and the painful consequence of the revelation was, that now, with all her swelling love for human beings, she felt her heart shrink from him as if he were of another nature. She could never indeed have loved him as she did but that, being several years his elder, she had had a good deal to do with him as baby and child: the infant motherhood of her heart ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the daughter of the murderer, could never again meet the wife of the murdered man as a friend. If the punishment of the father descended to the children, did not their guilt descend too? Already she seemed to feel the stain of blood upon her hand, and to shrink from herself, as all innocent persons ought to do, henceforward. And Bella, her old companion and friend, must shrink from her most of all; the very spirit of the dead would surely rise up to forbid all ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... "that was in times of peace, before this terrible emergency had arisen. As a woman, I shrink from bloodshed and everything that suggests it. It has been my constant dread that you, my boy, should follow your father's profession. 'My boy a soldier!' I said, as I lay sleepless of a night, and I felt that I ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... you can be a potent factor in teaching him the hidden dangers that beset him, in seeing that his young feet rest on the rock of true knowledge, and not on the shifting quagmire of the devil's lies; but above all, in inspiring him with a high ideal of conduct, which will make him shrink from everything low and foul as he would from card-sharping or sneaking, proving yourself thus to him as far as in ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... is an event of which the memory will live in Scotland as long as it is a nation, and which ranks in moral dignity and dramatic interest with the greatest scenes in history. When did a subject ever use a manlier freedom with his Sovereign? When did mere titular kingship more plainly shrink into insignificance in presence of the moral majesty vested in the spirit of a true man? No writer can afford to describe the scene in other words ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... minute that, save with a powerful lens, you would never imagine the dust on your fingers to be more than dust. The thoughts of man are like these: each to him seems great in his day, but the ages roll, and they shrink till they become triturated dust, and you might, as it were, put a thousand on your thumb-nail. They are not shapeless dust for all that; they are organic, and they build and weld and grow together, till in the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... he had been retained to defend. When he came to deal with Elizabeth he was on firmer ground. By that time the Reformation was an accomplished fact, and the fiercest controversies lay behind him. Disgusted as he was with the scandals invented against the virgin queen, he did not shrink from exposing the duplicity and meanness which tarnish the lustre of her imperishable renown. Like Knox, he was insensible to the charms of Mary Stuart, and that is a deficiency hard to forgive in a man. Yet who can deny that Elizabeth only did to Mary as Mary would have done to her? ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... gets its coloring from the needs of the time and the temper of the age. The Book of Deuteronomy is so sure that the law of God is necessary for the life of Israel, and that departure from it will mean national ruin, that it will shrink from nothing needed to preserve the truth. Its warnings against being led away to idolatry are very instant and solemn. Every precaution must be taken; nothing must be allowed to seduce them from their allegiance, ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... rock! we cannot climb it, so Thou must point out some other way to go." Yet secretly we are rejoicing: and, When right before our faces, as we stand In seeming grief, the rock is cleft in twain, Leaving the pathway clear, we shrink in pain, And, loth to go, by every act reveal What we so tried from Conscience ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a great relief to my heart when I find you sufficiently calm upon this sad subject to claim the promise I made you when she lay dead in this house, never to shrink from speaking of her, as if her memory must be avoided, but rather to take a melancholy pleasure in recalling the times when we were all so happy—so happy that increase of fame and prosperity has only widened ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... shrink from the danger and toil of penetrating the polar basin, will shrink from the trouble of doing their own thinking, and put themselves, like Captain Poke, under the ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of part of your life. I decline to inspect it. I consider the publication or circulation of such a composition at any time as prejudicial to Ada's future happiness. For my own sake, I have no reason to shrink from publication; but, notwithstanding the injuries which I have suffered, I should lament some ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... connection with the tight ligature, that the artery above the bandage was distended and pulsated, not below it, so, in the case of the moderately tight bandage, on the contrary, do we find that the veins below, never above, the fillet swell and become dilated, while the arteries shrink; and such is the degree of distention of the veins here that it is only very strong pressure that will force the blood beyond the fillet and cause any of the veins in the upper part of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... I've seen a snake in human form, All stain'd with infamy and vice, Leap from the dunghill in a trice, Burnish and make a gaudy show, Become a general, peer, and beau, Till peace has made the sky serene, Then shrink into its hole again. "All this we grant—why then, look yonder, Sure that must be a Salamander!" Further, we are by Pliny told, This serpent is extremely cold; So cold, that, put it in the fire, 'Twill ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... toward the close of the afternoon, and rode on after our wonted time looking for feed at less than twenty cents a night. The great trunks, fluted like marble columns, blackened against the western sky. As they grew huger, we seemed to shrink, until we moved fearful as prehistoric man must have moved among the forces over which he had no control. We discovered our feed in a narrow "stringer" a few miles on. That night, we, pigmies, slept in the setting before which should have stridden the colossi of another ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... smaller and smaller at each Assizes since your cousin became our wine merchant."—"Whist!" replied Jerry; "don't you be talking of what you know nothing about. It's quite natural the bottles should be growing smaller, because we all know they shrink in ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... mood of much daylight was making him blink and shrink. He saw himself as he was—or nearly—and the spectacle did not please him. The thought of Lady St. Craye was the only one that seemed to make for any sort of complacency. The thought of Temple ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... been finely said, righteousness and sinfulness were for the while "in strange and dreadful peace with each other. The wicked man did not dislike virtue, nor the good man vice: the villain could admire a saint, and the saint could excuse a villain, in things which we often shrink from repeating, and sometimes recoil ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... religious acts at first appear romantic and delightful in consequence of the fruits they hold forth, viz., heaven and felicity. But when they are examined by the light of philosophy, they disappear or shrink into nothingness, for as acts, they are transitory and their consequences too ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... comprehend. If the barrier of religion were demolished, there was no possibility of telling what more formidable works might be unmasked. And so Henry, rather more sensible upon this point than even Catharine and Charles, who would have had him shrink from no concessions, made a virtue of necessity, definitely withdrew from competition for the hand of a woman for whose personal appearance it was impossible for him to entertain any admiration; whose moral character, he had often been told ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... mammy, must not be impatient with dear Mrs. Crewe. Good old lady! I can't bear her to think she's ever tiresome to people, and you know she's very ready to fancy herself in the way. I think she would like to shrink up to the size of a mouse, that she might run about and do people good without ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... since gone to bed; and, as Harry opened the door, the hall gaped black like the mouth of night. For a second or two the boy hesitated upon the threshold, and seemed almost to shrink back into the lighted room as though in that dark void peril awaited him. And peril ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... of real poor are not so easily found! There are thousands, ay, millions of 'sham' poor. But the real poor, who never ask for anything,—who would not know how to write a begging letter, and who would shrink from writing it even if they did know—who starve patiently, suffer uncomplainingly, and die resignedly—these are as difficult to meet with as diamonds in a coal mine. As for hospitals, do I not know how many of them pander to the barbarous inhumanity of vivisection!—and have I not experienced ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... zeal and loyalty, will not fail to punish the defalcation of principle. Every Canadian freeholder is, by deliberate choice, bound by the most solemn oaths to defend the monarchy, as well as his own property; to shrink, from that engagement is a treason not to be forgiven. Let no man suppose that if, in this unexpected struggle, his majesty's arms should be compelled to yield to an overwhelming force, the province will be eventually abandoned; the endeared relations of its first ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... the most attractive young woman, but was seized with deadly terror and sudden collapse of all the powers of life, if he came into her immediate presence; if it were added that this same young man did not shrink from the presence of an old withered crone; that he had a certain timid liking for little maidens who had not yet outgrown the company of their dolls, the listener would be apt to smile, if he did not laugh, at the absurdity of the fable. Surely, he would say, this must be the fiction ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... for a moment think That we, thy children, when old age shall shed Its blanching honors on thy weary head, Could from our best of duties ever shrink? Sooner the sun from his high sphere should sink, Than we, ungrateful, leave thee in that day To pine in solitude thy life away, Or shun thee, tottering on the grave's cold brink. Banish the thought!—where'er our steps may roam, O'er smiling plains, or wastes ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... shrink. Those which shrink least are sandy and chalky soils. Humus soils, on the other ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... this apparent paradox is a sober truth. Life is indeed more precious than property. But the power of arbitrarily taking away the lives of men is infinitely less likely to be abused than the power of arbitrarily taking away their property. Even the lawless classes of society generally shrink from blood. They commit thousands of offences against property to one murder; and most of the few murders which they do commit are committed for the purpose of facilitating or concealing some offence against property. The unwillingness of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Whilst we know what you are, and who you are, Your wrongs and [injuries]: shrink not, worthy Sir, But add your Father to you: in whose name, We'll waken all the gods, and conjure up The rods of vengeance, the abused people, Who like to raging torrents shall swell high, And so begirt the dens of these Male-dragons, That through ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Guizot, of Gibbon or Macaulay, but has a palpable individuality of its own. They evince throughout a patient, persistent industry in investigating original documents, from the mere labor of which an Irish hod-carrier would shrink aghast, and thank the Virgin that, though born a drudge, he was not born to drudge in the bogs and morasses of unexplored domains of History; yet the genius and enthusiasm of the historian are so strong that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... shore. He too returns, after a long period, but he brings with him the fatal gift of his Northern bride—a hand of ice. He may be strong and brave still, as he was when he went away; but he is no longer the peerless and envied warrior. Men look upon him with a ghostly shudder, and women shrink back from his chilling presence. Not even Freja can thaw away all the ice that has gathered in his veins. He may chastise the robber Ruric from the hills, and sleep once more in the warm embrace of Isoldane; but ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... equipped for so desperate an encounter as the one that lay before him; but it was plain that he did not on that account shrink from it. His appearance upon the scene had not been observed by any of the robbers—for such they plainly were—and he was thus able to take his time ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... scarcely falls a drop of rain on the thirsty soil of Andalusia. The ramblas, or dry channels of the torrents, remain deep and arid gashes and clefts in the sides of the mountains; the perennial streams shrink up to mere threads of water, which, trickling down the bottoms of the deep barrancas, or ravines, scarce feed and keep alive the rivers of the valleys. The rivers, almost lost in their wide and naked beds, seem like thirsty rills winding in serpentine mazes through ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... income would grow less, and that it would be only a question of time, and a short time at that, when the laborers would be worse off than they are now. Though, at the outset, they might absorb the entire incomes of the well-to-do classes, the amount thus gained would shrink in their hands until their position would be worse than their present one. They would have pulled down the capitalists without more than a momentary benefit for themselves and with a prospect of soon sinking ...
— Social Justice Without Socialism • John Bates Clark
... toed, and of the most elaborate manufacture, encased his feet. Not a speck defiled their high polish; the very dust and mud which introduces itself cosily into the habiliments of your common, warm hearted men, seemed to shrink away chilled and repulsed by the immaculate coldness that clung like an atmosphere around the Mayor of New York. The nap of his hat lay shining and smooth as satin; so deeply and thoroughly was it brushed down into the stock, that it seemed as if a whirlwind would have failed to ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... able to dispense with direct personal co-operation from England. The really important co-operation is the encouragement we give one another by the success of each in our own country. For Great Britain this success is much greater than appears on the surface, for our people, as you know, shrink much more timidly than Americans from attracting public notice to themselves; and the era of great public meetings on this subject has not arrived in our country, though it may be near at hand. I need hardly say how much I am gratified at the mode in which my name was mentioned ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... possible, and defended at all hazards. Our Lord's prayer was, "Sanctify them through thy truth," So truth has a sanctifying power. It may be pleasant or unpleasant in the discovery, but is beneficent in the long run. We are not to shrink then from the discovery of it. We are to search for it, as for hidden treasures, whatever prejudices and errors it may overturn. It is of God, and is certain to triumph in the end. And it can issue in no ultimate ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... Carabineers of Luneville: to chastise mutinous men, insulting your General Officer, insulting your own quarters;—above all things, fire soon, lest there be parleying and ye refuse to fire! The Carabineers fire soon, exploding upon the first stragglers of Mestre-de-Camp; who shrink at the very flash, and fall back hastily on Nanci, in a state not far from distraction. Panic and fury: sold to Austria without an if; so much per regiment, the very sums can be specified; and traitorous Malseigne is fled! Help, O Heaven; help, thou Earth,—ye unwashed Patriots; ye too ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... too much indifference in the matter," I replied. "I suppose most men do not think their relations to their Maker important enough to give them any concern. And even the best among us shrink from urging their opinions on others, partly because they know they are not perfect examples themselves, and also from the feeling that their friends are intelligent beings and ought to know, as well as they do, what is best ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... In the admiration only of weak minds Led captive. Cease to admire, and all her plumes Fall flat and shrink into a trivial toy, At every sudden slighting quite abashed. Paradise Regained, Bk. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... often, for thyself, in years Fast coming, wilt thou pause and doubt and shrink O'er some fair project! Then, be all thy fears False as this first one by ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... all classes, old and young, shrink with instinctive fear from any strange object approaching them. A piece of newspaper carried accidentally by the wind is as great an object of terror to an inexperienced young bird as a buzzard sweeping down with death in its talons. Among birds not yet able to fly there ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... out of the sneaking consciousness of the ingratitude he did not regret; on the part of Marylyn, it arose from two causes: a sense of girlish shame at having confessed her attachment, and a fear that her father would discover it. With Dallas, consideration for the feelings of her sister made her shrink from mentioning Lounsbury. Yet there was another reason, and one no less delicate—she, as well, had ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... Peterkin did not now shrink from another voyage. Her experience on the Nile had made her forget her sufferings in crossing the Atlantic, and she no longer dreaded entering another steamboat. Their delight in river navigation, indeed, had been so great that the whole family had listened with ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... women wailing, Cruel wrong and bitter strife, Shrieking souls that pass, and quailing Hearts that shrink beneath the knife. Tales I tell of evil passions, Men that suffer, men that slay, All the tragedy that fashions Life and death for such as they. Yet these things are but as fleeting Shadows, that more lightly pass Than the sunlight, which retreating Leaves no stain upon the grass. ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... whole West and amaze the world. And Blicky had said a big strike had been on for weeks. Kells's prophecy of the wild life Joan would see had not been without warrant. She had already seen enough to whiten her hair, she thought, yet she divined her experience would shrink in comparison with what was to come. Always she lived in the future. She spent sleeping and waking hours in dreams, thoughts, actions, broodings, over all of which hung an ever-present shadow of suspense. When would she meet ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... quite well dressed, nothing about his garments offended the eye or outraged good taste, yet, all the same, the man had "bounder" written all over him in large letters. His impudent red face, his aggressively waxed moustache, and the easy familiarity of his manner, caused Vera to shrink within herself, though she could have been grateful to the fellow for the diversion which his ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... wild whirr of startled wings the owls and bats scurried away, dim spectral hiding things that love the darkness and the silence of night, and shrink from light and cheerful sounds! "Well rid of you!" murmured Punch, as Toby barked at the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... House which should make it representative in fact as in name. The full issues of such a reform, the changes which it would bring with it, the displacement of political power which it would involve, Burke alone of the men of his day understood. But he understood them only to shrink from them with horror, and to shrink with almost as great a horror from the man who was leading England on in ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... money is nothing; the self-made man only finds out all that he lacks after six months of flatteries. Andoche Finot, the self-made man in question, stiff, taciturn, cold, and dull-witted, possessed the sort of spirit which will not shrink from groveling before any creature that may be of use to him, and the cunning to be insolent when he needs a man no longer. Like one of the grotesque figures in the ballet in Gustave, he was a marquis behind, ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac |
