"Shrink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we do not know that our hope and our religion lies. Thrice blessed are we in the certainty that here our range is infinite. This infinite that makes our brains reel, that begets the feeling that makes us 'shrink,' is perhaps the most portentous argument in the logic of the sceptic. Since the days of Laplace, we have been haunted in some form or other with the ghost of the MECANIQUE CELESTE. Take one or two commonplaces from ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... of my grief—for human hearts crave intelligent sympathy. My faithful servant and friend Moses is, no doubt, intensely sympathetic, but—but—well, I cannot understand, still less can I explain, why I shrink from making a confidant of him. Certainly it is not because of his colour, for I hold that the souls of men ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... during their stay, but failed to get a good shot. The rifle was in the wrong place each time. The man with the shot-gun saw an old bear and two cubs lift themselves from behind a rock and twist their noses around for his scent, and then shrink away. They were too far off for his buckshot. I must not forget the superb view that lay before us, a wilderness of woods and waters stretching away to the horizon on every band. Nearly a dozen lakes and ponds could ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... warmed her. She wondered if she had been cold all her days. She wanted to lean toward this burning, blazing man that was like a volcano spouting forth strength, robustness, and health. She felt that she must lean toward him, and resisted by an effort. Then, too, there was the counter impulse to shrink away from him. She was repelled by those lacerated hands, grimed by toil so that the very dirt of life was ingrained in the flesh itself, by that red chafe of the collar and those bulging muscles. His roughness frightened her; ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Ray seemed to shrink closer together on the old mahogany sofa. Cora and the Robinson girls with Cecilia were grouped closely ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... expected! You shrink from me. You avoid my polluted hand. How could it be otherwise? A conscientious green-goods man would do the same." He rose from his seat. "Your attitude," he said, "confirms me in a decision that has been in my mind ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... began, So you, at each new play, must have a man. Hither you come, as to see prizes fought; If no blood's drawn, you cry, the prize is naught. But fools grow wary now; and, when they see A poet eyeing round the company, Straight each-man for himself begins to doubt; They shrink like seamen when a press comes out. Few of them will be found for public use, Except you charge an oaf upon each house, Like the train bands, and every man engage For a sufficient fool, to serve the stage. And when, with much ado, you get him there, Where he in all his glory ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... and Tait on the Differential Calculus. Controversies raged about it. Some thought he asked too much of man, some thought he saw too much in women; there was a fear that young people, knowing at last how far short they fell of what they ought to be, might shrink from the matrimony that must expose them to each other, now that they had Sandys to guide them, and the persons who had simply married and risked it (and it was astounding what a number of them there proved to be) wrote ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... their own. For this reason, too, the Old Law is described as "restraining the hand, not the will" [*Peter Lombard, Sent. iii, D, 40]; since when a man refrains from some sins through fear of being punished, his will does not shrink simply from sin, as does the will of a man who refrains from sin through love of righteousness: and hence the New Law, which is the Law of love, is said to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... bladder-like bodies, I believe, are reservoirs of water like a camel's stomach. As soon as I have made a few more observations, I mean to be so cruel as to give your plant no water, and observe whether the great bladders shrink and contain air instead of water; I shall then also wash all earth from all roots, and see whether there are true bladders for capturing subterranean insects down to the very bottom of the pot. Now shall you think me very ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... mouth shut and not butting in on another gent's game. But I always noticed that when a gent is in a losing run, half the time he don't know it. Maybe that might be the way with you. I been watching and seen your winnings shrink considerable lately." ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... something servile and contemptible in mine," said Louise; "I always shrink from a woman flaunted out in rustling silks, great, glaring rings on her fingers, and alarming jewels swinging like ponderous pendulums from her ears. I think what a poor, little, pinched, narrow-contracted, poverty-stricken soul is there, that seeks to atone for ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... receive one cent of the money which his father was unwilling that he should enjoy. Beside, who loved her as well as Henry Clifton? She owed more to him than to any living being; it would be the part of an ingrate to leave him; it was cowardly to shrink from repaying the debt. But the thought of being his wife froze her blood, and heavy drops gathered on her brow as she endeavoured ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... meant you," said Hardy; "indeed I didn't. But surely, think a moment; is it a proof of manliness that the pure and weak should fear you and shrink from you? Which is the true—aye, and the brave—man, he who trembles before a woman or he before whom ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... whose love you would not return, because for you there was no future, but merely the past. Ah! beautiful hypocrite that you are, and you, foul liar, I know you at last—I know and curse you. To the one I say, I despise and contemn you: to the other, I shrink from you ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... had done, Amelius started to his feet, and opening the cabinet, took from it Mrs. Farnaby's letter. He read the letter, keeping his back towards Phoebe—waited a moment thinking—and suddenly turned on the woman with a look that made her shrink in her chair. "You wretch!" he said; ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... the Morgans bounded to their feet. They were not unused to sudden onslaughts, nor was either of them a man to shrink from a fight at short quarters, if it came to that, but blank astonishment overwhelmed both. De Spain, standing slightly sidewise, his coat lapels flapped wide open, his arms akimbo, and his hands on his hips, ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... am not afraid to die," said she, "for what have I to bind me to life now that I can never visit the spot where repose the shattered fragments of my beloved Capitaine Guilbert? But to be burned, helpless, while rescue was cut off from me by a locked door! I shrink from so terrible a fate." Subtlety, she had discovered, was thrown away upon the obtuseness of Rust. She was compelled to be brutally plain, and so she drove into his thick head the tempting fact that nothing interposed ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... raised. The German Emperor, some may hold, fancying that the weight of his sword in the scale would induce the Tsar to shrink from action, had foreseen the anger of the Slav nation at its sovereign's timorous scruples, and looked forward to revolutionary outbreaks which would cripple the Government for years to come and make it unable to think of war, if indeed they did not sweep the ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... warmth. It is not a matter of the relative value of the aspiration, or a difference between subconsciousness and consciousness but a difference in the arts themselves; for example, a composer may not shrink from having the public hear his "love letter in tones," while a poet may feel sensitive about having everyone read his "letter in words." When the object of the love is mankind the sensitiveness is changed ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... caress, far from waking in Eleanor a responsive feeling, caused her to shrink further away from ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... come close to her now; in his eagerness he pressed against her, and, earnestness overcoming diffidence, he almost ventured to take her hand in his. She felt herself inwardly shrink from him with the repulsion that young wild animals feel at times for mere contact. But outwardly she did not betray it; pity for ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... luckily; and I think, as I like him all the better for his strength, he really does not object to a moderate amount of weakness on my part, which is unaffected and not to be helped. When animal magnetism becomes a science, it will be seen why some spirits revel and soar, and some cower and shrink, at the same amount of electricity. So the Dominie says now; and then—he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... overcome these terrible foes, their triumph is due to the fact that in the midst of the fray Prince Arthur's shield is accidentally uncovered and its brightness quells both giant and beast. But no sooner are the fallen pierced with the victors' swords than they shrink to nothing, for they are mere wind-bags, or ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... to be an admirer of old John Brown, any farther than sympathy with Whittier's excellent ballad about him may go; nor did I expect ever to shrink so unutterably from any apothegm of a sage, whose happy lips have uttered a hundred golden sentences, as from that saying (perhaps falsely attributed to so honored a source), that the death of this blood-stained ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... And for this— A being of the race thou dost despise— The order, which thine own would rise above, Mingling with us and ours,—thou dost forego The gifts of our great knowledge, and shrink'st back To ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... after-considerations; and be sure no writer will grudge a guinea for calm, unbought, unsuspected justice bestowed upon his brain-child. Let all those members of the tribunal, deciding by ballot, (here in an assembly where all are good, great, and honest, I shrink not from that word of evil omen,) judge, as far as possible, together and not separately, of all kinds of literature: I would not have poets sentencing all the poetry, historians all the history, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... youth a look from under his bent brows, that made the young man shrink back in his chair, but in a moment the unpleasant expression went off, and a quiet smile stole over the ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... language which pointed unmistakably to war with Servia. The official "Fremdenblatt", however, was more cautious, and till the note was published, the prevailing opinion among my colleagues was that Austria would shrink from courses calculated to involve her in ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... be driven to this course, dear TOBY," he said, when I ventured to remonstrate with him on his remorseless career; "have the greatest respect for the SPEAKER; shrink from depriving the Clerks at table of means of livelihood. But an example must be made. Effect not confined to walls of this Chamber. My Motion of Censure on the SPEAKER will strike terror to the House of Lords, and go long way to deliver my noble friend DENMAN from thraldom under ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... stalls. A cow stable is warm and not too dry, so that a hickory log cures slowly without cracking or checking. There it lay for many weeks. Often I cast my eyes up at it with satisfaction, watching the bark shrink and slightly deepen in colour, and once I climbed up where I could see the minute seams making way in ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... marking of a ballot paper on the day of the election, but an active share in that work of appointing and controlling party committees from which many men whose opinions are valuable to the State shrink with an instinctive dread. ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... conviction that there is something radically amiss with their being: that they are evil. Willy nilly, they seem to communicate an atmosphere of secret and wicked thoughts which makes those in their immediate neighbourhood shrink from them as from ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... attack on Carthage at the time of his death. His last years were harassed by ill-health and the turbulence of his grandson Archagathus, at whose instigation he is said to have been poisoned; according to others, he died a natural death. He was a born leader of mercenaries, and, although he did not shrink from cruelty to gain his ends, he afterwards showed himself a mild ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... then we are situated very much alike after all—though I have dear friends outside of my own family; but what a heavy responsibility you must feel in your large household, and you the only Christian. Do you shrink from responsibility of that kind, Ester? Does it seem, sometimes, as if it would ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... becoming ice, need 109 cubic feet of space. On a cold winter night the water sometimes freezes in the water pipes, and the pipes burst. Water is very peculiar in expanding on solidification, because most substances contract on solidifying; gelatin and jelly, for example, contract so much that they shrink from the sides of the ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... said she was going by it, whether I did or not, because it was a pity to have too much of a good thing, and she hadn't the face to ask for the keys of that church again. I accompanied her. I fancy that the brown leather is liable to shrink in the sun, and I was not unwilling to get back to my slippers and stretch myself out on ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... city's quaint old square. It can rouse the blood to battle with its patriotic tunes, And still render hymns as gentle as a prayer. When it starts "Ave Maria" there is no one in the throng But would doff his cap, his heart to heaven raise; And who would shrink from combat when, with brasses sounding strong, There is flung out ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... in these problems, shrink, my Memmius, far From yielding faith to that notorious talk: That all things inward to the centre press; And thus the nature of the world stands firm With never blows from outward, nor can be Nowhere disparted—since ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... he get to Jesus? is the leper's first thought. With a dash and the cry,' Unclean!' which causes the crowd to make way and shrink back in horror, he rushes forward and prostrates himself at the feet of Jesus. 'Lord, if Thou wilt,' he cries, 'Thou canst make ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... encourage resort to the courts. The unscrupulousness of some lawyers, who fatten their purses at the expense of marital happiness, and the meddlesomeness of relatives are also contributing causes. Finally the restraint of religion has relaxed, and unhappy and ill-mated persons do not shrink from taking a step which was formerly condemned by ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... in a pan in the oven and bake 4 hours. They will blacken on the outside, but that does not matter; when they begin to shrink try them with a knitting-needle, and if quite tender strip off the skin. Add a little butter, pepper and salt on top and set into the oven ...
— 365 Luncheon Dishes - A Luncheon Dish for Every Day in the Year • Anonymous
... watch through long dark ages. When sunrise reddens them, their shadows stretch westward in bars of darkness over the burnished grass. From morning to midday the shadows shrink, ever hiding from the sun; an army of wraiths, sprite-like able to grow gigantic or draw together into mere blots of darkness. When day declines, the shadows come forth again, joining ghostly hands from stone to stone, from circle to circle, under the sunset sky, and merging at last ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... suffer a heavy defeat while France is without some great head to rally the nation and again show face to the Spaniards. At the same time, I may tell you at once, that in this matter I am heart and soul with Enghien. I consider that did we shrink from battle now, it would so encourage Spain and Austria that they would put such a force in the field as we could scarcely hope to oppose, while a victory would alter the whole position and show our enemies that ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... dentifrice, which cleans and preserves the teeth, is made by mixing together two ounces of brown rappee snuff, one of powder of bark, and one ounce and a half of powder of myrrh. When the gums are inclined to shrink from the teeth, cold water should be used frequently to rinse the mouth; a little alum, dissolved in a pint of water, a tea-cup full of sherry wine, and a little tincture of myrrh or bark, will be found extremely beneficial in ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... ring of gold with its cunningly engraved signet which he displayed on his left hand. Himself he had wrought the circle of gold, had closed the bezel around the gem and engraved the stone. I have not yet told you all the tale of his achievements. But I will not shrink from enumerating all the marvels that he thought it no shame to show. For he proclaimed before that vast concourse that his own hands had fashioned the oil-flask which he carried. It was in shape a flattened ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... to reduce too fast. I had two friends who died as a result of reducing with medicine. They took some sort of baths for reducing, and some kind of medicine to shrink themselves. That is why I became interested in reducing and began ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... rudimentary notion of physiology and hygiene is sometimes disposed to undertake a more or less complete reform of his diet, regimen, etc., to make it "scientific" in a way that an older and a more learned physician would shrink from, so the half-insights of boys into matters of moral regimen are far too apt, in the American temperament, to expend, in precocious emancipation and crude attempts at practical realization, the ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... but a hope. But will a longing bring the thing desired? Doth dread avert its object? An instinct is no preservative. The fire I shrink from, may consume me.—But dead, and yet alive; alive, yet dead;—thus say the sages of Maramma. But die we then living? Yet if our dead fathers somewhere and somehow live, why not our unborn sons? ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... sight of another stranger Madaline could feel Mary shrink back, and the faint sigh that escaped her lips was noticed by Grace ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... moistened with glycerine to prevent adhesion. When cold, the gelatine cast is taken from the mould, and is, of course, the same size as the original. If the copy is to be reduced, this gelatine cast is put in strong alcohol and left entirely covered with it. It then begins to shrink and contract with the greatest uniformity. When the desired reduction has taken place, the cast is removed from its bath. From this reduced copy a cast is taken as usual. As there is a limit to the shrinkage of the gelatine cast, when a considerable ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... hers to pluck the amaranthine flower Of faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower, And do not shrink from ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... hills, lakes, and islands are linked together, or follow each other in succession, so that their whole length greatly exceeds their breadth, they form what is termed a chain. A measuring chain is divided into links, &c., made of stout wire, because line is apt to shrink on wet ground and give way. The ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... saw her shrink, and his heart smote him. Four years such as few men ever spent, and all the luck had been with him, and the West had got into his bones! The quiet, starry nights, the wonderful days, the hunt, the long journeys, the life free of care, and the warm lodge; and, here, the great ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... to go on selling. This, as a plan, included restitution to Aurora; but it meant also dissolution to the Grandissimes, for should their sold titles be pronounced bad, then the titles of other lands would be bad; many an asset among M. Grandissime's memoranda would shrink into nothing, and the meagre proceeds of the Grandissime estates, left to meet the strain without the aid of Aurora's accumulated fortune, would founder in a sea of liabilities; while should these titles, after ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... a clerical, he is a good citizen,' I said; 'come, lend us your lantern. Shall I shrink from my duty wherever it leads me? Nay, my good friends, the Maire of a French commune fears neither man nor devil in the exercise of his duty. M. Paul, lead on.' When I said the word 'devil' a spasm of alarm passed over ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... came she said: "I have been thinking over what you said, monsieur, and I feel that it would be cowardly indeed if I were to shrink from incurring some little danger for the sake of Lucien. I know that he would give his life for me. We were to have been married in a fortnight, when they came and carried him off to the war. Now tell me exactly what you want me ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... an Ornament, but also a Guard to Virtue. It is a kind of quick and delicate Feeling in the Soul, which makes her shrink and withdraw her self from every thing that has Danger in it. It is such an exquisite Sensibility, as warns her to shun the first Appearance of every thing which ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... dear Miss Newville; it is natural that you should shrink from such a change, but I am sure you would ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... deeply. "Then—— you are right. There is no help for it. But remember, Donald Ward, that you and I must answer for our actions before the judgment seat of God. Remember, also, that our names and our deeds will be judged by posterity. We must not shrink from stern necessities laid upon us. But let us not give the enemy an excuse to brand us as assassins in the ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... For, somehow, though she did not shrink from her new life—that strange, perplexing life for which her sense of duty was making her every day more strong—she did shrink from the outward shows of it. To be stared at by cold, sharp, Avonsbridge eyes, or pointed at as "the governess" whom Dr. ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and the rule operated to aid not to defeat the majority. If the rule were adopted, it would be by the votes of States which were not Democratic, and would bring 'dismemberment and final breaking up of the party.' Walker laughed at Butler's 'tall vaulting' from the floor; and, refusing to shrink from the Van Buren issue, he protested against New York dictation, and warningly said that, if Van Buren were nominated, Clay would be elected."—Edward M. Shepard, Life of Martin Van ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... strongly to the conclusion that this was not a true view of what had happened. What had happened was due, he thought, to no plot, but to superficial and fortuitous circumstances. He consequently did not shrink from describing it as criminal, that the king's Catholic subjects in Ireland should have been subjected, on no good grounds, to harassing persecution, and that numbers of them should have been ruined in fortune, imprisoned, tried, ...
— Burke • John Morley
... watching for him here. My, but it is terrible! Terrible! How can such villains achieve their dastardly ends with women and escape detection! Some mysterious influence seems to cover them, in all their devilish ways, from the suspicion of innocent people. Perhaps their victims in many cases shrink from exposing them. Oh, forgive me for burdening you with this awful mystery! It ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... that if we compare the sorrows of our earthly life with the hope of an eternal existence, though painfully felt, still they shrink as ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... fingers involuntarily clasping the handle. But he dared not go in. If he looked upon Felicita again he could not leave her, even to escape from ruin and disgrace. An agony of love and of terror took possession of him. Never to see her again was horrible; but to see her shrink from him as a base and dishonest man, his name an infamy to her, would be worse than death. Did she love him enough to forgive a sin committed chiefly for her sake? In the depths of his own soul ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... he could feel her presence and know that the others were all away; to feel that when his hand touched her cheek, neck, or arm in his loving care in keeping her from the night air, that she did not shrink from his touch, but rather leaned to it. And he was happy, and so was she, but he did not know it, he only knew he was ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... curiously repeated. But the look of cold irony had already passed from the features of the stranger, and it had given place to a stern and fixed austerity, that imparted a character of grimness to his hard and sun-burnt visage. Still he betrayed no disposition to shrink from the subject, but, after regarding, his auditors with a glance in which pride and suspicion were strongly blended, he resumed ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... thought the caution necessary. He had often seen the sailor in action on board ship, and the gallant manner in which he had saved his officer's life during the fight at the house, had fully satisfied the young commander that the coxswain was not the man to shrink from his duty because it was dangerous. His reply to the major ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... without sacrificing the fair fame of individuals, or attempting to make vice respectable. Pleasure is our pursuit, but we are accompanied up the flowery ascent by Contemplation and Reflection, two monitors that shrink back, like sensitive plants, as the thorns press upon them through the ambrosial beds of new-blown roses. In our record of the daughters of Pleasure, we shall only notice those who are distinguished as belles of ton—stars of the first magnitude in the hemisphere ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the approaching departure and expected long absence of Traverse! All that was grievous enough to bear; and now to be torn away from the home of my childhood, and from the friend that has always been a mother to me, and by a man, from whom every true, good instinct of my nature teaches me to shrink. I, who have always had full liberty in the house of my dear father, to be forced away against my will by this man, as if I were his slave!" exclaimed Clara, bursting into fresh tears ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... happy when we get it; and that is the beginning of recreation. You are entitled to say to me, "That is all very well as a general piece of advice, but tell us how you have followed and applied it yourself"; and it would not be fair for me to shrink from answering that question. In one respect I must plead failure. I have been a failure as regards golf, not because I did not succeed, but because I did not want to succeed. I have a great respect for golf. I am ...
— Recreation • Edward Grey
... jolly Bucchanals That love to tope good wine, Let's offer up a hogshead Unto our master's shrine, Come, let us drink and never shrink, For I'll tell you the reason why, It's a great sin to leave a house till we've drunk the cellar dry. In times of old I was a fool, I drank the water clear, But Bacchus took me from that rule, He thought 'twas too severe; He filled a bumper to the brim And bade me take a sup, But ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Tegyra, a village dependent upon Orchomenus (B.C. 375). Pelopidas had with him only the Sacred Band and a small body of cavalry when he fell in with the Lacedaemonians, who were nearly twice as numerous. He did not, however, shrink from the conflict on this account; and when one of his men, running up to him, exclaimed, "We are fallen into the midst of the enemy," he replied, "Why so, more than they into the midst of us?" In the battle which ensued the two Spartan commanders fell at the first charge, and their men were put ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... Her umbrella with a mighty report, Grounded it by me, wry and flapping, A wreck of whalebones; then, with snort, Like a startled horse, at the interloper (Who humbly knew himself improper, But could not shrink up small enough) —Round to the door, and in,—the gruff Hinge's invariable scold Making my very blood run cold. Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered On broken clogs, the many-tattered Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother Of the sickly babe she tried to smother Somehow up, with its ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... responsibility is different. This group was the victim of a nation-wide depression caused by conditions which were not local but national. The Federal Government is the only governmental agency with sufficient power and credit to meet this situation. We have assumed this task and we shall not shrink from it in the future. It is a duty dictated by every intelligent consideration of national policy to ask you to make it possible for the United States to give employment to all of these three and one half million employable people now on relief, pending their ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... her influential intervention. The evidence of Ignatius and Dionysius as well as the Marcia-Victor episode place this beyond doubt (see above). The efforts of Marcion and Valentinus in Rome have also a bearing on this question, and the venerable bishop, Polycarp, did not shrink from the toil of a long journey to secure the valuable fellowship of the Roman Church;[324] it was not Anicetus who came to Polycarp, but Polycarp to Anicetus. At the time when the controversy with Gnosticism ensued, the Roman Church showed all the rest an example of resolution; ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... body of colonists, an acknowledgment of the grateful sense they entertain of the services rendered by you to the cause of science and to the interests of this colony. Whilst I fully participate in the admiration with which your merits are universally acknowledged, I confess that I shrink from the task now imposed upon me, from a sense of my inability to do justice to it in language commensurate with the occasion. For indeed it would be difficult to employ any terms that might be considered as exaggerated, in acknowledging the enthusiasm, the ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... "You still shrink from pronouncing on their beauty;" said Alida, disappointed, in spite of an affected indifference ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... proofs of the things then said, what they know to have happened, since it is not possible to furnish witnesses about these things; for it was not only impossible for us to be present, but in our homes, so that it is in the power of those who have done it for their own safety! 34. I do not, however, shrink from the issue, but rather confess to you that I am utterly opposed (to their statements). Indeed, I wonder what in Heaven's name you would have done if in harmony with the Thirty, since when opposing them you killed Polemarchus. Come now, what would you do if you happened ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... of humanity who feel their souls shrink from any compromise with murder, but whose deep and abiding reverence for womanhood causes them to hesitate in giving their support to this crusade against Lynch Law, out of fear that they may encourage the miscreants whose ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... world: The Athenian[299] wears again Harmodius' sword; The Chili chief[300] abjures his foreign lord; The Spartan knows himself once more a Greek,[301] Young Freedom plumes the crest of each cacique; Debating despots, hemmed on either shore, 280 Shrink vainly from the roused Atlantic's roar; Through Calpe's strait the rolling tides advance, Sweep slightly by the half-tamed land of France, Dash o'er the old Spaniard's cradle, and would fain Unite Ausonia to the mighty main: But driven from thence ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Vincent throws off her hat. Denise brings some water in a small, old silver basin, and rummages for the linen. Grandon turns up the sleeve of his daughter's dress, and now Cecil begins to cry and shrink ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... hard put to it to show some dexterity as a nurse. And all the time she was aware of Wade, with his quiet, forceful presence, hovering near. Could he not see her hands trembling? And would he not think that weakness strange? Then driftingly came the thought that she would not shrink from Wade's reading her mind. Perhaps even now he understood her better ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... Yet may no free man's voice, For stern compassion and deep awe, rejoice That one sign more is given against the crown, That one more head those dark red waters drown Which rise round thrones whose trembling equipoise Is propped on sand and bloodshed and such toys As human hearts that shrink at human frown. The name writ red on Polish earth, the star That was to outshine our England's in the far East heaven of empire—where is one that saith Proud words now, prophesying of this White Czar? "In ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... scoff. We can't help believing it. It is that which makes good men and women of us, which keeps us as children to the end. It isn't honour or nobility of character that makes us righteous, but the fear of God. It isn't death that we dread. We shrink from the answer to the question we've asked all through life. Can you ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... on earth is not all mirth, Nor is it constant gloom; Some joys decay and fall away, But leave much lasting bloom. My wishes are not always met, And cares press hard at times; Yet joyous strains ne'er sink to fret, Tho' dollars shrink ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... sacred tombs, ye mouldering and silent walls, all hail! To you I address my invocation. While the vulgar shrink from your aspect with secret terror, my heart finds in the contemplation a thousand delicious sentiments, a thousand admirable recollections. Pregnant, I may truly call you, with useful lessons, with pathetic and irresistible advice to the man who knows how to consult ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... read the evidence without seeing that the British Government was doing its best under difficult circumstances to carry out the most humane plan possible, and that any other must involve consequences from which a civilised nation must shrink. ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Christlike either to force our light upon them, or to constrain them to leave us; but to give up the Chapel to them, as they do not, in heart, go along with us. It cannot be expected that, for the sake of pleasing even those whom we love in Christ, we should shrink back from carrying out any truth which the Lord may lead us into; and, therefore, if our brethren cannot heartily go along with us, it is better that nothing should be imposed upon them contrary to their convictions. If it should be said ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... used the tones that made her shrink, but tonight she was unmoved, and he saw that her womanhood was crushed by the heaviness of her fatigue, and she was no more than a human being ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... struggle to be really free: they are our tramps and outcasts. We well-behaved slaves shrink from them, for the wages of freedom in this world are vermin and starvation. We can live lives worth living only by placing the collar ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... that we might be friends, but I know it cannot be. My blessing men would shrink from, if they knew what you do; but may God bless you for your kindness to me." And standing motionless in the dusky passage, they heard the footsteps die away in the empty corridors, and the rattle of the wheels of the vehicle which ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... disgust. Just then a powerful yellow cur sprang out of the darkness over the railroad track, and Satan sprang to meet him, and so nearly had the life scared out of him by the snarl and flashing fangs of the new-comer that he hardly had the strength to shrink back behind his new friend, the ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... Mother Earth she gathers all Into her bosom, great and small. Ah! could we look into her face, We should not shrink from her embrace. ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... this man gave when he saw me, for in no way could I take it for a cry of joy for rescue. I could rather think that he had raised the same when the wolf came near him. And when I dismounted and led my horse after me toward him he seemed to try to shrink from me, as if I also meant him harm. I thought that the poor soul had surely gone distracted with the fear of the forest beasts on him, so that he no longer knew friend from foe, and I wondered how long he had been bound here in this lonely place. I had seen ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... rope about forty feet long. The ring bolts were screwed into a pair of stout anchor stakes about two feet from their, lower ends. The rope was passed through the rings and the ends were joined by tying them to a galvanized iron link. Then it was soaked for a while to shrink it before it was set in place. After the rope had shrunk sufficiently, the two stakes were driven into the bed of the river, one close to the bank and the other far enough out to hold the rope belt clear of the bottom. Both stakes were sawed off under water, just above the ring bolts, so ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... at the rag he held in his hand, and wondered much who might pull so hard against him; and therewithal Grettir ran under his hands and gripped him round the middle, and bent back his spine as hard as he might, and his mind it was that Glam should shrink thereat; but the thrall lay so hard on Grettir's arms, that he shrank all aback because ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... telephone close by. Well, the thing began in this way. A member of our household came in and asked me to have our house put into communication with Mr. Bagley's downtown. I have observed, in many cities, that the sex always shrink from calling up the central office themselves. I don't know why, but they do. So I touched the bell, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that have not the substance of a crane's marrow, to go shrink from so small a bidding, let you go on the shaughraun or to the workhouse, where you would ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... and true and lasting liberty was cheap at any cost of life or treasure. The reply was all that could be desired. While the House deplored the hostile declaration that had been made against Great Britain, and seemed to shrink from the miseries which war entails, they assured the Governor that threats would not intimidate, nor persuasions allure them from their duty to their God, to their country, and to their king. They were convinced that ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... propositions true, will not enable the weakest of mankind to believe them without a vestige of intellectual grounds—without any, even apparent, evidence. It acts indirectly, by placing the intellectual grounds of belief in an incomplete or distorted shape before his eyes. It makes him shrink from the irksome labor of a rigorous induction, when he has a misgiving that its result may be disagreeable; and in such examination as he does institute, it makes him exert that which is in a certain measure voluntary, his attention, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... le Bret were their names—we must at least concede that they were gifted with undaunted courage. To slay an anointed archbishop in his own cathedral was to do a deed from which the boldest might well shrink, in the days when excommunication was held to be a living reality, and the Church was believed to hold the power of eternal blessing or damnation in her hand. These men—who were all closely attached to the king's person, ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... 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 ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... Again the quarter strikes! Call loud Rip up all my bleeding wounds, and shrink not! Yet think 'tis I that answer, God that hears! To every wretch in chains sleep is permitted: I, I alone, am robb'd of this last refuge Of sinking nature! Hark! Again they thunder! Again they iterate yells of Trenck ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... I, must bide here a month or two till I am strong enough to travel homewards, for I have a fancy to die in the place where I was born. So while I have strength I will put the story down, or at least those parts of it that are most essential, for much can, or at any rate must, be omitted. I shrink from attempting too long a book, though my notes and memory would furnish me with sufficient ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... we lack grit We shrink from the horrors of war. We don't mind the battle a bit; In fact that is what we are for; It isn't the rum-jars and things Make us wish we were back in the fold: It's the fingers that freeze In the boreal breeze— It's the ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... would amend evil laws should consider rather how much it may be safe to spare, than how much it may be possible to change. Have you not heard that men who have been shut up for many years in dungeons shrink if they see the light, and fall down if their irons be struck off? And so, when nations have long been in the house of bondage, the chains which have crippled them are necessary to support them, the darkness which hath weakened their sight is necessary ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to the tragical part of my story, and wish with all my heart that I could leave it out. But beyond the full confession I have made to my wife, the County Police and the newspapers, I feel that I should not shrink from any admission that may be called for of how much I have been to blame. In May, on the 13th of May, Thumbeline, Bran, and our ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... last flung the door open and confronted the amazed and wondering group clustered thickly without. Every man there shrank back affrighted at the desperation on the cornered man's face. But Mallalieu did not shrink, and his hand was strangely steady as he singled out his partner and shot him dead—and just as steady as he stepped back and turned ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... pleasantly. "You 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 ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... lend their aid, if we are to get the evidence we need to help us. Can we find the man who whittled that stick? Never. But some one else may. I am going to give the men and women of this town a chance. I'm too anxious to clear my husband's memory to shrink from any publicity. You see, I believe that the real culprit ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... know how to refuse; she had no excuse to give, no reason that she could put into words why she should shrink with such a dreadful terror from this interview with his brother which he was forcing upon her. She told him that she would go, and Sir John, leaving her, went into the house well satisfied to do his business ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... despotism in government would generally prevail; all the throbbing life of Asia would receive a sudden and violent check; Semitism would be thrust back; Aryanism, just pushing itself to the front, would shrink away; the monotonous Egyptian tone of thought and life would spread, like a lava stream, over the manifold and varied forms of Asiatic culture; crushing them out, concealing them, making them as though they had never been. The victory of Babylon, on the other hand, would mean room for Semitism ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... say the least peculiar. Most fathers would shrink from trafficking in a son's marriage, but Booth is above such nice scruples. The worst deeds are sanctified by love of God, ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... however. How much I might say about your Letter to me! you will hardly comprehend how it is I almost turn my Eyes from it in this Answer, and dally with other matter. You make me sad with old Memories; yet, I don't mean quite disagreeably sad, but enough to make me shrink recurring to them. I don't know whether to be comforted or not when you talk of India as a ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... enjoy, is a something over and above what they produce by their own exertions. It is a gift to the many from the few, or, at all events, it has its origin in the sustentation and the multiplication of their efforts, and would shrink in proportion as these efforts were impeded. If, then, the claims which socialists put forward on behalf of labour are really to be based, as the earlier socialists based them, on the ground that production alone gives a valid right to possession, labour to-day, instead of getting less than its ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... motor-van Came clattering round the kerbstone's brink, Its driver dreaming some new plan To make my mauve pyjamas shrink. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... alone, provided only the government would suffer the free expression of opinion in literature and science. Rousseau went deeper. His moral conception of individual life and character contained in itself a social conception, and he did not shrink from boldly developing it. The rightly constituted man suffices for himself and is free from prejudices. He has arms, and knows how to use them; he has few wants, and knows how to satisfy them. Nurtured in the most absolute freedom, he can think of no worse ill ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the experiment. His mirth's a smirk and not a paroxysm; "Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism" Do not disturb the "plie" of his prim lips, Neither do cynic quirks and querulous quips. Mirth would guffaw—when hearts and mouths were bigger, OSRICK would shrink from aught beyond a snigger, Such as is stirred by screeds of far-fetched whim. Ay! that's the humour o't, sententious Nym. Let's hail a dying century's latest birth,— The Newest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... of suffering are, after all, in my mind, the result of a greater degree of physical insensibility. It has been told me, and I believe it, that in amputation and other surgical operations, their nerves do not shrink, do not show the same tendency to spasm with those of the whites. When the savage, to explain his insensibility to cold, called upon the white man to recollect how little his own face was affected by it, in consequence of its constant exposure, he added, 'My body ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... more potent reason is to be found in the power of that loving sympathy which the Army extends even to the vilest, to those from whom the least puritanical of us would shrink. It shows such men that they are not utterly lost, as these believe; that it, at any rate, does not mark them with a figurative broad arrow and consign them to a separate division of society; that it is able to give them back the ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... questions, riddles—I ask myself endless questions to which I never have an answer. I have not had the courage to look myself through and through—to form a really bold and honest resolution. I am pusillanimous, I am a coward. I shrink from pain, I want to suffer as little as possible, I prefer to temporise, to hang back, to resort to subterfuges, to wilfully blind myself instead of courageously facing the risks ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... to him, and abused him violently, and threatened him with his fist; the priest raised his arms in prayer, just as I saw him yesterday at the festival—but not in devotion, but to seize Paaker, and wrestle with him. The struggle did not last long, for Paaker seemed to shrink up, and lost his human form, and fell at the poet's feet—not my son, but a shapeless lump of clay such as the potter uses ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to and fro At a rink, Pretty girls, with cheeks that glow Rosy pink; Graceful, gleeful, gliding, go, Whilst they link Arms together, like the flow Past its brink Of a river's eddy—so Duffers think They can glide. See one start slow, Shyly shrink, Fearful lest his end be woe, Sheepish slink, Skates on unaccustomed toe Strangely clink, Hot and thirsty he will grow, Long for drink; All around amusement show, Laugh and wink, But they look as black as crow, Or as ink, If he fall against ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... should hear my confession. Before I went to college, as a boy of eighteen, I was at a private tutor's and there, like Arthur, I became attached, or fancied I was attached, to a woman of a much lower degree and a greater age than my own. You shrink from me—" ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it affording employment and sustenance to thousands, but the staple produce of England only is consumed. In these speculations—in the millions required and immediately produced, you can witness the superiority of England. Undertakings from which foreign governments would shrink with dismay are here effected by the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... She gradually found herself considering Drake's words as a light thrown upon the man who spoke them, rather than as the description of an actual incident. The humiliation which she experienced made her shrink with a certain repulsion from her recollections of Gorley and dwell instead upon the contrasting tones in Drake's voice, the contrasting expressions upon his face when he spoke to her and when he merely narrated his story. In the first instance gentleness had been the dominant characteristic, ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... substance gets contracted, and the molecules more and more pressed together, as it assumes a solid form. There is at least one exception. If we take 1,700 pints of steam, the water, as I said, on becoming cool enough to lose the vapourous form, will shrink into a measure holding a single pint; if we cooled lower still, it will get smaller and smaller in bulk (though of course not at all at the same rate) till it arrives at a point when it is just going to freeze; then suddenly (7 degrees above ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... pray for idle hours,— Never try to shrink; But with all your honest powers Thank the Lord for work! Labor brings the pleasures high And the joys that thrive,— Where men laugh and where men cry, Dearest ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... opportunity Is never offered twice; seize then the hour When fortune smiles and duty points the way; Nor shrink aside to 'scape the spectre fear, Nor pause, though pleasure beckon from her bower; But bravely bear thee onward to ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... were in a company of General Officers and Admirals who have been in service, he would shrink; he'd wish to creep under the table,' iii. 265; 'As to the style, it is fit for the second ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... more truly be said, 'He took counsel ever of his courage—never of his fears.' With firm convictions upon pending vital issues, he did not shrink from the conflict. His antagonist he met in the open. In the words of Lord Brougham, 'His weapons were ever those of ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Susan Brundon would, naturally, shrink from what he must tell her; but he was suddenly confident of his ability to convince her of the superior importance of the actuality of what they together might make of the future. He was accustomed to the bending of circumstance to his will; in the end he would prove stronger than any hesitancy ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... with energy, "when was I ever known to shrink from a duty? But 'judge not lest ye be judged,' and fancy not that it is given to mortal eyes to fathom ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... broke in. 'Not his sincerity in the beginning; but he must long since have ached to free himself. It is such a common thing for a man to commit himself to some pronounced position in public life and for very shame shrink from withdrawing. He would not realise what it meant. Now in the revolutionary societies of the Continent there is something that appeals to the imagination. A Nihilist, with Siberia or death before ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... unto the living waters! Cried the prophets, do not shrink! God invites His sons and daughters: He that thirsteth come and drink. With this water God imparts Health and strength to sin-sick hearts. Why are ye then hesitating While the ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... said Miss Shott. "Of course they are, and that's the trouble with them. Some of these days they'll have to be washed, and then they'll shrink up so short that I suppose I'll have to freeze either my chin or my toes. And as to her giving them to me, 'turn about's fair play.' I once joined in ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... that you understand. But, again ... have I been wrong to shrink from personal relations with Mr. Trebell? Hatred is as sacred a responsibility as love. And you will not agree with me when I say that punishment can be the salvation of ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... heart inspired her with a higher and a nobler wisdom—which disdained to appeal to the low and sordid passions of her people even for the protection of their low and sordid interests, because she knew, or, rather, she felt that there are effeminate, creeping, cowardly, short-sighted passions, which shrink from conflict, even in defence of their own mean objects. In a righteous cause she roused those generous affections of her people, which alone teach boldness, constancy, and foresight, and which are therefore the only safe guardians of the lowest as well ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... panic to be quit of him. He could see no reason for it and attributed it to her nervousness. So he restrained her withdrawing hand and started to walk on with her. Halfway down the block, he saw a man in a long overcoat shrink back into a doorway. He shot a glance in as he passed by, and, despite the high turned-up collar, he was certain that he recognized ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... passes from this world to the other just as it is, and that, if it progresses at all, it progresses slowly. How many individuals see in spiritualism only a means of putting forward their wretched personalities or of exploiting their contemporaries! Such persons would not shrink from representing their lucubrations as communications from the next world; they would sign them with the most august of names if to do so would further their designs. Finally, it is not even necessary to suppose that these messages are due to ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... for the tide to take him up the Sound. He beguiled the time by a nap, and, on waking, he started to leave his sleeping place under the trees to regain his boat, when the gleam of a lantern and the sound of voices coming up the bank caused him to shrink back into the shadow. At first he thought that he might be dreaming, for Hell Gate was a place of such repute that one might readily have bad dreams there, and the legends of the spot passed quickly through his mind: the skeletons that lived in the wreck on Hen and ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... those my own entrails that I see about me? Are those stars or bundles of nerves in my eye; is that water, or is it tears? Wait! Now I'm moving forward in time for a thousand years, and beginning to shrink, to grow heavier and to crystallise! Soon I'll be re-created, and from the dark waters of Chaos the Lotus flower will stretch up her head towards the sun and say: it is I! I must have been sleeping for a few thousand years; and have dreamed I'd exploded and become ether, ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... and farouche appearance,—hair black and matted, eyes keen and wild, and beaming with malicious cunning, who surveyed her as she passed with a mixed look of insolence and curiosity, that involuntarily made her shrink. He had been half reclining carelessly against the wall, when she first entered, but rose upright with a sudden motion as she passed him—not probably from any sentiment of respect, but under the first powerful impression of surprise on seeing a young woman of peculiarly splendid figure and ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... power in the sacredness of this believing dream,—who with calculating shrewdness uses this most touching miracle of love only to corrupt and destroy the loving! For him there is no sacrifice for sin, no place for repentance. His very mother might shrink in her grave to have him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of the productions of the sister Art, and be convinced that the qualities which dazzle at first sight, and kindle the admiration of the multitude, are essentially different from those by which permanent influence is secured. Let us not shrink from following up these principles as far as they will carry us, and conclude with observing—that there never has been a period, and perhaps never will be, in which vicious poetry, of some kind or other, has not excited more zealous admiration, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... wouldn't virtually confirm. He would come in as soon after nine as possible; the day up to that time would be stiff in the Cours la Reine, and he begged her in the meantime not to doubt of his perfect tenderness. So far from her having caused it at all to shrink, he had never yet felt her to have, in his affection, such a treasure of indulgence to ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... shar'd my cake Holds out so cold a hand to shake, It makes me shrink and sigh:— On this I will not dwell and hang, The changeling would not feel a pang Though ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... not a soul." She sighed in perplexity. To assist in an elopement! The staid, earnest upbringing of the country girl, coupled with her high sense of duty, made her shrink from the ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... hideous nature of war and the iron hand of discipline, as did that lonely death on the misty hillside in the early morning. (p. 215) Even now, as I write this brief account of it, a dark nightmare seems to rise out of the past and almost makes me shrink from facing once again memories that were so painful. It is well, however, that people should know what our men had to endure. Before them were the German shells, the machine-guns and the floods of gas. Behind them, if their courage failed, was the court-martial, always administered with great ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott |
