"Lean" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out. It was quite dark, but the rain had nearly ceased. With his wheel-barrow and shovel he went to a ravine close by and obtained a load of clay, which he easily threw up on the roof of the low "lean-to"; then he climbed up and patched the holes. A half hour's work and it ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... no doubt about it, for the blacks had seen it, and they laughed as they saw their passenger shrink to the other side and lean ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... there, a motionless figure, flaring against the dark jungle in his spotless, white linen evening dress. There was a broad silk cummerband about his lean waist, and a gold signet-ring gleamed on his left hand. Half a dozen Englishmen, thread for thread in similar garb, still lounged in the Collector's drawing-room. He appeared the very symbol of ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... architect had not lacked grandeur of conception nor good taste when building such large corridors, massive staircases, lofty vestibules, and spacious, resounding rooms. That given to the Queen was like an alcove, decorated by six large marble caryatides, joined by a handsome balustrade high enough to lean upon. The four-post bed was of azure blue velvet, with flowered work and rich gold and silver tasselling. Over the chimneypiece was the huge Bleink-Elmeink coat-of-arms, supported by ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to come and speak with him in the parliament chamber. And when I came to him he was in a little chamber within the parliament chamber, where, as I remember, stood an altar, or a thing like unto an altar, whereupon he did lean and, as I do think, the same time the Bishop of Bath was talking with him. And then he said this to me, I am very glad to hear the good report that goeth of you, and that ye be so good a Catholic man as ye be. And ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... table and made some turns about the room. It was growing late; the October sun had left the top of the tall windows; it was still clear day, but it would soon be twilight; they had been talking a long time. Fulkerson came and stood with his little feet wide apart, and bent his little lean, square face on March. "See here! How much do you get out of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... empty sleeve to her lips. "How you must have suffered, my poor darling," she went on, her eyes filling with tears, her heart yearning over him. "And how ill you look, and I keep you standing here,—how thoughtless! Come to the bench here and sit down. Lean on me." ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... keeps a festival with songs, feasting, games, and family parties in every house. When the great bell in the cathedral tolls the first stroke of midnight, every house opens wide its windows. People lean from the casements, glass in hand, and from a hundred thousand throats comes the cry: "Prosit Neujahr!" At the last stroke, the windows are closed and a midnight hush descends upon ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... was covered, as a lean-to, all round his inner, apartment, and long rafters lay from the thirty two angles to the top posts of the inner house, being about twenty feet distant; so that there was a space like a walk within the outer wicker wall, and without the inner, near ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... who was nimble in spite of her years, through a broken gap in the wall of the Omnibus House. The old ruin was more picturesque than, ever in its cloak of five-leafed ivy which the autumn had touched with red and gold. A lean-to had been built against the back wall of the building, fitted with a stout door on the inside and a pair of doors ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... experienced by Johnson, when he became the fervent admirer of Mrs. Porter, after her first husband's death. Miss Porter told me, that when he was first introduced to her mother, his appearance was very forbidding: he was then lean and lank, so that his immense structure of bones was hideously striking to the eye, and the scars of the scrophula were deeply visible. He also wore his hair, which was straight and stiff, and separated behind: ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... passed a tall, lean figure in soiled khaki ascending, whom the public (together with his wife and family) had every reason to suppose was at that moment in the ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... of some sort of Genius in all things; they all believe there is a Master of Life, as they call him, but hereof they make various applications; some of them have a lean Raven, which they carry always along with them, and which they say is the Master of their Life; others have an Owl, and some again a Bone, a Sea-Shell, or some ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... its immediate neighbourhood. Although small, the Red Lion Inn was superior in many respects to its surroundings. It was larger than the decayed buildings that propped it; cleaner than the locality that owned it; brighter and warmer than the homes of the lean crew on whom it fattened. It was a pretty, light, cheery, snug place of temptation, where men and women, and even children assembled at nights to waste their hard-earned cash and ruin their health. It ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... hold, cockpit; cubbyhole; cook house; entre-sol; mezzanine floor; ground floor, rez-de-chaussee; basement, kitchen, pantry, bawarchi-khana, scullery, offices; storeroom &c. (depository) 636; lumber room; dairy, laundry. coach house; garage; hangar; outhouse; penthouse; lean-to. portico, porch, stoop, stope, veranda, patio, lanai, terrace, deck; lobby, court, courtyard, hall, vestibule, corridor, passage, breezeway; ante room, ante chamber; lounge; piazza [veranda, U.S.]. conservatory, greenhouse, bower, arbor, summerhouse, alcove, grotto, hermitage. lodging &c. (abode) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... a tall white-moustached lean man with bushy eyebrows. The cookees grinned, and one of them offered him a cooky as big as a pie-plate. Bobby accepted the offering, and seated ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... Crescent Alley. On the left were the 5th Border Regiment, and on the right the 47th Division, but it was not possible to get into touch with the flanks during the night. The Company Commanders were now W Company, 2nd Lieut. Barnett; X Company, 2nd Lieut. Lean; Y Company, Lieut. Catford; and Z Company, Capt. Peberdy. By dawn all preparations, including the alteration of watches to winter time, were completed for the attack, which had been ordered ...
— The Story of the 6th Battalion, The Durham Light Infantry - France, April 1915-November 1918 • Unknown
... pieces of belly meat, packed in a two-gallon jar and covered with salt or brine, will make a supply of fat pork to cook with beans and other vegetables. The tenderloin makes good roasts, the head and feet may go into head cheese or scrapple, and the trimmings and other scraps of lean meat serve for a few pounds of home-made sausage. In some large families it is found profitable to "corn" a fore quarter of beef for spring and summer use. Formerly it was a common farm practice to dry beef, but now it ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... watched the advancing array with an eager gaze. It was a noble sight, full of moral sublimity, and worthy of all admiration. The long, lean, sunburned, weather-beaten soldiers, in ragged gray stepped forward, superbly, their ranks loose, but swift and firm, the men leaning forward in their haste, their tattered slouch hats pushed backward, their whole aspect business-like and virile. Their ...
— The Brigade Commander • J. W. Deforest
... lay thick and cold, and there seemed something sinister in the silence all about them. None the less, they soon had a good camp-fire going, and with the axe they proceeded to make a sort of lean-to shelter out of pine boughs. Rob picked out a place near a big fallen log, drove in two crotches a little higher than his head, and placed across them a long pole; then from the log to this ridge-pole they laid others, and thatched it all with pine boughs ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... yarns of Uncle Parker—uncle to the whole village by right of seniority, but of southern blood, with no kindred in New England. His figure is before me now, enthroned upon a mackerel barrel—a lean, old man, of great height, but bent with years, and twisted into an uncouth, shape by seven broken limbs; furrowed, also, and weather-worn, as if every gale, for the better part of a century, had caught him somewhere on the sea. He looked like ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... may'st return alive— O'er awe thee. Yea, and pity thine own son, Unsheltered in his boyhood, lorn of thee, With bitter foes to tend his orphanhood, Think, O my lord, what sorrow in thy death Thou send'st on him and me. For I have nought To lean to but thy life. My fatherland Thy spear hath ruined. Fate—not thou—hath sent My sire and mother to the home of death What wealth have I to comfort me for thee? What land of refuge? Thou art all my stay Oh, of me too take thought! Shall men have joy, And not remember? Or shall kindness ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... Mother Durga, are thy sons thus dispirited and their hearts crushed with injustice? The demons are in the ascendant, and constantly triumphing over godliness. Awake, Oh Mother, who tramplest on the demons! Thy helpless sons, lean for want of food, worn out in the struggle with the demons, are, struck with terror at the way in which they are being ruled. Famine and plague and disease are rife, and unrighteousness triumphs. Awake, Oh Goddess Durga! I see the ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... day, by application to one of his type-writing women, he got word of a young lady, one Miss Mamie McBride, who was willing and able to conduct him in these bloomless meadows; and, her circumstances being lean, and terms consequently moderate, he and Mamie were soon in agreement for two lessons in the week. He took fire with unexampled rapidity; he seemed unable to tear himself away from the symbolic art; an hour's lesson occupied the whole evening; and the original two was soon increased ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... before, and perceiving an enormous oak with wide-spreading branches, he hurriedly drew La Valliere beneath its protecting shelter. The poor girl looked round her on all sides, and seemed half afraid, half desirous, of being followed. The king made her lean her back against the trunk of the tree, whose vast circumference, protected by the thickness of the foliage, was as dry as if at that moment the rain had not been falling in torrents. He himself remained standing before her with his head uncovered. ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... may arise on my orders as to the limits or legality of plunder in your front, I authorize you to be the sole judge. In the exercise of this trust, it is my wish you should lean to the ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... passion of Parthenophil: Blithe burly Porter, broad and bold of word: Wilkins, a voice with strenuous pity stirred: Turk Mason: Brewer, whose tongue drops honey still: Rough Rowley, handling song with Esau's hand: Light Nabbes: lean Sharpham, rank and raw by turns, But fragrant with a forethought once of Burns: Soft Davenport, sad-robed, but blithe and bland: Brome, gipsy-led across the woodland ferns: Praise be with all, and ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to lecture you, my boy," said Mr. Cabot, closing the door, then going to the mantel to lean one elbow on it, a favorite attitude of his, while he scanned his nephew. "But something worse than common has come to you. Can ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... very weary of his corner, sprang up readily enough when Vanna, at this, beckoned him to the inner ante-chamber. Here, where persons of a certain condition waited (the outer being given over to servants and tradesmen), they found a lean humpbacked boy, shabbily dressed in darned stockings and a faded coat, but with an extraordinary keen pale face that at once attracted ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... want him, my dear." said the first guest, as a lean black-looking individual, with grizzled hair and a red nose, entered the coffee-room from the interior. "Tanner, here's ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... who knew him should waver in their judgments of him, should in turn reproach themselves for their hardness of heart and then grow angry at their own lack of assuredness. Perhaps it was the disquieted gray eyes in the lean leathery face, or the thin-lipped mouth that I had seen close so foxly after some sanctimonious speech, or the voice which, when not savage with recrimination, could take on a sustained and calculated intonation of appeal,—perhaps these things aroused my interest as well as my disgust. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... lasts was taken down from the shelf, and these were tied to one end of the waxed-end and were let right down to the pavement. People collected in the street outside, and stood there staring. Pelle had to lean right out of the window, and bend over as far as he could, while Emil, as the oldest apprentice, laid the waxed-end over his neck. They were all on their feet now, with the exception of the young master; he took no ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Language,—then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues and living integuments. An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek for: is not your very Attention a Stretching-to? The difference lies here: some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous; some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; while others again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own case) not without an apoplectic tendency. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... face darkened. Trotter could see that he had angered him. He could see a lean hand shoot out and a lean finger push down on the button that sounded a buzzer ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... pilgrims seem endless and are attended by many pitiful sights. Aged women, crippled men, lean and haggard invalids with just strength enough to reach the water's edge; poor, shivering, starving wretches who have spent their last farthing to reach this place, exhausted with fatigue, perishing from hunger or disease, struggle to reach the water before their breath shall fail. Here and there ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... lean little man, full of dignity, busied himself with the problems which the steam-engine requires us to solve, and lived in a modest way, taking his social intercourse with Monsieur and Madame Carpentier. His gentle manners and ways, and his scientific occupations won him ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... to the ground. The crowd drew asunder on all sides with a cry of horror. In the tumult and confusion, the bearers were obliged to set down the coffin; the girl lay close by it; it seemed as if every limb was broken. They lifted her up, and by accident or providentially she was allowed to lean over the body; she appeared, indeed, to be endeavoring, with what remained to her of life, to reach her beloved mistress. Scarcely, however, had the loosely hanging limbs touched Ottilie's robe, and the powerless finger rested on ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... tears than pride had let me be for three years past, grief and anger uniting to make me sore and desolate. There seemed a great gap made in my life; my dearest companion was gone, the source of all that most held my fancy and filled my mind dried up. But before I could speak again a tall, lean figure stood in the doorway, helmet in hand. Hammerfeldt was there; he was asking if the King would receive him. My mother turned an inquiring glance on me. I bowed my head and choked down a sob that was in my throat. The old man came near to me and stood before me; there was a ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... rules of the train, manage to escape on the North Philadelphia platform. The rest, standing huddled over the swaying couplings, find the leisurely transit to West Philadelphia as long as the other segments of the ride put together. Stoically, and beyond the power of words, they lean on one another. At last the train slides down a grade. In the dark and picturesque tunnel of the West Philadelphia station, through thick mists of steam where the glow of the fire box paints the fog a golden rose, they grope and find the ancient stairs. Then they stagger off to seek a lonely ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... said the Skipper, "this young Wilson comes down here from Hanover College, in the spring, as lean as a shad in dog-days. He had studied himself half blind, and all his blood had got into brains. So the Doctor tried to help him with his poticary stuff, and the women with their herbs; but all did no good. At last somebody advised him to try a fishing cruise down East; and so he persuaded me ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... boy with a lean, but good-natured face, now streaked with perspiration and dirt, struggled to his feet, and began to feel his lower extremities sympathetically, as though the terrific strain had centered mostly upon that particular part ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... rise and extend right arm toward the flag. 2 Touch forehead with tips of the fingers. 3. Right palm over the heart. 4. Both hands extended upward. 5. Lean forward, hands at sides. 6. With emphasis, right hand pointing to the flag. ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... prison-house; and he made them sport; and they set him between the pillars. 20. And Samson said unto the lad that held him by the hand. Suffer me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house standeth, that I may lean upon them. 27. Now the house was full of men and women; and all the lords of the Philistines were there; and there were upon the roof about three thousand men and women, that beheld while Samson ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... shadow in which he was sitting the guardian examined them with the keen eyes of one who had looked upon travelers of many nations. He knew at once that the woman was English. As for the man—yes, probably he was English too, Dark, lean, wrinkled, he was no doubt an Englishman who had been much away from his own country, which the guardian conceived of as wrapped in perpetual fogs and ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... I came to believe that Ludlam's dog did exist once upon a time, centuries ago perhaps, and that if he had been the laziest dog in the world Dandy was not far behind him in that respect. It is true he did not lean his head against a wall to bark; he exhibited his laziness in other ways. He barked often, though never at strangers; he welcomed every visitor, even the tax-collector, with tail-waggings and a smile. He spent ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... what's the matter! It does seem to catch me at the wrong time. I'm afraid I won't be able to play ball to-day after all, boys. I'm sorry, but—Oh dear! There it goes again!" and that poor, old gentleman rabbit had to lean on his crutch, because ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... and I watched him as he scuttled up the mountain side, and made straight for a long grey rock which protruded from the foot of a steep crag. And as I looked, and saw him go to the rock and open a door in it, I realised that it was really a great, grey, lean-to shed, cunningly concealed. Hilderman had scarcely opened the door when a huge, dark shadow seemed to fall out of the shed and envelop him. It was Sholto. Blind, and half-mad with fury, he sprang at Hilderman's throat ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... given orders she was not to be disturbed, so I did not go near her, and crept down to the dining-room, quite forgetting the master of the house had arrived. There he was, a strange, tall, lean man with fair hair, and sad, cross, brown eyes, and a nose inclined to pink at the tip—a look of indigestion about him, I feel sure. He was sitting in front of a Daily Telegraph propped up on the teapot, and some cold, untasted sole ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... Vikram's temper, which was right kingly and somewhat hot. This time he bade his son strike the Baital's head with his sword. Then, more like a wounded bear of Himalaya than a prince who had established an era, he hurried up the tree, and directed a furious blow with his sabre at the Vampire's lean and calfless legs. The violence of the stroke made its toes loose their hold of the bough, and when it touched the ground, Dharma Dhwaj's blade fell heavily upon its matted brown hair. But the blows appeared to have lighted on iron-wood—to judge at least ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... edifices and thoroughfares which "gives us pause." There, if anywhere, our gaze and our feet linger; people have a relief against the sky, as they pass over it; artists look patiently thither; lovers, the sad, the humorous, and the meditative, stop there to observe and to muse; they lean over the parapet and watch the flowing tide; they look thence around as from a pleasant vantage-ground. The bridge, in populous old towns, is the rendezvous, the familiar landmark, the traditional nucleus of the place, and perhaps the only picturesque framework in all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... the pole being imbedded in the ground. Other smaller saplings were trimmed and laid across the slanting poles, and on them were piled layer after layer of fan-like palmetto leaves. In a short space of time they had completed a lean-to which would protect them from any storm they were likely to experience at this season ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... my loved one, that there are beings in the elements which appear almost like you mortals, and which rarely allow themselves to become visible to your race. Wonderful salamanders glitter and sport in the flames; lean and malicious gnomes dwell deep within the earth; spirits, belonging to the air, wander through the forests; and a vast family of water spirits live in the lakes and streams and brooks. In resounding domes of crystal, through which the sky looks in with ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... to do so. Write me in perfect freedom, with the assurance that I will not subject you to any embarrassment by making your letter or its contents known to any one. I wish to know your wishes before I decide whether to break the subject to him. Do not lean a hair's breadth against your own feelings, or your judgment of the public service, on the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... sixty-five last birthday. This is my appearance as I see it in the glass before me: tall, spare (I don't weigh more than a hundred and forty pounds—the desert has any superfluous flesh that I ever owned, my lot having been, like Falstaff, to lard the lean earth, but in a hot climate); my eyes are brown, my face is long, and I wear a pointed white beard, which matches the white ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... suddenly among the cottonwoods that belted with a scattering grove the garden and the spring. The horseman was Lanpher, manager of the 88 ranch. He was followed by another rider, a lean, swarthy individual with a smooth-shaven, saturnine face. Racey knew the latter by sight and reputation. The man was one Skeel and rejoiced in the nick-name of "Alicran." The furtive scorpion whose sting is death is not indigenous to the territory, but Mr. Skeel had gained the appellation in New ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... interrupted Moll, taking her by the arm. "I'm well enough. Here, let me lean on you. That's it. I'll sit on the rocking-chair. Thank you. Just bind my head up, will you? Is it an ugly cut?" she asked, as Miranda, having procured some linen, ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... A lean-to is built on the north side of the wagon-house, in which is a tool-house opening into it, and a stable for eight milch-cows, that will thus be convenient for winter-milking; these cows are fed from the loft over the wagon-house. The barn is thirty by forty feet, with floor ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... and Mrs. Gould sank low before the little tea-table. Antonia took up her usual place at the reception hour—the corner of a leathern couch, with a rigid grace in her pose and a fan in her hand. Decoud, swerving from the straight line of his march, came to lean over the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... di San Giacinto; while the younger girl, the fair, brown-eyed Faustina, loved a poor Frenchman, half soldier and all artist. The weak, good-natured Ascanio Bellegra reigns in his father's stead, the timidly extravagant master of all that wealth which the miser's lean and crooked fingers had consigned to a safe keeping. Frangipani too, whose son was to have married Faustina, is gone these many years, and others of the older and graver sort have learned the great secret from the lips ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... eagerness, hanging over the book to read it, Bab happened to lean on the end of a pen standing up in art inkstand. She was too much interested to know what it was, but it came spluttering out, and a little speck of ink splashed on the white paper ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... seemed to enjoy himself, too, though, every once in a while he would lean over and say to ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... about the virtuous Douglass in the works of Sir Walter Scott. How wonderful then, in the light of a few years, that a fugitive slave from America, bearing one of the most powerful names in Scotland should lean against the pillars of the Free Church of Scotland, and meet and vanquish its brightest and ablest teachers (the friends of slavery, unfortunately), Doctors Cunningham ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... ears, he snuffs, Snorts,—never such a snort! then plunges, knows the sough's Only the wind: yet, no—our breath goes up too straight! Still the low sound,—less low, loud, louder, at a rate There's no mistaking more! Shall I lean out—look—learn The truth whatever it be? Pad, pad! At last, I turn— 'Tis the regular pad of the wolves in pursuit of the life in the sledge! An army they are: close-packed they press like the thrust of a wedge: ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... better than she did.' Ib ii. 208. 'Oct. 31, 1781. Poor Lucy's health is very much broken ... Her mental powers are not impaired, and her social virtues seem to increase. She never was so civil to me before.' Ib p. 211. On his mother's death he had written to her:—'Every heart must lean to somebody, and I have nobody ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... or of realising the scheme or scope of our own combination? And this, too, not a spiritual being, which, without matter, or what we think matter of some sort, is as complete nonsense to us as though men bade us love and lean upon an intelligent vacuum, but a being with what is virtually flesh and blood and bones; with organs, senses, dimensions, in some way analogous to our own, into some other part of which being, at the time of ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... is impossible to flatter it—you must either change it into a fancy nose, or resignedly acquiesce in it. When a man has no perceptible eyelids, and when his eyes globularly project so far out of his head, that you expect to have to pick them up for him whenever you see him lean forward, how are mortal fingers and bushes to diffuse the right complimentary expression over them? You must either do them the most hideous and complete justice, or give them up altogether. The late Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., was undoubtedly the most ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... dreaming. Granny Thomas' love potion seemed to have turned the world upside down. For Randall's arms were about her and Randall was pressing his lean bronzed cheek to hers and ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of the room on to the porch, and began loitering, in an uncertain way, up and down. A lean figure, with an irresolute step: the baggy clothes hung on his lank limbs were butternut-dyed, and patched besides: a Methodist itinerant in the mountains,—you know all that means? There was nothing irresolute or shabby in Gaunt's voice, however, as he greeted the old man,—clear, thin, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... I tore off the layer roofing of the wigwam, plunged through the tapering pole frame, shaking the frail lean-to like a house of cards, and was beside Miriam. Again I heard Louis' whistle and again the squaw's angry scream; but Little Fellow had followed on my heels and stood with knife-blade glittering ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... celery into small pieces and boil it in three pints of water with one-fourth pound of lean ham minced; simmer gently for an hour. Strain through a sieve and return to the pan adding one quart of milk, salt and pepper; thicken with two tablespoonfuls of butter and two tablespoonfuls of flour rubbed to a paste. Serve ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various
... housing not only the president and his little reception-room solemn with a dozen chairs in cotton shrouds, but congress, the ministry, and the "West Point of Honduras," the superintendent of which was a native youth who had spent a year or two at Chapultepec. Against it lean barefooted, anemic "soldiers" in misfit overalls, armed with musket and bayonet that overtop them in height. The main post-office of the republic is an ancient adobe hovel, in the cobwebbed recesses of which squat a few stupid fellows ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... out of the window if you lean over like that, and that would be lively, in all conscience, if you were picked up in fragments. Come in; you're getting your ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... care for me, and is pained by my coldness! Ah! but I hope and trust she loves me only as a sister loves a brother! She has no brother, poor child! And her heart must have some one to lean on! I must be that one, for she has chosen me, and I will not be so recreant to humanity as to ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... head had been cropped so that his hair stood up like a short-bristled white brush. His rather round face was brown and lined. His hands, which grasped the doorposts uncompromisingly to bar the way, were lean and veined and old. But all that I found in my recollections afterward to be utterly unimportant. His eyes were his predominant, his formidable, his compelling characteristic. They were round, the pupils very small, the irises large and ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... Poldl faded day by day under the pressure of his heavy burden of soul. At last there remained nothing else for him but to let them write to his brother that he lay sick and wished to see him. As Martin entered the sickroom Poldl stretched his lean arms toward him, breathed a heartfelt cry and began to weep aloud like a child. "You are like a father to me, Martin, you are like a father to me!" And from time to time he added, "Forgive me!" Then he stroked Martin's rough hands, "the hands which had toiled ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... kani, being used for the end of a grain of rice and the tip of a tooth. Or the teeth are placed under a water-pot in the hope that the child's second teeth may grow as fast as the grass does under water-pots. If a child is lean some people take it to a place where asses have lain down and rolled in ashes; they roll the child in the ashes similarly and believe that it will get fat like the asses are. Or they may lay the child ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... terror of criminals, who have come to regard an arraignment before him as equivalent to a conviction, which is generally the case. At the same time he is kind and considerate to those who are simply unfortunate. As a man, he is kind-hearted, and inclined to lean toward ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... that word. He was a disagreeable fellow: I remember that well. I caught him once thrashing a little fellow most cruelly. I helped the little one, and he shouted after me at least twelve times in succession, 'Aristocrat, aristocrat!' And now it comes back to me about the other one, the lean Andrew, his brother. He was your Andrew, was he not, Marie?—the Andrew with the violets? Oh, now I comprehend this great ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... and three horses shot under him; but no hurt, the Almighty's grace preserving him." [Feldzuge,i. 434.] This Moritz is the Third of the Brothers, age now thirty-three; and we shall hear considerably about him in times coming. A lean, tall, austere man; and, "of all the Brothers, most resembled his Father in his ways." Prince Dietrich is in Leipzig at present; looking to that contribution of 50,000 pounds; to that, and to other contributions and necessary ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... reasoning and of eloquence. A speech in Hanover Court House in defence of the people against a suit of the parish clergy gave him sudden fame. As grave of face as Samuel Adams, as careless of his attire, tall and lean, stamped with the seal of the speaker and the thinker, Patrick Henry at nine-and-twenty was already a very different man from the youth who five years earlier seemed destined to be but a Jack of all trades and master of none, an unsuccessful trader, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... years old, perhaps to his cousin aged seventeen (I know one here in that case), and when he grows up he wishes it had been let alone. A clever lad of seventeen propounded to me his dissatisfaction, and seemed to lean to Islam. I gave him an Arabic New Testament, and told him to read that first, and judge for himself whether he could not still conform to the Church of his own people, and inwardly believe and try to follow the Gospels. I told him ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... his predecessor, he was a spy in the employ of the imperial police. There was little for him to learn; but to feel that I was watched, and, once, that my desk had been searched, was disagreeable. This time I meant to be on safer ground, and was inquiring for a suitable servant when a lean, alert little man presented himself with a good record as a valet in England and France. He was very neat and had a humorous look which caught my fancy. His name was Alphonse Duret. We agreed easily ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... near, would attract her. This he managed with a tinder-box, which the good fairy had given him. It was just beginning to blaze up, when he heard a moan, which seemed to come from the other side of the tree. He sprung to his feet, but his heart throbbed so that he had to lean for a moment against the tree before he could move. When he got round, there lay a human form in a little dark heap on the earth. There was light enough from his fire to show that it was not the princess. He lifted it in his arms, hardly heavier than a child, and carried it to the ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... them as the steamboat drew to the dock, his peering blue eyes already eagerly scanning the islands and mountains, was a lean, sinewy man of forty, with waving, reddish-brown hair and beard, and shoulders slightly stooped. He wore a Scotch cap and a long, gray tweed ulster, which I have always since associated with him, and which seemed the same garment, ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... repay all of the years mother has spent over the dreary washtub by just one long, hard grip at this lean throat. I could kill him with so little extra pressure," ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... a long, lean, slightly stooped, sallow-faced man of about fifty, with eyes that rolled in all directions but towards the officer he addressed, and long hair thrown back of his ears in such a way as to make up an appearance that would readily attract the attention ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... pleasant shade Which a group of myrtles made, Beasts did leap and birds did sing, Trees did grow and plants did spring, Everything did banish moan, Save the nightingale alone; She, poor bird, as all forlorn, Lean'd her breast against a thorn, And there sung the dolefull'st ditty, That to hear it was great pity.... Ah, thought I, thou mourn'st in vain, None takes pity on thy pain. Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee; Ruthless beasts, they will not cheer thee; King Pandion he is dead, All thy friends are ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... every thing that had passed, could not help pitying the old man's situation, and, therefore, putting down her stockings on the chair, ran towards him, picked up the cane, and gave it to him, and then taking hold of his other arm, as if she had been as strong as a woman, advised him to lean upon her, and not mind any thing the boys might say ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long; For sideways would she lean and sing ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... before the grating is lowered and the chandelier is lighted. One was, in fact, in a sort of theatre-box, narrow, furnished with two old chairs, and a much-frayed straw matting, sparely illuminated by the vague light from the glass door; a regular box, with its front just of a height to lean upon, bearing a tablet of black wood. This box was grated, only the grating of it was not of gilded wood, as at the opera; it was a monstrous lattice of iron bars, hideously interlaced and riveted to the wall by enormous fastenings ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... wines and such nibbling delicacies as turos csusza, the cheese gnocchis; but specializing as well or even more so in romantic atmosphere dominated by heartstring touching of gypsy violins, as musicians strolled about quietly, pausing at this table or that to lean so close to a feminine ear that the lady was all but caressed. It came to Joe that there was more of this in the Sov world than at home. The Sov proletarians evidently spent less time at their Telly sets than did the Lowers ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... on the thousands of cars in the city we knew why the streets had to be broad and straight and long. In no other way could they accommodate all that rushing traffic of the swift cars and the lean, torpedo-like trams that with a splendid service link up the heart of the town with the far outlying suburbs. And even though the streets are broad the automobile is becoming too much for them. The habit of parking ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... Nunez could not resist such a provoking mixture of innocence and guile; he was first taken with her, and ended by falling in love. He was a man with a wide face, lean, grave, and bilious looking, having a moustache and imperial, and languid, dull looking eyes, very conscientious in his duties, and very fond of taking long walks. This type of silent, conventional man is most susceptible to the charm of cheerfulness and ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... published in 1666 by Guillaume de Luynes. The first shows Moliere in two characters, as Mascarille, and as Sganarelle, in 'Le Cocu Imaginaire.' Contrast the full-blown jollity of the fourbum imperator, in his hat, and feather, and wig, and vast canons, and tremendous shoe-tie, with the lean melancholy of jealous Sganarelle. These are two notable aspects of the genius of the great comedian. The apes below are ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... as she strengthened her resolution, her thoughts would run from her, carrying her back to the sweet rapture of some moment in which the man had been gracious to her; and even while she was struggling to teach herself to hate him, she would lean her head on one side, as though by doing so she might once more touch his brow with hers; and unconsciously she would put out her fingers, as though they might find their way into his hand. And then she would draw them back ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... them cut some timber for a lean-to. Like as not they cal'lated to make it a kind of headquarters for a day or so, strikin' off by twos to find ye. That's what I come to tell ye; I didn't want ye to be took. I knowed I'd find ye if I kep' on—I'm ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... and Guy Tabary were huddled together over a scrap of parchment; Villon making a ballade which he was to call the "Ballade of Roast Fish," and Tabary sputtering admiration at his shoulder. The poet was a rag of a man, dark, little, and lean, with hollow cheeks and thin black locks. He carried his four and twenty years with feverish animation. Greed had made folds about his eyes, evil smiles had puckered his mouth. The wolf and pig struggled together in his face. It was an eloquent, sharp, ugly, earthly countenance. ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... A strong, vigorous brain collects around it in time many others, whose mental processes are a feeble imitation of its own. Thus it came to pass that, as the years rolled on, Harston learned to lean more and more upon his old school-fellow, grafting many of his stern peculiarities upon his own simple vacuous nature, until he became a strange parody of the original. To him Girdlestone was the ideal man, Girdlestone's ways the correct ways, and ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... need to lean upon somebody. My knights couldn't arrive in time. They would be as much as three hours too late. Nothing in the world could save the King of England; nor me, which was more important. More important, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to see her brother act with the violence she now associated with cowboys? The clatter of hoofs stopped before the door. Looking out, Madeline saw a bunch of dusty, wiry horses pawing the gravel and tossing lean heads. Her swift glance ran over the lithe horsemen, trying to pick out the one who was her brother. But she could not. Her glance, however, caught the same rough dress and hard aspect that characterized the cowboy Stewart. Then one rider threw his bridle, leaped ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... as if struck by a blow, but he did not stand still. His nervous thin hands and lean body were in constant motion, although he did not stir from the one spot. In every involuntary movement and gesture there was something that suggested the feline. When spoken to or given an order he replied respectfully and obeyed with alacrity, but ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... course," he murmured, "principal director, you might say, made it natural to lean on him ... to depend ... undoubtedly he would have been notified. Probably if the doctor were to send for the body, Mr. Webb would have got there before, and his colleagues be satisfied. They depended on his judgment to ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... scarecrow. The true Jack-o'-lent was, as we learn from Taylor, the water poet, a ragged, lean-like figure which went as a token of Lent, in olden times, ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... rocks shelter afford to the cranes, plunged in sleep. The dew, blown on the t'ung tree by the well, doth wet the roosting rooks. Wrapped in a quilt, the maid comes the gold phoenix coverlet to spread. The girl, who on the rails did lean, on her return drops the kingfisher flowers! This quiet night his eyes in sleep he cannot close, as he doth long for wine. The smoke is stifled, and the fire restirred, when tea is ordered to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... genius had carried him to the heights, and a white blaze of publicity had given him a halo of glory. Later had come lean and bitter years until finally his reputation dwindled like a gutted candle in a wintry ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... and weather changed. There was now abundance of grass, and the ponies could make up for the lean days past. Thousands of cattle and sheep again gladdened our eyes, and the pony herds were a splendid sight; hundreds of beautiful creatures, mostly chestnut or black, were grazing near the trail or galloping free with flowing mane ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... three little piggies grew peaky and lean, and lean they might very well be; "For somehow they couldn't say umph, umph, umph! and they wouldn't say wee, wee, wee! "For ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... use a chicken or several pounds of bones with some meat attached, or a pound of lean meat and one quart of water. Cut-up vegetables may be added as desired. For flavoring add a sprig of parsley and of celery, a peppercorn, a small onion, and a scant teaspoonful of salt. Any of the flavoring vegetables ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... nothing owing me,' Harold said, the pain in his heart and his fear of losing her growing lean as she talked. 'You have brought me nearly all the happiness I have ever known; for when I was a boy and every bone ached with the hard work I had to do—the thought that Jerry was waiting for me at home, that her face would greet me at the window, or in ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... a presage of evil to the faithful Tsze-kung. "If the great mountain crumble," said he, "to what shall I look up? If the strong beam break, and the wise man wither away, on whom shall I lean? The master, I fear, is going to be ill." So saying, he hastened after Confucius into the house. "What makes you so late?" said Confucius, when the disciple presented himself before him; and then he added, "According to the statutes of Hea, the corpse was dressed and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... missed one," she said. She shook a lean forefinger at him reprovingly: "So 'twas you run off with it! I'm obliged to you for bringing it again, sir. I couldn't rightly remember whether 'twas a young lady or gentleman who'd had it. There's so many comes for ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... clear and joyful hour God spread out all the breadth of Italy before me: the plains, the valleys, and the mountains. Far and far away, shining in the sun, Ravenna lay, and lean Rimini and bartered Pesaro. There, the mountains rose over Siena, in that valley Gubbio slept, on that hill stood S. Marino, and there, like a golden angel bearing the Annunciation of Day, S. Leo folded her wings on her mountain. ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... him—she had a score of reasons against it; but why not at least see more of him? He was certainly not repulsive to her. On the contrary, she liked him, had always liked him from the day she had first seen him and looked upon his lean Indian face and into his flashing Indian eyes. He was a figure of a man in more ways than his mere magnificent muscles. Besides, Romance had gilded him, this doughty, rough-hewn adventurer of the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... fine old New England farm-house shining white through the trees a quarter of a mile away. There I met an ancient couple, a typical New England farmer and his wife; the old man, lean, chin-bearded, with keen gray eyes flickering occasionally with a shrewd humor, the old lady with a kindly old face of the withered-apple type and ruddy. They were evidently prosperous people, ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... the signora was leaning over the brink of the ivy-crowned well, trying to reach a spray twined thick with moss that grew in a crevice of the stones just beyond her reach. "Signora," a low voice said, "you ought not to lean so far: you might fall in, and the water is very deep. What is it you want? Let me get it for you." And Fra Lorenzo, following her direction, drew up the spray ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... relation to pictures. In England and America our plastic arts are but beginning. Yesterday we were preeminently a word-civilization. England built her mediaeval cathedrals, but they left no legacy among craftsmen. Art had to lean on imported favorites like Van Dyck till the days of Sir Joshua Reynolds and the founding of the Royal Society. Consider that the friends of Reynolds were of the circle of Doctor Johnson. Literary tradition had grown old. Then England had her beginning of landscape gardening. Later she ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... expensive as it appears, for the bacon is served as a dish of meat, either after the soup or cold for breakfast or tea. Put two quarts of water into a saucepan; when it boils put in a pound of bacon neither too lean nor too fat. Let it boil slowly for one hour. The bacon must be well washed and scraped before cooking, and when it boils skim the pot thoroughly. Well wash the cabbage and soak it in hot water for half an ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... he told me what to do, and well I did it; for when I opened my eyes, even without moving them from the cliff-side, I saw that the ledge was little more than a foot wide, and that ever so little a lean of the body would dash me on the rocks below. So I crept on, but spent much time that was so precious in travelling those ten yards to take me round the first elbow of the path; for my foot was heavy and gave me fierce ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... German pictures, Joseph is not only old, but appears almost in a state of dotage, like a lean, wrinkled mendicant, with a bald head, a white beard, a feeble frame, and a sleepy or stupid countenance. Then, again, the later Italian painters have erred as much on the other side; for I have seen pictures in which St. Joseph is not only a young man not more than thirty, but bears a strong ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... little pieces, and glad to get them. Now and then, to help out the sow-belly, we get quarter rations of fresh beef from the carcass of a Tennessee steer that the quartermaster manages to lay hands on somehow. But it's awful poor beef, lean, slimy, skinny and stringy. The boys say that one can throw a piece up against a tree, and it will just stick there and quiver and twitch for all the world like one of those blue-bellied lizards at home will do when you knock him off a fence ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... with the singularity of Caleb's appearance, and later by the expression of his eyes. A very tall, big-boned, lean, round-shouldered man, he was uncouth almost to the verge of grotesqueness, and walked painfully with the aid of a stick, dragging his shrunken and shortened bad leg. His head was long and narrow, and his high forehead, long nose, long chin, and long, coarse, grey whiskers, ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... finding water, although in the heart of Australia, surrounded by an unbroken horizon. On proceeding, we passed some large huts near the river, which were of a more substantial construction, and also on a better plan than those usually set up by the aborigines of the south. A frame like a lean-to roof had first been erected; rafters had next been laid upon that; and, thereupon thin square portions of bark were laid, like tiles. A fine pond of water being near, we there spancelled our horses and lay down for the night. ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... drearily. Looking downwards, I could at first see nothing; but as my eyes grew used to the darkness—I had only just put out my rushlight—I made out the stable door and the shadowy outlines of the lean-to roof. ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... a mild southwest blow, with a moderate beam-sea; only the deck would come up smack against the soles of his boots in a most unexpected and aggravating manner. But after the third day out, he found his sea-legs and learned how to "lean." From two till five his time was his own, and a very good deal of this time he devoted to Henley and Morris and Walt Whitman, an ancient brier between his teeth and a canister of excellent tobacco ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... fifty years ago,— When apple trees were white with snow Of fragrant blossoms, and the air Was spellbound with the perfume rare,— Upon a farm horse, large and lean, And lazy with its double load, A sun-browned youth and maid were seen Jogging along the ...
— Standard Selections • Various |
