"Shrink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... steadily, will not find matter of offence, in what is technically termed the composition of a natural landscape. And yet how unintelligible is this! In all other matters we are justly instructed to regard Nature as supreme. With her details we shrink from competition. Who shall presume to imitate the colors of the tulip, or to improve the proportions of the lily of the valley? The criticism which says, of sculpture or of portraiture, that "Nature is to be exalted rather than imitated," ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... "I don't shrink from it at all. I only intend to choose the proper time and not give the show away at a moment when to do so will be to ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... a sudden impulse, and not giving herself time to shrink from the determination, she bent forward a ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... life even as a prisoner now came in a swelling tide upon Henry. He had not known before that air could be so pure and keen, such a delight and such a source of strength to the lungs. The figure that had seemed to shrink within the narrow walls suddenly expanded and felt capable of anything. Strength flowed back in renewed volume into every muscle. Before him beyond the walls curved the dark green world, vital, intense, ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and manners, could not endure the presence of the most attractive young woman, but was seized with deadly terror and sudden collapse of all the powers of life, if he came into her immediate presence; if it were added that this same young man did not shrink from the presence of an old withered crone; that he had a certain timid liking for little maidens who had not yet outgrown the company of their dolls, the listener would be apt to smile, if he did not laugh, at the absurdity of the fable. Surely, he would say, this must be the fiction of some ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... till stars unnumber'd Tremble in the breeze-swept tarn, And the bat that all day slumber'd Flits about the lonely barn; And the shapes that shrink from garish Noon are peopling cairn and lea; And thy sire is almost bearish If kept waiting for ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... no further. The big man sprang forward to face him with a look that made the dandy shrink with fear. "Protect Sammy Lane from me! Protect her, you! You know what I feel toward her? You!" He fairly choked with ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... 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 ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... apprenticeship to life; we are new to the business, a kind of faint-heartedness overpowers us, and leaves us in an almost dazed condition of mind. We feel that we are helpless aliens in a strange country. At all ages we shrink back involuntarily from the unknown. And a young man is very much like the soldier who will walk up to the cannon's mouth, and is put to flight by a ghost. He hesitates among the maxims of the world. The rules of ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... and slept like a contented child. This time, however, it was not long before he was awakened by a feeling of hunger, and this satisfied, he slept again, almost unintermittently, for several days and nights. When at last he awoke he was quite calm, but oppressed by a gloomy reserve and desire to shrink more and more within himself. This was exactly what ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... it 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 the warrior—never of ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... interesting as companions, providing their innate juvenility is undisturbed; but when their personalities are rudely thrown open by a teacher, and the innate juvenility prematurely exposed to the air, it is something so clammy, so chilly to the mental marrow, that I shrink from it as I would shrink from the touch of ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... danced before his eyes, the darkness of the thicket, the dance on the mountain-top, the scenes by lonely shores, in green vineyards, by rocks and desert places, passed before him: a world before which the human soul seemed to shrink back and shudder. Villiers whirled over the remaining pages; he had seen enough, but the picture on the last leaf caught his eye, as ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... make you think of heaven. I stood on the steps, and the hundreds of men and Women stood below me, with their upturned faces. Among them were old men crushed by sorrow, and old men ruined by vice; aged women with faces that seemed to plead for pity, women that made you shrink from their unwomanly gaze; lion-like young men, made for heroes but caught in the devil's trap and changed into beasts; and boys whose looks showed that sin had already stamped them with its foul insignia, and burned into their souls the ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... panting she had to lift her face. And then he kissed her in his passionate compelling way, holding her shy lips with his own till he actually forced them to respond. She felt as if his love burned her, but, even so, she dared not shrink from it. There was so much at stake. Her mother's lack of love was infinitely ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... read; aye, you Who this very line may scan: Think of all you planned to do . . . Have you done the best you can? See! the tavern lights are low; Black's the night, and how you shrink! God! and is it time to go? Ah! the clock is always slow; It is later than you think; Sadly later than you think; Far, far later than ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... him went Doubt, who was yclad In a discolour'd coat of strange disguise, That at his back a broad capuccio had, And sleeves dependant Albanese-wise; He lookt askew with his mistrustful eyes, And nicely trod, as thorns lay in his way, Or that the floor to shrink he did avise; And on a broken reed he still did stay His feeble steps, which shrunk when hard ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... end," says Mr. Millers, "is eminently beautiful, and will not by any means shrink from comparison with the more gorgeous termination of any church built after great end windows came into fashion. There are two tiers of lights; the lower consists of three very high lancet-shaped lights, nearly all equal; the second of five, the middle one being higher, and those on the sides gradually ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... Stay! Shrink not away at the sound of his name, to meet whom ye were wont to press forward so joyously!—When rumour announced his approach, when the cry arose, "Egmont comes! He comes from Ghent!"—then happy indeed were those citizens who dwelt in the streets through which ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... there is as wide a difference between the real situation in the hunting life and the scenes depicted in this book as there is between the real attitudes of primitive people and those of the child, which are idealized forms of the same attitudes.[1] The child would shrink in terror from the real conflict. His interest is in the dramatized form. If this dramatic interest of the child is satisfied, it can be made to pay tribute to the sciences and the arts. If it is ignored or repressed, it is liable to find expression ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... had known, of course, that girls were to look for endearments from those whom they promised to marry, but her person had hitherto been so sacred to man and to herself that it was difficult not to shrink a little from what was taking place. This then was love, and love was, of course, the sweetest thing in the world. That was one of the truths which she had accepted as she had accepted the beauty of Shakespeare, as something not to be disputed, ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... which may be said in a certain manner to epitomize and symbolize the character of a race. "I and my nation are one": thus Poland's greatest poet, Adam Mickiewicz, sums up the devotion that will not shrink before the highest tests of sacrifice for a native country. "My name is Million, because I love millions and for millions suffer torment." If to this patriotism oblivious of self may be added an unstained moral integrity, the magnetism of an extraordinary personal charm, the glamour of ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... overpast, he draws The living oxen and the panting sheep With cords to his home, not as a horned prey, But as in triumph marshalling his foes: Whom now he tortures in their bonds within. Come, thou shalt see this madness in clear day, And tell to the Argives all I show thee here Only stand firm and shrink not, I will turn His eyes askance, not to distinguish thee, Fear nought—Ho! thou that bindest to thy will The limbs of those thy captives, come thou forth! Aias! advance before thy ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... are narrower and shorter in women than in men; but it must be noticed that they are more intertwined and contorted than in men, and shrink together by reason of their shortness that they may, by their looseness, be better stretched out when necessary: and these vessels in women are carried in an oblique direction through the lesser bowels and testicles but are divided into two branches half way. The larger goes to the stones ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... Yet he is as one that dies while he lives; though not altogether as one unbeloved by divine beings. Wonderful are the accounts he brings of that far-off world, where his spirit wanders. Sometimes I listen with fear, till all philosophy seems dim, and I shrink from the mystery of our being. When they do not disturb him with earthly medicines, he is quiet and happy. Waking, he speaks of things clothed in heavenly splendour; and in his sleep, he smiles like a child whose dreams are pleasant. ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... speak to Hollis, I know; that it was his will, I do not know; but she was assured that she knew, and she never changed her mind. It may be that it was his will for her to make a mistake and bring sorrow upon Marjorie; the Lord does not shrink from mistakes; he knows ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... good woman, but she did delight in hearing and retailing gossip, and in making and seeing a sensation; so she rather enjoyed her errand to Westbourne Terrace. She was also a brave woman, so she did not shrink from meeting the high-born bridegroom and the bride ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... moving still, an assiduous mummy, from dinner-party to dinner-party, suddenly moved no longer. When she knew that the end was inevitable, she seemed, by a pathetic instinct, to divest herself of her royalty, and to shrink, with hushed gentleness, beside him, a woman and nothing more. "I send some Osborne primroses," she wrote to him with touching simplicity, "and I meant to pay you a little visit this week, but I ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... instances, than can be discovered in the mass of harangues poured forth by Mr Cobden, were the flowers ever so carefully culled and separated from the loads of trashy weed. His forte consists in a coarse but dauntless intrepidity, with which respectability and intellect shrink from encounter. The country squire, educated and intelligent, but retiring and truth-loving, retreats naturally from contest with a bold, abusive, and unscrupulous demagogue; even the party he serves, holds off from contact and communion with him. He never quails, therefore, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... surroundings and rise above all the obstacles connected with its material heredity. It depends upon the unfoldment of the spirit whether it shall espouse the cause of progress and truth, or yield to the pressure of its environment and shrink back into a lower grade, and lose the opportunity ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... be so good for me as this pure, bracing mountain atmosphere," her father replied, gently. "I would shrink from going to any place where we should be likely to find familiar faces—nothing would break me down so quickly. Be patient, Virgie for a little longer, and then you shall go back to the world, where you ought long ago to have been with people ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... that, as its home broke up, the soul withdrew little by little, and contracted itself like the pupil of an eye, to shrink to a pinpoint and vanish in the full ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... with which the Turks have always regarded the memory of the greatest of their sultans, has led them not only to shrink with superstitious awe from attempting any enterprise in which he failed, but even to attach a prophetic importance to his recorded sayings. A promise attributed to him, that "an Ottoman army should never pass ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... am inclined to think that most unmarried women, as well as many who are married, should support themselves. Where the necessity exists, it is base to shrink from doing one's part. When others of the family must endure privation to keep her at home, it is seldom that home is a girl's place. But I would not have a girl too eager to support herself. And I would not have her urged unless there is necessity. ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... complicated case. Suppose two thoughts to be in the mind together, of which one, A, taken alone, would discharge itself in a certain action, but of which the other, B, suggests an action of a different sort, or a consequence of the first action calculated to make us shrink. The psychologists now say that the second idea, B, will probably arrest or inhibit the motor effects of the first idea, A. One word, then, about 'inhibition' in general, to make this particular ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... reasonable that, as long as we are persuaded that our English theory of the Bible, as a whole, is the right one, we should shrink from contact with investigations, which, however ingenious in themselves, are based on what we know to be a false foundation. But there are some learned Germans whose orthodoxy would pass examination at Exeter Hail; and there are many subjects, such, for ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... Parliament, and would jointly oppose any administration who should resort to such proscription. But the bold and domineering spirit of Fitzgibbon—the leader of the Castle party, then, and long afterwards—did not shrink before even so formidable a phalanx. The Duke of Leinster was dismissed from the honorary office of Master of the Rolls; the Earl of Shannon, from the Vice-Treasurership; William Ponsonby from the office of Postmaster-General; ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... of the world's welfare seem suspiciously like a cloak for national self-interest, let the latter be accepted frankly as the adequate motive which it assuredly is. Let us not shrink from pitting a broad self-interest against the narrow self-interest to which some would restrict us. The demands of our three great seaboards, the Atlantic, the Gulf, and the Pacific,—each for itself, and all for ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... of self-sacrifice for the salvation of Russia, was not disposed to leave that work half accomplished. All knew that the infamous Alexis would shrink from no crime, and there was ample evidence of his treasonable plots. The father now deliberately resolved to arraign his son for high treason, a crime which doomed him to death. Aware of the awful solemnity of such a moment, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... the time, with a shake of his craggy, shaggy head: "Poor little Queen! she is at an age at which a girl can hardly be trusted to choose a bonnet for herself, yet a task is laid upon her from which an archangel might shrink.": ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... however, that there are some among them who would gladly see a change; some, who with the wisdom of philosophers, and the fair candour of gentlemen, shrink from a profession of equality which they feel to be untrue, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... used. "If your mother was alive," said she, "this is what she would say." And then she spoke to me of God, who alone can determinate man's trials, either by the end He ordains, or the resignation He inspires. I felt myself carried with her into the regions where our sorrows shrink into insignificance as the horizon broadens around them. And I remember she uttered this fine thought, "See how my son has suffered! It makes one believe, Monsieur Fabien, that the elect of the earth are the hardest tried, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... had made against Dutch tyranny in the Transvaal. If we were going to retreat from that position, the discredit of our action would compel England to resign her claim to be paramount Power, and with the resignation of that claim England's rights in South Africa would inevitably shrink to the narrow limits of a naval base at Simon's Town, and a sub-tropical plantation in Natal. What was fundamental was not the possibility of war, but the impossibility ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... Why can't you name them? Are they so infamous that even you shrink from telling me? In a ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... many shapes The babble of baboons, the chat of apes. Why hang, Sir, up a tree, in a big cage, To study Simian speech, which in our age May be o'erheard on Platform or in Pub, And studied 'mid the comforts of a Club? And yet perchance your forest apes would shrink From Smoke-room chat of apes who never think, But cackle imitatively all round, Till their speech hath an automatic sound. Put the dread name of GL-DST-NE in the slot SMELFUNGUS calls his mouth, and rabid rot Will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... theorist of Pre-Raphaelitism, Sir James Tuckett, does not shrink from placing the Madonna of the National Gallery on a level with the masterpieces of Christian art. "By giving to the Virgin's head," says Sir James Tuckett, "a third of the total height of the figure, the old master attracts the spectator's attention and keeps ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... of death, the same high courage, the same unlimited confidence in their Leader. What matter if they die in His service? He has told them what their work should be. He has bidden them visit the sick and comfort the sorrowing. What if there be danger in the work? Did He shrink from the Cross which was to end His work of love, and is it for His followers to do so? 'Though you go down into the pit,' He has said, 'I am there also'; and with His companionship one must be craven indeed to tremble. This is a noble opportunity ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... starry universe, and the radiant depths of the soul. Martyrdom may desolate, but cannot terrify him. If he be a genius, if his soul crave only his idea, and his body fare unconsciously well on bread and water, then his lot is happy, and fortune can present no ills which will not shrink before his burning eye. But if he be less than this, he is lost, the sport of devouring elements. As he fights fate on the border of ruin, so much the more should he be animated by courage, ambition, pride, purpose, and faith. To him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... with household duties, and afternoons Patty and Mabel were usually together. Patty felt sure she could never ask Mabel, for though the two girls were confidential friends, there was a sensitiveness in Mabel's disposition that made Patty shrink from touching on what she felt might be a painful subject. Then there were the boys. Bob, at home on his vacation from college was Patty's chum and merry comrade, but she imagined he would cleverly evade a serious question. He was always chaffing, and while Patty was always glad to meet ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... that I object to, madam," said Ishmael very gently, "but it is this—to make my fee out of my case would appear to me a sort of professional gambling, from which I should shrink." ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... sardonically at the silent maroon who poured again with steady hand, "you are the only soul on this island who doesn't fear me. That woman above yonder, curse her, shuddered away from me as I looked at her dying. But your hand is steady. You and old Ben Hornigold are the only ones who don't shrink back, hey, Carib? Is it love or hate?" he mused, as the man made no answer. "More," he cried, again lifting the glass which he ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... memorandum prefixed to the Bill vaguely describes its main object as being to bring our law into conformity with "The Hague Conventions" at large. An ordinary member of Parliament would surely be grateful to be referred specifically to Convention No. xiii., Arts. 8, 17, and 25. He might well shrink from the labour of exploring the hundreds of articles contained in "The Hague Conventions" in order to ascertain which of the articles suggest some modification of ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... previous declarations, the countenance of Cecilia, was to any decided and open act in his favor, stood in stupid wonder at her declaration. He could not conceive that a woman who had already ventured so much in secret in his behalf, and who had so often avowed her weakness, should shrink to declare it again at such a crisis, though the eyes of a universe were on her! He looked from one of the party to the other, and met in every face an expression of delicate reserve, except in those of the guardian of his ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... arrows he shot from his bow; Remember your chiefs by his hatchet laid low. Why so slow? Do you wait till I shrink from the pain? No! the son ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... men who, lacking a Crusader's cult or a country's need to cut and thrust for, go out among the savage denizens of the desert seeking opportunity to fight for their faith in their own strong arms and steady nerves; men who shrink from a laurel but treasure a trophy. William Northrup McMillan, a native of St. Louis, who has spent the last eight years in exploration of the Blue Nile and in travel through Abyssinia and British East ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... shall encounter dangers from which I shrink. Lower away slowly, boys," he added to those who were fastening a rope to the car, "and keep a sharp look-out for ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... after listening at the head of the stairs for sounds from below where her prisoner was confined, Celia had crept on tiptoe to her father's door, only to shrink away again not daring ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... meat or drink, —Every nighte and alle, The fire sall never make thee shrink; And ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... salted, and his right hand cut off; the third day, his breasts cut out, and salt thrown in, and then his left hand cut off. The last day of his torment, which was the 10th of July, he was bound to two stakes, standing upright, in such order that he could not shrink down nor stir any way. Thus standing, naked, there was a great fire placed some small distance from him wherein heated pincers of iron, with which pincers two men did pinch and pull his flesh in ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... baby in a mauve blouse stared after them; and a white face so poisoned in its badness that it gave Flora a start, peered at them from across the street. It made her shrink a little behind Harry's broad shoulder and take hold of his arm. The mere touch of that arm was security. His big presence, moving agilely beside her, seemed to fill the street with its strength, as if, by merely flinging out his arms, Samson-like, ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... unsteadily, "night, all of you. You may say that I've been drinking. Nothing of the kind. The man who says I've been drinking lies. Experiment. Nothing in the world but a lot of experiments which a braver man than I would shrink from. Sartoris, if you say I am drunk, then I say ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... to perpetuate in its purity the Anglo-Saxon blood, and would colonize the West with men raised under free institutions. They shrink from all contact with a race of bondmen. Our President, himself a Western man, proposes to colonize the free negro in Central America, and thriving colonies already exist on the coast of Africa. But why should we send from this country her millions of laborers? Is our land exhausted? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... of the time, we shall endeavour to indulge the lovers of variety 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 ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... 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 meeting ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... But now, as I tell you, I have determined to take right hold for myself; to look right into European life, and judge it without Johnsonian prejudices. I have taken up my residence in a French family, in a real Parisian house. You see I have the courage of my opinions; I don't shrink from carrying out my theory that the great thing ...
— A Bundle of Letters • Henry James
... sucked in. The third, then, is the ruling part; consider thus: Thou art an old man; no longer let this be a slave, no longer be pulled by the strings like a puppet to unsocial movements, no longer be either dissatisfied with thy present lot, or shrink from ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... him thoughtfully, and then of a sudden seemed to shrink back, and her face went whiter. "You—you have a warrant for me!" ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... destinies of the Church of England, of her gallant protest against the corruptions of the West, and of her future unique position in Christendom as the National Church of the most progressive country—all this caused her to shrink back terrified from the bourne to which she was drifting, and from the breach that must follow with her brother. But above all else that caused her pain was the shocking suspicion that her love ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... the eyes of my Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, fixed upon me with a deep gratitude and pride. It was all of a great pleasure to me except that I did not like very well to be so distinguished by a young man, which made the French grande dame in me to shrink. ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and throwing off the paralysis of fear, she pushed one of the men away and grasped the arm of the injured man. He winced perceptibly and she felt something warm and sticky on her hands. She knew it was blood, but it was not in her to shrink at a moment ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... and burning with blushes, she watched the end of the train shrink away. On its last iron ladder the conductor swung aside to make room for Kincaid's stalwart spring. So! It gained one handhold, one foothold. But the foot slipped, the soldier's cap tumbled to the ground, and every onlooker drew a gasp. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... could not answer that question to his own heart, much less to hers. He could not paint the shuddering horror which had forced him to veil his eyes and shrink aghast from that last ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... have had him know it. Her love for him was too deep to let her shrink; and she knew that only by that love did she maintain her ascendancy, appealing to his higher nature as only true love can appeal. But the perpetual strain of it told upon her, and that night she felt tired ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... far off, and bellowed at him about pig-pounds and floodgates. These last were two great sliding shutters of weedy oak across the brook, which were prised up inch by inch with a crowbar along a notched strip of iron, and when Sidney opened them they at once let out half the water. Midmore watched it shrink between its aldered banks like some conjuring trick. This, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... face, I had the hopeless feeling that I had never heard the tune before. In his earnestness he came nearer and nearer, his contortions every moment becoming more extraordinary, his whistling more piercing; and I, by this time convulsed by awful, helpless laughter, could only shrink farther back in my seat and ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... the rich individual and the passage of a camel through a needle's eye. Possibly it had come home to Mrs. Errington upon her death-bed. Possibly, as her end drew near she had perceived herself tower to camel size, the entrance to Paradise shrink to the circumference which refuses to receive a thread manipulated by an unsteady hand. Yes, yes; they began to expand in unctuous conjecture that merged into deliberate assertion, when some one remarked that Mrs. Errington had died in exactly three minutes of the rupture ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... substantial soundness of the general views winch I took of the French revolutionary thinkers at that time, I feel no apprehension; nor—some possible occasional phrases or sentences excepted and apart—do I see the smallest reason to shrink or to depart from any one of them. So far as one particular reference may serve to illustrate the tenour of the whole body of criticism, the following lines, which close my chapter on the "Encyclopaedia," will answer the purpose as well as any others, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... and the weight of the great bag of meshes proved that after all a good fair haul had been made, the net being drawn close to the boat and the bag seeming to shrink in size till there was a mass of struggling, splashing fish alongside, apparently enough to far more ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... Agatha, who had scarcely suspected him of a capacity for such flights as this, "what is there to shrink from?" ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... as though in terror.] Never under a roof again! It is so good to be out here in the night. If I went up into the gallery now, ceiling and walls would shrink together and crush me—crush me ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen
... shrink from the truth, which is that he sat there in two minds. Sometimes he looked longingly at his mother, and sometimes he looked longingly at the window. Certainly it would be pleasant to be her boy again, but, on the other hand, what times those had been in the Gardens! Was he so sure ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... the rock; great ravines were filled up with solid masonry; rivers were crossed by suspension bridges, used here ages before their introduction into Europe. Says Baldwin, "The builders of our Pacific Railroad, with their superior engineering skill and mechanical appliances, might reasonably shrink from the cost and the difficulties of such a work as this. Extending from one degree north of Quito to Cuzco, and from Cuzco to Chili, it was quite as long as the two Pacific railroads, and its wild route among the mountains was far more difficult." Sarmiento, describing it, ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... honest guilt, that dares do all but lie, From the false, juggling craft of men like these, Their canting crimes and varnisht villanies;— These Holy Leaguers, who then loudest boast Of faith and honor, when they've stained them most; From whose affection men should shrink as loath As from their hate, for they'll be fleeced by both; Who, even while plundering, forge Religion's name To frank their spoil, and without fear or shame Call down the Holy Trinity[4] to bless Partition leagues and deeds of devilishness! But hold—enough—soon would this swell ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... all your feats proclaim, Nor once from duty shrink? In flattery I sunk my fame, A Bowman e'en ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... I should get no luncheon. I don't shrink from sacrifice in a good cause, Major, whenever sacrifice is necessary; but I see no point in starving myself merely to satisfy ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... she addressed an encouraging word to Virginie as she felt her shrink as they approached groups of men lounging outside the wine-shops, for there was but little work done in Paris, and the men of the lower class spent their time in idleness, in discussions of the events of the day, or ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... courage and nobility. For long years his violent and haughty temper made him the most unpopular man in England, except in Devonshire, where everybody doted on him. He was "a man of desperate fortunes," and he did not shrink from violent methods. In studying his life we are amused, we are almost scandalised, at his snake-like quality. He moves with serpentine undulations, and the beautiful hard head is lifted from ambush to strike the unsuspecting enemy at sight. With his protestations, his volubility, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... now bestirring themselves—it is high time—but criticism has not died. Refined natures have heartstrings like the chords of Aeolian harps, sensitive to the faintest touch, responsive to the gentlest whisper of the evening breeze; such shrink in terror from the icy breath of the scoffer: the purpose is frozen dead within their souls. O criticism! what crimes have been committed in your name! How many noble careers have ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... define, but I certainly don't mean pernicketty. Of course, there is a fastidiousness which makes one shrink from unpleasant things, but Harry's is the other kind. It impels him to do them ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... the proposition, (21) and finally a unanimous resolution was passed voting assistance to the Thebans. Thrasybulus, in an answer communicating the resolution, pointed out with pride that in spite of the unfortified condition of Piraeus, Athens would not shrink from repaying her former debt of gratitude to Thebes with interest. "You," he added, "refused to join in a campaign against us; we are prepared to fight your battles with you against the enemy, if he attacks you." Thus the Thebans returned home ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... 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 the freezing point) it again begins to ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... Let no man shrink from the bitter tonics Of grief, and yearning, and need, and strife, For the rarest chords in the soul's harmonies, Are found in the minor strains ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... confidence of the salaried man, and Thurston, who fought for his own interests, flung himself down on his trestle cot with all his clothes on. Neither the timber slide nor the bridge was quite finished, but because rivers in that region shrink at night when the frost checks the drainage from the feeding glaciers on the peaks above, the saw-miller had insisted on driving down his logs when there was less chance of their stranding on the shoals that cumbered the high-water channel. Thurston lay awake for some time, listening ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... continental Buddhism had not shrunk before and did not shrink then, nor indeed from it do the insular Japanese sects shrink now. Indeed, Buddhism is quite ready to adopt, absorb and swallow up Japanese Christianity. With all encompassing tentacles, and with colossal powers of digestion and assimilation, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... finds himself unable to pay the interest on the indebtedness. If the farm represents much invested capital, the net income of the farm becomes too meagre to pay even a moderate rate of interest on its cost value; therefore its selling value must shrink to the level of its reduced income. In this way a large share of the available assets of the small farmer, are swept away. The savings of years, are swallowed up and lost. Savings, that in the aggregate, amount to many millions of dollars. What has become of these values? They have ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... off with you!" cried Sergei across the raft, accentuating his exclamation with a loud and cynical curse. Then he seemed to shrink together, as if himself afraid of the terrible drama which was unfolding itself before him; drama, which he was now compelled to understand. . ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... declines have bottomed out with estimated growth of 4% in 1994; and living standards are rising. Economic restructuring has been dramatic. By 1994 the service sector accounted for over 55% of GDP, while the once-dominant heavy industrial sector continues to shrink. The private sector is growing rapidly; the share of the state enterprises in the economy has steadily declined and by late 1994 accounted for only about 40% of GDP. Estonia's foreign trade has shifted rapidly from East to West; the Western industrialized countries ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... to shrink away from his beautiful wife. And when at length he asked her the reason that she no longer loved Undine so well as she had been used to do, she told him that she now knew from whence his wife had come. 'And for the spirit world,' said Bertalda, 'I do not ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... enervated, she would fall to musing on the nothingness of life, the sorrow, the labour, the malice of it.... Her soul would be filled with sudden daring, and would flow with generous ardour, but a draught would blow from a half-closed window, and Anna Sergyevna would shrink into herself, and feel plaintive and almost angry, and there was only one thing she cared for at that instant—to get away ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... he had something to communicate, which was so terrible, if I heard it I should give up the march. Lumeresi was his authority, but he would not tell it until Grant arrive. I said to him, "Let us wait till Grant arrives; we shall then have some one with us who won't shrink from whispers"—meaning Bombay; and so I let the matter drop for the time being. But when Grant came, we had it out of him, and found this terrible mystery all hung on Lumeresi's prognostications that we never should get through ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... circular, "indispensably necessary." Of course a railroad was the dream of the settlers; but when it was considered seriously there was always, as Lincoln says, "a heart-appalling shock accompanying the amount of its cost, which forces us to shrink from our pleasing anticipations." Improvement of the Sangamon River he declared the most feasible plan. That it was possible, he argued from his experience on the river in April of the year before (1831), when he made his flatboat trip, and from his observations ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... They had not, as yet, required the work of her machine needle. She told her self, whimsically, that when the time came to set her crude work next to the masterly effects produced by the needle of Eddie's ma every fiber in her would shrink from the task. Of course Martha did not put it in just that way. But the thought was there. And bit by bit, week by week, month by month, the life, and aims, and ambitions, and good luck and misfortunes of this country boy who had come to the call of the city, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... that entwine themselves, with more or less system, around two or three subjects." He declares that there is nothing it undertakes to prove; that there are none whose mission it is to convince. And so true is this, so absolutely honest and sincere is the writer, that he does not shrink from attacking, qualifying, modifying, his own propositions; from advancing, and insisting on, every objection that flits across his brain; and if such proposition survive the onslaught of its adversaries, it is only because, in the deepest of him, he holds it ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... He would not even, like Descartes, attempt to transform theology by turning reason into a mode of theological demonstration. He stood absolutely aloof from it. Though as a politician he did not shrink from dealing with such subjects as Church Reform, he dealt with them simply as matters of civil polity. But from his exhaustive enumeration of the branches of human knowledge he excluded theology, and theology alone. His method was of itself inapplicable ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... the timid, fluttering Grecian women, those doves of the dove-cot, and would call some of them into action. But which? Precisely those of energetic and masculine minds; the timid and feminine would but shrink the more from public gaze and from tumult. Thus it happened, that such female characters as were exhibited in Greece, could not but be the harsh and the severe. If a gentle Ismene appeared for a moment in contest with some energetic sister Antigone, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... we all feel that they were very sinful; we shrink with horror from their words as we read them. But why ought they to have done the same? We know, thank God, who Jesus Christ was. But they did not; at that time, when He was first beginning to preach, they hardly ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... foul, By the smoky town in its murky cowl; Foul and dank, foul and dank, By wharf and sewer and slimy bank; Darker and darker the farther I go, Baser and baser the richer I grow; Who dare sport with the sin-defiled? Shrink from me, turn from me, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... for dinner on Sundays, and they never go to the theater, and they like bread pudding, and they're happy. I wasn't. They treated me fine, and it was home, all right, but not my home. It was the same, but I was different. Eleven years away from anything makes it shrink, if you know what I mean. I guess maybe you do. I remember that I used to think that the Grand View Hotel was a regular little oriental palace that was almost too luxurious to be respectable, and that the traveling men who stopped there were gods, and just to prance ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... the latest fashion-plates, but the elaborate descriptions of expensive costumes plunged the girl into another state of bewilderment and slough of despond. She heartily regretted having accepted the invitation. She began to dread the party as an execution—to shrink from exhibiting herself to Christian with the fine ladies and gentlemen who would form the company at Mrs. Van Pelt's. However, the dress was cut and made, and in this there was a fair degree of success, for necessity had taught these women ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... paper. Make sure that the oven is at the proper temperature. For a small cake, the oven should be hot enough to brown a piece of unglazed paper or a tablespoonful of flour in three minutes. Bake a small cake from twenty to thirty minutes. When done, the cake will shrink from the sides of the pan; the crust will spring back when touched with the finger; the loud ticking sound will cease; a fine knitting-needle will come out clean if the cake is pierced; and the crust will be nicely browned. When the cake is removed ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... It had been his lot to live in a world of suspicion and hatred, of evil-believing and evil-doing. It had been his experience, slouching along village streets at nightfall, to see little children, screaming with fear, run from him to their mothers. He had even seen grown women shrink aside from him as ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... to Philip's intelligence to insinuate that the Prince would shrink before danger, or die of fear. Had Orange ever been inclined to bombast, he might have answered the churchman's calumny, as Caesar the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... who are Christians and not Pagans, who believe that death is not an eternal sleep, who wrest from life its uses and gather from life its beauty,—why they should dally along the road, and cling frantically to the old landmarks, and shrink fearfully from the approaching future, I cannot tell. You are getting into years. True. But you are getting out again. The bowed frame, the tottering step, the unsteady hand, the failing eye, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... employment, waiting patiently for the replies to my applications for advertised situations, which never come, the brand of the convict has indeed become the very mark of Cain, and I feel as if my fellowmen shrink from me as they pass. Fortunately I found at the post-office a few pounds sent to me from my brother, which, with slight additions, have enabled me to procure a mechanical leg, and to live till I have completed this narrative. But ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... speed. The time would soon come when everything on Earth would be commonplace. Then man's urge to go places he hadn't seen before would take him away from the Earth entirely—when he would begin the task of making even the universe shrink to appease the gods of speed. Somehow the thought was a ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... contrary, will in the end, as is now manifest to all, too surely multiply its embarrassments. Relying, as I am bound to do, on the representatives of a people rendered illustrious among nations by having paid off its whole public debt, I shall not shrink from the responsibility imposed upon me by the Constitution of pointing out such measures as will in my opinion insure adequate relief. I am the more encouraged to recommend the course which necessity exacts by the confidence ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... myself to despair, but shall console myself with the thought that I have done the best I was able to do under actual circumstances, and in my then state of health. It would, indeed, ill become me to shrink from public criticism, after having braved the terrors and hardships of The Desert. However, the publication of this journal may induce others to penetrate The Desert,—persons better qualified, and ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... living, He must grow stronger. And when we are weak and bitter, when the world haunts us as I felt this afternoon on leaving the superintendent, when men strike and starve, and others are hard and grasping—then He must shrink and grow small and suffer. There is happiness," she ended, breathing her belief as a prayer into the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... youth and beauty die. So be it, O my God, thou God of truth. Better than beauty and than youth Are saints and angels, a glad company: And Thou, O lord, our Rest and Ease, Are better far than these. Why should we shrink from our full harvest? why Prefer to ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Tarquinii and Veii espoused the cause of their Etruscan kinsmen, and marched against Rome. The two Consuls advanced to meet them. When Aruns, the king's son, saw Brutus at the head of the Roman cavalry, he spurred his horse to the charge. Brutus did not shrink from the combat; and both fell from their horses mortally wounded by each other's spears. A desperate battle between the two armies now followed. Both parties claimed the victory, till a voice was heard in ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... one step of supreme importance from which a man must not shrink, however difficult it may seem to be; and that is to search and probe the depths of his soul, that he may find out what it is that he really and deeply and whole-heartedly and instinctively loves and admires and desires. Without this first step no progress is ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Kop and had been defeated. On nearing the high Tugela mountains we heard more and more distinctly the constant rattling of bullets, interrupted by the roar of the cannon and the bom-bom-bom of our saucy bomb-Maxim, that made our hearts expand and those of the enemy shrink. As we raced on to the foot of the mountains, the bullets that the enemy were sending over the mountains to find the Boers ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... see how the wistfulness was quite submerging the twinkle in Mrs. Jerry's eyes, and if she had seen, she would never have guessed what put it there; nor would she have understood why Mrs. Jerry might shrink from attending that magnificent festival, perhaps the only gringo woman in all the crowd, and a pitifully shabby gringo woman at that. To her mind, Mrs. Jerry was beautiful and perfect, even in her shapeless brown dress that ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... story, the truth of which we ourselves strongly doubted. Pages were, however, written concerning the matter in so earnest and pleading a manner that I came to feel conscience-stricken at refusing to do what was asked, and to shrink from seeing Mr. Smith's name appear. Once was written, "Say to James that in my new position, and with my new views of life, I feel that I did wrong to treat his sister Violet as I did. She was not to blame for following out her own convictions, when I had inculcated independent thought ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... people who believe honestly in antiquated prejudices, you must go to the people who have been trained to believe them. An ecclesiastical seminary can manage to drill the pupils into professing absurdities from which average common sense would shrink, and only supply logical machinery for warring against reason. The reference to enlightened aristocracies is common enough; but I cannot discover that, "taken in a lump," any particular aristocracy cannot be as ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... am tremulous and a trifle sick, And, face to face with chance, I shrink a little: My hopes are strong, my will is something weak. Here comes the basket? Thank you. I am ready But, gentlemen my porters, life is brittle: You carry Caesar ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various |
