"Shrink from" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... afraid if you give me my name I shall feel a prominence in the book that I altogether shrink from. My very last wish would be to appear in the book more than is absolutely necessary. If it were possible, I would choose not to be known at all. It is my friend only that I care to see and recognise, though your framing and setting of the picture will very ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Turk was Dicky's idea entirely. Yet Oswald is just, and he owns that he helped as much as he could in packing the Hamper of the Avenger. Dora paid her share, too, though she wasn't in it. The author does not shrink from owning that this was very ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... treatment;' the general charge that is made to cover so many abominable sins, because we women shrink from exposing the crimes we have been in a measure partners to. My attorney assured me that, under the circumstances, Mr. Seabrook would not make any opposition, fearing we might prove the whole, if he did so; but ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... miles to travel, over a country entirely destitute of roads, and cut up by numberless sloughs and ponds. They had, moreover, a considerable river to cross, and, after that, several miles of their way lay through a dense and pathless forest. But they were not the men to shrink from difficulties, at any time; and now they were carried along even more resolutely, by the stern, unwavering spirit of their new leader. Having once learned the direction, Stone put himself at the head of the party, and strode ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... that I have striven hard to force the love to come where it does not exist naturally. Can you sink a well in the sand-hill, and compel the water to bubble up? Can you drain away the moor and bid it blossom like a garden? I cannot love you—when you do everything to make me shrink from you. You esteem nothing, no one, that is good. You sneer at everything that is holy; you disbelieve in everything that is honest; you value not the true, and you have no respect for suffering. I do not deny that I have no love for you—that there is much in you that makes me draw away—as from ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... When a woman has once set up for an Independent, when, scorning the opinion of the world, she walks forth conscious in her own integrity and virtue, though no stain may have sullied her conduct or name, though she may be innately amiable and good, yet every gentler female will shrink from such a character, and tremble lest they should become like her. Women are dependent beings; in Infinite Wisdom it was thus ordained, and why should we endeavour to be otherwise? When once we set up a standard for ourselves, we have thrown ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... suffering, and they dislike painful scenes and disastrous catastrophes; and this sentiment they carry to extremes. Although they have the finest representative of Othello—Salvini—at this moment in Europe, the terrible scene of the murder of Desdemona is a shock that many would shrink from witnessing. They will bear any strain on the imagination, but their fine-strung nerves revolt against the terrible in action. To this natural refinement is owing much of that peculiar softness of manner and reluctance to disoblige which foreigners frequently mistake ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... of a curious kind of suspension bridges, and no obstruction was encountered which the builders did not overcome. 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 ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... brought the faint reek of wood-smoke; an odor much too elusive, at that distance, for humans to smell. And, once or twice, he would glance in worried concern at these humans; as if wondering why they took so coolly a manifestation that a thousand-year-old hereditary instinct made the dog shrink from. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... I shrink from giving offence, and yet I have in this terrible affair an enemy who is my master. Yesterday Byzantium adopted my cause, and lent me her eyes and hands; before the sun went down her ardor cooled; to-day she will not go a rood. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... would be perhaps difficult to find a single church in all the little towns and hamlets within a dozen miles of London, which does not contain one tenant at least who has thus secured permanent possession of his last resting-place. So strong is this feeling in some individuals, that they shrink from confiding even in the stone-vaults in the interior of a city church. Thus, Sir William Rawlins, not so very long ago, bequeathed a certain sum of money for the preservation of his tomb and monument in Bishopsgate Church. The bequest provides for ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... the great principles and results involved in this most important affair, and not shrink from the duties imposed on you, to avoid a few present unpleasant consequences. It is not for me to prescribe rules of conduct to be observed by you, but I must say, that I am surprised that any circumstance should cause you to waver ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... land knows that. However, yet there is no great breach; when it comes, Cranmer will find a friend will not shrink from him. ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... than that, I've seemed of late To shrink from happy boyhood—boys Have grown so noisy, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... attend religious worship. Why, then, is this prerogative of punishment, so eminently paternal, to be withheld from a paternal government? It seems to us, also, to be the height of absurdity to employ civil disabilities for the propagation of an opinion, and then to shrink from employing other punishments for the same purpose. For nothing can be clearer than that, if you punish at all, you ought to punish enough. The pain caused by punishment is pure unmixed evil, and never ought to be inflicted, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... continuance. We must aim at nothing less than the complete effacement of the financial evils that necessarily followed a state of civil war. We must endeavor to apply the earliest remedy to the deranged state of the currency, and not shrink from devising a policy which, without being oppressive to the people, shall immediately begin to effect a reduction of the debt, and, if persisted in, discharge it fully within a definitely fixed number ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... a 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 with her ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... the strange light in Haydon's eyes; she had seen that Haydon had seemed about to shrink from the chain when she held it out to him. She looked from Haydon to Harlan inquiringly and when her glance again returned to Haydon he ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... his legions were the first to shrink from the conflict; and then the King of Misser, ashamed of their cowardice, rapidly advanced towards the champion with the intention of punishing him for his temerity, but he had no sooner received one of Rustem's ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... earthly Shepherd of Christendom, and the depositary of all canonical power. The duty of humility and obedience, impressed on him to excess as a monk, must, no less than the fear of the possible dangers and troubles in store for himself and his Christian brethren, have made Luther shrink from the thought of having actually to testify and fight against him. He ventured to dedicate his 'Solutions' to the Pope himself. The letter of May 30, 1518, in which he did this, shows the peculiar, anomalous, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... Hawk as he carried them on through the night. Them! With a start of recollection she realised fully whose arm was round her, and whose breast her head was resting on. Her heart beat with sudden violence. What was the matter with her? Why did she not shrink from the pressure of his arm and the contact of his warm, strong body? What had happened to her? Quite suddenly she knew—knew that she loved him, that she had loved him for a long time, even when she thought she hated him and when she had fled from him. She knew ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... time to the present it may be safely asserted that he has never hesitated to risk his own life to save that of a fellow-creature. The danger incurred in jumping overboard to rescue a drowning person is very great. Many expert swimmers shrink from it. Ellerthorpe has encountered this risk under almost every variety of circumstance. He has followed the drowning, unseen in the darkness of the night, in the depth of winter, under rafts of timber, under vessels at anchor or in docks, from great heights, and ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... then was equal to more than half the population of England and a menace to that country, as one of its statesmen incautiously admitted—was a conviction not shared by the bulk of his colleagues. They shrank from it as men will shrink from a conclusion that horrifies the human nature in them. Mitchel went outside the Confederation to preach his policy, and he might have preached it without result had not the French Revolution turned men's minds to the contemplation of arms and ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... chiefly serve the purpose of courteous concealment, as when they enable us to refuse a request or to decline an invitation or a visit without disclosing whether disinclination or inability is the cause. Then there are falsehoods for useful purposes. Few men would shrink from a falsehood which was the only means of saving a patient from a shock which would probably produce his death. No one, I suppose, would hesitate to deceive a criminal if by no other means he could prevent him from accomplishing a crime. There are also cases of the suppression of what we believe ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... allowing the absolute nature of justifying grace and the impossibility of the elect ever falling from the faith, or the glorious end to which they were called; and then he said, this granted, self-destruction was the act of a hero, and none but a coward would shrink from it, to suffer a hundred times more every day and night that ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... I should know my way from there. I fear it would not surprise any of the household to see me. They would say—'It is only Lady Alice.' Yet I cannot tell you how I shrink from being seen. No—I will try the way you brought me—if you do not mind ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... too womanly not to shrink from this disclosure, and she had been too thoroughly educated in the faith by which Edith lived not to understand just how her life would appear seen through the latter's belief. Disconnected with a question relating to the ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... yet I think it will be saved, perchance by sacrifice. That is the keystone of your faith, is it not? Therefore if it is asked of you to save the world, you will not shrink from it, will you, Humphrey?" ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... immortal youth. 'It is not the full-grown, articulated, thoroughly accomplished periods of the world that we regard with the pity or reverence due to age, so much as those imperfect, unformed, uncertain periods which seem to totter on the verge of non-existence, to shrink from the grasp of our feeble imagination, as they crawl out of, or retire into the womb of time, of which our utmost assurance is to doubt whether they ever were or not.' And then, as usual, he passes ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... wrong, and I forgive you—but to proceed. The army, as you say, will give me a position in society, from my profession being that of a gentleman, but as I do not wish to take the advantage which you have suggested from the position, I shrink from putting myself into one which may lead to much mortification. As for the law, although I do not exactly agree with you in your abhorrence of the profession, yet I must say, that I do not like the idea. I have been rendered unfit for it by my life up to the present. ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... It is lamentable that, owing to the miserable inefficiency of the Spaniards, ... the glory of the action is the only benefit which we have derived from it.... I have in hand a most difficult task.... In such circumstances one may fail, but it would be dishonourable to shrink from the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... 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 ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... 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, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... self-dissolution of the army with calmness, and then said, "You know, Verney, my fixed determination not to quit this place, until in the light of day Stamboul is confessedly ours. If the men I have about me shrink from following me, others, more courageous, are to be found. Go you before break of day, bear these dispatches to Karazza, add to them your own entreaties that he send me his marines and naval force; if I can get but one regiment to second me, the rest would follow of course. Let him ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... to surround the walls with wicker-work platforms, which served the patients as tolerably comfortable couches. A further and still more important change he effected related to the article of diet. He suggested, and the suggestion was adopted—honour to the courageous humanity which did not shrink from so righteous an innovation!—that instead of his salt ration and spirits, which he could not consume, the sick soldier should be supplied with fresh meat, broth, &c.; and that, as the quantity required for the invalid would be necessarily small, the quarter-master should allow the saving on ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... propose to become participant of those mysteries which raise men above the passions, the mischances, the pains, the sorrows of life, a state only to be attained by rivalling the firmness of the ancient Stoic, and dost thou shrink from the first pressure of adversity, and forfeit the glorious prize for which thou didst start as a competitor, frightened out of the course, like a scared racer, by shadowy ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... the world, and ye faded; No longer your pure rural worshipper now; In the haunts your continual presence pervaded, Ye shrink from the signet of care ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... when so many questions of importance are in agitation.' I expressed as well as I could, and indeed it was but ill, my unfeigned and deep sense of his kindness, my hesitation to form any opinion of my own competency for the office, and at the same time my general desire not to shrink from any responsibility which he might think proper to lay upon me. He said that was the right and manly view to take.... He adverted to my connection with the West Indies as likely to give satisfaction to persons dependent on those colonies, and thought that others would not be displeased. In short, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Thus I am told of one individual that he wants the organ of colour; and all the culture in the world can never supply that defect, and enable him to see colour at all, or to see it as it is seen by the rest of mankind. Another wants the organ of benevolence; and his case is equally hopeless. I shrink from considering the condition of the wretch, to whom nature has supplied the organs of theft and murder in full and ample proportions. The case is like that ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... equipped for so desperate an encounter as the one that lay before him; but it was plain that he did not on that account shrink from it. His appearance upon the scene had not been observed by any of the robbers—for such they plainly were—and he was thus able to take his time and ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... an intelligence which would have been surprising but for his action respecting the rattlesnake. He kept on a slow walk, so as not to leave his friends, and now and then looked at them, as if to make sure they were not trying to shrink from ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... point; and that he places the tendency to good in a conscious creative power which is outside both, and which deals directly with each separate human soul. But neither must we forget that the creative purpose, as he conceives it, fulfils itself equally through good and evil; so that he does not shrink from the contemplation of evil or by any means always seek to extenuate it. He thinks of it philosophically as a condition of good, or again, as an excess or a distortion of what is good; but he can also think of it, in the natural sense, as a distinct mode ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... gratify them. These times are to them the red-letter days of the year, without which life would be intolerably dull. Resort to these gatherings no doubt involves them in toil, in expense, and sometimes in great suffering; but they do not shrink from the cost, as they anticipate the ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... afraid of speaking," she said, a softer light coming into her eyes. "I don't know why people shrink from meeting trouble. Even Tom is half afraid of me. I am not changed, I am still Erica; can't you understand how much I want ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... confession. Before I went to college, as a boy of eighteen, I was at a private tutor's, and there, like Arthur, I became attached, or fancied I was attached, to a woman of a much lower degree and a greater age than my own. You shrink from me——" ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... History, which, embracing the prominent events of all ages, placed before the reader in a clear and comprehensive arrangement, shall yet be so simple and brief as to command the perusal of the great laboring classes, who would shrink from the study of Rollin or Rotteck, as a task too serious to be undertaken. The abridgment of Schlosser's "Weltgeschichte," which we believe has never been translated, contains these qualifications in an eminent degree; yet its high philosophical ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... will, for the rest of our lives I will try to atone for the wrong I did you. I want you, I want our child. I want to win your love again. I can't wipe out what I have done, but I can put you right before the world, I can prove to you that I set you above place and ambition. If you shrink from doing it for me, do it"—he glanced towards the bed—"do it for our child. To-morrow—to-morrow it shall be, if you will forgive. To-morrow ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... it promised mercy and forgiveness, but demanded from me full expiation. I go to make it. To-morrow I shall be on my way to Genoa to surrender myself to justice. You who have pitied my sufferings; who have poured the balm of sympathy into my wounds, do not shrink from my memory with abhorrence now that you know my story. Recollect, when you read of my crime I shall have atoned for it ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... end of three months he became anxious to know what the enemies of the cross intended to do with him. His sentence was transportation and death, unless he conformed. To give up or shrink from his profession of Christ, by embracing the national forms and submitting his conscience to human laws, he dared not. He resolved to persevere even at the sacrifice of his life. To add to his distress, doubts and fears clouded his prospects ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... well shrink from the task facing them. Work in the provincial capital had been of so totally different an order, and life in a large community of foreigners had limited their sphere to the oversight of a small school for girls, and the instruction of ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... vain to shrink from what cannot be avoided, and to hide that from ourselves which must some time be found, is a truth which we all know, but which all neglect, and, perhaps, none more than the speculative reasoner, whose thoughts ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... shrink from humiliation when one has been in the wrong," said Lady Beltham, in the pulpit manner she affected. "Tell Walter ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... able heroically, without the quivering of a single muscle, to look straight in the face of death; who are capable for the sake of an idea of bearing unconceivable privations and sufferings, equal to torture; but then, these people are lost before the haughtiness of a doorman; shrink from the yelling of a laundress; while into a police station they enter in an insufferable and timid distress. And precisely such a one was Lichonin. On the following day (yesterday it had been impossible on account of a holiday and the lateness), having gotten up ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... Undine's freakish playfulness and mischief as an elemental being, and her sweet patience when her soul is won, are quite original, and indeed we cannot help sharing, or at least understanding, Huldbrand's beginning to shrink from the unearthly creature to something of his own flesh and blood. He is altogether unworthy, and though in this tale there is far less of spiritual meaning than in Sintram, we cannot but see that Fouque's thought ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... best and most dignified way of having these papers published. Why make a secret of it at all? If wrong, it should not be done; if right it should be done openly, and in the face of her enemies. In her royal highness's case, as in that of wronged princes in general, why do they shrink from straightforward dealings, and rather have recourse to crooked policy? I wish, in this particular instance, I could make her royal highness feel thus: but she is naturally indignant at being falsely accused, and will not condescend to an ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I will say that, free from any forebodings of evil, above the influence of taunts, beyond the reach of treasonable threats, and confiding securely in the wisdom and patriotism of the Executive, I shrink from the assertion of no right, and will consent to no restrictions on the discretion of the treaty-making power of ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... childishly averse from female ugliness. It is a common thing in Italy to hear of men of the lower classes speak of a woman's plainness with brutality, with a manner almost of personal offence. They often shrink from personal ugliness as Englishmen seldom do, like children shrinking from something abnormal—a frightening ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... widows and orphans call on you Who lost their support from this tyrant's attacks, And he with his legions may soon fall upon you, If you now shrink from duty or show him your backs. Lend, lend a hand! Lend, lend a hand! Your own peace and safety your ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... I would not shrink from the trouble of transcribing the whole letter, if a complete copy were only to be found in the short-lived columns of a newspaper, as inserted in the Record of May 15, 1843, by Merle d'Aubigne; but the Dean has given a reference to the volume in which both the letters he cites are preserved ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... course. The gallantry and intrepidity, displayed by him on many occasions, forbid the supposition that he was under the influence of any unmilitary feeling, and prompted to that course by a disposition to shrink from ordinary dangers. His motives were certainly pure, and his subsequent exertions to rally his men and bring them to face the foe, were as great as could have been made by any one; but disheartened by the fear of unreal danger, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... us with His precious Blood. So one wants never to forget so great a blessing, but always to hold it before one's eyes, in holy and sweet gratitude, seeing how immeasurably God loves us: who did not shrink from giving His only begotten Son to the opprobrious death of the Cross, to give ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... cleared his throat awkwardly. He was feeling embarrassed at the unpleasantness of the duty which he had to perform, but it was a duty, and he did not intend to shrink from performing it. Ever since, gazing appreciatively through the drawing-room windows at the charming scene outside, he had caught sight of the unforgettable form of Billie, seated in her chair with the sketching-block on her knee, he had realised that he could not go away in ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... noticed, that I must live in momentary expectation of sudden death. His reply was very affectionate. He said it had given him a great shock, but on a little reflection he was convinced of its being altogether a nervous sensation; adding, "If not, why should you shrink from sudden death? For my own part, I should desire it, as a short and easy passage out of this life." A tremor came over me as I read these words; but again I thought, "Surely there is something on his mind to brighten that passage, or he would not so express ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... to a young man," I began, "and do you think that he will shrink from enduring any number of hardships to gain them? Are you ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... primitive man to-night, and primitive feelings were astir in him. He had not known he possessed them, yet he—the secret soul of him—did not shrink from them in any surprise. To something in him, some part of him, they came as ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... through the billows, as maidens toss the ball. And when Scylla stooped to seize her, they struck back her ravening heads, and foul Scylla whined, as a whelp whines, at the touch of their gentle hands. But she shrank into her cave affrighted; for all bad things shrink from good; and Argo leapt safe past her, while a fair breeze rose behind. Then Thetis and her nymphs sank down to their gardens of green and purple, where live flowers of bloom all the year round; while the heroes went on rejoicing, yet dreading ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Agastya dwelt. Go, Rama, smite this monster dead, The wicked plague, of power so dread, And further by this deed of thine The good of Brahmans and of kine. Thy hand alone can overthrow, In all the worlds, this impious foe. Nor let compassion lead thy mind To shrink from blood of womankind; A monarch's son must ever count The people's welfare paramount, And whether pain or joy he deal Dare all things for his subjects' weal; Yea, if the deed bring praise or guilt, If life be saved or blood be spilt: Such, through all time, should be the care Of ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... under a bell jar and supplied with leaves; they made no use of them and presently died. If they were supplied with a piece of "garden," they rebuilt it and covered it so far as they could. It was seen to shrink from day to day, the ants bringing out the old pieces and adding them to the wall; finally it was exhausted and the ants died. Others were starved for five days, and then supplied with a bit of garden; ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... store up even this force for his own ends? Who can tell?" The solitary form of a man stood at some distance gazing, as I was gazing, out on the ocean. I walked towards him, thinking with myself who it could be that loved Nature so well that he did not shrink from her even in her most uncompanionable moods. I suspected, and soon found I was right; it ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... to fly from a pestilence which lurks in the very air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we take to nourish us. Faith in the mercy of God, and submission to His will appear to me the only remedies at all likely to avert the danger we shrink from with ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... be a great relief to my heart when I find you sufficiently calm upon this sad subject to claim the promise I made you when she lay dead in this house, never to shrink from speaking of her, as if her memory must be avoided, but rather to take a melancholy pleasure in recalling the times when we were all so happy—so happy that increase of fame and prosperity has only widened the gap in my affections, by causing me ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... the veteran gave way at last; none who knew Barbarossa had ever seen him shrink from fighting—to this his whole career bore witness. He had delayed the issue from the soundest of strategical reasons, which those under his command were too stupid and too prejudiced to understand: what cared they for ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... route than that of Asti preferable. Frank and indifferent to the world's opinion as was Mme. d'Albany, her originally cut and dry intellectual temper hardened by many years' misery, one can conceive that she should shrink from accepting the hospitality of Alfieri's mother. Alfieri had doubtless shown her his mother's letters, and from these letters, as reflected in his answers, it is clear that the Countess of Albany, returning from that ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... to this! Associate with black folks! how shocking! What if he was a—Fessenden's? wasn't he white? Where were those finer tastes and instincts which make you and me shrink from persons of color? Pity they had not been properly developed in him! Pity he should stoop so low as to eat and sleep with niggers, and feel grateful! He rolls and tumbles in mad frolic with Joe on the garret-floor, and plays horse with him. He suffers his hair to be combed by the girls, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... twenty-one years of age. You are brave and courageous, and will not shrink from any obstacle. You are rich, you have knowledge—now it must be seen whether you possess the will which ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... have long ago bidden each other good-by as man and wife—but we have also made up our minds to take life lightly, to be free, and to lay hold of every happiness that comes within our reach. Should we be mad enough, or cowardly enough, to shrink from the highest ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... recover her composure? Recover, that is, the first beginnings of it? At what stage in her mourning is it legitimate to intrude on her with reminders of obligations incurred before she was a widow,—with, in fact, the Twinklers? Delicacy itself would shrink from doing it under a week thought Mr. Twist, or even under a fortnight, or even if you came to that, under a month; and meanwhile what was he to ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... youth of the backwoods early became an excellent shot and a confirmed sportsman. The woods still swarmed with game, and every cabin depended largely upon this for its supply of food. But to his strength was added a gentleness which made him shrink from killing or inflicting pain, and the time the other boys gave to lying in ambush, he preferred to spend in reading or in efforts at improving ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... fire-eating warrior does not run me through the body for impertinence before he has time to appreciate the delicacy of my mission, I may be able to convince him that a well-to-do wife is worth the respectable consideration of a hard-up captain of Chasseurs. I say I may be able to convince him; but I shrink from the impudence of the encounter. I am to accost a total stranger in a foreign army and tell him to return to his wife. This is the pretty little mission I have undertaken. It sounded glorious and eumoirous and quixotic and deucedly funny, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... English Pre-Raphaelitists, particularly in dealing with the human form. They have no hesitation in pursuing into still further minuteness the literal delineation of inanimate objects, draperies, etc.; but they shrink from giving full life to their figures, not from a slavish adherence to their exemplars, but from a dread lest it should seem that what is shown is all that is meant. The early painters were thus naive and distinct because of their limitations; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... Nor will women shrink from war because they lack courage. Earth's women of every generation have faced suffering and death with an equanimity that no soldier on a battlefield has ever surpassed and few have equalled; and where war has been to preserve life, or land, or freedom, unparasitised and ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... one of the best families in the country, and he now thought of the respect due to the unsullied reputation of a young girl—he was somewhat less reckless than ten years ago. But now there should be a change. Since he had serious intentions he need not shrink from using all means to complete the conquest of this fortress, which, moreover, was already on the point of raising the ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... emphasis should be given to the subject, whether by way of delicacy and poetry or too impressive warning. But the plain fact is that in refusing to allow the child to be taught by qualified unrelated elders (the parents shrink from the lesson, even when they are otherwise qualified, because their own relation to the child makes the subject impossible between them) we are virtually arranging to have our children taught by other children in guilty ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... are here sworn to do justice between man and man and mete out punishment to the guilty, and we must not shrink from our task. We have heard the case through, and if we are not competent to give a ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... ourselves sinners, and of having to owe all our hope and salvation to God's undeserved mercy, therefore we stay outside. And because the way is narrow, and we have to put off some of our treasures, our earthward-looking desires shrink from laying these aside, and therefore we stop outside. There was room in the boat for the last man who stood on the deck, but he could not make up his mind to leave a bag of gold. There was no room for that. Therefore he would not leap, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and, says his biographer, 'he went very decent to the gallows, being in a white waistcoat, clean napkin, white gloves, and an orange in one hand.' So well did he play his part, that one wonders Jack Ketch did not shrink from the performance of his. But throughout his short life, Roderick Audrey—the very name is an echo of romance!—displayed a contempt for whatever was common or ugly. Not only was his appearance at Tyburn a lesson in elegance, but he thieved, as none ever thieved before or since, with no other accomplice ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... sail about the lovely islands of the South Seas without constantly seeing before him men and women dying of the most terrible of all diseases—leprosy. The poor victims are cast out from their homes, and those who have loved them most, shrink from them with the greatest horror, for one touch of their bodies or their clothes might cause the wife or child to share their doom. Special laws are made for them, special villages are set apart for them, and in old times as they walked they were bound ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... it, lived near each other. I have learnt much good of you. You have a heart open to the wants of your fellow creatures. I am happy that it is so. You shall not be without the power of gratifying your benevolence. I know you have a spirit that must shrink from a state of obligation. This paper, to which the whole remnant of my fortune is pledged, secures you independence, Adelaide: and let the only recommendation of the gift be, that it will administer to you the means of indulging ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... Brebeuf had made a vow to Christ: 'Never to shrink from martyrdom if, in Your mercy, You deem me worthy of so great a privilege. Henceforth, I will never avoid any opportunity that presents itself of dying for You, but will accept martyrdom with delight, ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... his spotless name should share his mortal bed. Old friends would look beyond his grave, to my dishonored one, And hide the virtues of the sire behind the recreant son. And I can fancy, if there my corse its fettered limbs should lay, His frowning skull and crumbling bones would shrink from me away; But I swear to God I'm innocent, and never blood have shed! And they'll hang me to the gallows, mother—hang me till ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... listened to the bishop, and exclaimed, with deep emotion, "It is a terrible sentence. Little did I imagine that any offense I had committed against God or the king could merit such punishment. It is not death that I fear. Death is the common lot of all. But I shrink from dishonor. Yet I may hope that my sufferings will so far expiate my offenses that my innocent family will not be involved in my ruin by the confiscation of my property. This much, at least, I think I may claim in consideration of my past services." Then, after a pause, he added, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... Nemesis which they bring with them; of chronic moodiness and concealed rage. Day by day he was lashing himself up into fresh fury, and yet day by day he was becoming more careful to conceal that fury. He had many reasons: moral cowardice, which made him shrink from the tremendous consequences of an explosion— equally tremendous, were he right or wrong. Then the secret hope, perhaps the secret consciousness, that he was wrong, and was only saying to God, like the self-deceiving prophet, "I do well to be angry;" then the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... no evil? Is there nothing hateful, nothing against which unceasing war should be waged, in the degradation of those unhappy persons who worship idols of their own imagination? Can error be fraught with good and truth with evil, that we should shrink from doing justice to both? Everywhere are learnedly ignorant or basely cunning men, who would scare us from dealing with religious error, as all error deserves to be dealt with, by high-sounding jargon about the danger of freeing vulgar minds from the wholesome restraints of certain ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... spirit such as he—all are not prepared to subscribe to the precise formulation of the mystery as given in an Athanasian creed, or a homily of a fourth century father. Beyond admitting in a general and rather vague way that Jesus is "Divine," many people are not prepared to go. They would shrink from saying that he was the Infinite and Eternal, from whom all things derive their being; they see no necessity for believing in the story of his miracles, or the legendary account of his appearance in this world; above all, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... deathlike look; ghastly protruding bones; the faltering, hollow voice; preaching audibly from the shattered, shaking skeleton; piercing to the most vital marrow of the bones, and sapping the manly strength of youth—faugh! the idea sickens me. Nose, eyes, ears shrink from it. You saw that miserable wretch, Amelia, in our hospital, who was heavily breathing out his spirit; modesty seemed to cast down her abashed eye as she passed him; you cried woe upon him. Recall that hideous image to your ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... accused him on this ground of sedition, and of treason against the government. Nothing could be more unjust; for Jesus had always recognized the Roman government as the established power. But conservative religious bodies do not generally shrink from calumny. Notwithstanding his own explanation, they drew certain conclusions from his teaching; they transformed him into a disciple of Judas the Gaulonite; they pretended that he forbade the payment of tribute to Caesar.[1] Pilate asked him if he was really ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... nervous, Dr. Hamilton. I have always been a timid man, and my timidity depends upon my frail physical health. But my soul is firm, and I can bring myself up to face a danger which a less-nervous man might shrink from. What I am doing now is done from no compulsion, but entirely from a sense of duty, and yet it is, beyond doubt, a desperate risk. If things should go wrong, I will have some claims to the title ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a visible gain. He never, I believe, wants all that the thing offers and implies. He wants, at most, no more than certain parts. He may desire, let us say, a housekeeper to protect his goods and entertain his friends—but he may shrink from the thought of sharing his bathtub with anyone, and home cooking may be downright poisonous to him. He may yearn for a son to pray at his tomb—and yet suffer acutely at the me reapproach of relatives-in-law. He may dream of a beautiful and complaisant mistress, less exigent ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... bound to remonstrate with them and endeavor to warn them timeously. This of course needs to be wisely done, and after prayer to God to guide us rightly; but we ought to do it. "A word spoken in due season how good is it." Such a word has often been blessed and made effectual, and we should not shrink from speaking it. The right time for speaking it should be chosen, but it should not be left by us unsaid. When Paley the great moralist was a student at Cambridge he wasted his time in idleness and frivolity, and was the butt ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... attack on Carthage at the time of his death. His last years were harassed by ill-health and the turbulence of his grandson Archagathus, at whose instigation he is said to have been poisoned; according to others, he died a natural death. He was a born leader of mercenaries, and, although he did not shrink from cruelty to gain his ends, he afterwards showed himself a mild and popular ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... what are they to the problems of the hereafter? What is there like knowing God? Not a scroll of the mysteries, but the mysteries themselves would for that hour at least lie before me revealed; even the innermost and most awful—the power which now we shrink from thought of—which rimmed the void with shores, and lighted the darkness, and out of nothing appointed the universe. All places would be opened. I would be filled with divine knowledge; I would see all glories, taste all ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... you fancy yourself a thing apart from the mass." And again, the same writer says: "Before you can attain knowledge you must have passed through all places, foul and clean alike. Therefore, remember that the soiled garment you shrink from touching may have been yours yesterday, may be yours tomorrow. And if you turn with horror from it when it is flung upon your shoulders, it will cling the more closely to you. The self-righteous man makes for himself a bed of mire. Abstain ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... want you to shrink from this sin as the Jews did from the fiery serpents. Hate it. Loathe it as you would the leprosy. Make a solemn vow before the Saviour, who loves the slave and slave children as truly as he does you, that you will ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... very certain, and much to be rejoiced at, that our literature is hag-ridden. Tea has shattered our nerves; late dinners make us slaves of indigestion; the French Revolution has made us shrink from the name of philosophy, and has destroyed, in the more refined part of the community (of which number I am one), all enthusiasm for political liberty. That part of the reading public which shuns the solid food of reason ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss—we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling. By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... money is nothing; the self-made man only finds out all that he lacks after six months of flatteries. Andoche Finot, the self-made man in question, stiff, taciturn, cold, and dull-witted, possessed the sort of spirit which will not shrink from groveling before any creature that may be of use to him, and the cunning to be insolent when he needs a man no longer. Like one of the grotesque figures in the ballet in Gustave, he was a marquis behind, a boor in front. And this ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... Greeks for the people who roamed in these Eastern wilds-much remained for us to do; for it was yet a dark spot on the missionary map. Thousands of these poor souls were without the saving knowledge of the Gospel. He could not shrink from a duty so demanding-wringing his very heart with its pleadings! Giving the light of the Gospel to these vicious Arabs and Kurds was the end and aim of his mission. (A motion of satisfaction was here perceptible.) And while there, he would ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... she put in an appearance at the factory the other girls marked her down as being a little different from themselves; a little less rough and capable of looking after her own interests, a little more refined, and ready to shrink from jest and laughter. ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to us but through our toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to us to till." To undervalue our own thought because it is ours, to depreciate our own powers or faculties because some one else's are more vigorous, to shrink from doing what we can because we think we can do so little, is to hinder our own development and the progress of the world. For it is only by exercise that any faculty is strengthened, and only by each one putting his shoulder to the wheel that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... projection from a gun into a besieged town would instantly induce the garrison to evacuate the place and quit; but the barbarity which would be involved in subjecting even an enemy to direct contact with the Bradley Sausage is so frightful that we shrink from recommending its use, excepting in extreme cases. The odor disseminated by the stink-pot used in war by the Chinese is fragrant and balmy compared with the perfume which belongs to this article. It might also be used profitably ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler) |
