"Span" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a pretty picture: the bride, a handsome demoiselle de boutique, or shop assistant, in white, with veil and wreath; behind her, girls in bright dresses bearing enormous bouquets; bridegroom and supporters, all in spick and span swallow-tail coats, with white ties and gloves, like beaux in a French comedy, backwards and forwards; the priests looking gorgeous, although in their second-best robes, their gold plates shining as they collected the money; for whether married first, second or third class, ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Holy Ones!' he cried from fifty yards. (They were by the shoal under the first bridge-span, out of sight of hungry priests.) 'Rice and good curry, cakes all warm and well scented with hing [asafoetida], curds and sugar. King of my fields,'—this to the small son—'let us show these holy men that we Jats of Jullundur ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... the physical ethers. Prana is vitality, the integrating energy that co-ordinates the physical molecules and holds them together in a definite organism; it is the life-breath within the organism, the portion of the universal Life-Breath, appropriated by the organism during the span of existence that we speak of as "a life". Kama is the aggregate of appetites, passions, and emotions, common to man and brute. Manas is the Thinker in us, the Intelligence. Buddhi is the vehicle wherein Atma, the Spirit, dwells, and in which ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... apparel is new, as one of the officers told Monsieur D. at Spa. Uniforms, boots, belts, saddles, bridles and even buttons—all new and spic and span for a triumphal entry into Paris. Each man carries two sets of buttons, one for field service (negligible) and the other, shining brass ones, for the review ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... insult if we sent such as ourselves, but the probability of anyone so harassed overcoming the difficulties of river, desert and mountain barrier is so remote that this person is more than willing to stake his entire share of the anticipated bounty against a span-length of succulent lotus root or an embossed ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... praus, and to look for a shore where he could easily disembark. A landing-place was found near the town; the men disembarked, and set out on foot in search of the Moros. The latter appeared in a broad plain, covered with grass about a hand-span high. The men were divided into two troops, in order to attack the Moros, who were shooting arrows as rapidly as they could, and wildly shouting. The Moros waited until the Spaniards began to hit their flanks with arquebuse bullets; and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... news, the simplest, oldest thing in the way of news that there is, seemed to him never to have been told to anyone before—never, at least, to have been so wonderful. All the beauties of Cloom, of life, all the trouble his own short span had felt, all the future held, seemed to fall into place and be made worth while. This was what he had lived for without knowing it—not to make Cloom finer for himself, not to save his own soul or carve out a life for himself, but this—to make of himself this mysterious immortality. ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... the level of the water, and is 10 feet in breadth. At Lockport the canal descends 60 feet by means of 5 locks excavated in solid rock, and afterward proceeds on a uniform level for a distance of 63 miles to the Genesee River, over which it is carried on an aqueduct having 9 arches of 50 feet span each. Eight and a half miles from this point it passes over the Cayuga marsh, on an embankment 2 miles in length, and in some places 70 feet in height. At Syracuse, the "long level" commences, which extends for a distance of 69 miles to Frankfort, without ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... never seen the 'Home for Girls,' you will wish me to describe Anne's new abode. Let me see. I have said that the house was square and brown, haven't I? with many green-shuttered windows. The grounds were large and well-kept—almost too spick and span, for one expects twenty-six children to leave behind them such marks of good times as paper dolls and picture-books, croquet-mallets and tennis balls ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... the marge of the horrible deep Hangs and hovers a bridge with its phantom-like span, [21] Not by man was it built, o'er the vastness to sweep; Such thought never came to the daring of man! The stream roars beneath—late and early it raves— But the bridge, which it threatens, is safe ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... and down, And kept their herd of brutes, Their uniforms were spick and span, And they wore their Sunday suits, But we knew the work they had been at, By ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... home Logan sedulously nursed him. A more generous diet than he had ever known before did wonders for the marquis, though he peevishly remonstrated against every bottle of wine that was uncorked. He did live for the span which he deemed necessary for his patriotic purpose, and peacefully expired, his last words being 'Nae ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... sweet memories are frequently nothing more or less than outbursts of hidden passion and attacks of sensual love. Seume is mistaken in his assertion that mysticism lies mainly in weakness of the nerves and colic—it lies a span deeper. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... act. "A sick man cannot live on beans." But now they were down to beans—just beans and lard boiled together. Then a day dawned when there was not even a spoonful of lard left. "Beans straight!"—it was the death knell, for beans straight—beans without grease—kill the strongest man in a brief span of days. Oh, that the ice bridges would melt, the seas open, the ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... An old and widowed man, Whose years had reached life's farthest, frailest span, And o'er whose head, as every moment flew, Eternity its dark'ning twilight threw, Lay in his silent chamber, dull and lone, Watching the midnight stars, as one by one They as slow, voiceless spirits glided past The window of his solitude, and cast Their pale light on his brow; and thus he lay ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... immense bow, nearly one hundred miles, from the lower to the upper Potomac. Our army, two to one, is on the span of the arc, and we do nothing. A French sergeant would be better ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... it very durable, but difficult to work. It is hard, dense, and strong, fairly free from knots, straight-grained, and one of the best timbers for heavy engineering work where great strength, long span, and durability are required. Used for heavy construction, shipbuilding, cars, docks, beams, ties, flooring, and interior decoration. Coast region ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... Look out, beyond, and see The far horizon's beckoning span! Faith in your God-known destiny! We are a part of some ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... whole number of the votaries of voluptuousness have, as yet, not been quickened or entered the world, and I mean to avail myself of this occasion to introduce this object among their number, so as to give it a chance to go through the span of human existence." "The votaries of voluptuousness of these days will naturally have again to endure the ills of life during their course through the mortal world," the Taoist remarked; "but when, I wonder, will ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... course and allow for drift of winds. The great-circle course was simple; the point he marked was drawing them as if it had been a magnet—drawing them as it drew the eyes of Walt Harkness, staring strainingly ahead as if to span the thousands of miles ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... a very neat sort of a little body!" she said to herself. "I just know that she is a tidy nest keeper,—she always looks so spick and span, herself!" ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... The plans of the other engineers were all rejected. I continued to work on mine. After the contest I happened to pick up a piece of torn plan out of the office wastebasket, and it gave me a suggestion how to improve the central span of my bridge." ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... reached. The last of these down stream, although insignificant when compared with the perilous falls up river, are sufficiently swift and voluminous to cause considerable anxiety to a nervous mind. The five granite pillars which here span the Yukon, at intervals of a few feet, from shore to shore, are known as the "Five Fingers," and here the steamer must be hauled up the falls through a narrow passage blasted out of a submerged rock. A steel hawser attached to a windlass above the falls is used ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... bridge over the Alleghany river, to replace the old wooden Howe truss bridge, which had become inadequate to the increasing traffic. The new bridge opens like a fan towards the freight yard at Pittsburg being at the narrowest part, next to the main span 55 feet wide. The river is crossed with spans averaging 153 feet in the clear, with a bearing of five feet on each pier. The principle of the construction is known as the lattice girder plan, with vertical ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... distant horn, And whets his tusks against the gnarled thorn; Palladian palace with its storied halls; Fountains, where Love lies listening to their falls; 85 Gardens, where flings the bridge its airy span, And Nature makes her happy home with man; Where many a gorgeous flower is duly fed With its own rill, on its own spangled bed, And wreathes the marble urn, or leans its head, 90 A mimic mourner, that with veil withdrawn Weeps liquid gems, the presents ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... had dragged by with Granger as would a century with normal men, except that in the entire span of those hundred years there had been no summer. In them he had lived through and remembered every emotion which had ever come to him. His brain was confused with remembering, fevered with anguish of regret for things lost, which would never come again. He had nearly succumbed ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... amang farmers I hae muckle pride, But I mauna speak high when I 'm tellin' o't, How brawlie I strut on my shelty to ride, Wi' a sample to shew for the sellin' o't. In blue worset boots that my auld mither span, I 've aft been fu' vanty sin' I was a man, But now they 're flung by, and I 've bought cordivan, And my wifie ne'er ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... if he was not afraid of being compelled to work. Ungka was in fact a baboon from the wilds of Sumatra. He had been caught young by a Malay lad, who sold him to Captain Van Deck. He was about two feet and a half high, and the span of his arms was four feet. His face was perfectly free from hair, except at the sides, where it grew like whiskers. It also rather projected over his forehead, but he had very little beard. His coat was jet ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... He was not one of those who thought that the raid alone was responsible; he knew very well that this lamentable affair had only fanned into an open blaze years-long smoulderings of discontent. The Raid had been a consequence, not an isolated spontaneous act. Little by little over a long span of years the ambitious and sordid overridings of various restless, and too often reckless, adventurers had come to be considered as representative of English rule, English opinions and, what was still more unfortunate, England's ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... wall is left, spanning the valley from side to side, through which the stream issuing from the glacier may be seen cutting its way. It is important to notice that such terminal moraines may actually span the whole width of a valley, from side to side, and be interrupted only where watercourses of sufficient power break through them. To suppose that such transverse walls of loose materials could be thrown across a valley by a river ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... understand an 'idea' as a process no less melting and fleeting than an act of feeling or of will, and I comprehended the older doctrine of association of 'ideas' to be no longer tenable.... Besides all this, experimental observation yielded much other information about the span of consciousness, the rapidity of certain processes, the exact numerical value of certain psychophysical data, and the like. But I hold all these more special results to be relatively insignificant by-products, and by no means the important thing."—Philosophische Studien, x. 121-124. ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... proves, in the long span of centuries, to be good or evil, a blessing to men or a curse, Karl Marx must always be an object of interest as one of the great world-figures of immortal memory. As the years go by, thoughtful men and women will find the same interest in studying the life and ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... houses, and thought that there sleep men, women, and children, free for a few hours from lust and hate and fear, all of them romantic, all of them striving, in their separate ways, to be happy, all of them passionate for their little span of life; and then thought that that street is but one of thousands and thousands which radiate to every point, and that all the night air of one city is holding the passions of those millions of creatures? I suppose I have ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... a deep breath of relief when she saw that this was no ravening monster. Her immediate thought was the hunter's thought. She drew her bow to the full length of her shaft, and as the panting beast went by she let drive. The arrow pierced to half its span, just behind the straining fore-shoulder. Blood burst from the animal's nostrils. It fell on its knees, struggled up again, blundered on for half a dozen strides, and dropped ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... connecting the apparent facts with causes (unapparent facts) similar to those which have been associated in experience with such results; in the other case the inference connects wet streets and swollen gutters with causes which have been associated in experience with such results. Let the inference span with its mighty arch a myriad of years, or link together the events of a few minutes, in each case the arch rises from the ground of familiar facts, and reaches an antecedent which is known to be a cause capable ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... those layers of fat which the similarly well-conditioned old gentleman of the city finds so inexpressibly delicious. When the summer is once, over, and while the cold weather prevails, they furnish another and quite new set of dainties. Then the span-long, ripe, 'salt' oyster is to be had for the raking of their more solidly-bottomed basins; and all along their more retired nooks and harbors, the gunner, by taking proper precautions, may bring to bag the somewhat 'sedgy' but still well-flavored black duck, the tender widgeon, the buttery little ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was small, nothing could be seen of the outline of that part of the planet which was outside the sun. But when half the planet was on the sun, the outline of the part still off the sun was marked by a slender arc of light. A curious fact was that this arc did not at first span the whole outline of the planet, but only showed at one or two points. In a few moments another part of the outline appeared, and then another, until, at last, the arc of light extended around the ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... to span the narrow stretch of water that separated us from our late antagonist; and upon climbing the side we were received at the gangway by an officer of some twenty-five years of age, whose head was swathed in a blood-stained bandage, and who handed his sword to Percival with a dignified bow. This ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... cold Stomach, shew My dissolution is in view, Eleven times seven near liv'd have I. And now God calls I willing Die, My Shuttle's shot, my Race is run, My Sun is set, my Day is done. My span is measured, Tale is told, My Flower is faded and grown old. My Dream is vanish'd, Shadows fled, My Soul with Christ, my Body Dead, Farewel dear Wife, Children and Friends, Hate Heresie, make Blessed Ends, Bear Poverty, live with ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... to try and express himself by the same means, he would say: "The world's a bubble, like, and the life of man less than a span, like." ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... style, in dainty ruffled frocks and necklaces and bright hair-ribbons, tripped gracefully in and advanced to meet Mrs. Morris, quite like grown ladies in their manners. Behind them came several boys, spick and span in fresh white linen waists and silk neckties and ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... English circus announce that the performances are under his direct patronage. "Victoria, the Empress of the Arena," is to-night to perform her unparalleled feats in the ring in the presence of His Excellency. This was the only tribute we saw paid in India to Her Majesty's spick-and-span brand-new title of Empress. We attended the performance, which was really creditable, but the natives sat unmoved throughout every scene; so different from the conduct of the Japanese, who scream with delight like children under similar circumstances. The ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... up to them with Prudy; "did you ever before see a span of horses with a dog running ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... very near the duck rock without displacing the duck may also prove disastrous to the thrower. Should a stone fall within a hand span (stretching from finger tip to thumb) of the duck rock without knocking off the duck, the guard challenges the thrower by shouting "Span!" whereupon he proceeds to measure with his hand the distance between ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... Do not underrate him. But greater is He that is in you. You cannot overrate Him. He got the victory at every turn during those thirty-three years, and will get it for you as many years and turns as shall make out the span of your life. Your one business will be to let ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... His friends were few, and the best of them thought His life a mistake. It takes more than the span of our lives to measure their size. It is better that a great soul should be called a failure than that it should die a shrivelled success. Earth measures by what the hands hold; heaven by the heart. The hands at last lose their grasp, but the heart wealth goes on from more to more. ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... our heads contains a death within it, as certain if it were to fall upon us, as that occasioned by the angry surge, which swallows us up in its wrath. I believe, after all, that as many sailors in proportion, run out their allotted span as the rest of the world that are engaged in other apparently less dangerous professions; although it must be acknowledged that occasionally we do become food for fishes. "There is a tide in the affairs of men," says Shakespeare; but certainly, of all the tides that ever interfered in a ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... room of the shanty. Four miles to the south, Ithaca, too, slept,—the wholesome sleep of a small country town, while Cayuga Lake gleamed and glistened in the moonlight, as if fairies were tumbling it with powdered fingers. Above both town and span of water, Cornell University loomed darkly on the hill, the natural skyline sharply cut ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... limited span, and naught may avail to extend it. This is manifested by the impermanence of human beings, but yet, whenever necessary, I will hereafter make my appearance from time to time as a god (Kami), a sage (Confucian teacher), or ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Span across in treble curving, Bow of promise, upper lip! Set them free, with gracious swerving; Let the wing-words float and dip. DUMB ART THOU? O Love immortal, More than words thy speech must be; Childless yet the tender portal ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... harp on a mad maid's anger. Yesterday you were my enemy, a thing of threats and treason. To-day all's different; to-day you are my guest. Soon you will ride hence, and we will, if Providence please, never meet again. But for a span of hours let us make believe to be friend and friend, till Colonel Cromwell send my ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... or two west of Chalons the rider crossed the historic Marne on a makeshift bridge built from the materials of a ruined house and the remnants of the former span. ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... neber want no mess of fish, ketched wid a angle. He just take him fiddle an' fool along de branch, an' play a tune, an' up dey comes, an' he cotch 'em in he hans. He war mighty sot on Dicey, an' dey war married all proper an' reg'lar. Hit war so long ago, dat de railroad war a bran-new spick an' span ting in dose days. Dicey once she lounge 'round de track, 'cause she tink she hear Orpus a fiddlin' in de fur-fur-away. Onyways de hengine smash her. Den Jim Orpus he took on turrible, an' when she war buried, he sot him down on de grave, an' he fiddle an' ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... Creek arose from the failure of several wooden structures, to the great inconvenience of the public, this being really a creek rising and falling with the tide. The obstacle, and the steepness of the left bank, which was considerable, have been triumphantly surmounted by a noble arch of 110 feet span which carries the road at a very slight inclination to the level of the opposite bank. The bridge is wholly the work of men in irons who must have been fed, and must consequently have cost the public just as much if ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... a vague conviction that his sister was not dead, but lived on in him, as she had promised. There is a Breton superstition that those who die young are not dead, but stay and hover over the places where they lived until they have fulfilled the normal span of their existence.—So Antoinette lived out her life ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... it seems but a day ago that Stevenson set out to write a little book that was to be called "Life at Twenty-five"—before he got it written he was long past the delectable age—and now we rub our eyes and see he has been dead longer than the span of life he then so delightfully contemplated. If there is one meditation common to every adult on this globe it is this, so variously phrased, "Well, bo, ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... magnify Allah and extol His might and main, and her navel[FN59] an ounce of musk, sweetest of savour could contain: she had thighs great and plump, like marble columns twain or bolsters stuffed with down from ostrich ta'en, and between them a somewhat, as it were a hummock great of span or a hare with ears back lain while terrace-roof and pilasters completed the plan; and indeed she surpassed the bough of the myrobalan with her beauty and symmetry, and the Indian rattan, for she was even as saith of them the poet ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... it, sir? Something about the church? I should ha' thought the church was all spick and span by this time." ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... a power To lengthen life's too fleeting hour, And purchase from the hand of death A little span, a moment's breath, How I would love the precious ore! And every day should swell my store; That when the fates would send their minion, To waft me off on shadowy pinion, I might some hours of life obtain, And bribe him back to hell ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... never touched Hillard's face. His hand, expectant of this very movement, caught the assailant's wrist, and, with a quick jerk, brought him half-way across the table. He bore down on the wrist so fiercely that the Italian cried faintly. Hillard, with his face but a span from the other's, spoke tensely, but ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... between each column or pilaster, supposing we make them to stand on a square foot. Draw the first archway EKF facing us, and its inner semicircle gh, with also its thickness or depth of 1 foot. Draw the span of the archway EF, then central line PO to point of sight. Proceed to raise as many other arches as required at the given distances. The intersections of the central line with the chords mn, &c., will give the centres from which to ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... song that roars where the rocket soars Is the song of the stellar flame; The dreams of Man and galactic span Are ...
— The Stoker and the Stars • Algirdas Jonas Budrys (AKA John A. Sentry)
... and the Life of Man Less than a span: In his conception wretched, from the womb So to the tomb; Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years With cares and fears. Who then to frail mortality shall trust, But limns on water, or but writes ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... the simplest and cheapest kind of a receiving aerial that can be put up. The first thing to do is to find out the length of wire you need by measuring the span between the two points of support; then add a sufficient length for the leading-in wire and enough more to connect your receiving set with the ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... seeing things as they were once, as they are still, in a certain sleepy yet altogether individual corner of country life. And especially do we delight in one bit of fine mental tracery, etched carelessly, yet for all time, so far as our own' short span is concerned, by the unerring stylus of youth: the outline of a little red schoolhouse, distinguished from the other similar structures within Tiverton bounds by "District No. V.," painted on a shingle, in primitive black letters, and nailed aloft over the door. Up to the very ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... we, which we never can, Stretch our lives beyond their span; Beauty like a shadow flies, And our ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... with the content of the Present is at each point of its course something other than it was before.[22] But in any case this aspect of the Past as presented by Eucken shows that human life requires a great span of time which has already run in order to create its ideals and to be raised from the triviality of the mere moment. Goethe perceived the importance ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... the inch when ye have thol'd the span,'" he said, leaning back wearily in the cab but taking care to give the conversation an abrupt turn before ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... their ordinary habit. Their curiosity was excited,—so were their faculties of criticism. The new servants from the Manor had attended church, sitting all together in a smart orderly row, and suggesting in their neat spick-and-span attire an unwonted note of novelty, of fashion, of change, nay, even of secret and suppressed society wickedness. Their looks, their attitudes, their whisperings, their movements, furnished plenty of matter to talk about,—particularly as Mrs. Spruce ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... a common allegiance to God and the King. Mingled with French traders and French settlers, softened by French manners, guided by French priests, ruled by French officers, their now divided bands would become the constituents of a vast wilderness empire, which in time might span the continent. Spanish civilization crushed the Indian; English civilization scorned and neglected him; French civilization embraced ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... none other than Michelangelo, whose scheme was to make it not only a wonder of architecture but a wonder also of statuary, the facade having many niches, each to be filled with a sacred figure. But Michelangelo always dreamed on a scale utterly disproportionate to the foolish little span of life allotted to us and the S. Lorenzo facade was ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... lives the span of life allotted to man. After many small warnings his thumb weakens. He neglects that; and he gets touches of paralysis in the thumb, the arm, and the nerves of the stomach; can't digest; can't sweat; at last, can't work; goes to the hospital: there they galvanize him, which does ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... During the brief span of their lives they walked in their native garments down the great highway of a great nation; were laughed at, sworn at, chased, and fled from. Then they passed and were heard ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of this present time have fixed our faith firm as a rock upon our righteous cause, and upon the superior power and the inflexible will for victory that abide in the German nation. Nevertheless the deplorable fact remains, that the boundless egotism already mentioned has for that span of the future discernible to us destroyed the collaboration of the two nations which was so full of promise for the intellectual uplift of humanity. But the other party has willed it so. Upon England alone rests the monstrous guilt and the responsibility ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... of fine oil and beer, stirring plenty of sugar into it, and drinking off the nauseous compound; "this is a secret of ours, and makes an arm like this;" and he laid his on the table, and vainly endeavored to span it. "But there is a drawback. Have you ever seen an old porter? No; for there are none. Fifty is the greatest age they have ever reached. My father was fifty when he died, and the one we lately buried—Mr. Schroeter was at the funeral—was forty-nine. I ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... God at first made man, Having a glass of blessing standing by, "Let us," said he, "pour on him all we can: Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie, Contract into a span." ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... Paul's is in many respects essentially different from its Roman model. In the Temple of Peace three arches cover the enormous length of over 250 feet, and seriously diminish the apparent size; in St. Paul's their span is less than half of this. Indeed, in this respect Wren adopted a via media between the Roman and the Anglo-Norman and Pointed. Old St. Paul's, for instance, contained twice as many arches in the same length as its successor, and Rochester still more. This use of larger arches renders the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... after twenty to thirty months in a rat. He is then about through. But when an operation is performed on a senile rat he gets from six to eight months' new life. In other words, the addition to his normal span is 20 to 30 per cent. That would be a large fraction of life for a man to live over again. The rat lives it vigorously, eagerly, ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... her grimly, she would have to go back to cotton stockings; and no more grilled sweetbreads for supper, either; she'd be lucky if she got scrapple. She didn't care; everything was black for her. Black it must have been, I pointed out to McGeorge; it was bad enough with worry limited to the span of one existence, but to look forward to a perpetuity ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... expressive gesture. "Oh, yes," he admitted, "it's in you. All you want in order to beat the wilderness and turn it into a garden is an ax, a span of oxen, and a breaker plow. You ought to be proud of your energy. Still, you see, our folks back yonder aren't quite ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... had come she had promised to go and live with them, all at once I heard an awful racket, and looked toward the road, and oh cricky! what do you think I saw? Tearing round Deacon Stiles's corner, lickety-split, was a span of horses and a buggy, with the reins dragging in the dust, and the buggy spinning from one side of the road to the other, and in it was a lady with great wide-open eyes, and a face as white as a sheet, clutching a little girl in her arms ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... one span of time has pass'd, So swift to some, to others slow; But it has gone, and we should cast Along with it, ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... disturb me; and it is high time for me to be considering what I am to make of the remainder of my days. Too many of them have been wasted, too great a portion of my span has been sacrificed to vanities. One must not forget one is in a fair way to become a grandfather; it is plainly an urgent duty to reconcile oneself to that estate and cultivate its proper gravity and decorum. Yet a little while and one must bid adieu to that Youth which one ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... results of their lawless and perilous enterprise—a portion of his gains were safe, but this last blow was of crippling force. And only a day or so prior to it he had been revelling in the prospect of a speedy return to civilized life, to the enjoyment of wealth for the remainder of his allotted span. He recalled the misgivings uttered by Holmes, that wealth thus gained would bring them no good, for the curse of blood that lay upon it. Poor Holmes! The prophecy seemed to have come true as regarded the prophet—but for himself? well, the loss reconciled him ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... freedom is the only condition of a beautiful life. Those who, like Mrs. Alving, have paid with blood and tears for their spiritual awakening, repudiate marriage as an imposition, a shallow, empty mockery. They know, whether love last but one brief span of time or for eternity, it is the only creative, inspiring, elevating basis for a new race, a ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... it was a joy to think that He who hears prayer is equally present with all His people, and that though thousands of miles lie between the petitioner and the petitioned for, the breath of prayer may span the distance and pour blessings on the far-off head. The burden of thoughts and affections gathered during the twenty-three hours, was laid down in the twenty-fourth; and Ellen could meet her friends at the breakfast-table with a sunshiny ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... as Rome but not yet ruined, found on the sands of Africa, arrests the traveller in this fashion. In his modern cities he has seen greater things; but here in Africa, where men build so squat and punily, cowering under the heat upon the parched ground, so noble and so considerable a span, carved as men can carve under sober and temperate skies, catches the mind and clothes it with a sense of the strange. And of these emotions the strongest, perhaps, is that which most of those who travel to-day go seeking; the enchantment ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... uncomfortable in our smart civilian clothing. We looked too soft, too clean, too spick-and-span. We did not feel that we belonged there. But in a whispered conversation we comforted ourselves with the assurance that if ever America took her rightful stand with the Allies, in six months after the event, hundreds of thousands of American boys would ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... short, and was compressed within a space of less than thirty-four years. It terminated in the moment of victory on the Plains of Abraham. But, brief as was his earthly span, few lives of any length have accomplished so much; and his death was so glorious that it should scarcely have been regretted, even by his nearest and dearest, what he did is known to us. What he might have done if his life had ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Round span the wheel with mad velocity, now uncontrolled, jamming poor Davy's leg between the rudder beam and the wheel post, while Johnny lay sprawling on the deck, holding on like grim death to a stray end of the mizzen-halliard that had been cast loose from the cleats. Another ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... deprived her of days and weeks of happiness. Such a short span of joy had been allotted to her, and he had not allowed her to have even that. He had called her away. He dared not trust himself to write any word of sympathy. It seemed to him that to do so would be a hideous irony, and he sent the line in pencil which she had received. And ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... or thought, to sow a seed for the infinite and eternal perfecting of his race; to cast into Time something new and hitherto non-existent, which may abide there and become the unfailing source of new creations; to repay, for his place on this earth and for the short span of life vouchsafed him, something that shall last forever even here on earth—to the end that he as an individual, even though unnamed by history (since thirst for fame is contemptible vanity), may leave behind in his own consciousness and in his own belief manifest tokens that he himself existed? ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Toots harness a span of fast steppers, attach them to the double-seated surrey and bring the team round to ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... of Russia, an imposing city, occupying a dreary, isolated site at the head of the Gulf of Finland, on the banks and delta islands (100) of the Neva, founded in 1702 by Peter the Great; a large number of bridges span the main stream and its numerous divisions; massive stone quays hold back the waters, but a rise of 12 ft. floods the city (a yearly occurrence in the poorer parts); the river is ice-bound nearly half the year, and is given over ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... gift, surely. When our like"—he looked at Emma Ellis—"are toiling with our two hands and wishing they were twenty, yourself can reach the wide world over with your pen." Miss Ellis didn't seem especially impressed with his figure, but he nodded gravely and went on. "'Tis a true word. You can span the aching world with a clean and healing pen." (Isn't that delicious, Sally?) I tried to explain that I was just starting, that I was afraid I hadn't anything of especial importance to say, and then he said, very sternly—and he has the eyes of a zealot and a fighter's ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... If people knew that thirty minutes of a healthful regimen practiced daily would double the daily pleasure of living and add ten years to the span of life, nine out of ten would neglect it. And (b) thoughtlessness through faulty education; the primary function of mental culture being to teach people to think, analyze, and solve the problems of life, and cultivate the memory; but ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... look as spick and span as a nice little Queen of Sheba. Now don't slide down the banisters, or do anything hoydenish. Try to behave more ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... by Practice. All aspects of memory can be improved by practice, some aspects much, other aspects little. The memory span for digits, or letters, or words, or for objects cannot be much improved, but memory for ideas that are related, as the ideas of a story, can be considerably improved. In extensive experiments conducted in the ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... pillars of the Forum; the lofty columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius; the Pantheon, lifting its spacious dome two hundred feet into the air; the mere vestibule of the Baths of Agrippa; the triumphal arches of Titus and Trajan and Constantine; the bridges which span the Tiber; the aqueducts which cross the Campagna; the Cloaca Maxima, which drained the marshes and lakes of the infant city; and, above all, the Colosseum. What glory and shame are associated with that single edifice! That alone, if nothing else ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... could have been accomplished by Chopin only. And this first study in C is heroic. Theodore Kullak writes of it: "Above a ground bass proudly and boldly striding along, flow mighty waves of sound. The etude—whose technical end is the rapid execution of widely extended chord figurations exceeding the span of an octave—is to be played on the basis of forte throughout. With sharply dissonant harmonies the forte is to be increased to fortissimo, diminishing again with consonant ones. Pithy accents! Their effect is enhanced when combined with an elastic ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker |
