"Smallness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the first essential is healthful breasts. With this the largeness or smallness of a breast has nothing to do, for size is no more an index of its capacity for producing milk than is the weight of a woman an index of her energy. The breast is not a warehouse, but a factory, ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... tolerate any make-believe which is not in some way finer than the reality it simulates. In other words, imitation should always be in the nature of an amiable condescension. Whatever falseness, pretension or even mere frailty or smallness, suggests to the eye the ineffectuality of a toy is out of place in any sort of gardening." We do not actually speak all this, but we imply it, and we often find that the mere utterance of the one word, "toy gardening," has a magical effect ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... Goodman found courage of his meanness and smallness and spoke. "It seems a strange thing," he said, "that Doctor Gordon should hev came and went here for years, and all of us thinkin' his wife were his sister when she ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... of a long conference, he enumerated many other grounds of dissatisfaction; the principal of which were our want of attention to him as chief, the weakness of the rum formerly sent to him, the smallness of the present now offered, and the want of the chief's clothing, which he had been accustomed to receive at Fort Providence every spring. He concluded, by refusing to receive the ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... with every crook and foible in the pages of the Diary, he might feel that what he left behind him was indeed himself. There is perhaps no other instance so remarkable of the desire of man for publicity and an enduring name. The greatness of his life was open, yet he longed to communicate its smallness also; and, while contemporaries bowed before him, he must buttonhole posterity with the news that his periwig was once alive with nits. But this thought, although I cannot doubt he had it, was neither his first nor his deepest; it did not color one word that he wrote; the Diary, for as long as ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... in all its fulness and power! Spare me. Most Reverend Father in Christ and Most Illustrious Prince, that I, the dregs of humanity, have so much boldness that I have dared to think of a letter to the height of your Sublimity. The Lord Jesus is my witness that, conscious of my smallness and baseness, I have long deferred what I am now shameless enough to do,—moved thereto most of all by the duty of fidelity which I acknowledge that I owe to your most Reverend Fatherhood in Christ. Meanwhile, ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... the 'West Side' of the town. Here the brothers grew up, and, when Orville was still a boy in his teens, he started a printing business, which, as Griffith Brewer remarks, was only limited by the smallness of his machine and small quantity of type at his disposal. This machine was in such a state that pieces of string and wood were incorporated in it by way of repair, but on it Orville managed to print a boys' paper which gained considerable popularity in Dayton 'West Side.' Later, at the ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... Hannah Morrison came in, apparently from some errand outside, and, catching sight of him, stared, and pertly passed him in silence. On his inkstand he found a letter from Squire Gaylord, briefly auditing his last account, and enclosing the balance due him. From this the old lawyer, with the careful smallness of a village business man, had deducted various little sums for things which Bartley had never expected to pay for. With a like thriftiness the landlord, when Bartley asked for his bill, had charged certain items that had not appeared ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Brighton is still the Pavilion, which is indeed the town's symbol. On passing through its very numerous and fantastic rooms one is struck by their incredible smallness. Sidney Smith's jest (if it were his; I find Wilberforce, the Abolitionist, saying something similar) is still unimproved: "One would think that St. Paul's Cathedral had come to Brighton and pupped." ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... involves some weakness in many current aspirations towards the extension of the suffrage; I mean that, apart from all questions of abstract justice, it is not the smallness or largeness of the suffrage that is at present the difficulty of Democracy. It is not the quantity of voters, but the quality of the thing they are voting about. A certain alternative is put before them ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... that creation which by its inexorable calm and prodigious power rouses in some hearts terror and sets peace in some, stirs some natures to aspiration, and crushes others to the ground with an overwhelming sense of their impotence, their smallness, their fugitive existence, and their ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... "Scorn not the smallness of daily endeavour, Let the great meaning ennoble it ever, Droop not o'er efforts expended in vain, Work, as believing, that labour is gain." Queen Isabel, &c. ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... will, Mistress Carver," replied Howland heartily, for his relationship toward the governor and his beautiful wife was rather that of a younger brother than of a retainer; and although the smallness of his fortune had induced him to accept the patronage of the older and wealthier man, it was much as a lad of noble lineage was content a few years before this to become first the page and then the squire of ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... smallness, and from the great value, and the high duty on them when brought into the United States, form the chief articles of the high class smugglers," he said. "In fact the ones we are after have been doing more in diamonds than anything else, though they have, ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... heart, as Agamemnon did, who for that reason is ignominiously taxed by Achilles with having dog's eyes and a stag's heart; so, not to fear when the case is evidently dreadful is a sign of want or smallness of judgment. Now, if anything ought to be feared in this life, next to offending God, I will not say it is death. I will not meddle with the disputes of Socrates and the academics, that death of itself is neither bad nor to be feared, but I will affirm that this kind of shipwreck ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... most of the French stories appear to have told against the definiteness of their characters; as, on the other hand, the personages in Beowulf, without much individual character of their own, seem to gain in precision and strength from the smallness of the scene in which they act. There is less strict economy in the chansons ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... the famous Susquehanna, and as soon as we came, Mr. Woodbridge and I walked down to its banks. Disappointed at the smallness of its stream, he exclaimed, 'Is this ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... thick bushes. Henry Kingsley's explanation (1859), that the word means shrubbery, is singularly misleading, the English word conveying an idea of smallness and order compared with the size and confusion of the Australian use. Yet he is etymologically correct, for Scrobb is Old English (Anglo-Saxon) for shrub; but the use had disappeared ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... lot of Vicksburg. I remember, Colonel, that, despite its smallness, it is one of the great river ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of the French shore. The Upper Town was formerly fortified with outworks, which are now in ruins. Here is a square, a town-house, the cathedral, and two or three convents of nuns; in one of which there are several English girls, sent hither for their education. The smallness of the expence encourages parents to send their children abroad to these seminaries, where they learn scarce any thing that is useful but the French language; but they never fail to imbibe prejudices against the protestant religion, and generally return enthusiastic converts ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. But that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire. She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. So, striving to divert her thoughts, Emma determined now to see in this reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to please the eye, and she even smiled internally with disdainful pity when at the back of the stage under the velvet hangings ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... treated monthly, and the whole cost of treatment, including all charges for mining, carriage, reduction, amalgamation, and management, is only about eight shillings per ton. The loss of mercury is about twenty pounds for every thousand tons of ore treated; the smallness of the loss in comparison with that of many other gold-extracting establishments being greatly due to the employment of sodium in the amalgamating process. The loss of mercury usually occurring in ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... edge of the lake, their dark foliage trembling over the glittering surface which reflected them, the surrounding hills, and the death-like silence. I was both delighted and disappointed—delighted with the richness of the scenery, but disappointed at the smallness of the harbour. Can this little loch, imprisoned within natural ramparts of rocks, buried in the solitude of a forest, be the place which I hoped would become so famous, the great destiny of which has been prognosticated by statesmen and publicists, ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... giving herself to this man did not seriously occur to me. His face was like the face of thousands of successful men whom we see daily in the great marts of the world. His forehead was broad but low, his eyes inclined to smallness and set closely together, his brows shaggy and overhanging: his cheeks were heavy, and the fleshy formation of his mouth and chin denoted both cruelty and sensuality. He was a wealthy man: such men are always rich. He ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... is cast, I will come; I can no longer resist your influence; it grows stronger every day, and now it makes me a murderess, for the shock will kill him. And yet I am tired of the sameness and smallness of my life; my mind is too big to be cramped in ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... finer thing could a dream be about than this? It is small, if you will; but when you begin to think of things rightly, the ideas of smallness and largeness pass away. The making of this pyramid was in reality just as wonderful as the dream I have been telling you, and just as incomprehensible. It was not, I suppose, as swift, but quite as grand things are done as swiftly. ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... with astonishment, as well at the tiny smallness of the fairy, as at his truly classical beauty. The little creature was, in his way, a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... address, but that he thought the city magistrates ought to have been proceeded against by parliament for their conduct. On the other hand, the city and the people of Middlesex were offended by the conduct of the opposition, and the smallness of the minority that voted against the address, and they passed strong resolutions, expressing their discontent. The blame was chiefly imputed to the Rockingham party; and the Rev. Mr. Home—better known at a later date by the name of Home Tooke—who had begun ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the diminution Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle; Nay, followed him till he had melted from The smallness of a gnat to air; and then Have turned mine eye ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... mind there were serious misgivings. Long afterwards he told me that his father's death and the smallness of his patrimony had been a heavy blow to him. He encouraged himself, however, at the moment by dwelling on his brother's comparative success and waved aside ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... years older than you. And yet," he continued musingly, "I envy you. Knowledge is, of course, relative, and I can know so little! Time and space have yielded not an iota of their mystery to our most penetrant minds. And whether we delve baffled into the unknown smallness of the small, or whether we peer, blind and helpless, into the unknown largeness of the large, it is the same—infinity is comprehensible only to the Infinite One: the all-shaping Force directing and controlling the Universe and the unknowable ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... veneer of misanthropy, had that tinsel of the intellect, and led the half-idle life that attracts women. The blunt good sense and keen insight of the really great man weighed upon Dinah, who would not confess her own smallness even to herself. She said in her mind—"The doctor is perhaps the better man, but I do ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... celebrating the effects of whisky, English is immeasurably inferior. The free use of the diminutive termination in ie or y—a termination capable of expressing endearment, familiarity, ridicule, and contempt as well as mere smallness—not only has considerable effect in emotional shading, but contributes to the liquidness of the verse by lessening the number of consonantal endings that make English seem harsh and abrupt to many foreign ears. Moreover, the very indeterminateness ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... size to cause British firms to manufacture them. The nearest size in central-fire cartridge to seven millimetres is called the 300, which is .3 of an inch. Seven millimetres is .276 of an inch. The point to which I want to draw your attention is the extreme slightness and smallness of the revolver with which Mrs. Heredith was killed. As Captain Nepcote told Merrington yesterday, it is little ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... together one stormy evening in the library, before the fire. Mrs. Wilson had been reading Tom the letters which had come to him by the night's mail. There was a long one from his sister in Nagasaki, which had been written with a good deal of ill-disguised reproach. She complained of the smallness of the income of her share in her father's estate, and said that she had been assured by American friends that the smaller mills were starting up everywhere, and beginning to do well again. Since so much of their money was invested in ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the Press,—to the so-called 'air we breathe, not having which we die!' Would modern Friends of Progress believe it? Because, in former stages of this War, the Berlin Newspapers have had offensive expressions (scarcely noticeable to the microscope in our day, and below calculation for smallness) upon the Russian and Austrian Sovereigns or Peoples,—the Able Editors (there are only Two) shall now in person, here in the market-place of Berlin, actually run the gantlet for it,—'run the rods (GASSEN-LAUFEN'), ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... experiment I am afraid is to be regarded as a complete failure. Yet it could not well have been otherwise. It was never more than a mere military post, and the smallness of the party, almost always further lessened by sickness, was such that, even if judiciously managed, little more could be expected than that they should be employed merely in rendering their own condition more comfortable. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... you are now sitting in a larger and better furnished room) of a small room in which the King always dined, nay more proud of the simplicity of her royal master's taste, than any shower of Carlton House can be in showing the fine things there, and so she was when she made us remark the smallness of one of the Princesses' bedrooms, and said she slept and also dressed in that little room. There are a great many good pictures but I was most pleased with one of the King when he was about two years old, such a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... in the Hyaena is the disproportionate smallness of his hind quarters; besides which, the vertebrae of his neck very often become stiffened, in consequence of the strain put upon them by the powerful muscles of that part, and of the jaws. So firm is the hold which they take, that nothing will make them leave what ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... k is the sign of the second person, and signifies 'thou' or 'thy;' uli is a part of the word wulit, which signifies 'beautiful,' 'pretty;' gat is another fragment of the word wichgat, which means 'paw;' and lastly, schis is a diminutive giving the idea of smallness. Thus in one word the Indian woman has expressed, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... virtue of its hardiness in growing at low temperatures, its depth of root penetration, the availability of the seed, the smallness of the seed so that the weight required for the acre is not large, is to be favored for a cover crop. The objections are two: The fact that it does not seem to grow well under some conditions; second, that when a growth ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... new to Yuranigh, who drew my attention to their extreme smallness; not much exceeding in size a knat or mosquito. Nevertheless, he could cut out their honey from hollow trees, and thus occasionally procure for us a pleasant lunch, of a waxy compound, found with the honey, which, in appearance and taste much resembled fine gingerbread. The honey itself was ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... one was, that it was very rare; and the other, that it revealed her two regular rows of dainty white teeth, suiting well to the whole build of the maiden. She was graceful and rather tall, with a head which, but for its smallness, might have seemed too heavy for the neck that supported it, so ready it always was to droop like a snowdrop. The only parts about her which Hugh disliked, were her hands and feet. The former certainly had been reddened and roughened by household ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... hundred and fifty dollars!" Cornelia gasped in astonishment at the smallness of the sum. "You can't mean that that includes everything—chairs and tables, and carpets, and dishes, and beds, and bureaus, and brooms, and tins, and curtains, and fire-irons— and all the fixing to put 'em up! It isn't possible ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... trees, there were a hundred or more of them yelling and shrieking and hurling their sharp-pointed spears towards us. A hundred opposed to three were fearful odds. Probably they were not aware of the smallness of our number, or they might have made a rush at our camp, and knocked us all over with their waddies. Every moment we expected that they would do so. Should one of us be killed or wounded so as to be unable to fire, the other two must inevitably ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... unique in the smallness of its numbers, the intellectual eminence of its members, and the length of its unchanged existence. The nearest parallel is to be found in "The Club." (Of which Huxley was elected a member in 1884. Tyndall and Hooker were also members.) Like the x, "The Club" began with eight ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... The smallness of the population and the great distances between the settlements offer serious obstacles to the establishment of the usual Territorial form of government. Perhaps the organization of several sub-districts with a small municipal council ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... suddenly. She turned to the door, and all the smallness of her own conduct dawned upon Trix. Her generous heart—it was generous in spite of all this—smote her ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... astronomer does not depend on his instruments, he trusts to analogy, and the mathematical perfection of a law, which in the abstract is true; but which he does not know is rigidly exact when applied to physical phenomena. From the immense distance of the planets and the smallness of the earth, man is unable to command a base line sufficiently long, to make the horizontal parallax a sensible angle for the more distant planets; and there are difficulties of no small magnitude to contend with, with those that are the nearest. In the occasional ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... morals. To spirited people, difficult tasks are usually the most delightful ones. If we may rely upon the testimony of history, men are brave, truthful, and magnanimous, not in proportion to their wealth, but in proportion to their smallness of means. And the best are often the poorest,—always supposing that they have sufficient to meet their temporal wants. A divine has said that God has created poverty, but He has not created misery. And there is certainly a great difference between the two. While honest poverty is honourable, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... permanent; hence the smallness of the company at table since the voyage began. Our captain is a grave, handsome Hercules of thirty-five, with a brown hand of such majestic size that one cannot eat for admiring it and wondering if a single kid or calf could furnish material for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Brunton. Of the short time he had for instructing her, no part was lost. The appearance of Mr. Brunton's daughter in Euphrasia, with a prologue written for the occasion, was announced, and notwithstanding there were not wanting wretches mean and miserable enough to trumpet abroad her youth and smallness of stature, as insurmountable obstacles to her personating the Grecian daughter, more just ideas of her, or perhaps curiosity brought a full house. Mr. Brunton himself spoke the prologue, which was written for him by the ingenious Mr. Meyler, and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... Position (Vol. viii., pp. 59. 233.).—So Ben Jonson was buried at Westminster, probably on account of the large fee demanded for a full-sized grave. It was long supposed by many that the story was invented to account for the smallness of the gravestone; but the grave being opened a few years ago, the dramatist's remains were discovered in the attitude ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... cheaply on canals, and with respect to the many works and factories erected on the canal banks, or on bases connected therewith, there was with canal navigation no item of expense corresponding to the cost of cartage to the railway stations, yet the smallness of the railway rates for heavy goods, and the greater speed of transit, were found to be more than countervailing advantages. But when private individuals have embarked their capital in an undertaking, they do not calmly see that capital made unproductive, nor do ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... like distaste for himself. The complacency of Stevens, however, was too well grounded to be much disturbed by such an exhibition. Perhaps, indeed, he would have derived a malicious sort of satisfaction in making a presumptuous lad feel his inferiority. He had just that smallness of spirit which would find its triumph in the success of such ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... composing it have been rushing in this direction and that at an enormous speed, but do not appear to us on the earth to alter their positions in regard to each other. I know of nothing that gives one a more overwhelming sense of the mightiness of the universe and the smallness of ourselves than this fact. From age to age men look on changeless heavens, yet this apparently stable universe is fuller of flux and reflux than is the restless ocean itself, and the very wavelets on the sea are not more numerous nor more restless than the stars ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... good many, I reckon," drawled the wounded man, reflectively, "and I ain't sayin' I settled six on 'em hand to hand—I ain't sayin' that." He spoke with conscious modesty, as if the smallness of his assertion was equalled only by the greatness of his achievements. "I ain't sayin' I settled more'n three ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... "The smallness of the number of instances in which conquering nations have been able successfully to deal with alien peoples is extraordinary. The Romans were unusually successful, and England has been successful with all but the Irish, but perhaps ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... judgment and action regarding his subordinates there could be no reason for doubt in my mind. My command was to be mostly of veteran troops, and not too large for my experience. Its comparative smallness was a source of satisfaction to me at that time, rather than anything like jealousy of my senior brother commanders of ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... oratory, scooped by Guidobaldo II. from the thickness of the wall, a cast of Raphael's skull, which will be studied with interest and veneration. It has the fineness of modelling combined with shapeliness of form and smallness of scale which is said to have characterised ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... of this tract has aimed at conciseness, so far as the nature of the argument would allow, not employing "those arts by which a big book is made." But if the smallness of the work does not seem to accord with the magnitude of the subject, it is not to be inferred that the sentiments have been hastily formed or rashly vindicated. For many years they have been taking deep root in ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... the moment they discovered us until they were fairly out of hearing their shrieks were so loud and incessant that it seemed, for once, our presence in that country had been unknown to the surrounding natives, a proof perhaps of the smallness of their numbers. In the evening other natives (men) were heard approaching along the creek, and we at first supposed they had come to that place as their rendezvous to meet the gins and their families whom we had unwillingly scared; but Mr. Stapylton, ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... for him the cup and the censer, and filled his hand full (of incense), and put it into the cup, the large according to his largeness,(218) and the smaller according to his smallness, and so was its measure. He took the censer in his right hand, and the spoon in his left. He proceeded in the Sanctuary until he came between the two vails dividing between the holy and the holy of holies, and intermediate was a cubit. R. Joseph said, "there was one vail only," as He said, "the ...
— Hebrew Literature
... be surprised at the smallness of this cockpit in which three nations battled. From the cliff at Cape Helles to the top of the impregnable Achi Baba was only 5-1/2 miles. The distance straight across the Peninsula at the firing line was not more than 3-1/2 miles. On our flanks we were shut in by cliffs along the Aegean Sea ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... walked into Messrs. Pogson and Littlebird's office, and saw Mr. Tribbledale seated on a high stool behind a huge desk, which nearly filled up the whole place. He was rather struck by the smallness and meanness of Messrs. Pogson and Littlebird's premises, which, from a certain nobility belonging to the Quaker's appearance, he would have thought to be spacious and important. It is impossible not to connect ideas after this fashion. Pogson and Littlebird themselves carried in their own names ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... of his skill were more to him than the millions. He seems even to have been rather careless in keeping his accounts. He gave away freely—as much as L200,000, it is believed—in the course of his life. His accumulations arose not from parsimony but from the smallness of his personal expenses. He hated show and luxury, and kept a moderate establishment, which the increase of his wealth never induced him to extend. He seems to have felt a singular diffidence as to his capacity for aristocratic expenditure. The conversation ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... which he, in his effeminacy, can conceive. So he shrieks benevolently when a drunken soldier is flogged; but he trims his paletots, and adorns his legs, with the flesh of men and the skins of women, with degradation, pestilence, heathendom, and despair; and then chuckles self-complacently over the smallness of his tailors' bills. Hypocrite!—straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel! What is flogging, or hanging, King Ryence's paletot, or the tanneries of Meudon, to the slavery, starvation, waste of life, year-long imprisonment in dungeons narrower and fouler than those of the Inquisition, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... about that," said William when Whimple apologised for the smallness of the amount. "It'll help some at home, and mebbe I ain't worth no ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... great rapidity; and, the object of their pursuit being concealed from a distant spectator, they appear to be running about in the sea and dashing up the foam for no conceivable cause or reason. Notwithstanding the speed they are running with and the smallness of the object, in striking they rarely miss their aim. In deep rivers or in the sea the mode of spearing fish varies according to the circumstances of the case; sometimes it is done by diving, sometimes by sitting on a rock or tree and watching them ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... which no traders had passed, to avoid the plains, impassable from the floods. He accepted Livingstone's present of a shawl, a razor, some beads and buttons, and a powder-horn graciously, laughing at his apologies for its smallness, and asking him to bring a coat from Loanda, as the one ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... Drosera; the secretion contains an acid of the acetic series, and some ferment closely analogous to, but not identical with, pepsin; for I have been making a long series of comparative trials. No human being will believe what I shall publish about the smallness of the doses of phosphate of ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... a sugared sonnet for a pittance, or strained themselves to the length of an Ode for a berth in his household. Or frequently they supported a political party and received a place in the Red Tape Office. But even in politics, on account of the smallness of the reading public and the politicians' indifference to its approval, their services were of slight account. Too often a political office was granted from a pocket borough in which a restricted electorate could be bought at a trifling expense. To gain support inside the House ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... preponderance in the state; but they did not manage to succeed in the conduct of public affairs, and to satisfy the interests of a nation progressing in activity, riches, independence, and influence. Disquieted at the smallness of his success in Italy, Henry II. flattered himself that he would regain his ascendency there by sending thither the Duke of Guise, the hero of Metz, with an army of about twenty thousand men, French or Swiss, and a staff of experienced officers; but Guise ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... holiness; but the smallest deflection from the law of right, in theory or in practice, does lower a man's standing therein, inasmuch as it makes him less capable of that conformity to the King, and consequent nearness to Him, which determines greatness and smallness there. Dignity in the kingdom depends on Christ-likeness, and Christ-likeness depends on fulfilling, as He did, all righteousness. Small flaws are most dangerous because least noticeable. More Christian men lose their ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... considered, as we have seen, that the degree of the supernatural in any virtue could not be decided by the greatness or smallness of the external act, since an act in itself altogether trivial, may be performed with much grace and charity, while a very brilliant and dazzling good work may be animated by but a very feeble spark of love of God, the intensity of which is, after all, the only rule by ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... addressing the culprits, so she made up for their deficiency, saying: "Go upstairs at once, you naughty boys, and take off these pads." The naughty boys ascended, with a strangely combined feeling of joy and smallness, and, when the knapsacks were removed, Coristine sank into a chair laughing. "O Lord, Wilks," he said, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... royal treasury, and with other pious foundations. Neither was that enough, so that at times it was very difficult to find seculars to take charge of those districts. Those ministries were, it is true, scarce desirable, both because of the smallness of their stipends, because they carried with them unendurable hardships, and because of the unhealthfulness of the territory. But finally, moved, either by charity or by obedience, there was never a lack of zealous seculars who hastened with the bread of the instruction to those Indians. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... of the host, to the best where the traits or lines of the landlord's face were irregular, or did not coincide with his ideas of physiognomical propriety. The cut of a face, its expression, the length of the nose, the width or smallness of the mouth, the form of the eyelids or of the ears, the colour or thickness of the hair, with the shape and tout ensemble of the head, were always minutely considered and discussed before he entered into any agreement, on any subject, with any individual ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... lowered himself on the opposite side. The others followed safely, but not without a good deal of scraping against the wall, for the smallness of the rope added to the difficulty of climbing it. However, the noise was so slight that they had little fear of attracting attention, especially as the sentries would be standing in their boxes, for the rain was now coming down pretty briskly. As soon as ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... she could be spared; and when she hadn't just torn her frock, or worn out her shoes, or it didn't rain, or she hadn't been sent of an errand and come back too late—which reasons, with a multitude of others, constantly recurring, reduced the school days in the year to a number whose smallness Mrs. Grubbling would have indignantly disputed, had it been calculated and set before her; she being one of those not uncommon persons who regard a duty continually evaded as one continually performed, it being necessarily just ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... only saw him once, and she is quite aware that it is really difficult to distinguish between actual idiots and the ordinary heavy type of the rural lower classes. She noticed, however, the startling smallness of his head in comparison to the rest of his body; and, indeed, the fact of his having appeared upon election day wearing the rosette of both the two opposing parties appears to Lady Bullingdon to put the matter quite beyond doubt. Lady Bullingdon was astounded to learn that this afflicted ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... electors; and more than one bill for disfranchising revenue-officers, as being specially liable to pressure from the government, and to prevent contractors from sitting in Parliament, was brought forward, but was lost, the smallness of the divisions in their favor being not the least remarkable circumstance in the early history of Reform. It was made still more evident that as yet the zeal for Reform was confined to a few, when, two years afterward, Pitt, though now invested with all the power of a Prime-minister, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... despair until Decimus Brutus came to him with swift ships from the Mediterranean. And he was inclined to think he would be unable to accomplish anything with those either, but the barbarians through contempt for the smallness and weakness of the cutters incurred defeat. [-41-] For these boats, with a view to rapid progress, had been built rather light in the prevailing style of naval architecture among us, whereas those of the barbarians, ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... German soldiers moving forward through a criss-cross of trenches; I took them to be fresh men going in to relieve other men who had seen a period of service under fire. At first they suggested moles crawling through plow furrows; then, as they progressed onward, they shrank to the smallness of gray grub-worms, advancing one behind another. My eye strayed beyond them a fair distance and fell on a row of tiny scarlet dots, like cochineal bugs, showing minutely but clearly against the green-yellow face of a ridgy field well inside the forward batteries of the French and English. At ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... to sit down again, put his strong hand on her quivering one, marveling in tenderness at its smallness and softness. He talked to her in quiet, soothing tones, grave and reassuring. He promised he would talk no more about the Presence till she was ready to hear. He was leaning toward her in his strength, his arm behind her, his hand on her shoulder, with a sheltering, comforting touch when ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... relation to a productive concern, the interruption of whose business by strike "might be catastrophic," the decision was forthwith held to apply also to two minor concerns;[457] and in a later case the Court stated specifically that "the smallness of the volume of commerce affected in any particular case" is not a material consideration.[458] Moreover, the doctrine of the Jones-Laughlin Case applies equally to "natural" products, to coal mined, to stone quarried, to ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... saw that the herd was browsing in towards Frank. They were every moment getting closer and closer to him, and I watched eagerly for the shot. I knew he would not fire until they were very near, as I had cautioned him not to do so, on account of the smallness of his rifle. Presently I saw the stream of smoke and fire issuing from the leaves; then followed the sharp crack, and then the yelping of our dogs as they broke forward. At the same time one of the deer was seen to spring upward and fall dead in its tracks. The others wheeled and ran, first one ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the carriage lamps fell on, the flowering horse-chestnut by the door; the bats were flitting; a big white moth whirred softly against the brilliant glass as though you and I were after it again with nets and killing-bottles... and, helping mother out, I noticed, besides her smallness, how slow and ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... defense, the people are in no danger of being broken to military subordination. The laws are not accustomed to relaxations, in favor of military exigencies; the civil state remains in full vigor, neither corrupted, nor confounded with the principles or propensities of the other state. The smallness of the army renders the natural strength of the community an overmatch for it; and the citizens, not habituated to look up to the military power for protection, or to submit to its oppressions, neither love nor fear the soldiery; they view them with ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... Burgundy, near Soulanges, Blangy and Ville-aux-Fayes; nephew of one of the masons who built Mme. Soudry's house. A shiftless farm laborer, exempt from military duty on account of smallness of stature; was at first the lover, then the husband, of Catherine Tonsard, whom he married about ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... property, to go at large? This incident speaks for me, and I have now nothing to do but let the witnesses speak for themselves. Gentlemen of the Jury, I do not ask you to convict on insufficient evidence; but I do ask you not to be swayed by any false sentiment bearing reference to the so-called smallness of the offence, or the poverty of the offender. The law is made for the poor as well as for the rich, for the rich as well as for the poor. The poor man has no more right to shelter himself behind his poverty, than the rich man behind his ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... Langobardi, [210] on the other hand, are ennobled by, the smallness of their numbers; since though surrounded by many powerful nations, they derive security, not from obsequiousness, but from their martial enterprise. The neighboring Reudigni, [211] and the Avions, [212] Angli, [213] Varini, Eudoses, Suardones, and Nuithones, [214] are defended by ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... The smallness of the bag, by the way, was one reason why Sam, who did not like heavy bundles, wanted to carry it. He felt that it was time to practise ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... had known each the other from childhood. And she perhaps came nearer to liking him for himself than did any one else of his acquaintance. She was used to his conceit, his selfishness, his meanness and smallness in suspicion, his arrogance, his narrow-mindedness. She knew his good qualities—his kindness of heart, his shamed-face generosity, his honesty, the strong if limited sense of justice which made him a good employer and a good landlord. They had much in common—the ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... she said; "I had no idea of the charm of a very small river like this. The smallness of the scale of everything, the short reaches, and the speedy change of the banks, give one a feeling of going somewhere, of coming to something strange, a feeling of adventure which I have not ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... we promenaded, we showed our clothes, and came home smirking with satisfaction. We had been pointed out everywhere for Americans, which spoke volumes for our clothes and the smallness of our feet. ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... back to a place that one's memory and imagination have been busy with, there is a feeling of smallness and disappointment, and it is a day or two before one can renew all one's enjoyment. This morning, however, when I went up the gap between Croagh Martin and then back to Slea Head, and saw Inishtooskert and Inishvickillaun and the Great Blasket ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... girdle. A small youthful figure, in a pale yellow dress, lacking even the maturity of womanly outline. The full oval of her face, the straight line of her back, a slight boyishness in the contour of her hips, the infantine smallness of her sandaled feet and narrow hands, were all suggestive of fresh, ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... hearts. Both the doctor and Julian felt, as they listened, that it was music without an earthly home, without location, devoid of that sense of relation to humanity which links the greatness of the arts to the smallness of those who follow them. Eccentric the music was, but the eccentricity of it seemed almost inhuman, so unmannerly as to be beyond the range of the most uncouth man, in advance of the invention of any mind, however coarse and criminal. That was the atmosphere of this prelude, excessive, unutterable, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... (excepting, naturally, Brunelleschi's dome) very small buildings: the Sacristies of S. Lorenzo and S. Spirito, the chapel of the Pazzi, and the late, but exquisite, small church of the Carceri at Prato. The smallness of these places is fortunate, because it leaves no doubt that the sense of spaciousness—of our being, as it were, enclosed with a great part of world and sky around us—is an artistic illusion got by co-ordination of detail, greatness of proportions, and, most of all, perhaps, by quite ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... officers of the Golden Hind were unwilling to return, but consented on Sir Humphrey's promise that they should come back in the spring; they sailed for England on the 31st of August. All wished him to return in the Golden Hind as a much larger and safer vessel; the Squirrel, besides its smallness, being encumbered on the deck with guns, ammunition, and nettings, making it unseaworthy. But when he was begged to remove into the larger vessel, he said, "I will not forsake my little company going homeward with whom I have passed so many storms and perils." One reason for this was, ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... long since decided, was one of those men who, having nothing of worth to offer the world, did their utmost to tear down and humiliate anyone who had. And his smallness of soul and intellect were shown by the sort of tricks he was continually ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... pure and pleasant that each scent came to one separately; and, as the most of the foliage is dry and thin just now, these flowers and green bushes were the more effective. Certainly the surroundings were more beautiful than those we have in low ground shooting at home, and the smallness of the bag was balanced by this, and the delightfully unfamiliar sensation of both shooting and right-of-way, being free to you or ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... "it is indeed the beautiful home. This hall! It is not of a smallness! And in the old days it welcomed ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... Lord Bruncker and I to the Tower, to see the famous engraver, to get him to grave a seale for the office. And did see some of the finest pieces of work in embossed work, that ever I did see in my life, for fineness and smallness of the images thereon, and I will carry my wife thither to shew them her. Here I also did see bars of gold melting, which was a fine sight. So with my Lord to the Pope's Head Taverne in Lumbard Streete to dine ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... time, but supped and passed that night with her. I made her all my own by the power of my love, and by buying her such things as she most needed, such as linen, dresses, etc. It cost me about a hundred louis, and in spite of the smallness of my means I thought I had made a good bargain. Agatha, whom I told of my good luck, was delighted to have ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... all know the fable of the buried Pict, who bit off the end of a pickaxe, with which sacrilegious hands were breaking open his grave, and called out with a voice like subterranean thunder, I perceive the degeneracy of your race by the smallness of your little finger! videlicet, the pickaxe. This, to be sure, is a fiction; but it shows the prevalent opinion, the feeling, the conviction, of absolute, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... instead of doing us the good offices he pretended, he advised the King to refuse our present, that he might draw from us something more valuable. When I attended the King in order to deliver the presents, after I had excused the smallness of them, as being, though unworthy his acceptance, the largest that our profession of poverty, and distance from our country, allowed us to make, he examined them one by one with a dissatisfied look, and told me that however he might be pleased with our good attentions, he ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... with a quick, mobile face, and a lithe and shapely, if as yet somewhat unformed figure. The long thick plait in which her chestnut hair was arranged could not hide its plenitude and beauty, while the smallness of her hands and feet showed breeding, as did her manners and presence. The observant Godfrey, at his first sight of Juliette, for such was her name, marvelled how it was possible that she should be the ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... lords, the most forcible sort of coercion upon whole populations of provinces; but the modern missions certainly enjoy advantages educational, financial, and legislative, much outweighing the doubtful value of the power to coerce; and the smallness of the results which they have achieved seems to require explanation. The explanation is not difficult. Needless attacks upon the ancestor-cult are necessarily attacks upon the constitution of society; and ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... The smallness of the boat rendered it necessary that I should open one of my portmanteaus, and take out a supply of clothes before it was sent away; while thus occupied, I found myself overlooked by two or three respectably-clad women, who were in a boat, with several men, ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... that sum in making a man happy. I will begin the inquiries and researches necessary to obtain the documents of which you speak, and until they arrive I will give you five francs a day. If you are Colonel Chabert, you will pardon the smallness of the loan as it is coming from a young man who has his ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... noticed how complexity of organisation is hindered by reproductive activity and conversely. The hydra's power to produce young ones from nearly all parts of its body is due to the comparative homogeneity of its body, while it is not improbable that the smallness of human fertility, compared with the fertility of large feline animals, is due to the greater complexity of the human organisation—more especially the organisation of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... From the smallness of the harbor, Columbus gave it the name of El Retrete, or The Cabinet. He had been betrayed into this inconvenient and dangerous port by the misrepresentations of the seamen sent to examine it, who were always ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... the express image and direct counterpart of the souls that dwell in it. Be noble-minded, and all Nature replies—I am divine, the child of God—be thou too, His child, and noble. Be mean, and all Nature dwindles into a contemptible smallness. ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... roomy houses in the western quarters of town, shudder as they imagine the discomforts which these young wives of other days must have endured. "What! live in chambers?" they exclaim with astonishment and horror, recalling the smallness and cheerless aspect of their husbands' business chambers. But past usages must not be hastily condemned,—allowance must be made for the fact that our ancestors set no very high price on the luxuries of elbow-room and breathing-room. Families in opulent ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... reminded of Jesus' parable of the good Samaritan. The foreign sailors cry, in their perplexity, to their gods, and end by acknowledging the God of Israel; the people of Nineveh repent at the prophet's preaching. All this forms a splendid foil to the smallness and obstinacy of Jonah. With his mean views of God, he would not only exclude the heathen from the divine mercy, but rejoice in their destruction. In this the prophet is typical of later Judaism, with its longing for the annihilation of the nations as the obverse of ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... began, Sanchez objecting to rubies and demanding more emeralds, and Picquet complaining violently concerning the smallness of the diamonds ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... Saturday afternoons the door under the Victoria Tower, south end, is open, and anyone may walk through the principal rooms. This is well worth doing, though what is to be seen is mostly modern. What will chiefly astonish strangers is the smallness ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... determine whether he intended I should perish with famine, or linger out a long life in hopeless imprisonment. Whether the day was shut out by insuperable walls, or the darkness that surrounded me was owing to the night and to the smallness of those crannies through which daylight was to be ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... continue to perform its work effectually, will depend chiefly upon the perfection with which it was originally constructed upon the care taken to keep it in proper repair, particularly to correct every shake or looseness in the axes—and upon the smallness of the mass and of the velocity of its moving parts. Everything approaching to a blow, all sudden change of direction, is injurious. Engines for producing power, such as windmills, water-mills, and steam-engines, usually last a ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... cross examination in his friendly talk. The girl's thinness, her sometimes panting breath and the hollow eyes made larger by the black ring of her lashes startled him on first sight of her. He found that the smallness of her appetite presented to Dowie a ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... indignation." (21. Kirby and Spence, 'Introduction to Entomology,' vol. i. 1818, p. 280.) The Rev. O.P. Cambridge (22. 'Proceedings, Zoological Society,' 1871, p. 621.) accounts in the following manner for the extreme smallness of the male in the genus Nephila. "M. Vinson gives a graphic account of the agile way in which the diminutive male escapes from the ferocity of the female, by gliding about and playing hide and seek over her body and along her ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... The smallness of the village and the obscurity of the locality gave importance to every sound, proceeding from a human source, at this hour. I, therefore, dropped behind the thick stump of a tree, where I might see and hear without being observed. Presently a figure ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... grandeur and sublimity that indicate Universal Life, but smallness and commonplace do the same. A sage of old awakened to the faith[FN151] when he heard a bell ring; another, when he looked at the peach blossom; another, when he heard the frogs croaking; and another, when he saw his own form reflected in a river. The minutest particles of dust form ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... Carpet-making and Parcel departments. It is the largest room in the world, and is unbroken save by the light pillars which support the floors above. The Carpet-making department is interesting. The house deals largely in carpets, and one is surprised at the smallness of the force employed down here. The carpets purchased are cut, and the pieces matched as they lie on the floor by women. Then they are placed on a wide table, forty feet long, and are sewn together by a machine ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe |
