"Handbreadth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... skin, which yields him the means of gratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration of the proprietor's life; and for every satisfied desire the skin shrinks in proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the last handbreadth of the peau de chagrin disappear with the gratification of ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... are they called saplings?" Rabbi Eleazar, the son of Azariah, said,(42) "till they can be used." R. Joshua said, "till the age of seven years." R. Akiba said, "a sapling, as commonly named." "A tree decays and sprouts afresh; when less than a handbreadth, it is a sapling; when more than a handbreadth, it is a tree." The words of ...
— Hebrew Literature
... personal being makes comparison fitting, what makes the true contrast? In what respect is man unlike God? In moral antagonism. What is the true likeness? Moral harmony. What separates men from their Father in heaven? Is it that His 'years are throughout all generations,' and 'my days are as an handbreadth'? Is it that His power is infinite, and mine all thwarted by other might and over tending to weakness and extinction? Is it that His wisdom, sunlike, waxes not nor wanes, and there is nothing hid from its beams, while my knowledge, like ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... desires the deed, And of nought he recketh and thinketh, but a fame-stirred warrior's need; But Greyfell trembleth nothing and nought of the fire doth reck: Then the spurs in his flank are smitten, and the reins lie loose on his neck, And the sharp cry springeth from Gunnar—no handbreadth stirred the beast; The dusk drew on and over and the light of the fire increased, And still as a shard on the mountain in the sandy dale alone Was the shape of the cloudy Greyfell, nor moved he more than the stone; ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... latter snow had been light, while steady dry weather followed it, and there were times when I felt that I should have given several years of my life for rain. It came, and, though there was not much of it, as if by magic tender grain stood a handbreadth above the black loam, while I watched it lengthen daily with my heart in my eyes, and I grew feverishly anxious about the weather. Many things depended on the success of that crop. Then suddenly it was summer, the hottest summer for ten seasons, our neighbors said, and I wondered ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss |
