|
|
|
More "Shrink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... view, according to the use to which it is to be fitted. The same material may be employed for wall-hangings and dress, and then the principles which have been formulated have to be varied. I do not shrink from repetitions if they make my meaning clear, remembering the Duke of Wellington's direction to his private secretary, "Never mind ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... tubs, of wood simply dove-tailed, instead of being lined with lead or copper; and in my first experiments I used them made in that way; but I soon discovered their inconvenience. If the water be not always kept at the same level, such of the dovetails as are left dry shrink, and, when more water is added, it escapes through the ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... her mournful sacrifice, the poor woman did not shrink from covering herself, even in the presence of the man she loved, with ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... man as this is sure to have been impressed by the personality of Master Ste, who, in 1870, came to him in the old Charterhouse, that hoary, venerable pile which seems to shrink into itself, as if to shut out the unpoetic and modern atmosphere of Smithfield Meat Market. B.-P. went to Charterhouse as a gown boy, nominated by the Duke of Marlborough, and owing to the ease with which his infant studies had been conducted, ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... are brave," laughed the little woman. "There is more courage in that white heart of yours than in those of all the Umpondwana. Well, sister, I also am brave, or at the least for these many moons I have set myself a task, nor will I shrink from it at the end, and that is to save you from Piet Van Vooren as once at a dearer price you saved me. Now, hearken, for myself I have no fear; as I have said, doubtless in this way or in that I shall win ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... grasp the situation although the evidence was so overwhelming. He took the letter from the desk and read it for the fourth time since receiving it, riveting his eyes long and intently upon the signature affixed. Of all the years he had known the Governor he had never known him to shrink or show cowardice in any form whatever, although he'd passed through such crises as would tend to test the mettle of any man, it matters not how brave. "Surely the situation must be terrible!" finally observed Mr. ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... how the sweet things sigh For they have a voice like ours), 'The breath of the blind girl closes The leaves of the saddening roses— We are tender, we sons of light, We shrink from this child of night; From the grasp of the blind girl free us— We yearn for the eyes that see us— We are for night too gay, In your eyes we behold the day— O buy—O ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... my beloved sister, is prostrated by her sorrows and anxieties," it began, "and I must be her amanuensis—I who would die for her, yet who shrink from this task, well knowing, though she does not, how hard it is to write to one to whom I have given perhaps such infinite pain. Indeed, I should not have had courage to write had she not required it of me, had not your most generous offer and action demanded response. ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... chain, And in thy lap wilt take me once again. How comes it that thou dost not shrink from me?— Say, dost thou know, my ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... speck of dust in the sun, and not even so much, in this solemn, mysterious, unknowable universe. I shrink back. One truth I see. Franklin was right. "The highest worship of God is service to Man." All this, however, does not prevent everlasting hope of immortality. It would be no greater miracle to be born to a future life ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... him long ago when she had thrown him over for Rudyard, and now she had betrayed him again after she had married Rudyard, and betrayed Rudyard, too; and for whom this second betrayal? His heart seemed to shrink to nothingness. This business dated far beyond yesterday. The letter furnished that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... appeal; but it sufficed. There seemed to be expressed in it the knowledge bred by immemorial experience and immemorial time: This law before which we stand was not made by us! As dogs, when they hear the crack of a far whip, will shrink, and in their whole bearing show wary quietude, so Hughs and Mrs. Hughs, confronted by the questionings of Law, made only such answers as could be dragged from them. In a voice hardly above a whisper Mrs. Hughs ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... ourselves together to listen to the voice that calls, to draw nigh, and find out and know what Holiness is, or rather, find out and know Himself the Holy One. And if the first approach to Him fill us with shame and confusion, make us fear and shrink back, let us still listen to the Voice and the Call, 'Be holy, as I am holy.' 'Faithful is He which calleth, who also will do it.' All our fears and questions will be met by the Holy One who has revealed His Holiness, with this one purpose in ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... had plenty to fill our bellies and put on our backs; we had welcome wherever we went, and the groats and pennies rained into our caps. I was Clown and Jack Pudding and whatever served their turn, and the very name of Quipsome Hal drew crowds. Yea, 'twas a merry life! Ay, I feel thee wince and shrink, my lad; and so should I have shuddered when I was of thine age, and hoped to ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... serve as the nucleus of reconstruction when it can find protection and security, or whether we must wait for a new generation to grow up, remains to be tried. Their leaders are subtle reasoners, and it has been shrewdly observed of them that "they never shrink from following their logic to its consequences because the conclusion is immoral." Perhaps they will find no more difficulty in accepting the arguments we shall address to them because the conclusion is a little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... ask me not, if Truth have yet Her seal on Fancy's promise set; If even a glimpse my eyes behold Of that imagined age of gold;— Alas, not yet one gleaming trace![1] Never did youth, who loved a face As sketched by some fond pencil's skill, And made by fancy lovelier still, Shrink back with more of sad surprise, When the live model met his eyes, Than I have felt, in sorrow felt, To find a dream on which I've dwelt From boyhood's hour, thus fade and flee At ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... true man stirs one's heart like a trumpet. Therefore, this doubt I am confiding is all the more dreary. Naturally, I feel it most keenly in the company of my fellows, each one of whom seems to carry the victorious badge of manhood, as though to cry shame upon me. They make me shrink into myself, make me feel that I am but an impostor in their midst. Indeed, in that sensitiveness of mine you have the starting-point of my unmanliness. Look at that noble fellow there. He is six-foot odd in his stockings, straight, stalwart, and confident. His face is broad ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... the prospect of passing out of this world into that beyond the veil, so does many a girl shrink at the prospect of the beyond seen ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... bar. Here on this waste, and to left and to right of it, Never is lisp or the ripple of rain: Fierce is the daytime and wild is the night of it, Flame without limit and frost without wane! Trees half alive, with the sense of a curse on them, Shudder and shrink from the black heavy gale; Ghastly, with boughs like the plumes of a hearse on them: Barren of blossom and blasted ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... common roar the Morgans bounded to their feet. They were not unused to sudden onslaughts, nor was either of them a man to shrink from a fight at short quarters, if it came to that, but blank astonishment overwhelmed both. De Spain, standing slightly sidewise, his coat lapels flapped wide open, his arms akimbo, and his hands on his hips, faced the three in an attitude of readiness only. He had reckoned on ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... the trembling shepherds sore afraid? Why shrink they at the grand, the heavenly sight? "Fear not" (the angel says), nor be dismay'd, And o'er them sheds a ray of God-sent light. O matchless mercy! All-embracing love! The angel speaks and, gladly, men record:— "I bring you joyful tidings from above: This day is ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... distrusted the sweet innocence of Viola. He could not venture the hazard of seriously proposing marriage to an Italian actress; but the modest dignity of the girl, and something good and generous in his own nature, had hitherto made him shrink from any more worldly but less honourable designs. Thus the familiarity between them seemed rather that of kindness and regard than passion. He attended the theatre; he stole behind the scenes to converse with her; he filled ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Thus I am told of one individual that he wants the organ of colour; and all the culture in the world can never supply that defect, and enable him to see colour at all, or to see it as it is seen by the rest of mankind. Another wants the organ of benevolence; and his case is equally hopeless. I shrink from considering the condition of the wretch, to whom nature has supplied the organs of theft and murder in full and ample proportions. The case is ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... session in greater extent to England and Scotland, should also be extended to Ireland." But this extension of local self-government to Ireland would require, in Lord Hartington's opinion, a fundamental change in the fabric of Irish Government. "I would not shrink," he says, "from a great and bold reconstruction of the Irish Government," a reconstruction leading up gradually to some real and substantial form of Home Rule. His Lordship's words are: "I submit with some confidence to you these principles, ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... not a word, nor did he shrink from the blow; but Frank thought, and his mind grew more and more ...
— The Book of One Syllable • Esther Bakewell
... wife—that in taking the mantle from her own shoulders, and wrapping it around her rival, she was doing a most amiable deed, when down in her inmost heart, where the tempter had put it, there was an unrecognized wish to see how the little dainty girl would shrink from the miserable abode, and recoil from the touch of the little, dirty hands which were sure to be laid upon her dress if the children were at home, and she waited a little impatiently to start on ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... a little upon these trivial matters because I shrink from what must follow. They were scarcely blots upon our happiness; rather they were motes in the sunshine which had no other cloud. It is true that I was always somewhat puzzled by a certain manner in Mrs. Gray, which certainly was from no unfriendliness ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... impartial; or, if either of the yokefellows had a right to complain, certainly it was not the donkey. Now, in any country where such degradation of females could be tolerated by the state of manners, a woman of delicacy would shrink from acknowledging, either for herself or her friend, that she had ever been addicted to any mode of labour not strictly domestic; because, if once owning herself a prdial servant, she would be sensible that this confession extended ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... therefrom. At those devotional gatherings there was a simple petition offered to the Giver of all good that He should guard them during the night from the crimeful visitations of wicked men who coveted that which did not belong to them, and who did not shrink from murder in order to get it. Captain Wilkins had a profound belief in the efficacy of prayer, and was therefore staggered when he realized about two o'clock one morning that a giant of coppery colour stood over him with a revolver, while his compatriots ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... Pana-ewa is drunk with the scent; The breath of it spreads through the groves. Vainly flares the old king's passion, Craving a sauce for his meat and mine. The summer has flown; winter has come: 15 Ah, that is the head of our troubles. Palsied are you and helpless am I; You shrink from a plunge in the water; Alas, poor me! ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... I quite shrink from the truth, which is that he sat there in two minds. Sometimes he looked longingly at his mother, and sometimes he looked longingly at the window. Certainly it would be pleasant to be her boy again, but, on the other hand, what times those had been in the Gardens! Was he ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... quarter strikes! Call loud Rip up all my bleeding wounds, and shrink not! Yet think 'tis I that answer, God that hears! To every wretch in chains sleep is permitted: I, I alone, am robb'd of this last refuge Of sinking nature! Hark! Again they thunder! Again they iterate ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... returned Lady Rosamond, throwing her arms around the neck of Lady Douglas, giving full vent to the feelings which almost overwhelmed her, adding, between tears and sobs: "I have always obeyed my father's wishes and will not shrink from my duty now. Gerald Bereford is worthy of a nobler wife than I dare ever hope to be. He has indeed conferred on me a distinguished honor, and I must try to make amends with all the gratitude of which ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... families in the country, and he now thought of the respect due to the unsullied reputation of a young girl—he was somewhat less reckless than ten years ago. But now there should be a change. Since he had serious intentions he need not shrink from using all means to complete the conquest of this fortress, which, moreover, was already on the point of raising ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... has already been decided upon. Optimists in the labor movement maintain that a repetition of the legal murder of 1887, that has caused shame and horror even in the ranks of the upper ten thousand, is impossible—that the authorities would shrink from such an outrage, such an awful crime. That which has happened in Colorado and Idaho warrants no ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... singular and formidable inhabitants, the unknown dangers of the approach, and the fact that we were putting ourselves legally in a false position all combined to damp my ardour. But there was something in the ice-cold reasoning of Holmes which made it impossible to shrink from any adventure which he might recommend. One knew that thus, and only thus, could a solution be found. I clasped his hand in silence, ...
— The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Lord Garnon and I discussed this, oh, two years ago at the least. Really, I'm surprised that you seem to shrink from it, now. Of course, you're Venus-born, and customs there may be different, but with ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... be through it all some thread of continuity. That fearful Count was coming to London. If it should be, and he came to London, with its teeming millions . . . There may be a solemn duty, and if it come we must not shrink from it. I shall be prepared. I shall get my typewriter this very hour and begin transcribing. Then we shall be ready for other eyes if required. And if it be wanted, then, perhaps, if I am ready, poor Jonathan may not be upset, for I can ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... violently, and threatened him with his fist; the priest raised his arms in prayer, just as I saw him yesterday at the festival—but not in devotion, but to seize Paaker, and wrestle with him. The struggle did not last long, for Paaker seemed to shrink up, and lost his human form, and fell at the poet's feet—not my son, but a shapeless lump of clay such as the potter uses to make ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... altogether abnormal; it is not within the type of regular legislation. That any given creed should be regarded as out of keeping, as both redundant and defective, and yet that the ecclesiastical authority should shrink from applying a remedy to its most obvious defects, proves that the system itself is bad. All healthy legislation lends itself to perpetual improvement; that the enactments of articles of belief cannot be reconsidered, is ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... words to utter. He looked helplessly at the Queen like a man who has received a blow which has dazed him for the time being. The Ambassador's knowledge startled the Queen, too, but she did not shrink before his steady scrutiny. She was the first ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... the uselessness of these ascetic lives, shrink now from their example, and fall back upon that wiser teaching, that he best does God's will who best does God's work. The world now knows that heaven is not served by man's idleness—that the "dolce far niente," though it might suit an Italian lazzaroni, ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... such compositions, both are most deeply responsible; the author who publishes, and the critic who undertakes to recommend or to censure them. But if they appear to be written with any degree of sincerity and earnestness, we naturally shrink from treating them merely as literary efforts. To interrupt the current of a reader's sympathy in such a case, by critical objections, is not merely to deprive him of a little harmless pleasure, it is to disturb him almost in a devotional exercise. The most considerate ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... and the multitude are infected; riches outweigh virtue; lovers of money take the place of lovers of honour; misers of politicians; and, in time, political privileges are confined by law to the rich, who do not shrink from violence in order ...
— The Republic • Plato
... already explained. The declaration near the end, "It has become blue," indicates that the victim now begins to feel in himself the effects of the incantation, and that as darkness comes on his spirit will shrink and gradually become less until it ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... shrouded from full vision by elaborate illusion conspicuously round in our lives—the life-giving and life-destroying elements, Sex and Death. We are compelled to occasional physiologic and economic discussion of the one, but we shrink from recognising the full extent to which it bases the whole social fabric carefully concealing its insurrections, and ignoring or misreading their lessons. The other, in certain aspects, we are compelled to face, but to do it we tipple ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... which tears express That out of gladness come Be mirrored in its tender glow, Before the beautiful tableau Ingratitude and selfishness Would shrink ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... only be redeemed by paying the costly price demanded of those who own that they have drawn a blank in the lottery of marriage. Public opinion is a grim ghost that daunts the bravest, and Sylvia knew that trials lay before her from which she would shrink and suffer, as only a woman sensitive and proud as she could shrink and suffer. Once apply this remedy and any tongue would have the power to wound, any eye to insult with pity or contempt, any stranger to criticise or condemn, and she would have no means ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... gentlemen to think well before, upon the free prairies of the West, in the summer of 1860, they dare to wince and quail before the assertion of the men of Philadelphia in 1776—before they dare to shrink from repeating the words that these ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... the transmission of any acquired modification. The orthodoxy of science, therefore, must be held as giving at any rate a provisional support to Professor Weismann, but all of them, including even Professor Weismann himself, shrink from committing themselves to the opinion that the germ-cells of any organisms remain in all cases unaffected by the events that occur to the other cells of the same organism, and until they do this they have knocked the ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... enemies alive, it was because he himself lacked a skin. In this sense his Apologia is a triumph far beyond the ephemeral charge on which it was founded; in this sense he does indeed (to use his own expression) vanquish not his accuser but his judges. Many men would shrink from recording all their cold fits and hesitations and prolonged inconsistencies: I am sure it was the breath of life to Newman to confess them, now that he had done with them for ever. His Lectures on the Present Position of English Catholics, practically preached ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... to the hard drill which they had to go through, and which occupied them from morning till night, for the colonel knew that on any day the regiment might receive orders to embark, and he wanted to get it in something like shape before setting sail. Jack did, however, shrink from the company in which he found himself. With a few exceptions the regiment was made up of wild and worthless fellows, of whom the various magistrates had been only too glad to clear their towns, and mingled with these were the sweepings of the jails, rogues and ruffians of every description. ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... him. Fleeing, we may elude him. But what if he creep into the sanctuary of our lives, with his subtle omnipresence, that we do not see in all its horror till we are disarmed; thrusting the burden of his companionship upon us to the end! However we turn he is there. However we shrink he is there. However we come or go, or sleep or wake he is before us. Till the keen sense grows dull with apathy at looking on him, and he becomes like ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... and keep my heart and lips and hands stainless,—hold them high above the dishonorable things that you abhor, and live during your absence as if your clear eyes took cognizance of every detail. Yea,—search me as you will, dear deep-blue eyes,—I shall not shrink; for the rule of my future years shall be to scorn every word, thought, and deed that I would not freely bare to the scrutiny of the man whose respect I would sooner die than forfeit. Oh, my darling, it were easier for me to front the fiercest ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... was a strong-minded woman. We do not say this to her disparagement. A strong mind is as admirable in woman as in man. It is only when woman indicates the strength of her mind by unfeminine self-assertion that we shrink from her in alarm. Miss Lillycrop's bosom friend was a warm-hearted, charitable, generous, hard-featured, square-shouldered, deep-chested, large-boned lady of middle age and quick temper. She was also in what is styled comfortable circumstances, and dwelt in a pretty suburban cottage. ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... train, it was all such fun that I chattered away to mamma as fast as possible about the stations we should pass, and the things we should see, till I saw an old gentleman opposite exchanging smiles with mamma. That made me feel shy, and shrink back into the corner silent enough; and with the silence came a sigh, and five minutes later mamma's question surprised me, in a fit of melancholy thought, about all that I had left behind me. When would Lottie and I meet again? And how should we know which was getting on best with the history? ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... be only a question of time, and a short time at that, when the laborers would be worse off than they are now. Though, at the outset, they might absorb the entire incomes of the well-to-do classes, the amount thus gained would shrink in their hands until their position would be worse than their present one. They would have pulled down the capitalists without more than a momentary benefit for themselves and with a prospect of soon sinking to a lower level than as a class ...
— Social Justice Without Socialism • John Bates Clark
... of the nose will shrink away. When the specimen is dry and the nose-wire is cut off, a wax tip may be modeled on, nostrils being punched into it with a ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... your house becomes a lumber-kiln, and any wood that has not been tried as by fire will, under its influence, warp and crack and shrink; in carpenters' phrase, "it tears the finish all to pieces." The rapid shrinking of the joists and studs near the hot-air pipes is also apt to cause cracks in the plastering that would never appear if the whole frame could shrink evenly, for shrink it will more or less. The application of these ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... awakened in this woman's mind some slumbering recollection, and to have changed, for an instant, her whole demeanour. Her first hasty impulse was to bend forward as if to scan more minutely the appearance of her half-concealed companions; her next, on seeing them involuntarily shrink from her, to retreat to the back of the box, cover her face with her hands, and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... last book of yours WE think You've double damned yourself to scorn; We warned you whilst yet on the brink 485 You stood. From your black name will shrink ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the doomed palace no one noticed them. They cast aside all restraint. It was too dangerous to wait. The excessive dose they took of the drug made the corridor shrink with dizzying speed. They rushed along its length. Alan hurled a little man aside who was in their path. Already they were larger ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... these Marquesan superstitions. On the cannibal ghost I shall return elsewhere with certainty. And it is enough, for the present purpose, to remark that the men of the Marquesas, from whatever reason, fear and shrink from the presence of ghosts. Conceive how this must tell upon the nerves in islands where the number of the dead already so far exceeds that of the living, and the dead multiply and the living dwindle at so swift a rate. Conceive how the remnant huddles about ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fellow-countrymen, he enlisted in the Foreign Legion of France. Why did he take this step? Fundamentally, no doubt, because he felt war to be one of the supreme experiences of life, from which, when it offered itself, he could not shrink without disloyalty to his ideal. Long before the war was anything more than a vague possibility, he had ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... who habitually, and from a strong sense of duty, live on the shady side of life. Metaphorically speaking, the sunshine may almost touch the very path on which they are treading, but they shrink from and avoid it, having a strong preference for the shade, but considering themselves martyrs while they live in it. Mrs. Cameron was one of these people. The circumstances of her life had elected plenty of sunshine for her; she had a devoted and excellent husband, an ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... of a precipice. We peer into the abyss—we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling. By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... confidence of the salaried man, and Thurston, who fought for his own interests, flung himself down on his trestle cot with all his clothes on. Neither the timber slide nor the bridge was quite finished, but because rivers in that region shrink at night when the frost checks the drainage from the feeding glaciers on the peaks above, the saw-miller had insisted on driving down his logs when there was less chance of their stranding on the shoals that cumbered the high-water channel. Thurston lay awake for some time, listening to ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... noticed. The Roman legions, hitherto victorious over every foe, are now frequently vanquished; conquered tribes uprear the standard of revolt and refuse to pay tribute; the territorial boundaries of the empire materially shrink, and its once conquered provinces pass out of its ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... head close to the ears, and cut five collars of a side, bone the hinder leg, or else five collars will not be deep enough, cut the collars an inch deeper in the belly, then on the back; for when the collars come to boiling, they will shrink more in the belly than in the back, make the collars very even when you bind them up, not big at one end, & little at the other, but fill them equally, and lay them again in a soaking in fair water; before you bind them up, let them be well watered the space ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... few months to the completion of my book. I can now afford to devote my entire time to it, but I could not do the work justice unless amid the right surroundings, and the question is, where to find them. I do not care to remain here, and yet I shrink from ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... could not entertain overtures except in concert with Russia and the other powers. Meanwhile, Pitt, conscious as he was of failing powers, retained his undaunted courage, and while he was organising a third coalition, did not shrink from a bold measure which could hardly be justified by international law. This was the seizure on October 5, 1804, of three Spanish treasure-ships on the high seas, without a previous declaration of war against ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... to shrink from all, The lowly and the high; To see but scorn on every lip, Contempt in every eye. And for a time e'en Nature's smile A bitter mockery wore, For beauty stamped each living ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... many deeds of violence done that day called up others of their kind, she saw, and did not shrink from seeing, the fate of the Dutchmen at Werowocomoco who had sought to betray Smith to Powhatan. Her father, angered at them, had had them brained upon the threshold of the house they ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... one spoke. To shrink from expression is a characteristic in which the extremes of cultivation and mediocrity meet; the reserve of delicacy in St. George and Amory would have been a reserve of false shame in Bennietod, and of an exaggerated sense of humour in Little ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... together; heaven to help, One man shall break, even on their own flood's verge, That iron bulk of battle; but thine eye That sees it now swell higher than sand or shore Haply shall see not when thine host shall shrink. ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... was so attractive, but rather the intelligence, the personality that shone through it, as the light shines through the horn panes of some homely, massive lantern. Speculative eyes of the sort that seem to search horizons and gather knowledge there, but shrink from the faces of women; a head of brown hair, short cut but untidy, an athletic, manlike form to which, bizarrely enough, a slight stoop, the stoop of a student, seemed to give distinction, and hands slender and shapely as those of ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... smiles and wavings, but she could not shrink out of sight without falling into the lilies. She neither smiled nor waved back, and turning her eyes to the more distant mountains surveyed them carefully till the two, tired of waving, moved away along the path and turned ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... importance are in agitation.' I expressed as well as I could, and indeed it was but ill, my unfeigned and deep sense of his kindness, my hesitation to form any opinion of my own competency for the office, and at the same time my general desire not to shrink from any responsibility which he might think proper to lay upon me. He said that was the right and manly view to take.... He adverted to my connection with the West Indies as likely to give satisfaction ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... that interview, to get General Grant to agree to write his personal memoirs for publication, but he wouldn't listen to the suggestion. His inborn diffidence made him shrink from voluntarily coming before the public and placing himself under criticism as an author. He had no confidence in his ability to write well; whereas we all know now that he possessed an admirable literary gift and style. He was also sure that the book would have no sale, and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... proximity to him, she was hard put to it to show some dexterity as a nurse. And all the time she was aware of Wade, with his quiet, forceful presence, hovering near. Could he not see her hands trembling? And would he not think that weakness strange? Then driftingly came the thought that she would not shrink from Wade's reading her mind. Perhaps even now he understood her better than ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... situations in which the mind is moved to do that from which in cooler moments it would shrink with disgust. It chanced that Collins had retained the scalp so singularly found at the bottom of the river, by Corporal Nixon, and this circumstance ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... And on occasion by a stretch of art Can even speak the language of the heart, Can lisp and sigh and make confused replies, With baby lips and complicated eyes, Indifferently apt to weep or wink, Primly pursue, provocatively shrink, Brazen or bashful, as the case require, Coax the faint baron, curb the bold esquire, Deride restraint, but deprecate desire, Unbridled yet unloving, loose but limp, ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... violation of their sanctity. Go to a silent exhibition of the productions of the sister Art, and be convinced that the qualities which dazzle at first sight, and kindle the admiration of the multitude, are essentially different from those by which permanent influence is secured. Let us not shrink from following up these principles as far as they will carry us, and conclude with observing—that there never has been a period, and perhaps never will be, in which vicious poetry, of some kind or other, has not excited more zealous admiration, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... McMurray, is still at Bude. She is to have a child, I understand, in the near future, and will stay in Cornwall till the confinement is over. Her husband, even were he not amid the midnight stress of his newspaper office, I should shrink from seeking. He is a Niagara of a man. Judith—I can go to her no more. And though Antoinette has wept her heart out all day long, poor soul, and Stenson has conveyed by his manner his respectful sympathy, I cannot take counsel of my own servants. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Little'un that she thinks she has met him before; in Auckland, probably. Either she is mistaken, or, the Little'un has forgotten, and is shamefaced. He blushes the colour of beet-root. His huge frame wobbles in confusion; and, awkwardly trying to shrink out of sight, as his bashful habit is, he steps backward, and plants a giant heel upon O'Gaygun's toe. That outraged individual startles the assemblage with the sudden exclamation, "Gosh!" Endeavouring to extricate himself, he lumbers against the ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... killed, for no purpose, for no cause.... Well, he had not been killed meanly. There was still time for him to live on the level of his friends. If youth has had committed to it the task of redeeming the world from the follies of the Old, Youth must not shrink from the labour, even though it may feel that ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... her living, one poor enough, by hawking small household necessities; and not unfrequently where she appeared, the housewives bought of her because her eyes, and her nose, and an undefined sense of evil in her presence, made them shrink from the danger of offending her. But the real cause of the bad impression she made was, that she was sorely troubled with what is, by huge discourtesy, called a bad conscience—being in reality a conscience doing its duty so well that it makes the ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... shrink! I am not here for passion, I crave no love, only a little rest, Although I would my face lay, lover's fashion, Against the ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... nor the utility of such a measure. I trust the reader will believe that I would not have shrunk from any danger that perseverance or physical strength could have overcome; that indeed I did not shrink from the slow fate, which, as far as I could judge, would inevitably have awaited me if I had gone on; but that in the exercise of sound discretion I decided on falling back. The feeling which would have led me onwards ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... of Dr. Maverick's nature when he chose to use it, which was not nearly always, there was a steadfast kindliness, the vigor of a true and pure manhood, that made a clear atmosphere about him, in which insincerity, weakness, and selfishness seemed to flicker into pale shadows, and shrink away from the intense mental light ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... with his pious wife and child to the house of God, and offers the child, for her, to be baptized, is more of a man than before, gains reputation for some desirable qualities, excites respect for self-reliance, the quiet performance of a duty from which certain feelings might lead him to shrink, and in the increased love and esteem of others, to say no more, he ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... history may, in some respects, be likened unto an adventurous knight, who having undertaken a perilous enterprise by way of establishing his fame, feels bound, in honor and chivalry to turn back for no difficulty nor hardship, and never to shrink or quail, whatever enemy he may encounter. Under this impression, I resolutely draw my pen, and fall to with might and main at those doughty questions and subtle paradoxes which, like fiery dragons and bloody giants, beset the entrance to my history, and would fain repulse ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... rather that, as its home broke up, the soul withdrew little by little, and contracted itself like the pupil of an eye, to shrink to a pinpoint and vanish ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... In one way Rachel rather hoped it was the case; it would be something to have received so much kindness and attention, even though bought and paid for, from one of her own sex who knew all there was to know, and yet did not shrink from her. But the young woman's next words dismissed ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... understands him perfectly well. They are strange things. It must have been the finger of God. That executioner cut off Jurand's hand, tore out his tongue, and put out his eyes. That executioner is such that where men are concerned he would not shrink from inflicting any torture, even if he were ordered to pull the teeth of the victim; but, where girls are concerned, he would not lift up his hand to kill them, or to assist in torturing them. The reason for this determination is, because he too had an ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... we compare the sorrows of our earthly life with the hope of an eternal existence, though painfully felt, still they shrink as it ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... really of her kindred, I commend to you my brother: he is at ——, with Mr. Morton. If you can serve him, my mother's soul will watch over you as a guardian angel. As for me, I ask no help from any one: I go into the world and will carve out my own way. So much do I shrink from the thought of charity from others, that I do not believe I could bless you as I do now if your kindness to me did not close with the stone upon my ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... There was nothing left but open defiance, and he did not shrink from it. When he broke off, Carrington, who had listened with the veins swelling on his forehead, rose suddenly. It was evident that he had allowed his passion to ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... not say that, Aubrey! He would only be vexed to hear that you gave in, and were fickle to your undertaking. Indeed, if I were the volunteer, I should think it due to him, not to shrink as if I were ashamed of what ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... will answer; Sigh, it is lost on the air; The echoes bound To a joyful sound, But shrink from voicing care. ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... canst transfigure common things, And, like the sun, make the clod burst in bloom,— Unseal the fount so mute this many a day, And help me sing of Linda! Why of her, Since she would shrink with manifest recoil, Knew she that deeds of hers were made a theme For measured verse? Why leave the garden flowers To fix the eye on one poor violet That on the solitary grove sheds fragrance? Themes are enough, that court a wide regard, And prompt a strenuous flight; and yet from ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... herself? Her scruple might die—and if it should not, she was strong enough to hold it down, to keep her foot on its breast. Was her love so weak that it should shrink ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... observations upon him rendered the ill-tempered poetaster dumb; and Edward attributed this distance of manner to a feeling of shyness which Reddy might entertain at being seen in such a place, and therefore had too much good breeding to thrust his civility on a man who seemed to shrink from it; but when he left the house he expressed his regret to his companions at the poor fellow's ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... whether we should shrink from our troubles or face them," continued Little; "but in your case I should choose the shrinking, and write to the poor, pathetic little dimpler. Poor thing! Her days of dimpling are over. If you knew that you had led her astray, your duty, I believe, would be clear; ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... not one of your blood-thirsty Rebels, you know; she has the good sense to shrink with horror from the bare mention of those heathen who, at Manassas and elsewhere, wreaked their unmanly spite on the bodies of dead heroes: still she is a bitter little Rebel, with blonde hair, superb eyelashes, and two brothers in the Confederate service,—if I may be allowed to club the statements. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... was there a sail or a smoke not of a vessel of the Philippine expedition. All the long days and nights the eye swept the horizon for companionship, finding only that of our associates in adventure, and very little of them. Even the birds seem to shrink from the heart of the watery world spread between America and Asia; and the monsters of the deep are absent. One day, about a thousand miles from California, a story spread of a porpoise at play, but the lonely creature passed astern like a bubble. Bryant ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... causes of the Reformation. But without reviewing those old scandals, a true understanding of Italian morality, and a true insight into Italian social feeling as expressed in literature, are alike impossible. Nor will the historian of this epoch shrink from his task, even though the transactions he has to record seem to savor of legend rather than of simple fact. No fiction contains matter more fantastic, no myth or allegory is more adapted to express a truth ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... Bruce shrink in fear of his life; and despite her fury she was filled with disgust that he could imagine she would have his blood on her hands. Then she divined that Bruce saw more in the gathering storm in her father's eyes than he ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... been given to man in order to enable him to disguise his thoughts? Indian politicians are no Talleyrands, but they sometimes seem to have framed their vocabulary on purpose to disguise political conceptions which most of them for various reasons shrink from defining at present with decision. We have already seen how elastic is the word Swaraj, self-government, or rather self-rule. In the mouth of the "moderates" of the Indian National Congress it means, we are assured, only a pious ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... a proper season brings, In serious mood to treat of serious things, Then shall they find, disdaining idle play, That I can be as grave and dull as they. Thus far in sport—nor let half patriots, those Who shrink from every blast of Power which blows, 490 Who, with tame cowardice familiar grown, Would hear my thoughts, but fear to speak their own; Who (lest bold truths, to do sage Prudence spite, Should burst the portals of their ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... a bashful bride's first loving speech to her husband. Then suddenly she produced from that insignificant tambourine, as though with the fingers of a powerful musician, sounds like the crashing of the clouds in thunder, making the frames of her hearers shrink within them as she sang in tones more melodious than those of the Apsharas (celestial ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... Displeasure. And how dreadful is the Condition of that Creature, who is only sensible of the Being of his Creator by what he suffers from him! He is as essentially present in Hell as in Heaven, but the Inhabitants of those accursed Places behold him only in his Wrath, and shrink within the Flames to conceal themselves from him. It is not in the Power of Imagination to conceive the fearful Effects of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of any question submitted to arbitration. Beyond these considerations came the social influences in the richest capital of the world—all favorable to England, all hostile to the United States. Apparently believing that the United States would shrink from presenting the case of the fisheries to a commission in which Great Britain had so manifest an advantage, that Government proposed (before the Commission could sit) to open negotiations looking ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... pandered to the hatred of America among the upper classes of this country during the present war. Some of us at least had been taught by what we have lately seen not to shrink from an extension of the suffrage, if the only bad consequence of that measure of justice would be a change in government from the passions of the privileged class to the passions of the people.... ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... of it. I shrink from every new man I meet. I wait nervously for the word 'coal,' feeling that I shall scream when it comes. Oh, I want a vote or something. I don't know what I want, but I hate men! Why should they think that everything they say to us is funny or clever or important? ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... pin is too tight in the flange. The bushing in the flange often expands. Some tuners oil at the ends of the pin with kerosene or wet it with alcohol, which is very good; but a better plan is to shrink the bushing with a drop of water on each side so that it will penetrate the bushing. After this is done, the piano cannot be used for a day or two, as the water first swells the bushing, making all the hammers stick; but when they are dry again, they will be found free. This may seem a ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... with so dreary a picture presented to her mental vision, she did not shrink from the enterprise, nor turn back, until all hope of making a home for her family in that remote region had fled. We recall a few instances in which, after years of toil, sorrow, and suffering—when all had been lost, the heroine of the household has been driven back by a stress of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... He seemed to shrink from pursuing the subject, after having started it himself. "Let's be doing something to kill the time," he said. "Let's pack up and pay ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... which both to my cousin, and his men, I'll still be thankful in word, deed, and pen. Till Thursday morning there I made my stay, And then I went plain Dunstable highway. My very heart with drought methought did shrink, I went twelve miles, and no one bade me drink. Which made me call to mind, that instant time, That drunkenness was a most sinful crime. When Puddle-hill I footed down, and past A mile from thence, I found a hedge at last. There stroke we sail, our bacon, ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... rebuff. Mrs. Brainerd, however, had not tried again and had, with what stoicism she could command, resigned herself to the path God had ordered for her feet. So Mr. Brainerd's end at Woodbridge was not a brilliant one, but he did not shrink or cry aloud, and it was generally recognized that dear old Burt Brainerd was a ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... man, and therefore compelled me by other duties inspiring feelings, to bring even my Intellect to the Market. And the finale is this. I should like to attempt the Translation. If you will mention your terms, at once and irrevocably (for I am an idiot at bargaining, and shrink from the very thought), I will return an answer by the next Post, whether in my present circumstances, I can or cannot undertake it. If I do, I will do it immediately; but I must have all Goethe's works, which I cannot procure in Bristol; for to give the "Faust" without a preliminary ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... perilous nest, Most like to fall when fullest, and that jar With every heavier billow! O unrest Than balmiest deeps of quiet sweeter far! How did ye triumph now in Margaret's breast, 270 Making it readier to shrink and start Than quivering gold of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... account given, in the First Part, of the population of Salem Village and the contiguous farms, her husband, John Procter, was introduced to our acquaintance. From what we then saw of him, we are well assured that he would not shrink from the protection and defence of his wife. He accompanied her from her arrest to her arraignment, and stood by her side, a strong, brave, and resolute guardian, trying to support her under the terrible trials of her situation, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the centre of curiosity, quizzing, and comment, Jude was not inclined to shrink from open declarations of what he had no great reason to be ashamed of; and in a little while was stimulated to say in a loud voice to the listening ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... this side has a square aperture in it. Some of the women peep anxiously through it at the sound of footsteps; others shrink away in shame. - For what offence can that lonely child, of ten or twelve years old, be shut up here? Oh! that boy? He is the son of the prisoner we saw just now; is a witness against his father; and is detained here for safe keeping, until ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... of the nebulae consist of innumerable isolated particles and may be spoken of as gas. We know that some are in a state of whirling motion. We know also that such gas left to itself will slowly as it cools condense and shrink, so as to form a central solid nucleus; and also, if it were in whirling motion, that it would send off rings from itself, and that these rings could break up into planets. In two familiar cases the ring has not yet thus aggregated into planet ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... lit again the torch of learning in Europe when the Moors came to Spain. And so religion after religion bears testimony to the possibility of human knowledge outside the physical world; we only re-proclaim the ancient truth—with this addition, which some religions now shrink from making: that what man did in the past man may do to-day; that the powers of the Spirit are not shackled, that the knowledge of the other worlds is still attainable to man. And outside that practical knowledge of other worlds it ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... it been possible. As it was not, I have pointed out those features which seemed to me objectionable,—certainly with no design so ridiculous as that of setting up myself against Harvard University, but equally certainly with no heart so craven as to shrink from denouncing what seemed to me wrong because it would be setting myself against Harvard University. Opinions must be judged by their own weight, not by the weight of the persons who utter them. The fair fame of Harvard is the possession of every son and daughter of Massachusetts, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... she loved him; for if she was not bound strongly by the prejudices of her class, all those she cared for certainly were. On the other hand, if she did not love him, then, indeed, he had reason to shrink from an interview that would be the taking away of all his hope. Who would not wrestle hard with hope and fear before facing such an alternative? Certainly not a ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... a natural panic,' said Robert, throwing back his head at the challenge. 'Men shrank and will always shrink, say what you will, from what seems to touch things dearer to them than life. But the panic is passing. The smoke is clearing away, and we see that the battle-field is falling into new lines. But the old truth remains the same. Where and when and how you will, but somewhen ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... And the blacks shrink back and are sore afraid At the furrows five that rib the glade, And the voodoo work ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... reference to the scene within the typanum? We must remember, also, that at this early time the sculptor's art was in its infancy while painting and the ceramic art had reached a considerable development. Even if all analogy did not lead the other way, an artist would shrink from trying to fill up a pediment with statues in the round. The most natural method was ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... Lacedaemonian force near Tegyra, a village dependent upon Orchomenus (B.C. 375). Pelopidas had with him only the Sacred Band and a small body of cavalry when he fell in with the Lacedaemonians, who were nearly twice as numerous. He did not, however, shrink from the conflict on this account; and when one of his men, running up to him, exclaimed, "We are fallen into the midst of the enemy," he replied, "Why so, more than they into the midst of us?" In the battle which ensued the two Spartan commanders fell at the ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... even what I dreaded more than anything else, a long illness which would make me a burden to the Community. Should it please the Good God, I am quite content to have my bodily and mental sufferings prolonged for years. I do not fear a long life; I do not shrink from the struggle. The Lord is the rock upon which I stand—"Who teacheth my hands to fight, and my fingers to war. He is my Protector and I have hoped in Him."[14] I have never asked God to let me die young, It is true I have always thought I should do so, but ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... increasingly large number of women have entered professions that prevent motherhood, and that the number of apartment-houses where children are not wanted are on the increase, all play their part. In this age of intense living, it is not to be wondered at that many shrink from the responsibility of rearing children, and the same conditions that contribute to this decadent ideal intensifies sex-hunger, and it is this dominating passion that tolerates and makes possible the most frightful crime ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... hate myself—I do everything, in short, yet cannot save myself! Yet do not," he continued, seeing me shrink, "think worse of me than I deserve: nothing of injustice, of ill-nature, of malignancy—I have nothing of these ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... me from going in, but it had no such effect. If I have candidly narrated the importunities, the indelicacies, of which my desire to possess myself of Jeffrey Aspern's papers had rendered me capable I need not shrink from confessing this last indiscretion. I think it was the worst thing I did; yet there were extenuating circumstances. I was deeply though doubtless not disinterestedly anxious for more news of the old lady, and Miss Tita had accepted from me, as it were, a rendezvous which ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... secrets. It is surely the forbidden tree of knowledge; I no sooner taste it, than I perceive myself naked, and stript of all things - yea even of my very self. I see myself, and the whole frame of nature, shrink into fleeting ideas, which, like Epicurus's atoms, dance ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... they could not hang me or kill me. Deeper humiliation than ever would be my portion when they drive me from East Lynne with abhorrence and ignominy, as a soldier is drummed out of his regiment; but I could bear that as I must bear the rest and I can shrink under the hedge and lay myself down to die. Humiliation for me? No; I will not put that in comparison with seeing and ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... although I knew that the advice and the example of M—-M—— would end in her ruin; I had insulted, in the most grievous manner, the delicacy of my mistress, and that before her very eyes, and after all this how could I ask a weak woman to do what a man, priding himself on his strength, would shrink from at tempting? I should have stood self-condemned, and have felt that it was my duty to remain the same to her, but flattering myself that I was overcoming mere prejudices, I was in fact that most degraded of slaves, he who uses his strength ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... people are able, by extraordinary industry, to earn their daily bread; but they can do little more. The weavers, as a class, appear to be feeble and faded specimens of humanity, remarkably quiet, intelligent, and well-disposed—a law-abiding people, who shrink from violence and outrage, no matter what may be their grievances. It is cruel to load them too heavily with the burdens of life, and yet I am afraid it is sometimes done, even in this county, unnecessarily and wantonly. What I have said of the Downshire and ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... and on the 15th he entered Moscow. This enormous city was deserted. General Rostopschine, its governor, had forced all the inhabitants to leave. This Rostopschine whom some have described as a hero, was a barbarian, who would shrink from nothing to achieve his aims. He had allowed the populace to strangle a number of foreign merchants, mainly the French, who were living in Moscow, on the sole grounds that they were suspected of hoping for the ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... pluck the amaranthine flower Of Faith, and round the Sufferer's temples bind Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower, And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind. ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... they said, is one of public concern, one in which every Englishman who is unwilling to be the slave of France and of Rome has a deep interest. In such a case it would be unworthy of the Estates of the Realm to shrink from the responsibility of providing for the common safety, to try to obtain for themselves the praise of tenderness and liberality, and to leave to the Sovereign the odious task of proscription. A law requiring all public functionaries, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the soil is very wet. Trees will stay in good condition for several days, if the burlap sacks are kept moistened. Wet, soggy soil is certain to shrink away from the roots and leave air pockets which will, in time, kill the trees. If trees are transplanted during a very dry season, they should be thoroughly watered. To do this, remove several shovelfuls of dirt from the ground about a foot from the tree, being ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... marry William after he knew that she loved Paul; such a thought never crossed her mind. Yet, as she looked, a strange feeling of alarm which she did not comprehend swept over her, filling her with formless terror. Some instinct made her shrink, as if this wonderful string of pearls, which she had thought so beautiful a moment before, had turned into a cruel chain and was binding her fast. She did not know that many a weaker man has thus bound many a stronger woman ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... entrance of an untrod cave, I shrink—so hushed the shades and sombre. This death of sense makes life a breathing grave, A vital death, a waking slumber! 'Tis as the light itself of God were fled— So dark is all around, so still, so dead; Nor hope of change, one ray I find! Yet must submit. Though fled ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... thee this morning e'en as I have done: and I would fain have a good leech to Walter lest he should die, although I owe him hatred rather than love. Now, my friend, tell me, is this an evil deed, and dost thou shrink from the Sorceress?" ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... that Joe Swan, now he has change, freedom, and a rise in life before him, would willingly marry Laura if he might. I am not at all sure that, if it came to the point, she would willingly marry him at such short notice, and leave every friend she has in the world. I think she would shrink back, for she can know nothing worth mentioning of him. As to the boy, how do you know that a tour may not be a very fine thing for him? It must be better than moping at Melcombe under petticoat government; and even if Joe married Laura ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... return:—such is the kind of liberality of sentiment which may ruin great nations. The qualities of the lamb may be very excellent qualities, but they are specially inapplicable to dealings with the wolf. Do those who shrink from expense think that the presence of Russia in Afghanistan will be inexpensive to us? Will the weakness which will be the temptation and the opportunity of Russia be less costly than effectual defence? When we enter the councils of Europe ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... His lips. For they offer the realisation of an apparently impossible character, they promise the possession of an apparently impossible vision; and they soothe fears, and tell us that the sight from which, were it possible, we should sometimes fain shrink, is the source of our purest gladness. So there are three things, it seems to me, worth our notice in these great words—How hearts can be made pure; how the pure heart can see God; and how the sight can be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... tender, full of pain, with a note in it too of a struggling self-control that would break in a moment and overwhelm its possessor. As I look back at it I remember that I felt the passion and strength in it so violently that I seemed to shrink into myself, as though I were witnessing something that no man should see, and as though also I were conscious of my own ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... Prometheus, certain dialogues, among them a Symposium, in which Messala, Virgil, and Horace were introduced; and Horace implies that he had planned a prose history of Augustus's wars. [22] He did not shrink from attempting, and what was worse, publishing, poetry, which bore imprinted on it the characteristics of his effeminate mind. Seneca quotes one passage [23] from which we may form an estimate of his level as a versifier. But, however feeble in execution, he was ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... inert, trembling, and terrified. Impressions of early youth are indelible, and this was the first time, since his return from America, that Gabriel found himself in presence of Father d'Aigrigny; and although he did not shrink from the resolution he had taken, he regretted not to have been able, as he had hoped, to gather new strength and courage from an interview with Agricola and Dagobert. Father d'Aigrigny knew mankind too well not to have remarked the emotion of the young priest, and to have endeavored ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... bloody house of life,"[236] merely to supply the anatomists' table. The law which, as a deeper sentence on the guilt of murder, declares that the body of the convicted criminal should be given up to anatomy, is certainly not without effect, for criminals have been known to shrink from that part of the sentence which seems to affect them more than the doom of death itself, with all its terrors here and hereafter. On the other hand, while this idea of the infamy attending the exposition of the person is thus recognised by the law, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... know that who asked it with strong crying and tears? Was not the asking done to teach us two things—that He was very man, like ourselves, shrinking from pain and death as much as the very weakest of us can shrink, and also that we may ask anything and everything, if only we desire beyond it that ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... applause of a gratified audience as surely as the dramatist who introduces on the stage of his flagging action a carriage that can be driven or a fountain that will flow. But the masters of strong imagination disdain such work, and those of deep sensibility shrink from it.[39] Only under conditions of personal weakness, presently to be noted, would Scott comply with the cravings of his lower audience in scenes of terror like the death of Front-de-Boeuf. But he never ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... hence, the prolonged mechanical effort to introduce into each intellectual sponge all the scientific fluid it can contain, even to saturation, and maintain it in this extreme state of perfection if only for two hours during an examination, after which it may rapidly subside and shrink. Hence, that mistaken use, that inordinate expenditure, that precocious waste of mental energy, and that entire pernicious system which overburden for a substantial period the young, not for their advantage, but, on reaching maturity, to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the Rose blows along the River Brink, With old Khayyam the Ruby Vintage drink; And when the Angel with his darker Draught Draws up to Thee—take that, and do not shrink. ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... something servile and contemptible in mine," said Louise; "I always shrink from a woman flaunted out in rustling silks, great, glaring rings on her fingers, and alarming jewels swinging like ponderous pendulums from her ears. I think what a poor, little, pinched, narrow-contracted, poverty-stricken soul is there, that seeks to atone for the lack within, by ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... restaurants, and gorgeous drinking-saloons. A stranger here cannot fail to be struck with the incongruity with which wealth and squalor are blended. Here a dainty restaurant is elbowed by a cheap American gargote, there a plate-glass window blazing with diamonds seems to shrink from a neighbouring emporium stocked with second-hand wearing apparel. Even the exclusive Zero Club with its bow window generally crowded with fashionable loungers, is contaminated by the proximity of a shabby drinking-bar, which, however, does not impair the excellence ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... not shrink from Stratton till all had seen what had taken place. Then, gravely crossing to her father, she laid her hands together upon his breast, while he waited for ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... of frocks and trousers. It was an affection partly filial, partly fraternal—fraternal enough to make him like Irwine's company better than that of most younger men, and filial enough to make him shrink strongly from ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... would avoid living a life of sin: the one, to marry his victim; the other, to break off the connection before it is too late. The first is, of course, the more proper course; but there are cases where marriage is impossible. From the latter a man of any heart must shrink with horror. Yet there are cases, even, where the one sin will prove the least—where she who has loved too well may grieve bitterly at parting, yet will be no more open to temptation than if she ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... quality of acts as well as with their effects, with the soul as well as its environment. And it takes a real live soul to do good or evil. That is the point of Mr. Kipling's Tomlinson—a mere bundle of hearsays—who could win neither hell nor heaven. It is also the teaching of Ibsen. You must not shrink from wrong because you are told it is wrong, but because you see it is wrong. But few people can expect to develop a personality of their own. Current morality is the automatic application of misunderstood ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... to censure Mr. Clay for accepting office under Mr. Adams. We honor him for his courage in doing so. Having made Mr. Adams President, it had been unlike the gallant Kentuckian to shrink from the possible odium of the act by refusing his proper place in the administration. The calumny which anticipated his acceptance of office was a defiance: Take office if you dare! It was simply worthy of Henry Clay to accept the challenge, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... like a man and a soldier," she said, "to presume upon the natural delicacy of a lady under such circumstances. She shrinks from you and fears you. She dare not encounter you even in the presence of so dear a friend as I am. But I do not shrink from you, Captain Fyffe, and I am not afraid of you. I tell you once more that I think your coming here is, all things considered, as pretty a piece of audacity ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... the ladder, followed by several of the men. He springs from terrace to terrace, up to the third. He presses forward to the spot where stand the two captive girls. His looks are wild, and his manner that of one frantic. They shrink back at his approach, mistaking his ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... be raised. The German Emperor, some may hold, fancying that the weight of his sword in the scale would induce the Tsar to shrink from action, had foreseen the anger of the Slav nation at its sovereign's timorous scruples, and looked forward to revolutionary outbreaks which would cripple the Government for years to come and make it unable to think of war, if indeed they did not sweep the Romanoffs from ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... now, what do you think? From fighting it out to the end I don't shrink, But time's running short; we stand well for a win: They say that their eager desire's to go in. Perhaps if they got their desire they'd be posed. Suppose we declare ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 11, 1892 • Various
... man reopened the parlor-door he saw the school director making a motion as if to embrace Podge, who was full of blushes and appearing to shrink away. ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... that shall have more of the scientific and less of the religious character, proofs that shall more distinctly appeal to the senses. Believers in all ages have longed for external support to their faith; unbelievers have refused to believe unless supplied with more physical evidence. Believers shrink from being thrown inwards on themselves; they fear the wavering of their own faith; they are alarmed at the prospect of the buttresses of their belief being taken from them. They find it easier to believe the spiritual ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... seemed to shrink back into the shadows of the carriage. Her face was very pale, and ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... a position some men might have given up the attempt in despair, and saved themselves across the border. But I have always valued myself on my fidelity, and I did not shrink. If not to-day, to-morrow; if not this time, next time. The dice do not always turn up aces. Bracing myself, therefore, to the occasion, I crept, as soon as the house was quiet, to the window, a small, square, open lattice, much cobwebbed, and partly stuffed with hay. I looked out. The ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... like this the most ardent lover of Nature could scarcely fail to shrink from her cold, pallid face and colder breath. Our return to the home, whose ruddy firelight is seen through the frosted window-panes, will be all the more welcome because we have been shivering so long without. The grace of hospitality has been a characteristic of the ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... face. I could learn nothing there. His words had left me partly unconvinced. Somehow I felt that the only time he had spoken the entire truth was when he had spoken of Felicia. Yet it was certainly true that I owed these people something, and I had no wish to shrink ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... greatest sinner who repents shall be forgiven, and, indeed, is more acceptable in the eyes of Heaven than him who has never erred. Far be it from me to attempt to exculpate you in your own eyes, or extenuate your former criminality. You have sinned deeply, so deeply that you may well shrink aghast from the contemplation of your past life—may well recoil in abhorrence from yourself—and may fitly devote yourself to constant prayer and acts of penitence. But having cast off your iniquity, and sincerely repented, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... yield their souls captive to the brief intoxication of love, if no higher and holier feeling mingle with and consecrate their dream of bliss, will shrink trembling from the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... devolving on every human being,—duties not small nor few, but vast and varied,—which spring from home and private life, and all their sweet relations. The support or care of the humblest household is a function worthy of men, women, and angels, so far as it goes. From these duties none must shrink, neither man nor woman; the loftiest genius cannot ignore them; the sublimest charity must begin with them. They are their own exceeding great reward; their self-sacrifice is infinite joy; and the selfishness which discards them is repaid by loneliness ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... chain'd Prometheus feasts the vulture there, No Cyclop forges thro their summits glare, To Phrygian Jove no victim smoke is curl'd, Nor ark high landing quits a deluged world. But were these masses piled on Asia's shore, Taurus would shrink, Hemodia strut no more, Indus and Ganges scorn their humble sires, And rising suns salute superior fires; Whose watchful priest would meet, with matin blaze, His earlier God, and sooner chaunt his praise. For here great nature, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... with me; I was alone; she threw herself into an armchair, and told me she came to weep with me over the foolish conduct of the ultras of the King's party. "We must fall," said she, "attacked as we are by men who possess every talent and shrink from no crime, while we are defended only by those who are no doubt very estimable, but have no adequate idea of our situation. They have exposed me to the animosity of both parties by presenting the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... know they shrink in the washing,' which satisfied the grumbler. And that always seemed to me the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... of that fainting soul within Fay's fortress? Were chance words of Magdalen's beginning to make the rebel stir in his cell? At any rate something stirred. Something was making trouble. Fay began to shrink from Magdalen, involuntarily at first, then purposely for long moody intervals. Then she would be sarcastic and bitter with her, jibe at the housekeeping, and criticise the household arrangements. A day later she would be humbly ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... or meaningless became on his spontaneous and vital. "He is too modest and self-forgetful to wish for the honor," his friends commented now; "but he is too conscientious not to put aside his personal preferences for the good of the church. He may shrink from the high places, but he is the ideal man for them." As much of this sort of thing was said in the public print, it is not impossible that the Rev. Rutherford Strathmore was aware of it; but he had the good taste to ignore it, even in conversation with his nearest friends, and the tact to ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... beloved sister, is prostrated by her sorrows and anxieties," it began, "and I must be her amanuensis—I who would die for her, yet who shrink from this task, well knowing, though she does not, how hard it is to write to one to whom I have given perhaps such infinite pain. Indeed, I should not have had courage to write had she not required it of me, had not your most generous offer and action ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... vowed to wed that man only who should ride over the blazing fire that was laid around her hall. They found the hall and the fire burning around it. Gunnar rode Goti, and Hogni Holknir. Gunnar turns his horse towards the fire, but it shrinks back. Sigurd said: "Why dost thou shrink back, Gunnar?" Gunnar answers: "My horse will not leap this fire," and prays Sigurd to lend him Grani. "He is at thy service," said Sigurd. Gunnar now rides again towards the fire, but Grani will not go over. They ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... and sensitive, "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my God and your God." But after a few days He showed Himself to Thomas, and bade him boldly touch Him, put his hand in the Master's side, and his fingers into the marks left by the nails of the cross, so that He did not shrink from being touched even on the most sensitive spots. And also even in the earliest days, and as if the new life were to be fully strengthened by doing so, we find Him walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, and from Emmaus back to Jerusalem, as well ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... Jude. But she did not shrink nor shudder now. Young as she was, she had seen death many, many times. She had gone to the portals, alone, with others beside her poor baby. She rose now, and walked over to Jude's side. The night had wrought a change in him, seemingly; or perhaps it was Joyce's regained sanity. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... of those farewell feasts—festins d'adieu—which Huron custom enjoined on those about to die, whether in the course of Nature or by public execution. Being interpreted, it was a declaration that the priests knew their danger, and did not shrink from it. It might have the effect of changing overawed friends into open advocates, and even of awakening a certain sympathy in the breasts of an assembly on whom a bold bearing could rarely fail of influence. ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... that they have injured his converts, as in the letter to the Galatians. Modern critics have exaggerated this element in a character which does not seem to have been fierce or implacable. He writes like a man engaged in a stern conflict against enemies who will give no quarter, and who shrink from no treachery. But the sharpest expression that can be laid to his charge is the impatient, perhaps half humorous wish that the Judaisers who want to circumcise the Galatians might be subjected to a severer operation themselves ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... are still serving our apprenticeship to life; we are new to the business, a kind of faint-heartedness overpowers us, and leaves us in an almost dazed condition of mind. We feel that we are helpless aliens in a strange country. At all ages we shrink back involuntarily from the unknown. And a young man is very much like the soldier who will walk up to the cannon's mouth, and is put to flight by a ghost. He hesitates among the maxims of the world. The rules of attack and of self-defence are alike unknown ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... Brutus is speaking with reference to his own case, he probably intends 'Genius' in a good sense, for the spiritual or immortal part of himself. If so, then he would naturally mean by 'mortal' his perishable part, or his ministerial faculties, which shrink from executing what the directing power is urging them to. The late Professor Ferrier of St. Andrews seems to take a somewhat different view of the passage. He says, "In this speech of Brutus, Shakespeare gives a fine description of the unsettled state ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... has aggravated my foible, and makes me a wretched correspondent. I should like very much to write letters gracefully and easily, but I can't, because it is contrary to my nature." "I have got," he writes so early as 1873, "to shrink from the use of the pen; to ask me to write letters is like asking a lame man to walk; it is not, as horse-dealers say, 'the nature of the beast.' When others TALK to me charmingly, my answers are short, faltering, incoherent sentences; so it is with my writing." "You," he ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... "I would not shrink at all," she said, gently, "if at any time you saw anybody whom you wished to marry. You need not hesitate. I am not so selfish as that. I do not wish ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... all about him, and seemed greatly pleased with the attention he excited." His company followed the manager on foot. Yet for many years Mr. Pentland was the sole purveyor of theatrical entertainments to several English counties, and did not shrink from presenting to his audiences the most important ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... stretched out flat on the floor, his back to the wall, and he smoked thoughtfully as he looked at David. "A coward? I don't know. I have seen him jump at the snap of a twig. I have seen him tremble at nothing at all. I have seen him shrink at darkness, and then, again, he came through a terrible darkness to reach my cabin that night. Mad? Perhaps. It is hard to believe he is a coward. Would a coward live alone, as he does? That seems impossible, too. And yet he is afraid. That fear is always close ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... enjoyment—of all the sense originally vouchsafed to him. We know the stories that are in the most unfeeling manner told to the disadvantage of the learned and inoffensive gentleman; we know them, and shall not shrink from meeting them. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... baste it well. Stand at one side of the fire, take the fat up carefully with the basting-spoon, and pour it over the lean part of the meat. The basting-spoon will not become too hot if you put it in a plate by the side, not in the tin. If you baste the meat well, it will not shrink or become dry and hard, it will be juicy and savoury, and it will be a ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... nodded pleasantly. "You needn't shrink; I shan't ask you to do anything vulgar, or even anything that, with your present prejudices, you might consider actively criminal. You can help me, you see, in your own profession as a journalist; and in other ways. And my enterprise is greater ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... Miss Shott. "Of course they are, and that's the trouble with them. Some of these days they'll have to be washed, and then they'll shrink up so short that I suppose I'll have to freeze either my chin or my toes. And as to her giving them to me, 'turn about's fair play.' I once joined in to give ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... Louis XVI. had employed this great means whilst the Revolution was but yet in its cradle, we should not now be here! This rigour, the vice of a despot, is the virtue of a nation. Legislators, who shrink from such extreme means, are cowards—criminals: for when the public liberty is assailed, to pardon is to share the crime. ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... of the gray shadows of twilight a pair of soft eyes were gazing pitifully into his, as he had seen them gaze in actual life. His mind was passing over the tragic incidents which had swept down upon that ruddy brown head with such merciless force, and a tender pity made him shrink before his thought, as no trouble of ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... the nation's crime; Far heavier vengeance, in the march of time, Attends them still; if still they dare debase And hold inthrall'd the millions of my race; A vengeance that shall shake the world's deep frame, That heaven abhors, and hell might shrink to name. Nature, long outraged, delves the crusted sphere, And moulds the mining mischief dark and drear; Europa too the penal shock shall find, The ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... dainty dame, with haughty brow, Shrink at a load, and shudder at a plough! Sulky, and piqued, and silent would she stand As the tired peasant urged his team along: No word of kind encouragement at hand, For flocks no welcome, and for herds ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... hurried upstairs. It was part of her plan that she should be left alone in the villa chloroformed. Thus only could suspicion be averted from herself. She did not shrink from the completion of the plan now. She went, the strange woman, without a tremor to her ordeal. Wethermill took the length of rope which had fixed ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... are after-considerations; and be sure no writer will grudge a guinea for calm, unbought, unsuspected justice bestowed upon his brain-child. Let all those members of the tribunal, deciding by ballot, (here in an assembly where all are good, great, and honest, I shrink not from that word of evil omen,) judge, as far as possible, together and not separately, of all kinds of literature: I would not have poets sentencing all the poetry, historians all the history, novelists all the novels, and theologists all the works upon religion; for humanity ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... many are disposed to admit. The civilization of a nation seldom extends to a great number of individuals; and does not reach those who in the plantations are in immediate contact with the blacks. I have known very humane proprietors shrink from the difficulties that arise in the great plantations; they hesitate to disturb established order, to make innovations, which, if not simultaneous, not supported by the legislation, or (which would be more powerful) by public feeling, would fail in their end, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... approach; the Maid did shrink; Swift thro' the night's foul air they spin; They took her to the green well's brink, And, with a souse, ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... "be it so. I take you at your word. Though, mind you, M. de Bazan, 'tis no light thing I ask. It is something," pausing, "from which I shrink myself." ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... again like fire the violet kindle, [Str. 1. Ere the holy buds and hoar on olive-branches bloom, Ere the crescent of the last pale month of winter dwindle, Shrink, and fall as falls a dead leaf on the dead month's tomb, Round the hills whose heights the first-born olive-blossom brightened, Round the city brow-bound once with violets like a bride, Up from under earth again a light that long since lightened Breaks, whence all the world took comfort as all ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... life, the idol of my soul,—I will confess it now,—and for you and your future I have lived and toiled and served and loved. I have dreamed you great, high in rank and place, serving your king, winning back the ancient position of our family. I have shrunk from no sacrifice, nor would I shrink from any. 'Tis not that I do not wish you to risk your life in war,—I am a daughter of my race, and for centuries they have been soldiers, and what God sends soldiers upon the field, that I can abide,—but that you ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... vices and laws have been borne, a strange flotsam, upon its unchanging flood. It has had its springs and neaps, its trembling high-water marks, its hour of affluence, when the world has been flooded with golden humanity; its ebb and effluence also, when it has seemed to shrink and desert the kingdoms set upon its shores. The fifteenth century in Western Europe found it at a pause in its movements: it had brought the trade and the learning of the East to the verge of the Old World, filling the ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... know I am handsomer thus! Your eyes ha' told me so already. And look ye, I can be as soft and tender, as meek and helpless as any puling woman of 'em all, when I will. And if I hate fiercely, so is my love—ha, d'ye blench, fool, d'ye shrink; you thing shaped like a man, must ye cringe at ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... precious-stones, on its way to Europe, and suggested an attack. It is true that the roving Hollander merely commanded a couple of the smallest galleots, with about a hundred and thirty men in the two. But when was Jacob Heemskerk ever known to shrink from an encounter—whether from single-handed combat with a polar bear, or from leading a forlorn hope against a Spanish fort, or from assailing a Portuguese armada. The carrack, more than one thousand ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... austere and frowning on their bare, rocky crests; the forest more dark, more black; the trees of the valleys more barren and shriveled; the stones in the road rolled beneath his feet as if fleeing from his touch; the sky contained something repellant; even the air of the island would finally shrink away from his nostrils. In his desperation Febrer realized that he stood alone. Everyone was against him. Only Pep and his family were left to him, and even they would finally draw away under the necessity of living at ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... justice demands that men who boldly claim to be the rulers of the free and happy state of Connecticut, should be known. The men who are to stand in the places of our Trumbulls and our Ellsworths should not shrink from public investigation. To those who respect the authority of God it is a matter of no small moment that those who rule over men should be just, ruling in the fear of God nor will men, accustomed to revere this solemn declaration, lend their aid to elevate men of vicious and corrupt ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... the Punjab, he had nothing to do with the case. It was then transmitted to me. There was quite enough doubt as to my power of acting, to have justified me in referring the case to the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab. But I felt that the delay, and, above all, the appearance of a desire to shrink from the responsibility of passing a decision on the case, which this step would involve, would be so mischievous, that, having obtained from the Advocate-General an opinion that I had the requisite authority, I ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... behind me; in the shadow of the gloomy wellingtonias, whose sweeping skirts obscured the grass; but especially, I noticed, in the tops and crests of them. For here, the delicate, graceful curves of last year's growth seemed to shrink back into themselves. None of them pointed upwards. Their life had failed and turned aside just when it should have become triumphant. The character of a tree reveals itself chiefly at the extremities, ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... to speak, but from her parched lips not a word could proceed. She felt as if all the family that moment were conscious of the occurrence between her and her lover; and if the wish could have relieved her, she would almost have wished to die, so much did she shrink abashed in their presence. ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... dubious boon! Stucco Philistia shows in many shapes The babble of baboons, the chat of apes. Why hang, Sir, up a tree, in a big cage, To study Simian speech, which in our age May be o'erheard on Platform or in Pub, And studied 'mid the comforts of a Club? And yet perchance your forest apes would shrink From Smoke-room chat of apes who never think, But cackle imitatively all round, Till their speech hath an automatic sound. Put the dread name of GL-DST-NE in the slot SMELFUNGUS calls his mouth, and rabid rot Will gurgle forth in a swift sewer-like gush Of coarse abuse would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... challenge her as to leave her deluded?—and this quite apart from the exposure, so to speak, of Kate, as to whom it would constitute a kind of betrayal. Kate's design was something so extraordinarily special to Kate that he felt himself shrink from the complications involved in judging it. Not to give away the woman one loved, but to back her up in her mistakes—once they had gone a certain length—that was perhaps chief among the inevitabilities of the abjection of love. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... been slain; And others banished upon pain of death. But they come back again to meet their doom, Bringing the linen for their winding-sheets. We must not go too far. In truth, I shrink From shedding of more blood. The people ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... which even you will shrink, brave as you are," said the young man, in a voice of emotion, that forcibly struck ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... assail an unprofitable book, but even this is often but a bit of practice. They swish a bludgeon to try their hand. They only take their anger, as it were, upon an outing, lest with too close housing it grow pallid and shrink in girth. Or maybe they indulge themselves in humor. Perhaps they think that their pages grow dull and that ridicule will restore the balance. They throw it in like a drunken porter to relieve a solemn ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... timeously. This of course needs to be wisely done, and after prayer to God to guide us rightly; but we ought to do it. "A word spoken in due season how good is it." Such a word has often been blessed and made effectual, and we should not shrink from speaking it. The right time for speaking it should be chosen, but it should not be left by us unsaid. When Paley the great moralist was a student at Cambridge he wasted his time in idleness and frivolity, and was the butt of his fellow-students. ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... knowledge which had been deepening about him for a year. The time had already passed for him to return, but he did not come. Was there anything in the forecast of the night that made him falter? Was he shrinking—him shrink? She put away the thought as a ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... the length you now see, they began to shrink and grow hard. The knobs on the ends shrank until they became pointed. As soon as they stopped growing the blood stopped flowing up in them, and as they became hard they were no longer tender. The skin which ...
— The Adventures of Lightfoot the Deer • Thornton W. Burgess
... take the deepest interest in the goings-on of his time is part of his greatness; to suppose that he stopped at them, or that he subordinated to political objects or feelings all the other elements of his poem, is to shrink up that greatness into very narrow limits. Yet this has been done by men of mark and ability, by Italians, by men who read the Commedia in their own mother tongue. It has been maintained as a satisfactory account of it—maintained with great labor and pertinacious ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... say that, Aubrey! He would only be vexed to hear that you gave in, and were fickle to your undertaking. Indeed, if I were the volunteer, I should think it due to him, not to shrink as if I were ashamed of what he was ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... occasionally a subject of complaint that children will apparently dislike their father, that they will shrink from him or burst into tears whenever he approaches them. There is no need to see in this the child's jealousy of the father as a rival in the affections of his mother, which is the explanation proffered by the school of Freud. Every action and every ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... you who shall dare to acquit the President," he boldly threatened, "I hurl the everlasting curse of a Nation—an infamy that shall rive and blast his children's children until they shrink from their own name as from ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... proceed no further. But she being a woman not easily shaken from her evil purpose, began to pour in at his ears words which infused a portion of her own spirit into his mind, assigning reason upon reason why he should not shrink from what he had undertaken; how easy the deed was; how soon it would be over; and how the action of one short night would give to all their nights and days to come sovereign sway and royalty! Then she threw contempt ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... to whom he now reveals the secret, only in order that he may be able to deny it at any time; and suppose he were then to affirm, in all seriousness, that he has fulfilled a true human duty; you would either laugh in his face, or shrink back from him with disgust; and yet, if a man has regulated his principles of action solely with a view to his own advantage, you would have nothing whatever to object against this mode of proceeding. Or suppose some one recommends ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... grew into an old man, and became a dull, worn-out creature like herself. Sometimes, watching him, she felt more sorry for him than even for herself; and then, seeing she looked a less miserable and ugly woman, he did not shrink from her ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... nothing more for her to say. She could make no defense of an act which stood before her in all its ugly selfishness. Joe sat still, staring at the wall beyond the stove; she crouched forward in her chair, as if to shrink out ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... recede into poetic distance before he seemed to her a hero. In his cabin as he smoked, in the hard winter day as he felled the forest tree, in the rough, unhandsome experience of every hour, he has been to her the forerunner of refinement and plenty and ease. If taste and imagination shrink from the squalor of the frontier, she remembers the greater squalor and the darker tragedy of the city slum. If the long-haired, shambling, shrill fanatic upon the platform be a contemptuous jest to my Lady ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... tell you that they are that sorceress my brother's wife;' meaning the Queen: 'and that other sorceress, Jane Shore. Who, by witchcraft, have withered my body, and caused my arm to shrink ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... that was not the way to help Charlie. "I know he will feel it hard at first if he goes; but still I am sure he is a brave boy and will not shrink from it, if he feels it to be his duty. You would not have him idling about at home, thinking only of his own comfort, and picking and choosing his work, when his father, who has done so much for him, is suffering from a lingering illness, and wanting ...
— Charlie Scott - or, There's Time Enough • Unknown
... turned deadly pale as he listened to the bishop, and exclaimed, with deep emotion, "It is a terrible sentence. Little did I imagine that any offense I had committed against God or the king could merit such punishment. It is not death that I fear. Death is the common lot of all. But I shrink from dishonor. Yet I may hope that my sufferings will so far expiate my offenses that my innocent family will not be involved in my ruin by the confiscation of my property. This much, at least, I think I may claim in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... be careful to recollect, that I am not endeavoring to screen those sins that I know I have committed. As I feel that they will come under the denomination of venial, and not deadly sins, I shall not shrink from the task which I have imposed upon myself, of recording them as often as they occur at the different periods of my history. I am not insensible of my errors, faults, or frailties; I know that ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... [People shrink back. He goes into church. Mary Doul gropes half-way towards the door and kneels near path. People ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge
... had known trouble. He well remembered the days when he had had to learn to dance, and what it was to shrink from blows, and to howl with pain and fear under punishment. Times were not so bad for him now, because his education was over, but still he had to work hard for his living. In every town they passed he must stiffen his long thin back, ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... criticising public I should shrink; but to a sympathizing public I would appeal, trusting the holy mantle of charity will be flung over my errors, and ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... I tell you the Daily Leader will not shrink from its duty. It'll leave no stone unturned to hound the offenders down. I dare say they may be making arrests even now, and once started, we'll never pause till every Spanish sympathiser who has knowledge of the plot is ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... delivered from the curse of having only one child, I can show you the way. But so hard is it that I feel certain you will fail to follow it." This galled the King's pride and he stood up and exclaimed, "I swear, by all that is sacred, as a Kshatriya and a King, I will not shrink, but perform whatever you may ask, however hard." "Then listen," said I. "Light a sacrificial fire, offer up your son: the smoke that rises will bring you progeny, as the clouds bring rain." The King bowed his head upon his breast and remained silent: the courtiers shouted their horror, the Brahmins ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... coveted. But Mesopotamia had remained in the possession of the Persians as the prize of their victory over Valerian, and could only be obtained by wresting it from the hands into which it had fallen. Odenathus did not shrink from this contest. It has been, with some reason, conjectured that Sapor must have been at this time occupied with troubles which had broken out on the eastern side of his empire. At any rate, it appears that Odenathus, after a short contest with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... hated, despised in the sunshine hour, But at dusk,—he's abroad and well: Not a bird of the forest e'er mates with him; All mock him outright by day; But at night, when the woods grow still and dim, The boldest will shrink away; O, when the night falls, and roosts the fowl, Then, then is the reign of ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... quite ready, at once, to share His heaven with this poor defiled creature, the first trophy of the cross. Again—what a lesson of love!—how different, all this, from the common inclination to shrink away from contact and intercourse with the vile! Oh, shame, that there can ever have been such a shrinking in our poor guilty hearts! The servant is not above his Lord. He came to sinners. Let us go ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... Rigsdag of Denmark will not on account of the burden, shrink from the demands of justice; it will not allow it to be said that it refused to satisfy a claim, the justness of which has never been doubted by any civilized nation, nor will it suffer a number of its fellow citizens ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... in process of growth, and it was long ere it reached the solidity won by the Marcionite church through the activity of one man, who was animated by a faith so strong that he was able to oppose his conception of Christianity to all others as the only right one, and who did not shrink from making selections from tradition instead of explaining it away. He was the first who laid the firm foundation for establishing what is Christian, because, in view of the absoluteness of his faith,[402] he had no desire to appeal either to a secret evangelic ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... "As the showers upon the grass" as well, says Moses. It will not do for the preacher to speak only gently; his words must come pattering about your heads like a driving April shower, when you will shrink from the rain and hide to get out of the way. The preacher must pour out on you a good strong ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... moment in that peculiar state of exhilaration both of mind and body when no task seems impossible. It was not likely, therefore, that, with Sibylla's bright eyes regarding him with an eager curiosity—which to him seemed not wholly devoid of interest—he should shrink from ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... when thou'rt far away, Wilt thou not cast a wish behind? Say, canst thou face the parching ray, Nor shrink before the wintry wind? Oh, can that soft and gentle mien Extremes of hardship learn to bear, Nor sad, regret each courtly scene, Where thou wert fairest ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... Didst thou not shrink, when on Golgotha's crest Three crosses as three grizzly spectres rose, Spreading their ghastly arms protestingly, In silent malediction o'er the scene, And even nature paused and stood aghast In shuddering horror at the awful sight, Relaxing with the trembling earthquake ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... father, it is thus you deceive me! Very well, since things are come to such a pass, I openly declare to you that I shall not give up my love for Marianne. No! understand that henceforth there is nothing from which I shall shrink in order to dispute her with you; and if you have on your side the consent of the mother, perhaps I shall have some other resources left ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... sudden the door flies open, the Pretender rushes in, a sponge in one hand, in the other a sword, which he shakes at the Act of Settlement. The beautiful Queen sinks down fainting; the spell by which she has turned all things around her into treasure is broken; the money-bags shrink like pricked bladders; the piles of gold pieces are turned into bundles of rags, or fagots ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... receive and to shelter a criminal flying from justice was a very embarrassing position. On the other hand, to refuse protection to a helpless lady, and that lady a kinswoman, much more to betray her into the hands of her enemies, would have been an act from which any honourable man might well shrink. The possibility that it might be discovered in the island that he was entertaining a woman in male attire must also have been an annoying uncertainty to the immaculate Governor of Guernsey. Over the details of this perplexing ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... Fiends approach; the Maid did shrink; Swift thro' the night's foul air they spin; They took her to the green well's brink, And, with a souse, they plump'd ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... "Nobody knows, not even the doctor, what effect the news we so dread to give him will have upon Mr. Brotherson. You will have to wait—we all shall have to wait the results of that revelation. It cannot be kept from him much longer. When I return, I shall shrink from his first look, in the fear of seeing it betray this dreadful knowledge. Yet I have a faithful woman there to keep every one ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... is for me? And then there is my own pride. That you should see me disloyal to him in little things, such as this—" (she caught his hand again and caressed it with soft finger-tips) "—hurts me in my love for you, diminishes me, must diminish me in your eyes. I shrink from the thought that my disloyalty to him in this I do—" (she laid his hand against her cheek) "—gives you reason to pity him ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... nations, and to demand and exact equal justice from all, but to do wrong to none; to eschew intermeddling with the national policy and the domestic repose of other governments, and to repel it from our own; never to shrink from war when the rights and the honor of the country call us to arms, but to cultivate in preference the arts of peace, seek enlargement of the rights of neutrality, and elevate and liberalize the intercourse of nations; and by such just and honorable means, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... air, He saw, and raged with loathing, where She lay with love-dishevelled hair Beneath a broad bright laurel tree And clasped in amorous arms a knight, The unloveliest that his scornful sight Had dwelt on yet; a shame the bright Broad noon might shrink to see. ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... front of his own platform, inside during the show, were smaller, too. At first Charley thought that was due to the bally itself, but as the season began and wore on, the crowds continued to shrink beyond all expectation. Counting as he worked, combing his hair with one foot, drawing little sketches for the customers ("Take one home for only one extra dime, a treasured souvenir especially personalized for you by Charley de Milo")—counting the house, he discovered one evening that ...
— Charley de Milo • Laurence Mark Janifer AKA Larry M. Harris
... brought him the intelligence of what had happened. "Whether Injuns or wolves wrong him, Michael Moggs is not the man to let them go unpunished;" and his eyes lighted up with a fierce expression which made the young boy instinctively shrink back from him. "We have three strong traps which will catch the biggest wolf on the prairies; and if they fail, I'll lie in wait till I can shoot the savage brutes down with my rifle. We shall have to tramp it on foot, boy, with ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston
... in what we do not know that our hope and our religion lies. Thrice blessed are we in the certainty that here our range is infinite. This infinite that makes our brains reel, that begets the feeling that makes us 'shrink,' is perhaps the most portentous argument in the logic of the sceptic. Since the days of Laplace, we have been haunted in some form or other with the ghost of the MECANIQUE CELESTE. Take one or two commonplaces from the text-books ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... commonly depicted uncouth shapes of "Gorgons and Hydras and Chimaeras dire," furnishing eloquent testimony to the feelings with which the unknown was regarded. The barren wastes of the Sea of Darkness awakened a shuddering dread like that with which children shrink from the gloom of a cellar. When we remember all these things, and consider how the intelligent purpose which urged the commanders onward was scarcely within the comprehension of their ignorant and refractory crews, we can begin to form some idea ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... but this is not what I am driving at exactly," replied Hadria, turning uneasily away from the close scrutiny. "Don't you know—oh, don't you see—how many women secretly hate, and shrink from this brutal domestic idea that fashions ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... is clear before you." He pointed to it winding through the fern. "And you know, I hope, that anything I could do for you and your mother during your stay here I should be only too enchanted to do. The one thing I shrink from doing is to interfere in any way with her rest here. And I am afraid just now I might be ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... what would come of it. It was indeed an effort in favour of the Church, but it was in irresponsible hands, begun by men whose words were strong and vehement and of unusual sound, and who, while they called on the clergy to rally round their fathers the Bishops, did not shrink from wishing for the Bishops the fortunes of the early days: "we could not wish them a more blessed termination of their course than the spoiling of their goods and martyrdom."[76] It may reasonably be ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... where I seek employment, waiting patiently for the replies to my applications for advertised situations, which never come, the brand of the convict has indeed become the very mark of Cain, and I feel as if my fellowmen shrink from me as they pass. Fortunately I found at the post-office a few pounds sent to me from my brother, which, with slight additions, have enabled me to procure a mechanical leg, and to live till I have completed this narrative. But what is ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... forth, and deny, and condemn, these monstrous principles? Where, but here, and in one other place, are they likely to be resisted? They are advanced with equal coolness and boldness; and they are supported by immense power. The timid will shrink and give way, and many of the brave may be compelled to yield to force. Human liberty may yet, perhaps, be obliged to repose its principal hopes on the intelligence and the vigor of the Saxon race. As far as depends on us, at least, I trust those hopes will not be disappointed; and ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... princes of the Myrmidons tremble before Phrygian arms, now Tydeus' son and Achilles of Larissa, and Aufidus river recoils from the Adriatic wave. Or when the scheming villain [407-443]pretends to shrink at my abuse, and sharpens calumny by terror! never shall this hand—keep quiet!—rob thee of such a soul; with thee let it abide, and dwell in that breast of thine. Now I return to thee, my lord, and thy weighty resolves. If thou ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... churches, like all the rest of the world, are caught in the great revolutionary current, and swept on towards a goal which they do not forsee, and from which they would shrink in dismay: the Church of the future, the Church redeemed by the spirit of Brotherhood, the Church which we Socialists will join. They call us materialists, and say that we think about nothing but the belly—and that is ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... exposed to the attacks, more or less open, of every unmarried woman. Alas! he was insensible to his privileges; a steady man of fifty-five, a dignitary of the church, devoted to study, and shy in his habits, he seemed to shrink from the kind attentions he received, and to wish for a less favoured, a less glorious state of existence. His desires seemed limited to reading the Fathers, writing sermons, and doing his duty as a divine; and he appeared of opinion that no helpmate was required to fulfil them. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... themselves—it is high time—but criticism has not died. Refined natures have heartstrings like the chords of Aeolian harps, sensitive to the faintest touch, responsive to the gentlest whisper of the evening breeze; such shrink in terror from the icy breath of the scoffer: the purpose is frozen dead within their souls. O criticism! what crimes have been committed in your name! How many noble careers have ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... dangers from which I shrink. Lower away slowly, boys," he added to those who were fastening a rope to the car, "and keep a sharp look-out for ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... better pleased than while they feared that the proposal was serious. With the natural timidity of precariously situated minorities, they could not enter into the humour of it. The very title was enough to make them shrink and tremble. The only people who were really in a position to enjoy the jest were the Whigs. The High-Churchmen, some of whom, it is said, were at first so far taken in as to express their warm approval, were furious when they discovered the trick that had been ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... year. The stroke of the palsy has been related circumstantially; but he was also afflicted with the gout, and was besides troubled with a complaint which not only was attended with immediate inconvenience, but threatened him with a chirurgical operation, from which most men would shrink. The complaint was a sarcocele, which Johnson bore with uncommon firmness, and was not at all frightened while he looked forward to amputation. He was attended by ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... necessary to make Rollo feel colder and more disconsolate than ever before. He squirmed round on his green cricket, and seemed to shrink to a smaller size, as he again extended his hands, his expression becoming more and more disconsolate as the picture conjured up by Jonas's remarks floated before his eyes. He saw himself lying on his trundle bed, his family weeping about him. Among them, ...
— Rollo in Society - A Guide for Youth • George S. Chappell
... appearance almost of distress in this exercise, so utterly inadequate, as it seemed to him, were any words of his to express what lay deepest in his mind, when thus brought face to face with God. 'I do not shrink,' he said, 'from speaking to man.' But, except in his rarest and best moments, he was oppressed by a sense of the poverty of any language of thanksgiving or supplication that he could use in his ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... then with what you have; I shall not shrink, Nor budge for any man: only do you, Neighbour Palaemon, with your whole heart's skill- For it is no slight ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... character or achievement be regarded, the riches before us only expose the poverty of praise. So clear was he in his great office that no ideal of the Leader or the Ruler can be formed that does not shrink by the side of the reality. And so has he impressed himself upon the minds of men, that no man can justly aspire to be the chief of a great free people who does not adopt his principles and emulate his example. We look with amazement on such eccentric characters as Alexander, Caesar, Cromwell, Frederick, ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... always plays the active, masculine part. He never yields himself to the other, and he asserts that he never has the joy of finding himself desired with ardor equal to his own. He does not shrink from passive pedicatio; but it is never demanded of him. Coitus with males, as above described, always seems to him healthy and natural; it leaves a deep sense of well-being, and has cemented durable friendships. He has always sought to form permanent ties with the men whom he ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... silent, and they went on a while; then turned sharp out of this thoroughfare into a narrow alley. It was hot and close and dank enough here to make Miss Frere shrink, though she would not betray it. But dead cats and decaying cabbage leaves, in a not very clean alley, where the sun rarely shines, and briefly then, with the thermometer well up, on a summer day, altogether make an atmosphere not suited to delicate ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... idea has to be looked at sometimes from a different point of view, according to the use to which it is to be fitted. The same material may be employed for wall-hangings and dress, and then the principles which have been formulated have to be varied. I do not shrink from repetitions if they make my meaning clear, remembering the Duke of Wellington's direction to his private secretary, "Never mind ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... while goin down, as forty mugfuls would ordinary persons. And he wouldn't get intoxicated, which is a beastly way of amusin oneself, I must say. I like a little beer now and then, and when the teetotallers inform us, as they frekently do, that it is vile stuff, and that even the swine shrink from it, I say it only shows that the swine is a ass who don't know what's good; but to pour gin and brandy down one's throat as freely as though it were fresh milk, is the most idiotic way of goin' to the devil that I ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne
... had she given to possible trials and difficulties? How much effort to train herself for the battle of life? It was one of those blinding moments of self-revelation which come to us all, and before which the noblest natures shrink aghast. Dreda leant her head against the wall to hide herself from the dancing firelight, but her unusual silence could not fail to attract attention, and Norah was ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... last foible with which he could be charged,—had they understood him, they would have seen in him a young man in whom the fire of youth glowed not the less ardently for the veil of reserve that covered it; who would shrink from no danger, but would not court it in bravado; and who would cling with an invincible tenacity of gripe to any purpose which he might espouse. There is good reason to think that he had come to ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... all the obstacles in his path, and boldly grasp the very sharpest thorns, whatever reluctance his weak flesh may feel; such a man, if he would open out his path to fortune, should seize his dagger or his sword and strike out with his eyes shut; he should not shrink from bathing his hands in the blood of his kindred; he should follow the example offered him by every founder of empire from Romulus to Bajazet, both of whom climbed to the throne by the ladder of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... recorded in my Origins) have often marched with cheerful and lofty spirit to ground from which they believed that they would never return. That, therefore, which young men—not only uninstructed, but absolutely ignorant—treat as of no account, shall men who are neither young nor ignorant shrink from in terror? As a general truth, as it seems to me, it is weariness of all pursuits that creates weariness of life. There are certain pursuits adapted to childhood: do young men miss them? There are others suited to early ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... in the cellar through cold weather that if we did not have the new ones from the South, there would be, nevertheless, a variety from which to choose. It is late in the spring, when the old vegetables begin to shrink and grow rank, that we appreciate what comes from ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... by a motor-lorry. The ground was hired from a local farmer, who undertook to supply milk, butter, and eggs to the best of his ability, and to bring meat and fresh vegetables from Capelcefn as required. To cater for a whole school up in the wilds is a task from which many Principals would shrink, and Miss Bowes might be forgiven if she had at first demurred at the suggestion. But, with Mr. Arnold's practical experience to help her, she gave her orders and embarked (not without a few tremors) ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... well-made piece of earthenware, for the making of good earthenware is an art in itself. Many a rule attends its successful manufacture. For example, the bottom of a heavy piece must not be too thick, or it will crack, because a tremendous strain comes on the base when the clay begins to dry and shrink. The sides pull from every direction, and therefore the bottom must be sufficiently thin to be elastic, and sufficiently thick to be strong. And that is only one of the problems to be faced by pottery and earthenware makers. So you see they, as ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... Carolina and Georgia, where their families live wretchedly, often upon unwholesome food, and as idly as wretchedly, for hitherto there has been no manual occupation provided for them from which they do not shrink as disgraceful, on account of its being the occupation of slaves. In these factories negroes are not employed as operatives, and this gives the calling of the factory girl a certain dignity. You would be surprised to see the change which a short time effects in these poor people. They come barefooted, ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... but I shrink and adapt myself to it. Somehow a tyrannous sense of a superincumbent oppression Still, wherever I go, accompanies ever, and makes me Feel like a tree (shall I say?) buried under a ruin of brick-work. Rome, believe me, my friend, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... it still thirsts, and would his heart-blood drink; And if he haste not to encounter me, Say I will find him when he least doth think." The Christians at his words enraged be, But he to shun their ire doth safely shrink Under the shelter of the neighbor wall, Well guarded with his troops and ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... bestowed upon its cultivation,—thanks to the power of money and the moral fervor of civilization! She is generally recognized by the whiteness, the fineness and softness of her skin. Her taste inclines to the most spotless cleanliness. Her fingers shrink from encountering anything but objects which are soft, yielding and scented. Like the ermine she sometimes dies for grief on seeing her white tunic soiled. She loves to twine her tresses and to make them exhale the most attractive scents; to brush ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Gray. "These small town operators are not always to be trusted. If the story were to creep about that Tom Gray had disappeared, so shortly before his wedding day, it would be very painful for both you and me. I could, of course, consult a private investigator in New York, yet I shrink from doing so until I know definitely that Tom has disappeared. It is such an intimate, personal matter. I don't fancy turning it over even to my lawyer. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... Superior now turned a piercing glance on Clara, which made her involuntarily shrink and cast down her eyes on the ground. The former did not speak till she had finished her scrutiny; she then ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... to me, singly and in pairs, to grovel and to implore. An interesting study these arrogant gentlemen made as they cringed, utterly indifferent to the appearance of self-respect, in their agony for their imperiled millions. A mother would shrink from abasing herself to save the life of her child as these men abased themselves in the hope of saving their dollars. How they fawned and flattered! They begged my pardon for having disregarded my advice; they assured me that, if I would only exert that same genius ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... the substance of a crane's marrow, to go shrink from so small a bidding, let you go on the shaughraun or to the workhouse, where you would not ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... praying for mercy." "The whole congregation became more or less moved. The place became truly awful and glorious, and it seemed that the time had come when a decided effort must be made upon the kingdom of darkness, and that under such circumstances to shrink from the task and, through fear of producing a little temporary disorder, to refuse to go heartily into the work, would have been nothing short of down right spiritual murder." "At one time during the meeting ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... do them reverence; For though thine husband armed be in mail, The arrows of thy crabbed eloquence Shall pierce his breast, and eke his aventail; In jealousy I rede* eke thou him bind, *advise And thou shalt make him couch* as doth a quail. *submit, shrink ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... flood. It has had its springs and neaps, its trembling high-water marks, its hour of affluence, when the world has been flooded with golden humanity; its ebb and effluence also, when it has seemed to shrink and desert the kingdoms set upon its shores. The fifteenth century in Western Europe found it at a pause in its movements: it had brought the trade and the learning of the East to the verge of the Old World, filling the harbours of the Mediterranean with ships and the monasteries of Italy and ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... on the balcony, looking for a few minutes upon the sight, and then came into the shadowy room, where De Stancy had remained. While the rest were still outside she resumed: 'You must not suppose that I shrink from the subject you so persistently bring before me. I respect deep affection—you know I do; but for me to say that I have any such for you, of the particular sort you only will be satisfied with, would be absurd. I don't feel it, and therefore there can be nothing between us. One would ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... regarding with something of true veneration the nest from which he had sprung. The Vicar did not like the task before him, dreading the disappointment which failure would produce; but he was not the man to shrink from any work which he had resolved to undertake, and drove gallantly into the farmyard, though he saw both the farmer and his wife standing at the back-door ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... her husband thundered. He had no reason in the world for opposing the motherly impulse; but it relieves the male of certain species to roar when he is irritated, and the relief is all the greater when he finds some sentient creature to roar at, that will shrink from the noise, and ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... about the place meditating upon the probable tactics of Uncle Jim. He was no longer strung up to the desperate pitch of the first encounter. But he was grave and anxious. Uncle Jim had shrunken, as all antagonists that are boldly faced shrink, after the first battle, to the negotiable, the vulnerable. Formidable he was no doubt, but not invincible. He had, under Providence, been defeated once, and he ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... vanguard pressed forward swiftly, drove back the slender garrison of the Barrier, and advanced unchecked towards the Ridge. There were no English troops to oppose their advance; a French battalion only was close at hand, and they seemed to shrink from the task ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... were to be saved, if God were to be glorified, it was not possible. Did He not know that who asked it with strong crying and tears? Was not the asking done to teach us two things—that He was very man, like ourselves, shrinking from pain and death as much as the very weakest of us can shrink, and also that we may ask anything and everything, if only we desire beyond it that God's will ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... years ago, it came loaded with fine reddish-colored sand. Though no longer accompanied by sand, it is so devoid of moisture as to cause the wood of the best seasoned English boxes and furniture to shrink, so that every wooden article not made in the country is warped. The verls of ramrods made in England are loosened, and on returning to Europe fasten again. This wind is in such an electric state that a bunch of ostrich feathers held a few seconds against it becomes ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the heroic fibre. My edge is much easier turned than was that, say, of Thoreau. Austerity would ill become me. You would see through the disguise. Yes, there is much soft rock in my make-up. Is that why I shrink from the wear ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... dry for about six hours. 6. Remove washer on the short end of shaft, also the cogwheel if the shaft has cogs on both ends. 7. See that the rubber rolls are always longer than the space between the washers where the rubber goes on, as they shrink or take up a little in putting on the shaft. 8. Clean out the hole or inside of roll with benzine, using a small brush or swab. 9. Put the thimble or pointer on the end of shaft that the washer has been removed from, and ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... most solemn subjects with loveliness. Rembrandt and Albert Duerer depict the tragedies of the Sacred History with a serious and awful reality: Italian painters, with a few rare but illustrious exceptions, shrink from approaching them from any point of view but that of harmonious melancholy. Even so the English poets stir the soul to its very depths by their profound and earnest delineations of the stern and bitter truths of the world: Italian poets environ all things with the golden haze of an ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... man of mature age to marry the daughter, after having, in the days of his youth, been the lover of the mother, is a proceeding, the very idea of which is somewhat revolting in the average individual.... There are many roues in St. James' who would shrink before it; yet you, the enlightened philosopher, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... information of his age will not quietly submit to neglect its current acquisitions, but will go on improving as long as means and opportunities offer; while he who finds himself ignorant of most things, is only too apt to shrink from a labour which becomes Herculean. In this manner ambition is stifled, the mind gets to be inactive, and finally sinks into unresisting apathy. Such is the case with a large portion of the European peasantry. ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a flower with some fine sense imbued To shrink before the wind's vicissitude, So in thy prescient breast Are lyre-strings quivering with prophetic thrill To the low footstep of each coming ill;— Oh! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... air will be so good for me as this pure, bracing mountain atmosphere," her father replied, gently. "I would shrink from going to any place where we should be likely to find familiar faces—nothing would break me down so quickly. Be patient, Virgie for a little longer, and then you shall go back to the world, where you ought long ago to have been with people of ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... unappropriated, like several of the interior provinces. Actual partition would mean a scramble that would precipitate a general war, and such a war would involve so many uncertainties not only as to the result in China but as to possible readjustments in Europe itself, that the Powers wisely shrink from it. So they prefer for the present, at least, the policy of "spheres of influence'' as giving them a commercial foothold and political influence ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... is no substance here, One great reality above: Back from that void I shrink in fear, And child-like hide myself in love: Show me what angels feel. Till then I cling, a mere ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... other instances there is a great want in the popular imagination. Men will think it reasonable to believe in endless suffering; consider it even a sure sign of orthodoxy; sometimes speak of it glibly; but when the idea is drawn out into detail, they will shrink back from the ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... To have house & Bible shrink so, under the disillusioning corrected angle, is loss—for a moment. But there are compensations. You tilt the tube skyward & bring planets & comets & corona flames a hundred & fifty thousand miles high into the field. Which ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... strictly conservative man was forbidden to oppose the "red." Only no one needed to conceal his loyalty to the king, for at that time the democrats still shared it. A good word for the Prince of Prussia, on the contrary, inevitably led to a brawl, but we did not shrink from it, and, thank Heaven, we ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... these trivial matters because I shrink from what must follow. They were scarcely blots upon our happiness; rather they were motes in the sunshine which had no other cloud. It is true that I was always somewhat puzzled by a certain manner in Mrs. Gray, which certainly was from no ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... threatened him with his fist; the priest raised his arms in prayer, just as I saw him yesterday at the festival—but not in devotion, but to seize Paaker, and wrestle with him. The struggle did not last long, for Paaker seemed to shrink up, and lost his human form, and fell at the poet's feet—not my son, but a shapeless lump of clay such as the potter uses ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... no man can cope with. There are times when those ordinarily confident shrink back at the thought of grappling with the mighty issues that lie before them. There are minds of a structure so singularly complex and unique, that one leaves the study of them impressed only with a deep, abiding sense of his inability to fathom them. We have in our ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... into acts, they would carry the country appreciably nearer war; but the members of the committee were not inclined to shrink from the consequences. To a man they agreed that war was preferable to inglorious submission to continued outrages, and that the outcome of war would be positively advantageous. Porter, who represented the westernmost district of a State ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... thank thee. The mighty genius of immortal Rome Speaks in thy voice; thy soul breathes liberty. Caesar will shrink to hear the words thou utter'st, And shudder in the ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... she had to speak still remained unspoken, and he stood over her, waiting for her answer. Then slowly he sat down beside her, and gradually he put his arm round her waist. She shrank from him, back against the stonework of the embrasure, but she could not shrink away from his grasp. She put up her hand to impede his, but his hand, like his character and his words, was full of power. It would not be impeded. "Alice," he said, as he pressed her close with his arm, "the battle is over now, ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... are thinking, our fathers would think; From the death we are shrinking, our fathers would shrink; To the life we are clinging, they also would cling—But it speeds from us all like a bird on ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... of much daylight was making him blink and shrink. He saw himself as he was—or nearly—and the spectacle did not please him. The thought of Lady St. Craye was the only one that seemed to make for any sort of complacency. The thought of Temple ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... for her had also wept, But for the eyes that on him gazed: His sorrow, if he felt it, slept; Stern and erect his brow was raised. Whate'er the grief his soul avowed, He would not shrink before the crowd; But yet he dared not look on her; Remembrance of the hours that were— 190 His guilt—his love—his present state— His father's wrath, all good men's hate— His earthly, his eternal ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... as I have suffered, death, if it could be robbed of its terror, ought not to be very dreadful. I have often said, 'Would that I could lay myself down and die;' but now, now that I see death coming in its stern reality, I would fain shrink from it; and yet nothing but the cold hand of death will ever still the passionate throbbings of my heart, and teach it to love less wildly, or to hate less fiercely. Forgive me, forgive me, Mr. Lacy! Oh, do not ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... must be recollected that the temper of an ox is far less quick, though his sensations may be as acute as those of a horse: thus, he does not start forwards on receiving a cut with the whip, even though he shrink with the pain; but he thinks about it, shakes his head, waits a while, and then breaks gradually into a faster pace. An ox will trot well enough with a light weight; and, though riding myself upwards ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... come to a work, before which we find indeed no critical essay, but which disdains to shrink from the touchstone of the severest critic; and which certainly, as I remember to have heard you say, if it contains some of the worst, contains also some of the best things ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... called, and, privately admonished by his father that he must not allow any scruples about bringing his playmate into trouble to lead him to withhold his evidence, or shrink from telling the whole truth as he knew it, Humfrey accordingly stood before the Earl and made his replies a little sullenly but quite straightforwardly. He had prevented the whistle from being given to his sister for the huckstress because ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or sane . . ." There seems to be through it all some thread of continuity. That fearful Count was coming to London. If it should be, and he came to London, with its teeming millions . . . There may be a solemn duty, and if it come we must not shrink from it. I shall be prepared. I shall get my typewriter this very hour and begin transcribing. Then we shall be ready for other eyes if required. And if it be wanted, then, perhaps, if I am ready, poor Jonathan ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... if some poor famishing wretch were to ask you for food or water? Well, I am that poor wretch. What I have to tell you is a matter of life and death to me. Only a woman—only you—can help me; and you shrink because we have not had a proper introduction. My dear young lady, you have nothing to fear from me. I am unfortunate, but a gentleman,—a married man, if that will satisfy ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... prepared to say that the whole law of evidence, according to which men have during ages been tried in this country for offences against life and property, is vicious and ought to be remodelled? If you shrink from saying this, you must admit that we are now proposing to dispense, not with a divine ordinance of universal and perpetual obligation, but simply with an English rule of procedure, which applies to not more than two ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... stop that sort of talk, Adam Ward." Peter Martin was on his feet, and there was that in his usually stolid countenance which made the Mill owner shrink back. "I was a fool, as you say. But my mistake was that I trusted you. I believed in your pretended friendship for me. I thought you were as honest and honorable as you seemed to be. I didn't know that your religion was all such a rotten sham. ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... at last," he said. "Life is but a moment. Why am I so cowardly? why so unwilling to suffer and to struggle? Am I a warrior of the Lord, and do I shrink from the toils of the camp, and long for the ease of the court before I have earned it? Why do we clamor for happiness? Why should we sinners be happy? And yet, O God, why is the world made so lovely as it lies there, why so rejoicing, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... is there a great variety of trees, but because of the favorable climate they grow to a great size. As we approach the summit of the mountains the trees become smaller, and at an elevation of about two miles they shrink to the size of little bushes and finally disappear. They can no longer stand the fierce winds and cold ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... has wished us God-speed. And we have felt as never before the meaning of those awful words, "Hell beneath is stirred for thee," as we saw all that was mean and timid and selfish and wicked, by a horrible impulsion of nature, gathering to the help of our enemies. Why should we shrink from embodying our own idea as if it would turn out a Frankenstein? Why should we let the vanquished dictate terms of peace? A choice is offered that may never come again, unless after another war. We should sin against our own light, if we allowed mongrel republics ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... the victim of a nation-wide depression caused by conditions which were not local but national. The Federal Government is the only governmental agency with sufficient power and credit to meet this situation. We have assumed this task and we shall not shrink from it in the future. It is a duty dictated by every intelligent consideration of national policy to ask you to make it possible for the United States to give employment to all of these three and one half million employable people now on relief, pending ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of all these things before we started, and I will not shrink from them now. But come, Cyd; we must go to work and ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... one bullet found him, because I saw him shiver and shrink, but it couldn't have been mortal, as he ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... lost friends before because of this. I don't blame them. There are times when I feel hardly friendly to myself because of it. Such a power has a bit of divinity in it—whether of a good or an evil divinity who shall say? And we mortals all shrink from too close contact with ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sneered Cargan. "Oh, I know you. It doesn't take much to make your stomach shrink. ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... time and do not take the pains to analyze them. Only a sister or a mother is in a position to comprehend and love men of this stamp, because the confidential home relations of long years have revealed to them the hidden bloom of these sensitive plants which shrink back and close their leaves at every rude contact of the world. But rarely, however, do they find a loving heart outside, for, since their own hearts are too timid to seek for love, no one gives himself the trouble ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... hope that you are, my boy," said Uncle Chris gravely. "For in that case I should be forced into a course of action from which I confess that I shrink." ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... black snout, with a pair of little fiery blasting eyes, appeared, and a thin black neck glanced in the sun. The lizard saw it. I could fancy it trembled. Its body became of a dark blue, then ashy pale; the imitation of the flower, the gaudy fin was withdrawn, it appeared to shrink back as far as it could, but it was nailed or fascinated to the window sill, for its feet did not move. The head of the snake approached, with its long forked tongue shooting out and shortening, and with a low hissing noise. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... a man of some personal courage, never shrink from a row, nor be afraid to' fight a duel. He should be able to bully, bluster, swagger and swear, as occasion may require; nay, in desperate cases, such us peaching, &c. he should not object even to assassination. He should invite large parties to dine with ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... for himself if Jim Weston was as desperate a character as he had been painted. He could do no more than kill him, and he did not fear death. Had he not often faced it on the field of battle, and why should he shrink now? ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... that if he was going to make either reputation or money as an engineer, he had a great deal of hard study before him, and it is to his credit that he did not shrink from it. While Harry was in Washington dancing attendance upon the national legislature and making the acquaintance of the vast lobby that encircled it, Philip devoted himself day and night, with an energy and a concentration he was capable ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... effect—is the family circle. Some praise; But to geometricians it strange may appear, For a "circle" is only a part of a "sphere." Since woman appeared at the wickets, some think (Though male cricketers from the conclusion may shrink), That the true "sphere" of woman must be, after all, A leathern one—typed by a new cricket-ball. Young girls think a "Ball" of another guess sort Is the sphere in which woman may find truest sport. To harmonise all these opinions, 'tis clear, Is hard; ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going through the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; 'for it might end, you know,' said Alice to herself, 'in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?' And she ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... and alone before the assembled powers of the earth, with only the grace of God and his cause on which to lean, had demand made of him whether or not he would retract his books or any part of them, Yes or No. But he did not shrink, neither did he falter. "Since Your Imperial Majesty and Your Excellencies require of me a direct and simple answer, I will give it. To the pope or councils I cannot submit my faith, for it is clear that they have erred and contradicted ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... mournful sacrifice, the poor woman did not shrink from covering herself, even in the presence of the man she loved, with ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... expected it for some time. I have observed you looking over books upon foreign countries, and have seen that you often sat thoughtful and quiet. I guessed, therefore, what you had in your mind. Of course, dear, as a woman, I shrink from the thought of leaving all our friends and going to quite a strange country, but I don't think that I am afraid of the hardships or discomfort. Thousands of other women have gone through them, and there is no reason why I should not do ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... is musty with dank superstition From which we shrink recoiling, to th' extreme Of an unfaith that with material vision, Accounts as myth ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... fire. But Undine's freakish playfulness and mischief as an elemental being, and her sweet patience when her soul is won, are quite original, and indeed we cannot help sharing, or at least understanding, Huldbrand's beginning to shrink from the unearthly creature to something of his own flesh and blood. He is altogether unworthy, and though in this tale there is far less of spiritual meaning than in Sintram, we cannot but see that Fouque's thought was that the grosser human nature is unable to appreciate ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... for some time, he walked on. Several times she essayed to emerge, and join him; but a sudden awe of him, a conviction of that saintly purity which would shrink from the guilty vows she was meditating to pour into his ear, a recollection of the ejaculation with which he had accosted her before hovering figure, when she haunted his footsteps on the banks of the Cart; ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Licinian law forbade anyone to hold above 500 'jugera' of public land, for which, moreover, a tenth of the arable and a fifth of the grazing produce was to be paid to the State. The framers of the law are said to have hoped that possessors of more than this amount would shrink from making on oath a false return of the land which they occupied, and that, as they would be liable to penalties for exceeding the prescribed maximum, all land beyond the maximum would be sold at a nominal price (if this interpretation of the [Greek: kat' oligon] of ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... experienced, that I meet you here in this place. The history of this great State, the renown of those great men who have stood here, and have spoken here, and have been heard here, all crowd around my fancy, and incline me to shrink from any attempt to address you. Yet I have some confidence given me by the generous manner in which you have invited me, and by the still more generous manner in which you have received me, to speak further. You have invited and received me without distinction of party. I cannot for a moment ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... drawing the canvas as tightly as possible and keeping it straight. At the ends the canvas is split in the center and lapped over the bent wood. The surplus canvas is cut off. A thin coat of glue is put on, to shrink the cloth ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... projectors of the enterprise, I received a convulsive grasp of the hand, accompanied by a fierce and desperate look, that seemed to search my eye and countenance, to try if I were a person likely to shrink from whatever they had resolved to execute. It is surprising to think of the powerful expression which a moment of intense interest or great danger is capable of giving to the eye, the features and the slightest actions, especially in those whose station in society does not ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... rarely shrink from telling our doctor what is the matter with us merely through the fear that he will hurt us. We let him do his worst upon us, and stand it without a murmur, because we are not scouted for being ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... declined to avail herself of the services of any legal adviser. She had declared her determination to trust in her own innocence, and in that alone. Proud, calm, and self- possessed, she confronted the solemn assembly, and did not shrink from the scrutinizing looks that met her ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... in terse, sharp sentences, as men who recognized the advisability of coming straight to the point, which is, after all, a custom that usually saves trouble for everybody concerned. The men who shrink from candor, lest they should give themselves away, not infrequently waste a good deal of time wondering what the other person means, ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... it to me, your chief friend? You think the question indelicate, but why should I shrink from asking a question on which, perhaps, the happiness of your life depends? If—if you have set your heart on Mr. Beauclerk——" She stops, checked by something ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... justice is a very difficult matter. And perhaps it is just as well that it is so; for could this be done with truth and accuracy, frightful responsibilities would have to be placed on the shoulders of somebody; and we shrink instinctively from the thought of any one individual or body of individuals standing before God with the crime of war on his ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... of Thierry or Guizot, of Gibbon or Macaulay, but has a palpable individuality of its own. They evince throughout a patient, persistent industry in investigating original documents, from the mere labor of which an Irish hod-carrier would shrink aghast, and thank the Virgin that, though born a drudge, he was not born to drudge in the bogs and morasses of unexplored domains of History; yet the genius and enthusiasm of the historian are so strong that he converts the drudgery into delight, and lives joyful, though "laborious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... committing it to the tardy test of publication, offered a quaint and frank apology for its old-fashioned if not obsolete style of composition and versification. Yet I cannot but think that Hallam was right and Dyce was wrong in his estimate of a play which does not challenge and need not shrink from comparison with Fletcher's more elaborate, rhetorical, elegant, and pretentious tragicomedy of "The Loyal Subject"; that the somewhat eccentric devotion of Heywood's hero is not more slavish or foolish than the obsequious submission of Fletcher's; and that even if we may not be allowed ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... have, without knowing it, lived near each other. I have learnt much good of you. You have a heart open to the wants of your fellow creatures. I am happy that it is so. You shall not be without the power of gratifying your benevolence. I know you have a spirit that must shrink from a state of obligation. This paper, to which the whole remnant of my fortune is pledged, secures you independence, Adelaide: and let the only recommendation of the gift be, that it will administer to you the means of indulging in charity, the ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... sister, Mrs. Eames, moved into a house on the corner of H and Fourteenth Streets, which she and her husband had built and which she occupied until her death in 1890. I naturally shrink from dwelling in detail upon her charm of manner and social career, and prefer rather to quote an extract from a sketch which appeared in one of the newspapers ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... next, and here she felt less satisfied, though scarcely conscious why, for, as she looked, there came a defiant sort of flash, changing suddenly to something warmer than anger, stronger than pride, making her shrink a little and say, hastily, "I don't find the Charlie I left, but the Prince ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... before him— everything to look forward to! And yet he seemed to have existed since the morning of time, so thoroughly did he know the world of darkness that he left. Was not man a wonderful being, both in his power to shrink up and become nothing, and in his power to expand and fill everything? He now understood Uncle Kalle's smile on all occasions; he had armed himself with it in order that life should not draw too deep furrows in his ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... And now, as the spring drew onward, 'twas deemed a goodly feast For the acre-biders' children by the Niblung Burg to wait, If perchance the Son of Sigmund should ride abroad by the gate: For whosoever feared him, no little-one, forsooth, Would shrink from the shining eyes and the hand that clave out truth From the heart of the wrack and the battle: it was then, as his gold gear burned O'er the balks of the bridge and the river, that oft the mother turned, And spake to the laughing baby: "O little son, and dear, When I from the world ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... Jeffrey. They had not been left alone, but she had clung to him and kissed him boldly as though by her right before all men. The first time he had watched her sharply, looking almost savagely to see her shrink away from him in pity and fear of his guilt, as he had seen men who had been his friends shrink away from him. But there had been not a shadow of that in Ruth, and his heart leaped now as he remembered how she had walked unafraid into his arms, looking him squarely ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... makes it so is the extraordinary seriousness of its interior; no other term occurs to me as expressing so well the character of its clear gray nave. As a general thing, I do not favor the fashion of attributing moral qualities to buildings; I shrink from talking about tender porticos and sincere campanili; but I find I cannot get on at all without imputing some sort of morality to Saint- Sernin. As it stands to-day, the church has been completely restored ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... trim, self-satisfied city man. There was still something homely and wayward and definitely personal about him. Even his clothes, his Norfolk coat and his very high collars, were a little unconventional. He seemed to shrink into himself as he used to do; to hold himself away from things, as if he were afraid of being hurt. In short, he was more self-con-scious than a man of thirty-five is expected to be. He looked older than ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... should share his mortal bed. Old friends would look beyond his grave, to my dishonored one, And hide the virtues of the sire behind the recreant son. And I can fancy, if there my corse its fettered limbs should lay, His frowning skull and crumbling bones would shrink from me away; But I swear to God I'm innocent, and never blood have shed! And they'll hang me to the gallows, mother—hang ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... duty to govern. "As a private citizen the executive could not have consented that these institutions shall perish; much less could he, in betrayal of so vast and so sacred a trust as these free people have confided to him. He felt that he had no moral right to shrink, nor even to count the chances of his own life in what ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... reached their homes they took it to the council-lodge, and hung it up before the fire, fastening it with raw hide soaked, which would shrink and become tightened by the action of the fire. 'We will then see,' they said, 'if we cannot make it shut ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... us with strong discriminating faculties against certain external indications of disease. We experience a pleasant feeling when the hand is pressed by another hand that is warm and dry, but we shrink from the hand that is cold and moist ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... agricultural markets introduced in October 1994, at which state and private farmers sell above-quota production at unrestricted prices, have broadened legal consumption alternatives and reduced black market prices. Government efforts to lower subsidies to unprofitable enterprises and to shrink the money supply caused the semi-official exchange rate for the Cuban peso to move from a peak of 120 to the dollar in the summer of 1994 to 21 to the dollar by yearend 1998. New taxes introduced in 1996 helped drive down the number of self-employed workers from ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... by my own thoughts: I look upon the world, and see that it is fair and good; I look upon you, and I see all that I can venerate and adore. Life seems to me so sweet, and the earth so lovely; can you wonder, then, that I should shrink at the thought of death? Nay, interrupt me not, dear Albert; the thought must be borne and braved. I have not cherished, I have not yielded to it through my long-increasing illness; but there have been times when it has ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is most worthy of the notice of any man," agreed Brutus, with an amiable leer. Olga seemed to shrink within herself. It was plain that she was not a kindred spirit to ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... I have an hereditary malady, whose symptoms have lately been much aggravated. I have long since resigned myself to my doom, knowing that my Heavenly Father knows when it is best to call me home. But I cannot bear that my children should shrink from all I shall leave behind, my memory. Louis is a bold and noble boy. I fear not for him. His reason even now has the strength of manhood. Mittie has very little sensibility or imagination; too ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... central part was done, steel jackets or sleeves would be put on, red-hot, and allowed to shrink. Then would come a winding of wire, to further strengthen the tube, and then more sleeves or jackets. In this way the gun ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... difficulty that presented itself to him was, that the nuns would be so appalled by the approach of the French that it would be unlikely that they would think of leaving the protection—such as it was—of the convent, and would shrink from encountering the wild turmoil in the streets. Even if they did so, it would be too late for them to have any chance of getting across the bridge, which would be thronged to a point of suffocation by the mob of fugitives, and might ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... upflung face, her whole slender body tightened at the rough contact of blue flannel against her cheek. Almost before they held her she struggled madly from the circle of his arms. White of face, white of lip, she broke away from him and darted through the gap in the hedge, only to shrink back against him in panic the next instant before the black shape upon a blacker horse, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... yours of the 6th instant. I am sorry the militia are deserting,* because there is no greater support. If they were influenced by proper principles, and were impressed with a love of liberty and a dread of slavery, they would not shrink at difficulties. If we had a force sufficient to recover the country, their aid would not be wanted, and they cannot be well acquainted with their true interest to desert us, because they conceive our force unequal to the reduction of the country without their consent. I shall ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... however, over-estimate the significance of this statement. The diameter of the sun is so great, that a diminution of 10,000 miles would be but little more than the hundredth part of its diameter. If it were suddenly to shrink to the extent of 10,000 miles, the change would not be appreciable to ordinary observation, though a much smaller change would not elude delicate astronomical measurement. It does not necessarily follow that the climates on our earth ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... we are Christ's; for Christ has conquered him. If he be ours, our servant, our minister, sent but to bring us into the presence of our Lord, then, indeed, his terrors, his merely natural terrors, the outside roughness of his aspect, are things which the merest child need not shrink from. Then disease and decay, however painful to living friends to look upon, have but little pain for him who is undergoing them. For it is not only amidst the tortures of actual martyrdom that Christians have been more than conquerors,—in common ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... them; their shattered cornices and coping, the tops of their frowning walls, appear piled from both sides to the center of the street. It seems that a touch would now send the shattered masses left standing, down upon the people below, who look up to them and shrink together as the tremor of the earthquake again passes under them, and the mysterious reverberations swell and roll along, like some infernal drumbeat summoning them to die. It passes away, and again is experienced ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... go through, and which occupied them from morning till night, for the colonel knew that on any day the regiment might receive orders to embark, and he wanted to get it in something like shape before setting sail. Jack did, however, shrink from the company in which he found himself. With a few exceptions the regiment was made up of wild and worthless fellows, of whom the various magistrates had been only too glad to clear their towns, and mingled with these were the sweepings of the jails, rogues and ruffians of every description. ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... Antioch the decree of the Council at Jerusalem, and it was probably about this time that St. Peter paid to Antioch the visit of which we read in the Epistle to the Galatians[16], when his fear of "them which were of the circumcision," led him to shrink from continuing to eat and drink with the Gentiles, and drew down St. Paul's stern rebuke. [Sidenote: Separation of St. Paul and St. Barnabas.] The difference of opinion about St. Mark soon after separated the two Apostles, whose ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... must have been to make this sacrifice. He came accredited by all the claims of finished culture, a man consecrated to the scholar's life.[A] Then, with the sensitiveness that springs from intellectual breeding, one will look to see him shrink from conflict with the callous condition of feeling around him. The glamour of book-lore will spread over it, and hide it from his sight. He has a noble enough mission, at all events: to raise the standard of educational culture in a city that hardly knows ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... disastrous haste. We devour the words but lose their essence. Hence there is a grave danger that through this neglect we shut out one of the main streams by which our life must be fed if it is not to shrink ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... nerving himself during a long slow silence for that. He could almost as easily have struck her a blow, and indeed the effect of it was precisely that. But though she tried to shrink away he held her tighter and went on. "I don't believe there's anything in the whole picture now that I don't see and understand. But—but the way out ... Oh, Mary darling, it isn't the one you ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... embraces us all, and is the foundation of all our hopes. But it had to reach its purpose by a bitter road which He did not shrink from travelling. He desires to save us, and to realise the desire He had to die. 'It became Him for whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through suffering.' What He had to do, we have to accept. Unless ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... done, steel jackets or sleeves would be put on, red-hot, and allowed to shrink. Then would come a winding of wire, to further strengthen the tube, and then more sleeves or jackets. In this way the gun ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... disappointment. "I would sooner part with life than relinquish the pledge I have received from you. But I am content that my constancy should be put to the test you propose. During the long term of my probation, I will shrink from no trial of faith. Throughout Europe I will proclaim your beauty in the lists, and will maintain its supremacy against all comers. But, oh! sweet Geraldine, since we have met in this spot, hallowed by the loves of James of Scotland and Jane Beaufort, let us here renew our vows of ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... he understands him perfectly well. They are strange things. It must have been the finger of God. That executioner cut off Jurand's hand, tore out his tongue, and put out his eyes. That executioner is such that where men are concerned he would not shrink from inflicting any torture, even if he were ordered to pull the teeth of the victim; but, where girls are concerned, he would not lift up his hand to kill them, or to assist in torturing them. The reason for this determination is, because he too had an only daughter whom he loved dearly, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... breath in, thronged with spirits now invisible, and which otherwise would be the most terrible; we should view the secret transactions of those messengers who are employed when the parting soul takes it's leave of the reluctant body, and perhaps see things nature would shrink back from with the utmost terror and amazement. In a word, the curtain of Providence for the disposition of things here, and the curtain of judgment for the determination of the state of souls hereafter, would be alike drawn back; and what ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... difficult to define, but I certainly don't mean pernicketty. Of course, there is a fastidiousness which makes one shrink from unpleasant things, but Harry's is the other kind. It impels him to do them ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... happiness, ("sua si bona norit"), was exposed to the attacks, more or less open, of every unmarried woman. Alas! he was insensible to his privileges; a steady man of fifty-five, a dignitary of the church, devoted to study, and shy in his habits, he seemed to shrink from the kind attentions he received, and to wish for a less favoured, a less glorious state of existence. His desires seemed limited to reading the Fathers, writing sermons, and doing his duty as a divine; and he appeared of opinion that no helpmate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... Fear is neither reason nor philosophy. The true spirit of philosophy by giving knowledge gives a manly confidence, and substitutes rational firmness in the place of vain presumption. A man of real taste is always a man of judgment in other respects; and those inventions which either disdain or shrink from reason, are generally, I fear, more like the dreams of a distempered brain than the exalted enthusiasm of a sound and true genius. In the midst of the highest flights of fancy or imagination, reason ought to preside from first to last, though I admit ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... the hotel, knew but the history of that calm dignified-looking gentleman who sits under her, and over whose patient back she frantically advances and withdraws her two-franc piece, whilst his own columns of louis d'or are offering battle to fortune—how she would shrink away from the shoulder which she pushes! That man so calm and well bred, with a string of orders on his breast, so well dressed, with such white hands, has stabbed trusting hearts; severed family ties; written lying vows; signed false oaths; torn up pitilessly tender appeals for redress, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shall try to fulfill the duty thus devolving upon me, if it cost me my life. This is service for my country. It matters little, whether I perform it as lieutenant in the army, or as a mountaineer. I certainly shall not shrink from duty because the Senate does not confirm an ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... me that I might safely offer money to the vice-consul, but recommended that I should give no more to him than to “the others,” meaning any other peasant. I felt, however, that there was something about the man, besides the flag and the cap, which made me shrink from offering coin, and as I mounted my horse on departing I gave him the only thing fit for a present that I happened to have with me, a rather handsome clasp-dagger, brought from Vienna. The poor fellow was ineffably grateful, and I had some difficulty in tearing myself from ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... very civil to me however. How much I might say about your Letter to me! you will hardly comprehend how it is I almost turn my Eyes from it in this Answer, and dally with other matter. You make me sad with old Memories; yet, I don't mean quite disagreeably sad, but enough to make me shrink recurring to them. I don't know whether to be comforted or not when you talk of India as a Land ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... personality which may be said in a certain manner to epitomize and symbolize the character of a race. "I and my nation are one": thus Poland's greatest poet, Adam Mickiewicz, sums up the devotion that will not shrink before the highest tests of sacrifice for a native country. "My name is Million, because I love millions and for millions suffer torment." If to this patriotism oblivious of self may be added an unstained moral integrity, the magnetism of an extraordinary personal charm, the glamour of ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... first faint glimmering of the possible origin of his life breaks upon him, even the first inevitable risings of resentment against Sir Hugo are softened and toned down by the old yearning affection; and the longings for the unknown mother, intense as they are, yet shrink from full discovery of what she may have been or may still be. He and he alone, in unconscious dignity, stands up uncowering before Grandcourt. His whole relations to Mordecai are characterised by a deep suppressed enthusiasm, that fully responds to ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... Thorgerd went into the dairy as well. Then spoke Bolli, "Now it is safe, brothers, to come nearer than hitherto you have done," and said he weened that defence now would be but short. Thorgerd answered his speech, and said there was no need to shrink from dealing unflinchingly with Bolli, and bade them "walk between head and trunk." Bolli stood still against the dairy wall, and held tight to him his kirtle lest his inside should come out. Then Steinthor Olafson leapt at Bolli, ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... and subsisted wholly upon tepid milk, had all his work cut out for him in considerate dealings with his own digestion. So soon as prudence has begun to grow up in the brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds its first expression in a paralysis of generous acts. The victim begins to shrink spiritually; he develops a fancy for parlours with a regulated temperature, and takes his morality on the principle of tin shoes and tepid milk. The care of one important body or soul becomes so engrossing, that all the noises of the outer world begin to come thin and faint ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and Satyrs and Aegipans danced before his eyes, the darkness of the thicket, the dance on the mountain-top, the scenes by lonely shores, in green vineyards, by rocks and desert places, passed before him: a world before which the human soul seemed to shrink back and shudder. Villiers whirled over the remaining pages; he had seen enough, but the picture on the last leaf caught his eye, as he almost ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... himself had to act. But Nelson could not expect his own spirit in the King of the Two Sicilies. Even if the course suggested were the best for Naples under the conditions, it is the property of ordinary men, in times of danger, to see difficulties more clearly than advantages, and to shrink from steps which involve risk, however promising of success. The Neapolitan Government, though cheered by the appearance of the British fleet, had to consider danger also on the land side, where it relied upon the protection of Austria, instead of trusting manfully to its own arms ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... interests of a leisure class. For, as we have already stated, humanistic studies when set in opposition to study of nature are hampered. They tend to reduce themselves to exclusively literary and linguistic studies, which in turn tend to shrink to "the classics," to languages no longer spoken. For modern languages may evidently be put to use, and hence fall under the ban. It would be hard to find anything in history more ironical than the educational practices which have identified the ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... employed to cut off the head of a slain enemy, displaying the head in sight of their surviving enemies with triumphant dance and song. They carried no shield; perhaps because the excessive length of the spear required the constant employment of both hands—yet they did not shrink from meeting the Greeks occasionally in regular, stand-up fight. As they had carried off all their provisions into hill-forts, the Greeks could obtain no supplies, but lived all the time upon the cattle which they had acquired from the ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... much against the desire of the said individual. To his entreaties and objections the first General of the Society made answer, on the 9th August 1552, that he was indeed edified by the humility which caused Father de Comara to shrink from a position which many envied; nevertheless, he was of the opinion that he should obey his Highness in this, as in other things, "for the honour of God our Lord." St. Ignatius went on to say that he need not occupy himself with any but good and pious objects, neither ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... monster did not drop him. Instead, in its death agony, its grip tightened, and the Americans witnessed an incredible sight. Before their very eyes the monster began rapidly to shrink. Its tenuous body telescoped together, becoming thinner and thinner in the process, until on the floor there lay the lifeless body of a snake-like creature not more ...
— The Heads of Apex • Francis Flagg
... technical education is not enough. We must have every American citizen well grounded in the classical ideals. Such an education will not unfit him for the work of the world. Did those men in the trenches fight any less valiantly, did they shrink any more from the hardships of war, when a liberal culture had given a broader vision of what the great conflict meant? The discontent in modern industry is the result of a too narrow outlook. A more liberal culture will reveal ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... homes they took it to the council-lodge, and hung it up before the fire, fastening it with raw hide soaked, which would shrink and become tightened by the action of the fire. 'We will then see,' they said, 'if we cannot ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the hangman on January 25th. Even a reward of L1,000 failed to discover the author, printer, or publisher of this paper, the condemnation of which rather whets the curiosity than satisfies the reason. I would shrink from saying that a paper so widely disseminated no longer exists; but even if it does not, its non-existence affords no proof that in ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... no friend of the people. As a force, by which the tenor of the time is conditioned, they inspire me with distrust, with fear; as a visible multitude, they make me shrink aloof, and often move me to abhorrence. For the greater part of my life, the people signified to me the London crowd, and no phrase of temperate meaning would utter my thoughts of them under that ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... rather an oddity on the staff, and puzzled the reporters not a little. Most of his predecessors had differed much from each other, but they were all alike in one thing, and that was profanity. They expressed disapproval in language that made the hardened printers' towel in the composing room shrink. ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... proportions to which ale will exalt the sentiments within us, and our delivery of them, are apt to dwindle and shrink even below the natural elevation when we look back on them from the hither shore of the river of sleep—in other words, wake in the morning: and it was with no very self-satisfied emotions that Evan, dressing by the full light of day, reviewed his share in the events of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... are growing too, as all must grow who live on life's firing line, and shrink not from meeting the very hardest problems of today. The working-woman, in her daily struggle comes up against every one of them, and not one ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... the State, Their duty to our gracious king, and bloody treason's fate." A horror seizes every breast—a stifled cry of dread: "Who sheds the blood of innocence, the blood on his own head!" That pack'd and perjured jury shrink in conscience-struck dismay, And wish their hands as clear of guilt as they were yesterday. Mackenzie's cold and flinty face is quivering like a leaf, Whilst with quick and throbbing finger he turns o'er and o'er his brief; And the misnamed judges ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... rebel knowingly. Then fierce wrath flames out from the darkened spirit, and the whole priestly population of Nob are summoned before him, loaded with bitter reproaches, their professions of innocence disregarded, and his guard ordered to murder them all then and there. The very soldiers shrink from the sacrilege, but a willing tool is at hand. The wild blood of Edom, fired by ancestral hatred, desires no better work, and Doeg crowns his baseness by slaying—with the help of his herdsmen, no doubt—"on ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... sing, unasked he sends us to proclaim. We who have followed o'er the billowy brine Thee and thine arms, since Ilion sank in flame, Will raise thy children to the stars, and name Thy walls imperial. Thou build them meet For heroes. Shrink not from thy journey's aim, Though long the way. Not here thy destined seat, So saith the Delian god, not thine the shores ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... speaking faintly, doubly jarred by the cold touch and the mystery. He was not apprehensive or timid through his imagination, but through his sensations and perceptions he could easily be made to shrink and turn pale like ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... we shall see later in the case of Hastings, he would not be false to his convictions, and if he judged that a cause was worth maintaining, even at the cost of weakening his own position, he did not shrink from his duty. This is proved by his conduct with reference to ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... it crushes fame like a dead leaf, and all the spirits and ministers of the mind shrink away before it, and can no more allure, no more console, but, sighing, pass ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... her, I had held her hand. She had insulted me with the subtlest of insults and yet I was not angry. Suddenly the game I was playing became invested with a tremendous solemnity. My old antagonists, Stumm and Rasta and the whole German Empire, seemed to shrink into the background, leaving only the slim woman with her inscrutable smile and devouring eyes. 'Mad and bad,' Blenkiron had called her, 'but principally bad.' I did not think they were the proper terms, for they belonged to the narrow world of our common experience. This was something ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... surprised, Frank, at what you have said. In fact I have expected it for some time. I have observed you looking over books upon foreign countries, and have seen that you often sat thoughtful and quiet. I guessed, therefore, what you had in your mind. Of course, dear, as a woman, I shrink from the thought of leaving all our friends and going to quite a strange country, but I don't think that I am afraid of the hardships or discomfort. Thousands of other women have gone through them, and there ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... to its old greatness of less moment to England. Philip was yet to send an armada against her coasts; he was again to stir up a fierce revolt in northern Ireland. But all danger from Spain was over with the revival of France. Even were England to shrink from a strife in which she had held Philip so gloriously at bay, French policy would never suffer the island to fall unaided under the power of Spain. The fear of foreign conquest passed away. The long struggle for sheer existence was over. What remained was the Protestantism, ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... as hearts can think; Welcome, again, as much as tongue can tell,—Welcome to joyous tongues, and hearts that will not shrink: God thee preserve, we pray, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the sunken, deathlike look; ghastly protruding bones; the faltering, hollow voice; preaching audibly from the shattered, shaking skeleton; piercing to the most vital marrow of the bones, and sapping the manly strength of youth—faugh! the idea sickens me. Nose, eyes, ears shrink from it. You saw that miserable wretch, Amelia, in our hospital, who was heavily breathing out his spirit; modesty seemed to cast down her abashed eye as she passed him; you cried woe upon him. Recall that hideous image to your mind, and your Charles stands before you. His kisses ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... several minutes ensued, during which Mrs. Elwood looked sadly and meaningly from the husband to the son, both of whose countenances seemed to fall and shrink ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... will be so good for me as this pure, bracing mountain atmosphere," her father replied, gently. "I would shrink from going to any place where we should be likely to find familiar faces—nothing would break me down so quickly. Be patient, Virgie for a little longer, and then you shall go back to the world, where you ought long ago to have been with people of ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... only sufficient for one crust at a time. Lay this, the flat side upon the board, and roll evenly in every direction, until scarcely more than an eighth of an inch in thickness, and somewhat larger than the baking plate, as it will shrink when lifted ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... course to pursue both in justice to the learned judge and to myself. Either I am unfit to sit in this House, or the judge has no right to his place on the bench. I have courted investigation in every shape; and I trust that the learned lord will not shrink from it or suffer his friends on the opposite side to evade the consideration of these charges by ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... that thou didst ever commit, though thou makest a light matter of it, is a greater evil than the pains of the damned in hell, setting aside their sins. All the torments in hell are not so great an evil as the least sin is; men begin to shrink at this, and loathe to go down to hell and be in ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... modestly pretend to shrink from it; but I well know the joy these words afford you; you wish it were ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... promised. She adored shopping, and this would be a labor of love. So she went off to dress for dinner, full of visions of bright pinks and blues and laces and ribbons that would have made Halcyone shrink if ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... that an English political campaign is fought for a principle or for an abstract idea, and equally rarely that in America the watchword on one side or the other is not some such high-sounding phrase as Englishmen rather shrink from using. It is true that behind that phrase may be clustered a cowering crowd of petty individual interests; the fact remains that it is the phrase itself—the large Idea—on which orators and party managers rely to secure their hold ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... over the cauliflowers and seal at once. Glass jars are the most convenient, as they may be examined frequently to see if their contents are keeping well. If not, repeat the scalding. In all pickles the vinegar should be two inches or more above the vegetables, as it is sure to shrink, and if the vegetables are not thoroughly immersed in ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... transports me into a luxurious vision sinking back through one hundred and thirty years, in which I see Addison, Phillips, both John and Ambrose, Tickell, Fickell, Budgell, and Cudgell, with many others beside, all cudgelled in a round robin, none claiming precedency of another, none able to shrink from his own dividend, until a voice seems to recall me to milder thoughts by saying, 'But surely, my friend, you never could wish to see Addison cudgelled? Let Strephon and Corydon be cudgelled without end, if the police can show any warrant for doing ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... confessed that he saw, or fancied he saw, a something, he declared himself wholly at a loss to explain what that something was: moreover, contrary to former habits of an ostentatious boldness, he seemed meekly to shrink from observation: and, as he piously acquiesced in the annoyance, would observe that his unpleasant jerking was "a little matter after all, and that, no doubt, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... pardon. Never did children more abhor a lie: we spurned its meanness, while trembling at its guilt; and nothing bound us more closely and exclusively together than, the discoveries we were always making of a laxity among other children in this respect. On such occasions we would shrink into a corner by ourselves and whisper, "Do they think God does not hear that?" Self-righteousness, no doubt, existed in a high degree; we were baby Pharisees, rejoicing in the external cleanliness of cup and platter; but I look back with great thankfulness on the mercy that so far restrained ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... were particularly lively and vivacious, even as they are in the sanguine sketches of Antoine Watteau a hundred years afterwards, I am "confidous"—as Mrs. Slipslop would say. For my theory (in reality a foregone conclusion which I shrink from dispersing by any practical resolvent) is, that Mile. de Mons was some delightful seventeenth—century French child, to whom the big volume had been presented as a picture-book. I can imagine the alert, strait-corseted little figure, with ribboned hair, eagerly craning across the ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... commonplace speech than the reflection darted through her mind like a lightning flash that she had never spoken a bit of her heart out like this in all her life before. The reason came to her in the same flash: she was not being looked at; her disfigured face was hidden. This man, at least, could not shrink, turn away, shiver, affect indifference, fix his eyes on hers with a fascinated horror, as others had done. Her heart was divided between a great throb of pity and sympathy for him and an irresistible sense of gratitude for herself. Sure of protection and comprehension, her lovely soul came out ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... woman, that the true greatness wears an invisible cloak, under cover of which it goes in and out among men without being suspected; if its cloak does not conceal it from itself always, and from all others for many years, its greatness will ere long shrink to very ordinary dimensions. What, then, it may be asked, is the good of being great? The answer is that you may understand greatness better in others, whether alive or dead, and choose better company from these and enjoy and understand that company better when you have chosen it—also that ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... I do not see how this logic can be escaped. But sad experience makes me fear that some of you may still shrink from radically saying with me, in abstracto, that we have the right to believe at our own risk any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our will. I suspect, however, that if this is so, it is because you have got away from the abstract logical point of view altogether, and are thinking ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... me, Then shall my ghost come to thy bed, And thee, feign'd vestal, in worse arms shall see: Then thy sick taper will begin to wink, And he, whose thou art then, being tired before, Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think Thou call'st for more, And, in false sleep, will from thee shrink; And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected thou Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat wilt lie A verier ghost than I. What I will say, I will not tell thee now, Lest that preserve thee; and since my love is spent, I'd rather ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... when the smuggling captain came and stood before him; but the man did not speak—he only glared down, apparently with the idea that he was frightening the lads horribly. Vince did not shrink, for he did not feel frightened, only troubled about home and the despondency there, as the time went by without news of their fate. For it was evident to him that the time had come for them to be taken on board ready ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... cries or of parties Is worth but a whisper from thee, While only the trust of thy heart is At one with the soul of the sea. In justice her trust is Whose time her tidestreams keep; They sink not, they shrink not, Time casts them ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... that this was the mark that the Lord did set on Cain, even continual fear and trembling, under the heavy load of guilt that he had charged on him for the blood of his brother Abel. Thus did I wind, and twine, and shrink under the burthen that was upon me; which burthen also did so oppress me, that I could neither stand, nor go, nor lie, either ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... with a preceding passion play might occupy several hundred actors for a number of days. The texts as known to us are hardly 'literature' in the narrower sense. They were written by men of small poetic talent, who rimed carelessly, used the rough-and-ready language of the people, did not shrink from indecency and aimed at ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... splendid chance, for the brute was twenty feet long at least; the rugged knobs of its thick hide showed here and there through a coat of mud with which it was covered, and its partially open jaws displayed a row of teeth that might have made the lion himself shrink. The mud had partially dried in the sun, so that the monster, as it lay sprawling, might have been mistaken for a dead carcass, had not a gentle motion about the soft parts of his ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... was shown that the night was dark and recognition next to impossible, this evidence was held conclusive to prove the crime, and nothing now remained but to condemn the culprit. The judge's words came slowly forth, making the stoutest there shrink back and let that arrow from the bow of death glance by and set its mark on him upon whose face the crowd now turned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... savagery of his tone made the girl shrink away from him and turn pale. He managed to cover his break so quickly with a forced laugh and an effort to assist Gladwin to his feet that her fear ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... change as we contemplate it when parting from those we love, I confess I should shrink from the idea of years intervening before you and I met again; not that I apprehend any diminution of our affection, but it would be painful to be no longer young, or to have grown suddenly old to each other. But I hope ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... deriving of her spirit-state Is so remote from men and their believing, They shrink when she is cold, and estimate That hardness which is but a God's dismay: As when the Heaven-sent sprite thro' Hell sped cleaving, Only the gross air checkt him on ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... God's name,—such wisdom and such sin Are all about thy lips!—urge me no more. For all the soul within me is wrought o'er By Love; and if thou speak and speak, I may Be spent, and drift where now I shrink away. ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... an expression of pain and rage. Her brows drew downward, her thin lips curled themselves away from the gleaming teeth, and, at intervals of half a minute or more, her eyelids quivered, she shuddered, and her whole frame appeared to shrink together. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... ends in mistrust and alienation; and it lies at the root of too many of the fatal misconceptions of life. There are loving hearts that would pay any price to be freed from the self-enfolding toils that wrap them in these crisis hours. And so would Miriam's, for she felt herself shrink within herself at the approach of Matt. She knew nothing of mental moods, never having heard of them, nor being able to account for, or analyze, them. All she knew, poor girl, was that for the first time ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... Again, women shrink with passionate repugnance from receiving orders from another woman; witness the rarity of the American domestic. A pity? Yes; but what else can you expect? The Americans are a dominant race. Free education has made all classes too nearly equal for one woman ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... responsive movement. She seemed, if anything, to shrink a little away. Her head was thrown back, her dark eyes were filled with dislike. She turned suddenly to the Professor and spoke to him in her own language. She pointed to the signs upon the tent, drew her finger along one of the sentences, ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... forsook him, and you know I do not mean to forsake him. For yourself—do not try to desert. It would make no difference. Do not believe that any consideration would cause me willingly to give you a moment's pain, or that I should shrink from sacrificing myself to save you." With one of her small white hands she gently pressed my head towards her. Her lips touched my forehead, and she whispered: "Do not leave me. It will soon ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... great pleasure to me finding that to-day the Sakais no longer distrust civilization and some of them, especially the younger ones, do not refuse or shrink from work as they once did and neither do they oppose such an obstinate resistance to those innovations which I too had a part ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... into a besieged town would instantly induce the garrison to evacuate the place and quit; but the barbarity which would be involved in subjecting even an enemy to direct contact with the Bradley Sausage is so frightful that we shrink from recommending its use, excepting in extreme cases. The odor disseminated by the stink-pot used in war by the Chinese is fragrant and balmy compared with the perfume which belongs to this article. It might also be used profitably as a manure for poor land, and in a very cold climate, ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... The constant reference to a petty and puny race must cripple the boldness of the poet. Fortunately for his art, Shakespeare lived in an age extremely susceptible of noble and tender impressions, but which had still enough of the firmness inherited from a vigorous olden time not to shrink back with dismay from every strong and violent picture. We have lived to see tragedies of which the catastrophe consists in the swoon of an enamoured princess. If Shakespeare falls occasionally into ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... large pipes "robbed" their smaller neighbors of their due supply of wind, causing them to sound flat. By giving each pipe a pallet or valve to itself, the waste of wind in the large grooves was prevented. Another object was to get rid of the long wooden slides, which in dry weather were apt to shrink and cause leakage, and in damp weather ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... "—there's a bandage off most charmingly, and now comes the cool one,—makes you shrink at first, my poor dear fellow, don't it? but it will be comfortable presently,—it seems that the woman was a young woman, and a jealous woman, and a revengeful woman; revengeful, Handel, to the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... And his soul seemed to shrink back, as if into the recesses of the shell from which it had been peeping. His soul was tremendous, in solitude; but even the rumour of society intimidated it. His father and another were walking about the ground ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... she helped her mistress to pile up her wavy hair at the top of her head. But when at last it was ready, Mrs. Tiralla thought it so hideous, that she burst into tears and tore it down with an angry "Psia krew!" which made Rosa shrink. The child was crouching in a dark corner of the room with her hands clasped round her knees, gazing with admiration at the beautiful vision in the white ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... I will do it or die! Love that will not shrink from a crime must be love indeed. Is there a woman in the world for whom such a thing has been done? Poor boy! Come, do not lose time, dear M. Chesnel; and count upon me ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... No stone directs the stranger's eye To where his sacred relics lie, Nor can the weeping Burmans come To shed their tears around his tomb. And when their work on earth is done, No mourning daughter, wife, or son Can rest from toil the weary head, Beside him in his ocean bed. But while we shrink from such a grave, He rests as sweetly 'neath the wave As though in Auburn's bowers he lay, Where sunbeams through green branches play, And roses, wet with tear drops, bloom Around th' unconscious sleeper's tomb. Let no rude wind, no angry storm, The ocean's heaving breast deform,— 'Tis hallowed ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... unapproached affluence in dramatic instinct and invention—an affluence which enabled him to identify himself with every phase of emotion—the autobiographic element in his sonnets, although it may not be dismissed altogether, is seen to shrink to slender proportions. As soon as the collection is studied comparatively with the many thousand sonnets that the printing presses of England, France, and Italy poured forth during the last years of the sixteenth century, a vast number of Shakespeare's performances prove to be little ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... that she might indeed meet her dead lover at the ash-field stile; but though she shivered as this superstitious fancy came into her head, her heart beat firm and regular; not from darkness nor from the spirits of the dead was she going to shrink; her great sorrow had taken away ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... with you!" cried Sergei across the raft, accentuating his exclamation with a loud and cynical curse. Then he seemed to shrink together, as if himself afraid of the terrible drama which was unfolding itself before him; drama, which he was now compelled to understand. ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... of the whole matter seems to be, War and Union, or Peace and Disunion. If we have Union, it can only be now through war. We must 'seek peace with the sword.' The rebels have appealed from the civil law to the military law, from the Constitution to the sword; let us not shrink from the ordeal. No revolution to perpetuate oppression can hope for the favor of a God ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that have this instant opened on the world. There are two houses separated by but an inch or two of wall. In one, there are quiet minds at rest; in the other, a waking conscience that one might think would trouble the very air. In that close corner where the roofs shrink down and cower together as if to hide their secrets from the handsome street hard by, there are such dark crimes, such miseries and horrors, as could be hardly told in whispers. In the handsome street, there ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... fatigue and said that he would freeze if he rode. Besides, he added, it would be cruel to burden Fanny, in her present state of depression. The most likely thing was that we should have to carry her; and if she continued to shrink at her present rate per minute, soon we could slip her into ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... presented a dreadful spectacle, for my hair and collar were matted with blood, and I saw the guests stare and shrink from me. The clerk came toward me and stopped me at the entrance ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... movement among the directors. They shifted uneasily in their chairs, and several of them pushed them back. They did not know what might happen. Keith was the incarnation of controlled passion. Mr. Kestrel seemed to shrink up within himself. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... is idle to talk of municipal reform or popular Lords Lieutenant. The mild sway of a constitutional monarchy is not strong enough for a Roman Catholic population. The stern soul of a Republican would not shrink from sending half the misguided population and all the priests into exile, and planting in their place an industrious Protestant people. But you cannot do this, and you cannot convert the Irish, nor by other means make ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... they put those reasons on the journal, they would spread on it their own condemnation; adding that, by going out of the house, Mr. Adams might easily have avoided voting. The latter replied, "I do not choose to shrink from my duty by such an expedient. It is not my right alone, but the rights of all the members, and of the people of the United States, which are concerned in this question, and I cannot evade it. I regret the state ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... conceived how great a trial it is to me to write the following history of myself; but I must not shrink from the task. The words, "Secretum meum mihi," keep ringing in my ears; but as men draw towards their end, they care less for disclosures. Nor is it the least part of my trial, to anticipate that my friends may, upon first reading what I have written, consider much in ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... bloodthirsty, covetous—men who were almost always thieves, who were frequently cannibals, sometimes wreckers—who regarded foreigners as a cheap and very delicious kind of food. The pioneers of civilisation, always and everywhere, incur dangers from which ordinary mortals would shrink with dismay; but the earliest pioneers, the first introducers of the elements of culture among barbarians who had never heard of it, must have encountered far greater peril than others from their ignorance of the ways of savage man, and a want of ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Divorce can be pronounced, and the care of the child be legally secured to the mother. The only doubt and the only danger are there. If you are not frightened by the prospect of a desperate venture which some women would shrink from, I believe I see a way ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... remark the Goblin turned his telescope toward Davy, and uttered a faint cry of surprise; and Davy, peering anxiously through the large end, saw him suddenly shrink to the size of a small beetle, and then disappear altogether. Davy hastily reached out with his hands to grasp the telescope, and found himself staring through a round glass window into a farm-yard, where a red Cow stood gazing up ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... things move for ever; and not even ghosts can rest. So the corpses of their sisters, piling on them from above, press them outward, press them southward toward the sun once more; across the floes and round the icebergs, weeping tears of snow and sleet, while men hate their wild harsh voices, and shrink before their bitter breath. They know not that the cold bleak snow-storms, as they hurtle from the black north-east, bear back the ghosts of the soft air-mothers, as penitents, to their father, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... does not shrink back into itself because in the confused pell-mell of human life the alien souls which destiny has chosen for its companions do not satisfy, in this detail or the other detail, the desire of its heart. ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... as he swings his delicate cordage from one tree to another, he does not need to wear a gorgeous plumage; this old dusty coat and uncomely figure, that make a child shrink and cry out, these may well be forgotten by him who looks into life through prismatic glasses. Every drop of rain wears for him its Iris drapery; the dew on the flowers becomes a jewelled circlet; and the dazzling pictures brought by the sunbeams outshine and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... and deathlike as it was—suiting well the countenance of the speaker, and seeming rather the voice of some bodiless wanderer of the Styx than living mortal, would have made Ione shrink back into the pitiless fury of the storm, but Glaucus, though not without some misgiving, drew her ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... The photographer can procure every article needed for his work at moderate cost and in quantities suited to his wants. His prices have consequently come down to such a point that pauperism itself need hardly shrink from the outlay required for a family portrait-gallery. The "tin-types," as the small miniatures are called,—stanno-types would be the proper name,—are furnished at the rate of two cents each! A portrait such as Isabey could not paint for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the 'Hammer of the Arians,' could keep the heretics at bay, and do in the Latin Church what Gregory could not do in the Greek Church—maintain his position and his cause against all comers. For one thing, the retiring disposition of Gregory inclined him to shrink from the din of conflict, and his high ideals weakened his hopefulness. The result was that he abandoned his position and retired to Nazianzus in 381. Deprived by death of his life-long friend, and of his brother Caesarius, to whom he was bound by more than brotherly love, ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie
... have concluded this subject, by bringing under examination some of the arguments and quotations in the Epistle to the Hebrews; but upon looking over that Epistle, and contemplating my task, I confess I shrink from it. That Epistle is so replete with daring, ridiculous, and impious applications of the words of the Old Testament, that I am glad to omit it; and I think after the specimens which have been ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... would shrink from talking to a husband of the love they bore his wife, and an hour ago I should have shrunk from it, too, but you have forced me to it, and now you must listen while I tell you of my love for Katy. It began longer ago than she can remember—began when she was my baby sister, and I hushed ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... frequent exchange of perfectly harmless rifle-shots. And here in Prague, looking down over my newspaper from the terrace of my choice, I seemed to see the spires of the city mass closer together and take on the form of giant jungle trees, the broad Vltava to shrink to the narrow silver thread of a mountain stream at the crossing of which Wun Thu's sporting warriors had levelled their blunderbusses lashed to trees and warranted harmless to all but the men behind them; the paper told of another rising led by Wun Thu. ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... uncharacteristically petulant and anxious as she stood on the broad hearth at one side of the massive mantelpiece, one hand lifted to the high shelf; her red cloth gown with the amber-tinted gleams of the lines of otter fur showed richly in the blended light of fire and lamp. Her eyes seemed to shrink from the window, at which nevertheless ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... hills and lay the level plain of endless sand; so minute that, save with a powerful lens, you would never imagine the dust on your fingers to be more than dust. The thoughts of man are like these: each to him seems great in his day, but the ages roll, and they shrink till they become triturated dust, and you might, as it were, put a thousand on your thumb-nail. They are not shapeless dust for all that; they are organic, and they build and weld and grow together, till in the passage of time they will make a new earth and a new life. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... any important move I am making. So this is to inform you, in very strict confidence, of my latest dodge. For the effective organization of my particular branch of the W.S.P.U. activities, I must have an office. "The Lilacs" is far too small, and besides I shrink from having my little home raided or too much visited even by confederates. I learned the other day that the old Fraser and Warren offices on the top floor of 88-90 Chancery Lane were vacant. The Midland Insurance Co. that occupied ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... dauntless hardihood, 650 And brandish't blade rush on him, break his glass, And shed the lushious liquor on the ground, But sease his wand, though he and his curst crew Feirce signe of battail make, and menace high, Or like the sons of Vulcan vomit smoak, Yet will they soon retire, if he but shrink. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... this ghastly ceremony is that the spirit of the departed, of whom you have swallowed a piece, will for ever keep on friendly terms with you. When birds and dogs do not shrink from feeding, it is a sign that the body is healthy, and fit ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... a young man," I began, "and do you think that he will shrink from enduring any number of hardships to gain them? Are you ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... 'simmons for?" sharply rejoined the General. Then came the humorous reply that disarmed all of the officer's anger and appealed to his sympathy, while it hinted all "the boys" were suffering for the cause. "Well, the fact of it is, General, I'm trying to shrink up my stomach to the size of my rations, so I won't starve ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... by the fire; but, with his books slung over his shoulder, he sets out to face the storm. When he reaches the topmost ridge, where the snow lies in drifts, and the north wind comes keen and biting, does he shrink and cower down by the fences, or run into the nearest house to warm himself? No; he buttons up his coat, and rejoices to defy the blast, and tosses the snow-wreaths with his foot; and so, erect and fearless, with strong heart and ruddy ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... crooked garden," he said, at length, "is a combination from which all honest people should shrink. Those who frequent it must be, for the most part, crooked people. They were, for the most part, crooked ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... my head's a mop; I'm vet as any think; Oh! shan't ve cotch a cold!" "Your tongue is glib enough!" his rib exclaim'd, and made him shrink, —For ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... words and to realize that by his own efforts he had become a self-supporting member of society. It really seemed as though he increased in stature twice as fast after that little talk with his mother. At the same time his clothes appeared to shrink from the responsibility of covering an independent man, instead of the boy for whom they had ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... but defer it till I should meet her here,' said Robert. 'I shrink from seeing her with those cousins, or hearing her name with theirs. Phoebe, imagine my feelings when, going into Mervyn's club with him, I heard "Rashe Charteris and Cilly Sandbrook" contemptuously discussed by those very names, and jests passing on their ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she rose and dressed. She did not shrink from meeting the eyes of strangers. They simply did not exist for her. She took her place in the great dining saloon, looking neither to right nor left. The buzz of conversation all around her passed her by. She might have been sitting in utter solitude. And all the while the misery gnawed ever ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... scattered on the wind, a wretched spectacle was disclosed: men and officers tumbled in heaps, battalions resolved into a mob, order and obedience gone; and, when the British muskets were levelled for a second volley, the masses of the militia were seen to cower and shrink with uncontrollable panic. For a few minutes the French regulars stood their ground, returning a sharp and not ineffectual fire. But now, echoing cheer on cheer, redoubling volley on volley, trampling the dying and the dead, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... sun was risen More than two hours aloft; and to the sea My looks were turned. "Fear not," my master cried. "Assured we are at happy point. Thy strength Shrink not, but rise dilated. Thou art come To Purgatory now. Lo! there the cliff That circling bounds it. Lo! the entrance there, Where ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... away a chance; if they came on the British in the woods they were "to give them Indian play," and advance from tree to tree, pressing the enemy unceasingly. He ended by promising them that their officers would shrink from no danger, but would lead them everywhere, and, in their turn, they must be on the alert ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... be her mortal illness; for the very next night she came suddenly to her end. Her loss was a heavy one, especially to her own household. She had always been a quiet person, of rather pensive humor, whose native diffidence caused her to shrink from observation; and after Amelia's death she was rarely seen abroad, except at meeting, on Sundays, or when she went to visit the poor, the sick, or the grief-stricken. It was at home that her worth was most apparent; for plain domestic virtues, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... expected! You shrink from me. You avoid my polluted hand. How could it be otherwise? A conscientious green-goods man would do the same." He rose from his seat. "Your attitude," he said, "confirms me in a decision that has been in my mind ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... disgrace is ours, not theirs. If slavery, however, is a blemish, a blot, an eating cancer in the body politic, it is not our fault if, by holding it up, others should see in the mirror of truth its deformity, and shrink back from the view. We have not, and we intend not, to use any weapons against slavery, but the moral power of truth and the force of public opinion. If we enter the slave States, and tamper with the slave contrary to law, punish ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... tranquillity: Lord of magnanimity strong in apparel: Lord of the crown high plumed: of the beautiful turban, of the tall white crown: the gods love thy presence: when the double crown is set upon thy head: thy love pervades the earth: thy beams arise ... men are cheered by thy rising: the beasts shrink from thy beams: thy love is over the southern heaven: thy heart is not (unmindful of) the northern heaven: thy goodness ... (all) hearts: love subdues (all) hands: thy creations are fair overcoming (all) the earth: (all) hearts are ...
— Egyptian Literature
... and beauty die. So be it, O my God, thou God of truth. Better than beauty and than youth Are saints and angels, a glad company: And Thou, O lord, our Rest and Ease, Are better far than these. Why should we shrink from our full harvest? why Prefer to glean ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... man shrink from the bitter tonics Of grief, and yearning, and need, and strife, For the rarest chords in the soul's harmonics Are found in the minor strains ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... is a lasting lesson: and, dubious monument as Don Juan may be, it towers over the century. Of course there is truth in what you say; but ought it to be the case? and is it the case in any absolute sense? You deal frankly with your sonnets, and do not shrink from radical change. I think that on Oliver much better than when I saw it before. The opening phrases of both octave and sestette are very fine; but the second quatrain and the second terzina, though with a quality of beauty, both seem somewhat to ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... From useful labor we will not shrink; But our fires we'll blow till the forges glow With a lustre that makes our eyelids wink. Clink, clink, ...
— The Nursery, November 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 5 • Various
... Heaven above, And it sings a song of undying love; And yet, tho' [2] its voice be so clear and full, You never would hear it; your ears are so dull; So keep where you are: you are foul with sin; It would shrink to the earth if you ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... whose linen we lave, we laundress drudges, could look in here, Wouldn't their feet shrink back with sickness, and wouldn't their faces go pale with fear? White, well-ironed, all sheen and sweetness, that linen looks when it leaves our hands; But they little think of the sodden squalor that marks the den where the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... my daughter. Her education has been sadly neglected, and she should be where she can have experienced tutors, and good social surroundings. With her delicate organization, and sensitive and susceptible nature, she needs motherly care and affection, and I shrink from committing her to the hands of strangers. I should feel at rest about her only with you. You have been my steadfast friend through many years; you have stood by me in, sore trials—may I not then ask you to do me now ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... be "y-touked," that is, dyed, it was done at this period, and it was then "y-tented," spread on the tenter-field and caught on tenter-hooks, to shrink and dry. ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... as discernible to any one honest enough and fearless enough to look; and the first and supreme of all is that which we have been considering this morning. The question for you and for me, my brethren, is simply this: Are our lives full of the grace of love? Do not shrink from the question. Do not deceive yourselves with any substitutes; there are many offering zeal, the gift of prayer or of speech, yea, the gift of faith itself. None of these will atone for the lack of love. Let each ask himself, Am ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... Even in this desponding hour, Though to think may taint the flower, Thy suggestion comes to nought,— In my power is not my thought But my act is in my power. I can follow to the brink, Free to pause or to pursue, Move my foot, or backward shrink, For it is one thing to do, And another thing ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... six, and said she was going by it, whether I did or not, because it was a pity to have too much of a good thing, and she hadn't the face to ask for the keys of that church again. I accompanied her. I fancy that the brown leather is liable to shrink in the sun, and I was not unwilling to get back to my slippers and stretch ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... day like this the most ardent lover of Nature could scarcely fail to shrink from her cold, pallid face and colder breath. Our return to the home, whose ruddy firelight is seen through the frosted window-panes, will be all the more welcome because we have been shivering ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... the Colonel, in whose steps I follow, faithful as his shadow, crouch sidewise: we must pass behind this inclined plane, which rests on roughly hewn rocks, that protrude till it appears impossible that any living thing, except a lizard, can find a passage. I am sure we must shrink from the original rotundity with which Nature blessed us. I feel as the frog in the fable might have felt, if, after successfully inflating himself to the much-envied dimensions of the ox, he had suddenly found himself reduced ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... and saying what he listed, now in the Queen's inner chamber, then in the midst of the Council, unconsidered, and the butt of all, he paid for his bed and bounty by shooting shafts of foolery which as often made his listeners shrink as caused their laughter. The Queen he called Delicio, and Leicester, Obligato—as one who piped to another's dance. He had taken to Buonespoir at the first glance, and had frequented him, and Lempriere had presently been added to his favour. He had again and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... answer that question to his own heart, much less to hers. He could not paint the shuddering horror which had forced him to veil his eyes and shrink aghast from that last ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... the darkness, but there was no answering clasp. The woman seemed to shrink away. And ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... and if the contrast between your finery and my high-necked gingham apron and white sun-bonnet sometimes struck me painfully, I had no wish to take the boots and sashes from you, whom they fitted so admirably; and as we grew older and you did not shrink from or slight Jerrie Crawford, I cannot tell you how great was the love which grew in my heart for you, the dearest girl friend I ever had, and a thousand times dearer now that I know you ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... in front of that terrible silent line, while his men seemed to shrink somewhat as they, too, pulled up. Then he faced Thorleif as boldly as if he had the army of Wessex behind him, ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... of my Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, fixed upon me with a deep gratitude and pride. It was all of a great pleasure to me except that I did not like very well to be so distinguished by a young man, which made the French grande dame in me to shrink. ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... George for an event which would place her own son in a position of honor and affluence. But many a time George Eildon recoiled from the people who did not conceal their opinion that he might not be broken-hearted at the death of his cousin. There is nothing that true, honorable, unworldly natures shrink from more than having low, unworthy feelings and motives ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... at that Time, as I was assur'd by my Lord Lucas, Constable of it, upwards of twenty Thousand Barrels of Gun-powder, in that they call the White-Tower, when all at once the middle Flooring did not only give way, or shrink, but fell flat down upon other Barrels of Powder, together with many of the same combustible Matter which had been placed upon it. It was a Providence strangely neglected at that Time, and hardly thought of since; But let any considerate ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... innocent child, imprisoned here till he grew into an old man, and became a dull, worn-out creature like herself. Sometimes, watching him, she felt more sorry for him than even for herself; and then, seeing she looked a less miserable and ugly woman, he did not shrink from her as usual. ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... Bingo had fallen by his hand. But, oddly enough, that fact did not sear his conscience. He had been accused of drowning Lester Parmalee, and the thought of that accusation now made him shrink and writhe. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... their homes they took it to the council-lodge, and hung it up before the fire, fastening it with raw hide soaked, which would shrink and become tightened by the action of the fire. 'We will then see,' they said, 'if we cannot make it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... am glad I am so soon to be rid of my vexed, joyless life; but you know it is all a dark mystery; and sometimes, when I recollect how I felt in my childhood, I shrink from the final dissolution. I have no hopes of a blissful future, such as cheer some people in their last hour. Of what comes after death I know and believe nothing. Occasionally I shiver at the thought of annihilation; but if, after ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... than we do now about a very wicked hobgoblin; he was one of the very worst, for he was a real demon. One day, when he was in a merry mood, he made a looking-glass which had the power of making everything good or beautiful that was reflected in it almost shrink to nothing, while everything that was worthless and bad looked increased in size and worse than ever. The most lovely landscapes appeared like boiled spinach, and the people became hideous, and looked as if ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Lady Catharine," replied Mary Connynge. "To the contrary, 'twould not surprise me to learn that he would not shrink from any adventure which ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... strangulation; corrugation; astringency; astringents, sclerotics; contractility, compressibility; coarctation[obs3]. inferiority in size. V. become small, become smaller; lessen, decrease &c. 36; grow less, dwindle, shrink, contract, narrow, shrivel, collapse, wither, lose flesh, wizen, fall away, waste, wane, ebb; decay &c. (deteriorate) 659. be smaller than, fall short of; not come up to &c. (be inferior) 34. render smaller, lessen, diminish, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... a storm had been so unpleasant that somehow they seemed to shrink involuntarily from a repetition so soon. Later on, when the memory became fainter, they might again take risks, after the manner of buoyant youth ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... perhaps, very natural that, with her feelings towards Charles Holland, Flora should shrink from every one who seemed to be of a directly contrary impression, and when Mr. Marchdale now spoke, she showed but little inclination to hear what he had to say ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... disregardful of these orders, began firing as soon as the trumpets sounded, though with small injury to the islanders, who mostly lay under the cover of trenches or other means of defence. Captain Lister then urged on the rowers, who began to shrink at the shot from the enemy which flew thick about their ears, and was himself the first to board one of the ships which lay farther from shore than the other, while we speedily followed, still plying the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... of seats, this is barely conceivable; and that, were it to take place, the Reichstag would promptly be dissolved for new elections on a narrower franchise. Bismarck himself contemplated this course, and his successors would not shrink ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... it seems you are an adept after all in all the philtres known to man, only you chose to conceal your knowledge all the while; or is it that you shrink from taking the first step because of the scandal you will cause by kindly advances to your brother? And yet it is commonly held to redound to a man's praise to have outstripped an enemy in mischief or a friend in kindness. Now if it seemed to me that Chaerephon were better fitted ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... to the Church in Antioch the decree of the Council at Jerusalem, and it was probably about this time that St. Peter paid to Antioch the visit of which we read in the Epistle to the Galatians[16], when his fear of "them which were of the circumcision," led him to shrink from continuing to eat and drink with the Gentiles, and drew down St. Paul's stern rebuke. [Sidenote: Separation of St. Paul and St. Barnabas.] The difference of opinion about St. Mark soon after separated the ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... about it. Some thought he asked too much of man, some thought he saw too much in women; there was a fear that young people, knowing at last how far short they fell of what they ought to be, might shrink from the matrimony that must expose them to each other, now that they had Sandys to guide them, and the persons who had simply married and risked it (and it was astounding what a number of them there proved to be) wrote to the papers suggesting that he ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... not thy fortune troll upon the wheels Of yonder dancing cubes of mottled bone; And drown it not, like Egypt's royal harlot, Dissolving her rich pearl in the brimm'd wine-cup. These are the arts, Lothario, which shrink acres Into brief yards—bring sterling pounds to farthings, Credit to infamy; and the poor gull, Who might have lived an honour'd, easy life, To ruin, and an unregarded grave. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... If ye suffer in this manner, be ye not ashamed, but glorify God. Here he makes the suffering and anguish the more welcome, because it is great, insomuch that we praise God through it, and because we are not worthy of it. Yet now all will shrink therefrom. Of what advantage is it to embrace the cross in monasteries? The cross of Christ does not save me. I must, indeed, believe in His cross, but I must myself bear my own cross. His suffering must I experience inwardly, if I would possess ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... that, being a mortal like himself, I likewise found it a difficult task; but it did not become a person to shrink from a glorious but practicable undertaking, on account of the difficulties attending it, because in proportion to these difficulties, is the honour he acquires by it in the eye of man, and the merit in the sight of God. Our beneficent Creator is desirous, that, as he originally favoured human nature ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... murder, and there is not sufficient legal evidence, he is to be shut up in a narrow cell and fed with "the bread of adversity and the water of affliction" (Isa. xxx. 20). They give him this diet till his bowels shrink, and then he is fed with barley till (as it swells in his bowels) ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... could not bear that she should lose any happiness which might be hers; and the tender memory of the blessed companionship which had been withdrawn from his mortal sight only to be given back to him more fully as he had lived closer and nearer to spiritual things, made him shrink from forbidding the same sort of fullness and completion of life to one so dear as Nan. He tried to assure himself that while a man's life is strengthened by his domestic happiness, a woman's must either surrender itself wholly, or relinquish entirely the claims of such duties, if she would ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the most convenient, as they may be examined frequently to see if their contents are keeping well. If not, repeat the scalding. In all pickles the vinegar should be two inches or more above the vegetables, as it is sure to shrink, and if the vegetables are not thoroughly immersed in vinegar they ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... speaker went down on one knee to raise up the fallen lad, he uttered a cry of horror, and then let the young man's head hurriedly down, to shrink away with ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... swayed by Lady Gertrude, who is secretly rather bored by the dullness that has ensued on the strange absence of their host, decides to leave on the morrow, to the great distress of both Dora and Florence Delmaine, who shrink from deserting the castle while its master's fate is undecided. But they are also sensible that, to remain the only female guests, would be to ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... Pyramus—'An' I may hide my face,' says he, 'let me play Thisbe too!' And so likewise, when the lion is mentioned, he would fain play the lion in addition to both, promising to aggravate his voice in such a way as to roar you as gently as any sucking-dove. The managing partner would shrink from this kind of active employment. She would compose the play, distribute the parts, shift the scenes, and snuff the candles; but she would take no part in the performance. This makes her character a difficult study; but though difficult, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... Extreme pacificists shrink from fighting evil with evil, hell with hell, and advise submission to outrage, or at least taking the risk of being forced into resigned submission. The believers in the religion of valor, on the other hand, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... compassion. "You were so young—it was all so sudden, so terrible, so incomprehensible. Draw up that hassock, Edith, and sit here by my side, and listen. No, you must let go my hand. How can I tell whether you will not shrink from it and me with horror when ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... saw them shrink with fear Who would not shrink from foeman's spear, When Olaf's lion-eye was cast On them, and called up all the past. Clear as the serpent's eye—his look No Throndhjem man could stand, but shook Beneath its glance, and skulked away, Knowing his king, ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... something in his past life prejudicial to his character from parasites and informers, this would be an ordeal which scarcely any mere man since the fall could endure. It would be to subject him to a reign of terror from which the stoutest and purest heart might shrink. I have passed triumphantly through this ordeal. My vindication is complete. The committee have reported no resolution looking to an impeachment against me; no resolution of censure; not even a resolution pointing out any abuses in any of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... to be done!" said she, "and there's an end of it! The clothes won't be dry until morning, and it won't do to put them too near the stove, or they'll shrink so he can't get them on. And he can't go away to hunt up lodgings wearing the Duke's dressing-gown ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... human faculties may as well be content to leave unanswered, though to its being supposed to emanate directly from the mind of Omnipresent Deity, one insuperable objection may be mentioned, which should be kept steadily in view. There are few of us who will not shrink with horror from a notion, according to which man, whenever doing as he pleases with any material object, applying it, as likely as not, to some base or criminal purpose, is disposing at his pleasure of a portion of the Divine ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... his tactlessness constantly precluded a due appreciation of his courage and nobility. For long years his violent and haughty temper made him the most unpopular man in England, except in Devonshire, where everybody doted on him. He was "a man of desperate fortunes," and he did not shrink from violent methods. In studying his life we are amused, we are almost scandalised, at his snake-like quality. He moves with serpentine undulations, and the beautiful hard head is lifted from ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... last, in answer to my looks rather than to my words, "I AM nervous, Dr. Hamilton. I have always been a timid man, and my timidity depends upon my frail physical health. But my soul is firm, and I can bring myself up to face a danger which a less-nervous man might shrink from. What I am doing now is done from no compulsion, but entirely from a sense of duty, and yet it is, beyond doubt, a desperate risk. If things should go wrong, I will have some claims to ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you fancy yourself a thing apart from the mass." And again, the same writer says: "Before you can attain knowledge you must have passed through all places, foul and clean alike. Therefore, remember that the soiled garment you shrink from touching may have been yours yesterday, may be yours tomorrow. And if you turn with horror from it when it is flung upon your shoulders, it will cling the more closely to you. The self-righteous man makes for himself a bed of mire. Abstain because it is ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... was Dunport, and in these very streets her father had played, and here her mother had become deeper and deeper involved in the suffering and tragedy which had clouded the end of her short life. It seemed to the young stranger as if she must shrink away from the curious glances that stray passers-by sent into the old carriage; and that she was going to be made very conspicuous by the newly-awakened interest in a sad story which surely could not have been forgotten. Poor Nan! she sent ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... with steady hand, "you are the only soul on this island who doesn't fear me. That woman above yonder, curse her, shuddered away from me as I looked at her dying. But your hand is steady. You and old Ben Hornigold are the only ones who don't shrink back, hey, Carib? Is it love or hate?" he mused, as the man made no answer. "More," he cried, again lifting the glass ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... do get to heaven, it will be on your ladder, Mate. You have coaxed me up with confidence and praise, you have steadied me with ethical culture books, and essays, and sermons. You have gotten me so far up (for me), that I am afraid to look down. I shrink with a mighty shrivel when I think of disappointing you in any way, and I expand almost to bursting when I think of justifying your belief ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... was abashed at the disproportionate and unusual effects of his movements. It was as though a retiring nature were to be accompanied at every step through a crowded drawing-room by the jingling of bells. Always the instinct was to pause in order that the row might die away, that the man might shrink to his accustomed unobtrusiveness. And instantaneously, without the grace of even a little transitional echo, the stillness fell, crowding so closely on the heels of the man's presence that almost he could feel the breath ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... themselves perfectly justified in declining to give us any assistance in finding the will, soothing their consciences by the reflection that by such refusal they are committing no offense of which the law takes cognizance; but while doing this they might shrink from the absolutely criminal offense of destroying the will. I do not say that now they have entered upon the path they have that they would not destroy the will if they thought there was a chance ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... gentleman who performs the service.[271] I heard him do so with the utmost propriety for my late friend, Lady Alvanley,[272] the arrangement of whose funeral devolved upon me. How little I could guess when, where, and with respect to whom I should next hear those solemn words. Well, I am not apt to shrink from that which is my duty, merely because it is painful; but I wish this day over. A kind of cloud of stupidity hangs about me, as if all were unreal that men seem to ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... of Denmark will not on account of the burden, shrink from the demands of justice; it will not allow it to be said that it refused to satisfy a claim, the justness of which has never been doubted by any civilized nation, nor will it suffer a number of its fellow citizens to be illegally ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... broad principle of absolute religious toleration proclaimed in our fundamental law, and rejoicing in the benign influence which it has exerted upon our social and political condition, I should shrink from a clear duty did I fail to express my deepest conviction that we can place no secure reliance upon any apparent progress if it be not sustained by national integrity, resting upon the great truths affirmed and illustrated by divine revelation. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... succeed in making her allow him to see her sometimes; and, counting over the list of his advantages: his social position—his fortune, from which she stood too often in need of assistance not to shrink from the prospect of a definite rupture (having even, so people said, an ulterior plan of getting him to marry her)—his friendship with M. de Charlus, which, it must be confessed, had never won him any very great favour from Odette, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... thirty-five years ago, it came loaded with fine reddish-colored sand. Though no longer accompanied by sand, it is so devoid of moisture as to cause the wood of the best seasoned English boxes and furniture to shrink, so that every wooden article not made in the country is warped. The verls of ramrods made in England are loosened, and on returning to Europe fasten again. This wind is in such an electric state that a bunch of ostrich feathers held a few seconds against ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Pope's malignant clan, He'll do whatever Prince or Hero can; Retrieve that martial Fame by Britons lost, And prove that Faith which graceless Christians boast. O! make his Cause, ye Powers above! your Care; Let Guilt shrink back, and Innocence appear. But, now, with State Affairs I must have done, And to the Business of my Lamps must run; When Sun and Moon from you do hide their Head, Your busy Streets with artful Lights are spread, And gives you Light with great indulgent ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... rule were adopted, it would be by the votes of States which were not Democratic, and would bring 'dismemberment and final breaking up of the party.' Walker laughed at Butler's 'tall vaulting' from the floor; and, refusing to shrink from the Van Buren issue, he protested against New York dictation, and warningly said that, if Van Buren were nominated, Clay would be elected."—Edward M. Shepard, Life of Martin Van Buren, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the ruling classes, and the still sterner haughtiness of their footmen. He had now abandoned Alice in Putney. And a mysterious demon seized him and gripped him, and sought to pull him back in the direction of the simplicity of Putney, and struggled with him fiercely, and made him writhe and shrink before the brilliant phenomena of London's centre, and indeed almost pitched him out of the car and set him running as hard as legs would carry to Putney. It was the demon which we call habit. He would have given ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... his cold hand in hers. A few hours ago she dared not have done this, knowing very well that at the caressing touch of her fingers, she would have felt his strong arms around her in a passionate and distasteful embrace. But there was no fear of this now. She would never have to shrink away from him again. ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by ourselves, and may hereafter be misconceived by others, to encroach upon the powers of the House. Principles that bear a remote affinity with usurpation on those powers will be rejected, not merely as errors, but as wrongs. Our sensibilities will shrink from a post where it is possible they may be wounded, and be inflamed by the slightest suspicion ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... occupy several hundred actors for a number of days. The texts as known to us are hardly 'literature' in the narrower sense. They were written by men of small poetic talent, who rimed carelessly, used the rough-and-ready language of the people, did not shrink from indecency and aimed at dramatic rather than ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... between two persons, one of whom is protective, but unrelated. But there are wild, forcible, unrestricted characters, on whom the necessity and even duty of loving their own child is a sort of barrier to love. They perhaps do not love their own traits, which they recognize in their children; they shrink from their own features in the reflection presented by these little mirrors. A certain strangeness and unlikeness (such as gives poignancy to the love between the sexes) would excite a livelier affection. Be this as it may, it is not probable that Doctor Grimshawe would have loved a child of his ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... muscle, to look straight in the face of death; who are capable for the sake of an idea of bearing unconceivable privations and sufferings, equal to torture; but then, these people are lost before the haughtiness of a doorman; shrink from the yelling of a laundress; while into a police station they enter in an insufferable and timid distress. And precisely such a one was Lichonin. On the following day (yesterday it had been impossible on account of a holiday and the lateness), having gotten ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... of agreeable physiognomy and manners, could not endure the presence of the most attractive young woman, but was seized with deadly terror and sudden collapse of all the powers of life, if he came into her immediate presence; if it were added that this same young man did not shrink from the presence of an old withered crone; that he had a certain timid liking for little maidens who had not yet outgrown the company of their dolls, the listener would be apt to smile, if he did not laugh, at the absurdity of the fable. Surely, he would say, this must be the fiction of some ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... crest of the slope he stopped, and yelped down, almost determined to go back to that black patch of forest and chase out everything that was in it. Then he turned toward Cragg's Ridge, and what he saw seemed slowly to shrink up the pugnaciousness that was in him, and his stiffened tail drooped until the knotty end of it touched ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... for it," exclaimed the old trapper, when Laurence brought him the intelligence of what had happened. "Whether Injuns or wolves wrong him, Michael Moggs is not the man to let them go unpunished;" and his eyes lighted up with a fierce expression which made the young boy instinctively shrink back from him. "We have three strong traps which will catch the biggest wolf on the prairies; and if they fail, I'll lie in wait till I can shoot the savage brutes down with my rifle. We shall have to tramp it on foot, boy, with the furs on our backs. That's bad for you, ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston
... incompressible. It is nearly so. A pressure that would reduce air to one hundredth of its bulk would not discernibly affect water. Put a ton weight on a cubic inch of water; it does not flinch nor perceptibly shrink, yet the atoms of water do not fill the space they occupy. They object to being crowded. They make no objection to having other matter come in and possess the ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... At which time Pericles also lost his sister, and the greatest part of his relations and friends, and those who had been most useful and serviceable to him in managing the affairs of state. However, he did not shrink or give in upon these occasions, nor betray or lower his high spirit and the greatness of his mind under all his misfortunes; he was not even so much as seen to weep or to mourn, or even attend the burial of any of his friends or relations, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the richest man should look grand enough to make a simple man shrink in it, or luxurious enough to make a thoughtful man feel ashamed in it; it will not do so if Art be at home there, for she has no foes so deadly as insolence and waste. Indeed, I fear that at present the decoration of rich men's houses is mostly wrought ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... do her good. Still it would not be as it was at first. It was because her hands were busy and her days full, that she was helped then. It would be different now. And more than that, she seems quite to shrink from the thought of it. We will wait a while, and all that ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... drawing himself up with a look of defiance and a laugh of contempt, that caused the two men to shrink back in ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... stubborn to learn, they have had a lesson written in letters of blood, which would have long since convinced them—if it be necessary, it must be repeated I for one will not shrink from my duty. No though I should sink beneath the horrid task which it imposes ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... have supported the charge by attributing strange notions to me on no other authority than their own conjectures, owe it to themselves as well as to me not to refuse their attention to my own statement of the theory which I do acknowledge; or shrink from the trouble of examining the grounds on which I rest it, or the arguments which I offer in ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... regard any such proscription as an attack on the independence of Parliament, and would jointly oppose any administration who should resort to such proscription. But the bold and domineering spirit of Fitzgibbon—the leader of the Castle party, then, and long afterwards—did not shrink before even so formidable a phalanx. The Duke of Leinster was dismissed from the honorary office of Master of the Rolls; the Earl of Shannon, from the Vice-Treasurership; William Ponsonby from the office of Postmaster-General; Charles Francis Sheridan, from ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... so dense that the people were forced off the causeway, one of these six-feet gentlemen, on a black horse, rode straight at the place, making his horse rear very high, and fall on the thickest spot. You would suppose men were made of sponge to see them shrink away. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... along very well without conferring this right upon the female. But when you speak of it as a right, and as a great educational power in the hands of females, and I am called on to vote on the subject, I will vote that which I think under all circumstances is right, just, and proper. I shrink not from the question because I am told by gentlemen that it is unpopular. The question with me is, is it right? Show me that it is wrong, and then I will withhold my vote; but I have heard no argument that convinces me that the thing ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... have filled her time, mingled longings for her old life with blissful gloatings over Nino's beauty and cleverness. Her husband was always kind, but since his marriage delicacy of sentiment had made him shrink from having his wife pose even for himself, while naturally no thought of her doing so for another would have ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... mountains of earth, whose arena its valleys, to urge your peasant millions into gladiatorial war. You also, you tender and delicate women, for whom, and by whose command, all true battle has been, and must ever be; you would perhaps shrink now, though you need not, from the thought of sitting as queens above set lists where the jousting game might be mortal. How much more, then, ought you to shrink from the thought of sitting above a theatre pit in which even a few condemned ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... fail to be struck with the incongruity with which wealth and squalor are blended. Here a dainty restaurant is elbowed by a cheap American gargote, there a plate-glass window blazing with diamonds seems to shrink from a neighbouring emporium stocked with second-hand wearing apparel. Even the exclusive Zero Club with its bow window generally crowded with fashionable loungers, is contaminated by the proximity of a shabby drinking-bar, ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... blacks—and to reverse, under the very worst conditions, the universal verdict of racial history. And driven, sir, to this superhuman task with an impatience that brooks no delay—a rigor that accepts no excuse—and a suspicion that discourages frankness and sincerity. We do not shrink from this trial. It is so interwoven with our industrial fabric that we cannot disentangle it if we would—so bound up in our honorable obligation to the world, that we would not if we could. Can we solve it? The God who gave it into ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... were frequently cannibals, sometimes wreckers—who regarded foreigners as a cheap and very delicious kind of food. The pioneers of civilisation, always and everywhere, incur dangers from which ordinary mortals would shrink with dismay; but the earliest pioneers, the first introducers of the elements of culture among barbarians who had never heard of it, must have encountered far greater peril than others from their ignorance of ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... left, leaning against the back of the chair, a girl well forward into womanhood. At sight of them Ben-Hur felt the blood redden his forehead; bowing, as much to recover himself as in respect, he lost the lifting of the hands, and the shiver and shrink with which the sitter caught sight of him—an emotion as swift to go as it had been to come. When he raised his eyes the two were in the same position, except the girl's hand had fallen and was resting lightly upon the elder's shoulder; both of them ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... is, and that, if it progresses at all, it progresses slowly. How many individuals see in spiritualism only a means of putting forward their wretched personalities or of exploiting their contemporaries! Such persons would not shrink from representing their lucubrations as communications from the next world; they would sign them with the most august of names if to do so would further their designs. Finally, it is not even necessary to suppose that these messages are due to dishonesty; the number of ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... loved and hated, All that I shunned and knew, Clears in broad battle lightening; Where they, and I, and you, Run high the barricade that breaks The barriers of the Street, And shout to them that shrink within, ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... all the virtues and all the powers that go with this original quality in Ireland. One of them is a sort of awful elegance; a dangerous and somewhat inhuman daintiness of taste which sometimes seems to shrink from matter itself, as though it were mud. Of the many sincere things Mr. Shaw has said he never said a more sincere one than when he stated he was a vegetarian, not because eating meat was bad morality, but because it was bad taste. It would ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... seized with faintness and trembling. The phantom Prince vanished suddenly from before him, and his own Veil that Blinds rose in darkening folds across his eyes. The Veil that Chokes swept across his mouth, and his turbulent voice was stilled. He began to shrink upward, to waver and fade, and presently he drifted helplessly into the great smoke dome and was ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... Official violence brutalised, and political ambition extinguished, every spark of nature in this great lawyer, when he struck at his victims, public or domestic. His solitary knowledge, perhaps, had deadened his judgment in other studies; and yet his narrow spirit could shrink with jealousy at the celebrity obtained by more liberal pursuits than his own. The errors of the great are as instructive as their virtues; and the secret history of the outrageous lawyer may have, at least, the merit of novelty ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... "Why do you shrink from me?" he asked. "I mean you no ill. You shall be queen; I swear you shall be queen. Come with me," and he held out his hand with an air of royal condescension which contrasted ridiculously enough with his grotesque ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... stooped to seize her, they struck back her ravening heads, and foul Scylla whined, as a whelp whines, at the touch of their gentle hands. But she shrank into her cave affrighted; for all bad things shrink from good; and Argo leapt safe past her, while a fair breeze rose behind. Then Thetis and her nymphs sank down to their gardens of green and purple, where live flowers of bloom all the year round; while the heroes went ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... we shall find the gates open far, So that close together we both come in; I shrink from the thoughts of the gates ajar, When only the one might ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... speak to Hollis, I know; that it was his will, I do not know; but she was assured that she knew, and she never changed her mind. It may be that it was his will for her to make a mistake and bring sorrow upon Marjorie; the Lord does not shrink from mistakes; he knows what ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... of a nerve, which contracts at the slightest touch of any thing heterogeneous; so every motive fiber of a muscle, yea, the muscle itself, and even the whole body shrinks from the touch of whatever is hard or cold. So also the substances or forms of the spiritual degree in man shrink from evils and their falsities, because these are heterogeneous. For the spiritual degree, being in the form of heaven, admits nothing but goods, and truths that are from good; these are homogeneous to it; but evils, and falsities that are from evil, are heterogeneous to it. This ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... omnivorous ravages of the white ants is that they shrink from the light, in all their expeditions for providing food they construct a covered pathway of moistened clay, and their galleries above ground extend to an incredible distance from the central nest. No timber, except ebony and ironwood, which are too hard, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... all the time she was aware of Wade, with his quiet, forceful presence, hovering near. Could he not see her hands trembling? And would he not think that weakness strange? Then driftingly came the thought that she would not shrink from Wade's reading her mind. Perhaps even now he understood her better than she ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... in accepting Irish independence we shrink from responsibility for the acts of England. We know that the disorder now ruling in Ireland is, to some extent, the result of English misgovernment in past generations, and instead of attempting by firmness and patience ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... 'Three Gods', and they know it to be false. They might, with equal justice, affirm that we believe in 'three suns'. The meanest peasant, who has acquired the first rudiments of Christianity, would shrink back from a thought so monstrous. Still the Trinity has its difficulties. It would be strange if otherwise. A 'Revelation' that revealed nothing, not within the grasp of human reason!—no religation, no binding over again, as before said: but these difficulties are shadows, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... beauty. Cries of terror and agony rang in his ears; and he saw himself afterward burying the bodies—partly eaten by the flames. Small icy drops broke out on his forehead. Though he was doing it for her, when it was done, Natalie could not but shrink from such a bloody wretch. It would part them forever. But it ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... them without a blush. Indeed, it appeared to me that such is the impudent immorality and impurity now in Paris, that such an expression as an innocent blush would be difficult to detect, more especially as the conscience—that delicate sympathy of the mind which would cause it to shrink from all that was not perfectly pure and beautiful—is made to retire and give place to reason and materialism. The pleasure and satisfaction of the senses seems to be all that they consider worth living for. Pleasure is God, and both the ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... roaring torrent; tremendous mountains arose in every vista. The gigantic landscape, uncheered by a touch of changing light or a solitary ray of sun, was yet terribly distinct in its ferocity. The hearts of two lonely men might shrink a little, if they had to win their way for miles and hours among a legion of silent and motionless men—mere men like themselves—all looking at them with fixed and frowning front. But how much more, when the legion is ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... so much. Would you hesitate an instant if some poor famishing wretch were to ask you for food or water? Well, I am that poor wretch. What I have to tell you is a matter of life and death to me. Only a woman—only you—can help me; and you shrink because we have not had a proper introduction. My dear young lady, you have nothing to fear from me. I am unfortunate, but a gentleman,—a married man, if ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... him). Oswald, what is the matter with you? (OSWALD seems to shrink up in the chair; all his muscles relax; his face loses its expression, and his eyes stare stupidly. MRS. ALVING is trembling with terror.) What is it! (Screams.) Oswald! What is the matter with you! (Throws herself on her knees beside him ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... and the Peacock's cousin were sauntering through the Malay woods when they met the Peacock face to face. The Crow looked defiant and stood jauntily; but the Pheasant tried to shrink out of sight. The Peacock, however, had spied his poor relative, and was filled with cousinly ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... that her fears need not trouble her much longer—he did all the things that Robin disliked most. His boisterousness, heartiness, and good-fellowship, dislike of everyday conventionality, would all, she knew, count against him with Robin. She had seen him shrink on several occasions, and each time she had been triumphantly glad. For she was frightened, terribly frightened. Harry was threatening to take from her the one great thing around which her life was centred; if he robbed her of Robin he robbed her of everything, and she must fight to ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... her). But a certain curiosity came to the aid of her good sense; and, after all, she was a brave and haughty woman, and her natural courage began to rise. She thought to herself, "What, dares she come to me all this way, and shall I shrink from her?" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... spoken as likely to arise—not, as Laveaux says, after Raynal, to avenge, but to repair the wrongs of my colour. Low, indeed, are we sunk, deep is our ignorance, abject are our wills, if such a one as I am to be the leader of thousands—I, whose will is yet unexercised—I, who shrink ashamed before the knowledge of the meanest white—I, so lately a slave—so long dependent that I am an oppression to myself—am at this hour the ruler over ten thousand wills! The ways of God are dark, or it might seem that He despised ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... growing upon me that this order of men and women, wearing such a uniform as you wear, and with faces strengthened by discipline and touched with devotion, is the Utopian reality; but that for them, the whole fabric of these fair appearances would crumble and tarnish, shrink and shrivel, until at last, back I should be amidst the grime and disorders of the life of earth. Tell me about these samurai, who remind me of Plato's guardians, who look like Knights Templars, who bear a name that ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... refusal of all measures demanding expense which do not promise a pecuniary return:—such is the kind of liberality of sentiment which may ruin great nations. The qualities of the lamb may be very excellent qualities, but they are specially inapplicable to dealings with the wolf. Do those who shrink from expense think that the presence of Russia in Afghanistan will be inexpensive to us? Will the weakness which will be the temptation and the opportunity of Russia be less costly than effectual defence? ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... listened to it; still, she was not beloved. Weaknesses and foibles met with unmerciful severity, and well-meaning intentions and kind actions did not always escape without the keen sarcasm which it is so difficult for the best regulated mind to bear unmoved. The mild and gentle seemed to shrink from her; and thus she, who might have been the bright and beloved ornament of the circle in which she moved, was regarded with distrust, fear, and even hatred. This dangerous habit of making satirical ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... difficulties involved in administering distant territories, the ignorance and apathy of the public, the consequent erosion of responsibility, the chance that wrong will fail of discovery. But he did not shrink from his conclusion. "Let us do what we please," he said, "to put India from our thoughts, we can do nothing to separate it from our public interest and our national reputation." That is a general truth not less in Africa and China than in India itself. The main thought in Burke's mind was ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... the 15th he entered Moscow. This enormous city was deserted. General Rostopschine, its governor, had forced all the inhabitants to leave. This Rostopschine whom some have described as a hero, was a barbarian, who would shrink from nothing to achieve his aims. He had allowed the populace to strangle a number of foreign merchants, mainly the French, who were living in Moscow, on the sole grounds that they were suspected of hoping for the arrival of Napoleon's troops. Some days before the battle of Moscow, the Cossacks ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... there were sixty glad minutes in it. They sang and danced in their night-gowns. Such a deliciously creepy song it was, in which they pretended to be frightened at their own shadows; little witting that so soon shadows would close in upon them, from whom they would shrink in real fear. So uproariously gay was the dance, and how they buffeted each other on the bed and out of it! It was a pillow fight rather than a dance, and when it was finished, the pillows insisted on one bout more, like partners who know ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... Lord Garnon and I discussed this, oh, two years ago at the least. Really, I'm surprised that you seem to shrink from it, now. Of course, you're Venus-born, and customs there may be different, but ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... at them. Then he also fell to thinking that the hours were long; and a fear came suddenly upon him that she would not come. It was in these last hours that doubts crept in, and she was not there to drive them away. Would the great trial fail? Would she shrink at the last? But he would not think it of her, and he was smiling again, when the clock of the cathedral struck two, and told him that no more than one hour now parted her from him. For she would come; the princess would ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... who read; aye, you Who this very line may scan: Think of all you planned to do . . . Have you done the best you can? See! the tavern lights are low; Black's the night, and how you shrink! God! and is it time to go? Ah! the clock is always slow; It is later than you think; Sadly later than you think; Far, ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... said in conclusion, "to confide the service he rendered me, the intimacy that has sprung up between us, but to you alone,—not a word to your guests. When you have once seen him, you will understand why an eccentric man, who has known better days, would shrink from the impertinent curiosity of idle customers. Contented with his humble livelihood, he asks but ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... M. P. has got over it. Without boasting, I think I have also. But that is neither here nor there. In the old days, I have seen people shrink from him." ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... Nejdanov thought... "when I last held her in my arms like this, her body was at least motionless, but now I can feel it—against her will, perhaps—shrink ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... marry Laurence!" His coolness returned, and with it serious reflections. If he insisted on marrying, would not Bertha carry out her threats? Evidently; for he knew well that she was one of those women who shrink from nothing, whom no consideration could arrest. He guessed what she would do, from what she had said in a quarrel with him about Jenny. She had told him, "I will confess everything to Sauvresy, and we will be the more bound together by shame than by all the ceremonies ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... frowning on their bare, rocky crests; the forest more dark, more black; the trees of the valleys more barren and shriveled; the stones in the road rolled beneath his feet as if fleeing from his touch; the sky contained something repellant; even the air of the island would finally shrink away from his nostrils. In his desperation Febrer realized that he stood alone. Everyone was against him. Only Pep and his family were left to him, and even they would finally draw away under the necessity of living ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... summoned by incantation, they may destroy the audacious mortal who demands their services. The most sagacious and sceptical men are apt to be mildly susceptible to conviction in the matter of their own pedigrees, and, a little conscious of their weakness, they shrink from letting the sacred tree be handled by relentless and unsympathising adepts. One of these intellectual tyrants, a man of great ability, when he quarrelled with any one, used to threaten to "bastardise" ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... everywhere. That fair scene,—trees, grass, flowers, sky, sunshine, is there to be looked at and enjoyed; it seems wrong, that with such a picture passing on before your eyes, your eyes should be turned upon anything else. Work, especially mental work, is always painful; always a thing you would shrink from if you could; but how strongly you shrink from it on a beautiful summer morning! On a gloomy winter day you can walk with comparative willingness into your study after breakfast, and spread out your paper, and begin to write your sermon. For although writing the sermon is undoubtedly ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... red and yellow! "Beside," quoth the Mayor, with a knowing wink, "Our business was done at the river's brink; We saw with our eyes the vermin sink, And what's dead can't come to life, I think. So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink From the duty of giving you something for drink, And a matter of money to put in your poke; But as for the guilders, what we spoke Of them, as you very well know, was in joke. Besides, our losses have made us thrifty; A ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... great influence is ascribed to the moon, not only in regulating the weather, but as affecting all the affairs of man's daily life. The lower orders, and many of the better sort, will not fell a tree for agricultural purposes in the wane of that orb, lest it should shrink and decay; nor will the housewife then slaughter for her family, lest the meat should shrivel and melt away in the pot. The moon is the domestic deity, whom the household must fear: the Fortuna who presides over the daily doings of sublunary ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... which is most important and useful when it is founded on the right knowledge of God: but which is not itself theology. For theology begins with God: but experimental religion, right or wrong, begins with a man's own soul. Therefore it is that men are unaccustomed to theology. They shrink from it as something very abstruse, only fit for great scholars and divines, and almost given up now-a-days even by them. They do not know that theology, the knowledge of God, is full of practical every-day ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... conceived for this man a strange feeling of dislike. It was he of whom Lincoln had spoken, and who was likely to be my rival for the captaincy. Was it this that rendered him repulsive? No. There was a cause beyond. In him I recognised one of those abandoned natures who shrink from all honest labour, and live upon the sacrificial fondness of some weak being who has been enslaved by their personal attractions. There are many such. I have met them in the jardins of Paris; in the casinos of London; in the cafes of Havanna, and the ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... is in the nature of the spiritual part of mankind to shrink from the earth, to aspire to something higher; a bird soaring in the blue above us has something of the ethereal; we give wings to our angels. On the other hand, a serpent impresses us as something sinister. Trees, with their ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... into repose, beguiled it, hidden it away under habits and work and activities. It was something firmer than work, something even more beautiful than beauty, more satisfying than love that I wanted; and most certainly it was not repose. I had grown to loathe the thought of that, and to shrink back in horror from the dumb slumber of sense and thought. It was energy, life, activity, motion, that I desired; to see and touch and taste all things, not only things sweet and delightful, but every passionate impulse, every fiery sorrow that thrilled and shook ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... seemed to know what the matter was, for he flung down the axe he was using and was first of the three at the side of the car when Janice stopped. Mr. Trimmins sauntered up, too, but the sullen Jack Besmith seemed to shrink from approaching the visitors. ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... not Christlike either to force our light upon them, or to constrain them to leave us; but to give up the Chapel to them, as they do not, in heart, go along with us. It cannot be expected that, for the sake of pleasing even those whom we love in Christ, we should shrink back from carrying out any truth which the Lord may lead us into; and, therefore, if our brethren cannot heartily go along with us, it is better that nothing should be imposed upon them contrary to their convictions. If it should be said that for the sake of a few we thus separate from ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... the front. When she arrived, instead of finding a few women as she had expected, a large church was packed with both men and women, eager to listen. The governor of the State and other officials were present. She had never spoken in a mixed assembly. Her conservative training made her shrink from it, and, unfortunately, made her feel incapable of ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... The rich, the refined, the educated, whose time is their own, do not educate their own children. They systematically send them to schools and colleges, or pay for tutors or governesses under their own roof. They wisely shrink from a work for which, if they have the time, they seldom have the acquirements or the gift, or the method of the perseverance or the patience. And if this be, as it is, universally true of those who are the most competent, ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... to the orchard. I gathered the apples diligently and spoke no word, but not for that did I escape. She stood calmly looking on till I had finished, then began with that terrible opening from which we all shrink. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... the infinite woe we dogs suffer in new homes, under strange tyrannies; you never heed how we shrink from unfamiliar hands, and shudder at unfamiliar voices, how lonely we feel in unknown places, how acutely we dread harshness, novelty, and scornful treatment. Dogs die oftentimes of severance from their masters; there is Greyfriars' Bobby now in Edinboro' town who never has been persuaded ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... her dependence upon One higher than man, and in doing this is obliged to do but little violence to her habits of thought and feeling, and no violence at all to such sentiments of independence as stand most in the way of man. Hence men shrink with horror from coming in contact with a godless woman. In their eyes she is monstrous, unreasonable and offensive. Even an utterly godless man, unless he be debauched and debased to the position of an animal, deems such a woman without an excuse. He looks on her with suspicion. ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... Disgust. Akin to the instinct of flight is that of repulsion, which impels us, instead of fleeing, to thrust the object away. It leads us to reject from the mouth noxious and disgusting objects and to shrink from slimy, creepy creatures, and has of course been highly useful in protecting the race from poisons and snakes. It still operates in the tendency to put away from us those things, mental or physical, toward which we feel aversion or disgust. ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... seemed rather that, as its home broke up, the soul withdrew little by little, and contracted itself like the pupil of an eye, to shrink to a pinpoint and vanish ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... of millions to a young man," I began, "and do you think that he will shrink from enduring any number of hardships to gain them? Are you not laughing ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... even for a single year, to live without the manufacture of spirits? It may be, indeed, that for a time they will find other pursuits less productive than this. And is not this, after all, the true reason why they shrink from the sacrifice? But if superior profits be a sufficient reason for continuing distillation, it is a reason that will justify the robber, the thief, and every other depredator upon the rights ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... images and set a smile upon the face of stateliness. "Such old, old panes," says someone. "Six hundred years and more. How wonderful!" Pardon me, but I have seen them, and it is not wonderful at all. Beneath their spell, centuries shrink to afternoons. The windows of Chartres are above Time. They are the peepholes ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... sat down and faced one another. A good woman would have called his look impudent—insulting. Kate returned it with a look that did not shrink, nor waver, but fearlessly, recklessly accepted the challenge. Playing with fire, were these two, and with no care for the fearful results which might follow. Both knew it was dangerous, and liked it the better for that. There was a long silence. The game was opening on a wider ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... wildly back.] You reckless fool,—do you not shrink with fear Before this child of death, but risen up A fleeting moment from ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... What nobler name can I tender you? How else can I love you? Yet you may well shrink from the name: have I not said we are but poor things? Yet there is a power that can ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
Copyright © 2025 e-Free Translation.com
|
|
|
