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Shred   /ʃrɛd/   Listen
Shred

noun
1.
A tiny or scarcely detectable amount.  Synonyms: iota, scintilla, smidge, smidgen, smidgeon, smidgin, tittle, whit.
2.
A small piece of cloth or paper.  Synonyms: rag, tag, tag end, tatter.



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"Shred" Quotes from Famous Books



... De reliquiis quae continentur in Ecclesiis, seemed indeed to have cured the madness of Denys, but certainly did not restore his gaiety. He was left a subdued, silent, melancholy creature. Turning now, with an odd revulsion of feeling, to gloomy objects, he picked out a ghastly shred from the common bones on the pavement to wear about his neck, and in a little while found his way to the monks [70] of Saint Germain, who gladly received him into their workshop, though secretly, in ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater

... uncertain; you had to look twice to assure yourself that it was n't a mere fancy. It seemed as if never so thin a gauze had been drawn over the face of the sun, just faintly bedimming, without obscuring it. You could have ransacked the sky in vain to discover the smallest shred ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... their own breed. The belief in the power of a sire to influence subsequent generations, or telegony as it is sometimes called, is not uncommon even to-day. Nevertheless, carefully conducted experiments by more than one competent observer have failed to elicit a single shred of unequivocal evidence in favour of the view. Until we have evidence based upon experiments which are capable of {168} repetition, we may safely ignore telegony as a ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett

... say it. Close to the breaking point, she was ready now to give up to him more than he might care for—the only shred left which she had shrunk from letting him think was within his reach for the ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... the ordinary contains the extraordinary, why should we play the baby, and insist upon having the moon for a toy when a tin dish will do as well? Our deep ignorance is a chasm that we can only fill up by degrees, but the commonest rubbish will help us as well as shred silk. The god Brahma, while on earth, was set to fill up a valley, but he had only a basket given him in which to fetch earth for this purpose; so is it with us all. No leaps, no starts, will avail us; by patient crystallization alone, the equal temper of wisdom is attainable. Sit at home, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... had to listen to him. In the end he produced a treaty—Russian protection for Theos in exchange for every shred of independence she possessed. If I would swear before witnesses to sign it when I became King, I might proceed, and Domiloff himself would be my escort. If I refused—well, I think then that other things were in ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

... There was only one shred of comfort in all this dreariness. Life at Shamrock House was so cheap that she was eating up but very little of Uncle John's allowance. She wondered sometimes if the old people at home ever asked at the ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson

... Shred some pineapple; add grape fruit pulp and seeded white grapes; cover with hot sugar and water syrup and let stand until cold; flavor with sherry and serve in cocktail glasses that have been chilled by filling with ice an hour before ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various

... follow, And in terms like these addressed her: "O thou bride, my dearest sister, Thou my darling, best-beloved, Listen now to what I tell thee, For a second time repeated. Now thou goest, a flower transplanted, Like a strawberry forward creeping, 20 Whisked, like shred of cloth, to distance, Satin-robed, to distance hurried, From thy home, renowned so greatly, From thy dwelling-place so beauteous. To another home thou comest, To a stranger household goest; In another house 'tis different; Otherwise in strangers' houses. Walk ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... the last shred of self-control. With a growl of crazy rage he bounded forward again, striking up and down and right and left with a blind, venomous energy that would have ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... primitive communism was never quite extinguished, and the continual peasant-revolts of the Middle Ages, though immediately occasioned, probably, by some fresh invasion, by which it was sought to tear from the "common man" yet another shred of his surviving rights, always had in the background the ideal, vague though it may have been, of his ancient freedom. Such, undoubtedly, was the meaning of the Jacquerie in France, with its wild and apparently senseless vengeance; of ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... The fact is, we all scramble and jostle so much nowadays that I wonder we have anything at all left on us at the end of an evening. I know myself that, when I am coming back from the Drawing Room, I always feel as if I hadn't a shred on me, except a small shred of decent reputation, just enough to prevent the lower classes making painful observations through the windows of the carriage. The fact is that our Society is terribly over-populated. Really, some one ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde

... never hesitated to acknowledge the fact with straightforward frankness. His judgments were sometimes hasty, but he was always willing to amend an opinion on just grounds. There was a good deal of dogged firmness in his character, but not a shred of stubbornness or obstinacy. He never yielded one inch of his ground when he believed himself to be in the right, but he was always amenable to reason, and he never refused to allow himself to be convinced, even though it may be that his natural sympathies were not on the side of those with ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill

... and precede the kiss-doomed to death. Could he yet fail to hunt that Thing past midnight, out of the womanly form alluring and treacherous, into lasting restraint of the bestial, which was the last shred of hope left from the ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman

... prejudices and feelings so strongly, that she was a living caricature of all his foibles. She would not open a modern quarterly, did not choose to see a magazine in her drawing-room, and would not have polluted her fingers with a shred of "The Times" for any consideration. She spoke of Addison, Swift, and Steele, as though they were still living, regarded De Foe as the best known novelist of his country, and thought of Fielding as a young but meritorious novice in the fields of romance. In poetry, she was familiar with then names ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... speak of as his "life;" secondly, that he had never known any one who knew a Haygarth; thirdly, that he was intimately acquainted with every creature in the village, and that he knew that no one of the inhabitants could give me the smallest shred of such information ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... sxultro. Shoulder-blade skapolo. Shout kriegi. Shove pusxi. Shovel sxoveli. Shovel sxovelilo. Show montri. Show parado. Show in enigi. Show goods elmeti. Shower pluveto. Shower-bath pluvbano. Showy luksa. Shred peco, dispeco. Shrewd sagaca. Shrewdness sagaceco. Shriek kriegi. Shriek (of the wind) mugxi. Shrill sibla. Shrink malpliigxi. Shrivel up sulkigxi. Shrimp markankreto. Shroud mortkitelo. Shroud kasxi, protekti. Shrub arbeto. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... write and was pleased with for the instant, was, from the natural carelessness of his disposition, hastily cast aside, and, no doubt, often burnt with the waste paper of his chambers; so that every endeavour I have made to possess even a shred of these scraps, has been futile. All I have been able to gather are the few letters alluded to, with a few poetical lines which will be given to the reader; and, as we often judge of character from trifles, he must, from the slight ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper

... disappeared, and, walking to the place, saw not a trace of the butchery save the trampled ground and a small heap of undigested grass. Mr. Worcester had told me before that I should find this to be the case; not a shred of hoof, hide, or ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... reason correctly. Just think! Pavel was, and there were books and there were papers; Pavel is not, and no books and no papers! Ergo, it was Pavel who distributed these books! Aha! Then they'll begin to eat them all alive. Those gendarmes dearly love so to unman a man that what remains of him is only a shred of himself, and a ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... burst out Louis, in a frenzy. 'Because Jem Frost was in love with her himself, he fancied every one else must be the same, and now he will be married to her before Christmas, so that's disposed of. As to my feeling for her a particle, a shred of what I do for Mary, it was a mere fiction—a romance, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the husband? Chillon scorned him. Yet Chillon left the decision to her, specified his excuses. And Henrietta and Owain, Lady Arpington, Gower Woodseer, all the world—Carinthia shuddered at the world's blank eye on what it directs for the acquiescence of the woman. That shred of herself she would become, she felt herself becoming it when the view of her career beside her brother waned. The dead Rebecca living in her heart was the only soul among her friends whose voice was her own ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... successful. It carried the entire audience, and left in that region hardly a shred of the greenback theory. When the election took place it was observed that in those districts where Conkling and Garfield had spoken, the greenback heresy was annihilated, while in other districts which had been counted ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... quite possible that a man with a fractured skull could run some distance before he fell to die. The rector's story bore the stamp of truth, although the doubt WILL come that he desired thus to save a shred of honor for ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... Mr. Plimpton agreed, as though he had gained some shred of comfort from this thought. "I guess you're in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... shred pies of the best, Pig, veal, goose, and capon, and turkey well dressed; Cheese, apples, and nuts, jolly carols to hear, As then in the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... them, however, his white-skinned foe had wheeled and pounced upon him, and in the act there dropped from the shoulders of the English lord the last shred of his superficial ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... him, wisely forsook it for the honorable function of a parish clerk, which he considered as an office appertaining in some wise to ecclesiastical dignity; since by wearing a band, no small part of the ornament of the Protestant clergy, he thought he might not unworthily be deemed, as it were, "a shred of the linen vestment of Aaron." Nor was Roger one of those worthy parish clerks who could be accused of merely humming the psalms through the nostrils as a sack-butt, but much oftener instructed and amused his fellow-parishioners with the amorous ditties of the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... his golden hair, One ringlet gently shred; And then, within a costly shroud, She wrapped her ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... of you!" he said. "Do you understand what you've done? You've killed the last shred of self-respect in me! Do you think I'd take anything at your hands? I never cared for anybody in the world except my mother. If what your lawyers tell me is true—" His voice choked; he stood swaying a moment, face covered by ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... then, heavy with the warmth of the long summer, from the topmost pine-belt to the bronzed vineyards turning their metallic clusters to the sun; and in the midst his small bewildered figure, netted in a web of association, and seeming, as he broke away, to leave a shred of himself in ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... — [sitting down beside her and beginning to shred rushes she gives him.] — If I didn't talk I'd be destroyed in a short while listening to the clack you do be making, for you've a queer cracked voice, the Lord have mercy on you, if it's fine to look on you ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge

... of Jesus has of late exercised the minds of theologians. It is not surprising that some of them should reject the notion, for it is one without a shred of evidence in its favor. Setting aside the well-known fact that many other religions assume a similar origin for their founders, we may note the New Testament accounts are in such hopeless conflict with each other ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... hands and arms, and, leaving her shoes where Steenie's had lain, darted out of the cave. At the mouth of it she rose erect like one escaped from the tomb, and sped in dim-gleaming whiteness over the snow, scarce to have been seen against it. The moon was but a shred—a withered autumn leaf low fallen toward the dim plain of the west. As she ran she would have seemed to one of Steenie's angels, out that night on the hill, a newly disembodied ghost fleeing home. Swift and shadowless as the thought of her own brave heart, she ran. Her sense of power and speed was ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... high degree] greatly &c adj.; much, muckle^, well, indeed, very, very much, a deal, no end of, most, not a little; pretty, pretty well; enough, in a great measure, richly; to a large extent, to a great extent, to a gigantic extent; on a large scale; so; never so, ever so; ever so dole; scrap, shred, tag, splinter, rag, much; by wholesale; mighty, powerfully; with a witness, ultra [Lat.], in the extreme, extremely, exceedingly, intensely, exquisitely, acutely, indefinitely, immeasurably; beyond compare, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... with it as its necessary sequel the success of similar bills for Scotland and Ireland. In Scotland electoral abuses were so gross that reform was comparatively simple, and that proposed, as Jeffrey, the lord advocate, frankly said, "left not a shred of the former system". The nation, as a whole, gained eight members, since its total representation was raised from forty-five to fifty-three seats, thirty for counties and twenty-three for cities and burghs. Two members ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... but a certain number of statements have been modified, corrected, or suppressed. The study of our surnames has been mostly left to the amateur philologist, and many origins given by my predecessors as ascertained facts turn out, on investigation, to be unsupported by a shred of evidence. I cannot hope that this little book in its new form is free from error, but I feel that it has benefited by the years I have spent in research since its original publication. I would ask reader to accept it, not as a comprehensive ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... sitting down, and talking calmly.) Let us talk this over quietly. You have no shred of right of any sort to those documents. They are mine. They were stolen by a sneak thief from my private files. Only this morning—a few minutes ago—did I get them back. They are mine, I tell you. They belong to ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London

... the pieces were each about two inches long and two each about four inches long. In each of the shorter ones he made one slight gash and in each of the longer ones two gashes. The sticks were then painted, a shred of yucca leaf being used for the brush, with rings of black, red, and white, disposed in a different order on each stick. The two cigarettes were made by filling sections of some hollow stem with a mixture of some pulverized ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews

... all over my neck, Necktie and bosom and wristbands a wreck, Handkerchief dripping and worn to a shred Mopping and scouring my face and my head; Simply ablaze from my head to my feet, Back all afire with the prickles of heat,— Not on my cuticle one easy spot,— Jiminy Moses! ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln

... land breeze was blowing, and the ship had been worked through the harbor's mouth under scant sail, but now that they had cleared the point every available shred of canvas was being spread that she might stand out to sea ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... demand—"Unconditional Surrender." Anything less than this is treachery. The truth of the Lord Jesus, which cost His blood in its purchase and the blood of martyrs in its defence, should be maintained to the very last shred, with the tenacity of unconquerable faith. Unfaithfulness in the least degree may result in greatest disaster. Once a ship was cast upon the rocks, and the lives of the passengers were jeopardized simply because ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... morning. We see it in every deep spiritual life. Every true life is death-born, and the deeper the dying the truer the living. We doubt not the months that have been passing have shown us all many a place where there ought to be a grave, and many a lingering shred of the natural and sinful which we would gladly lay down in a bottomless grave. God help us to pass the irrevocable sentence of death and to let the Holy Ghost, the great undertaker, make the interment ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... the reason that the owners could not, or at least did not, increase or diminish the production at will.[2] It has been said by various anti-slavery spokesmen that many slaveowners systematically bred slaves for the market. They have adduced no shred of supporting evidence however; and although the present writer has long been alert for such data he has found but a single concrete item in the premises. This one came, curiously enough, from colonial Massachusetts, where John Josslyn ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... moment the native drew back, and Jack jumped to cover as he saw a dark object come whirling through the rift and fall straight into the cave. But the thing flung in was harmless enough in appearance, a mere bundle of dried grass bound loosely with a shred of creeper. Then, thick and fast, bundle after bundle was hurled into the cave, dried reeds, more grass, big loose splinters of pine, fat with resin, withered ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore

... the Lord of Drummond, who collected the customs of the fairs of Crieff and Foulis. These customs amounted, in 1734, to nearly L600 Scots. The Lochaber axes carried by the guardians of the peace may still be seen in the armoury at Drummond Castle. This last shred of baronial supervision—the ghost of the ancient Stewardship—disappeared in 1831. But perhaps the most interesting memorial of the Crieff Michaelmas Tryst is a poem written by one of the Highland ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... Her eyes were wide at this minute, all black, and not a shred of colour was left in ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... showing no sign either of pleasure or the contrary. There was no time lost in settling the cripples in their new quarters, so superior in all respects to any they had ever enjoyed before. There was nothing to be moved from those they had occupied with their father and mother; not a splinter, not a shred, beyond the clothes they had on and those kept at Mrs. Petersen's, was left to them; indeed, had there been, we never should have allowed them to claim it, nor would Mrs. Petersen have allowed it to come into ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... got the poor fellow up in his arms. It seemed a sheer impossibility for him to get back under cover alive, hampered as he was by the wounded man, who—as you know—is a much bigger fellow than himself. I gave up every shred of hope as I watched, and one or two of the sowars near me broke down and cried like children. But if ever I beheld a miracle it was during those few astounding minutes—the worst I've ever known. His clothes were riddled with bullets; two of ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... conditions, until it disappears. Explain how hard it is to know whether a sin be venial or mortal, and how many chances there are against its being in any strict sense a sin at all. Do not leave folk to their own blunt sense of right and wrong, but let them admire the finer edge of your scalpel, while you shred up evil into morsels they can hardly see. A ready way may thus be opened for the satisfaction of every human desire without falling into theological faults. The advantages are manifest. You will be able to absolve with a clear conscience. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... you like!" he said petulantly. "Pay for me, too, if you like—don't leave me a shred of self-respect. This all comes of giving women the vote. I saw it coming, but I couldn't help it! I like the old-fashioned ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... in an embarrassing position," said Tobermory, whose tone and attitude certainly did not suggest a shred of embarrassment. "When your inclusion in this house-party was suggested Sir Wilfrid protested that you were the most brainless woman of his acquaintance, and that there was a wide distinction between hospitality and the care of the feeble-minded. Lady Blemley replied ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... tribal fights or pagan mythology. These monks were capable men; they understood the appeal of pagan poetry, and their motto was, "Let nothing good be wasted." So they made careful copy of the scop's best songs (else had not a shred of early poetry survived), and so the pagan's respect for womanhood, his courage, his loyalty to a chief,—all his virtues were recognized and turned to religious account in the new literature. Even the beautiful pagan scrolls, or "dragon ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... recommends a "haggis made with blood, a good quantity of fat shred small, some of the tenderest of the flesh, together with the heart and lungs, cut or town into small skivers; all of which is put into the stomach, and roasted by being suspended before the fire with a string. Care must be taken that it does not get too much heat at first, or it will ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... as between friends for life! The first had been the laughing farewell of pleasant acquaintance. But now, ere she bade adieu to the gallant preserver of her life, she shred a tress of her silken hair, still wet with the waters of the Dyle, which she entreated him to keep for her sake. In return, he placed upon her finger the ruby presented to him by the Doge of Venice, bearing the arms of the republic engraved on the setting; telling her that chance had enabled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... let it have a Boil; then put it into your Jelly, but first measure your Jelly; put half the Syrup of the Oranges to a Pint of Juice, and the Outside of an Orange, boil'd in two or three Waters, and shred very fine; make them scalding hot together; then to a Pint of Jelly take a Pound and a Half of Sugar, boiling the Sugar to a Candy; then put in your Jelly, but not altogether; because if it all boil in the hot Sugar, it will not dry: As soon as it has done boiling, put in the rest; ...
— Mrs. Mary Eales's receipts. (1733) • Mary Eales

... the typical characters of vermin; unproductive activity combined with disproportionate destructiveness. Just as a rat will gnaw his way through a Holbein panel, or shred up the Vatican Codex to make a nest, so the professional criminal will melt down priceless medieval plate to sell in lumps for a few shillings. The analogy ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman

... close-fitting travelling-dress she looked unusually slim, almost boyish, and something about her attitude rather suggested a youthful knight, sword in hand, come with vengeance to the Transgressor. Yet, even in his shame and stunned perplexity, Hermon lost no shred ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... her, and sent down Iris, her messenger, that she might loose the soul that struggled to be free. For, seeing that she died not by nature, nor yet by the hand of man, but before her time and of her own madness, Queen Proserpine had not shred the ringlet from her head which she shreds from them that die. Wherefore Iris, flying down with dewy wings from heaven, with a thousand colors about her from the light of the sun, stood about her head and said, "I give thee to death, even as I am bidden, and loose thee from thy ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... OR MEAT PULP.—Take a rare piece of round or sirloin steak, cut the outer part away, scrape or shred with a blunt knife. Cutting the meat into small pieces is not satisfactory. One teaspoonful to one tablespoonful may be given well salted, to a child a year and a half old. It is best to begin with a small dose and work up to ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... Is there any shred or remnant of this deserted and discredited voluntary principle that is worth saving? There is not. It is the last disreputable relic of the extreme individualism of the Manchester School of the early nineteenth century, which taught a political theory that has been ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw

... interrupted by a cry from the girl. Without the slightest warning, she had lost the last shred of her self-control. She began to beat on the covering of her bed with clenched fists. He could see how her whole body moved ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.

... fell to making plans as mating birds build nests. Here a bit of straw and there a tuft of moss; here a feather, there a shred of wool—George would do this and George would do that; here the house would be and thus would they do in the house. Probabilities were ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... he found that he was walking down the tenth-floor corridor a subservient foot behind her; was in the sitting room while she disappeared to shed her furs. Something had gone wrong—in his own eyes he had lost a shred of dignity; in an unpremeditated yet significant encounter he had ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... perspiration is welling from every pore in man and beast, but scarcely a sign of it finds its way to the surface—it is absorbed before it gets there; there is not the faintest breath of air stirring; there is not a merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; there is not a living creature visible in any direction whither one searches the blank level that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there is not a sound, not a sigh, not a whisper, not ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... down the ridge, slipping and checking short as the loose stones slithered beneath his feet. At the bottom of the hollow Corliss reined up and shouted. The wind whipped his call to a thin shred of sound that was swept away in the roar of the storm. Again he shouted. As though in answer there came a burning flash of blue. The dripping trees surrounding the hollow jumped into view to be ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... the heart of Africa say some years ago that he used to live among the savage tribes of the far interior. They were people of the lowest type. They wore no shred of clothing. But in their wild and barbarous religious dances they would swing round and round till they frothed at the mouth and fell down rigid. It was their way, said the missionary, of asking the supreme question: "What must I ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... that many of those who are interested in the question have not taken the trouble to read what he said. The speech of 1828 is by no means equal in any way to its predecessors in the same field. It is brief and simple to the last degree. It has not a shred of constitutional argument, nor does it enter at all into a discussion of general principles. It makes but one point, and treats that point with great force as the only one to be made under the circumstances, and thereby presents ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... what was impending all about him. Aft, where he stood, the deck was almost deserted. Amidships and for'ard, gamming with the boat's crew, the deck was crowded with blacks of both sexes. He made his way to the yam sacks lashed abaft the mizzenmast and got his bottle. Just before he drank, with a shred of caution, he cast a glance behind him. Near him stood a harmless Mary, middle-aged, fat, squat, asymmetrical, unlovely, a sucking child of two years astride her hip and taking nourishment. Surely no harm was to be apprehended there. Furthermore, she was patently a weaponless Mary, for ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... execrations. The canvas itself was pulled hither and thither by the opposing gangs, each striving to retain possession of it. Bit by bit the banner was torn to pieces, the men fighting savagely for even the smallest shred of it, each man pocketing his piece as a trophy, till at length there was nothing of the ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead

... years, and I think in some instances beyond this age, go in a state of disgusting nudity. I have often seen them with their tow shirt (their only article of summer clothing) which, to all human appearance, had not been taken off from the time it was first put on, worn off from the bottom upwards shred by shred, until nothing remained but the straps which passed over their shoulders, and the less exposed portions extending a very little way below the arms, leaving the principal part of the chest, as well as the limbs, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... poor lawyer saved," muttered the old man, taking down his overcoat from a peg behind the door, and snapping off a shred of lint on the collar with his lean forefinger. Then his face relaxed, and an odd grin diffused a kind of wintry glow ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... faculty of general ideas—the orthos logos, or right reason, as the supreme power and the guiding light of humanity. This active principle is of divine origin, "a part or shred ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... chamber tenantless, a steed at rest, His host alarmed, his murmuring squires distressed: Their search extends along, around the path, In dread to meet the marks of prowlers' wrath: But none are there, and not a brake hath borne Nor gout of blood, nor shred of mantle torn; Nor fall nor struggle hath defaced the grass, Which still retains a mark where Murder was; Nor dabbling fingers left to tell the tale, 760 The bitter print of each convulsive nail, When agonised hands that cease to guard, Wound in that pang the smoothness of the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... think things are hopeless, Captain?" he asked curiously. "I don't see the shred of a chance for us. But my whole life's been in the fleet. Under Mekin I'd be drafted to work in a factory or serve as an under-officer on a guard-ship, one or the other! I'd rather end in a good fight. How can you ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... an ingenuity which amazed his companions. He took the tone of a man who is strongly attracted, and yet has one single remaining shred of doubt to hold him back. Yet as that one shred was torn away by the Moolah, there was always some other stubborn little point which prevented his absolute acceptance of the faith of Islam. And his questions were ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle

... were however seized and carefully scrutinised by his personal enemies; and, had they found any evidence to substantiate the charges brought against him, it would have been published to the world. It is clear that not a shred of such evidence was discovered, and that the Advocate was perfectly innocent of the treasonable conduct for which a packed court condemned him to suffer death. Such was the reward that Oldenbarneveldt received for life-long services of priceless value to his country. He more than any other ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... when he himself was attacked. His friends and lawyers have sometimes been aroused and sometimes indignant with his habitual caring for others, and his habit of vindicating and extending even to his enemies every scrap and shred of justice that might belong to them. From first to last of this trial, he has never for a day intermitted his regular work. Preaching to crowded houses, preaching even in his short vacations at watering places, carrying on his missions which have regenerated ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... consideration to be unbroken. In this contrast, of the exaltation of the hero and the patriot with the degradation of the man, lie the tragedy and the misery of Nelson's story. And this, too, was incurred on behalf of a woman whose reputation and conduct were such that no shred of dignity could attach to an infatuation as doting as it was blamable. The pitiful inadequacy of the temptation to the ruin it caused invests with a kind of prophecy the words he had written to his betrothed in the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... with men and things, in which I have unceasingly poured out my strength and energy, and so constantly worn the springs of desire, has, so to speak, undermined my vitality. With all the appearance of a strong man of good health, I feel myself a wreck. Every day carries with it a shred of my inmost life. At every fresh effort I feel that I should never be able to begin again. I have no power, no vigor left but for happiness; and if it should never come to crown my head with roses, the ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac

... to her feet. She shook her finger in his face. "Nice! Haven't you any shred of courage in your great, hulking body? I don't believe you'll even face blank cartridges like a man—I believe you'll scream and blubber and be a shame to us all. You disgust me!" She spat on the floor. "Here I come to tell you that you are to ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... recall from the wreck of years; and certainly it is not much. Even of Sappho, though time has made mere ducks and drakes of her lyrics, we have rather more spared to us than this. And yet this trifle, simple as you think it, this shred of a fragment, if the reader will believe me, still echoes with luxurious sweetness in my ears, from some unaccountable hide-and- seek of fugitive childish memories; just as a marine shell, if applied steadily to the ear, awakens (according to the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... the four carried him to the top of the steps and then down into the courtyard, where a Dutch surgeon took charge of him. His shoulder had been struck by the ball, and the arm hung only by a shred of flesh. The surgeon ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... came by boat to Crowland all Torfrida's wealth: clothes, jewels: not a shred had Hereward kept. The magic ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... the sons of Nu'uman, * Braves whose blades shred heads of the foeman-clan![FN97] A tribe who, when tried in the tussle of war, * Taketh prowess stand in the battle-van: In their tents safe close gaberlunzie's eyne, * Nor his poverty's ugly features scan: And I for their aidance ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... authenticated. Three pictures alone have never been called in question by contending critics; outside this inner ring is more or less debatable ground, and on this wider arena the battle has raged until scarcely a shred of the painter's work has emerged unscathed. The result has been to reduce the figure of Giorgione to a shadowy myth, whose very existence, at the present rate at which negative criticism progresses, will assuredly be called ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... with his heart heavier and heavier, he had a presentiment that he was on the point of discovering a new misfortune. The footprints passed steadily under the branches along the side of the Neva. From a bush he picked a shred of white cloth, and it seemed to him a veritable battle had taken place there. Torn branches strewed the grass. He went on. Very close to the bank he saw by examination of the soil, where there was no more trace of tiny heels and little soles, that the woman who had been found there was carried, ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux

... to lay the cloth on the gate-legged oak table in the parlour and to set it out with bread and butter and the end of a tinned tongue and a couple of bottles of stout. After which they went back to the little kitchen, where in a kind of giggling awe she watched him shred the bacon and break the eggs with his thin, skilful fingers and perform his magic with the frying-pan and turn out the great golden creation into ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... afterwards to quench his light; but through them, beyond them, above them, slowly, steadily, majestically rose the sun, nor quivered from his path, nor halted in his progress, until by the power of his mid-day light he had utterly driven those clouds away, so that not a shred of their tumultuous assemblage could any more be seen on the clear blue sky. Such and so impotent in Christ's hands are the adversaries of Christ's kingdom, although they seem formidable to men of little faith: such and so glorious will be the final ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... laughed he in the morning red!— For of what had the robbers robbed him?— Ho! hidden safe, as he slept in bed, When the robbers came to rob him,— They robbed him not of a golden shred Of the childish dreams in his wise old head— "And they're welcome to all things else," he said, When the robbers came ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley

... caused by the stinging of a Flea, a Gnat, a Flie, a Wasp, and the like, proceeds much from the very same cause, I elsewhere in their proper places endeavour to manifest. The stinging also of shred Hors-hair, which in meriment is often strew'd between the sheets of a Bed, seems to proceed from the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... The silly countryman who, seeing an ape in a scarlet coat, blessed his young worship, and gave his landlord joy of the hopes of his house, did not slander his compliment with worse application than he that names this shred an historian. To call him an Historian is to knight a Mandrake; 'tis to view him through a perspective, and, by that gross hyperbole, to give the reputation of an engineer to a maker of mousetraps. When these weekly ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... discontinued the manoeuvres and returned to its garrison'.[98] Will it be believed that, except for the assertion 'of rapidly progressing preparations of France, both on water and on land',[99] this is the only shred of evidence that the Germans have produced to prove the aggressive intentions of France? And it may be worth while to point out that on July 29, when the German White Book says that Berlin heard of the ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History

... she had been to him when he wanted to take her himself to Italy. But this arrangement, as it happened, was ever so much better, though not through any merit of hers. She talked and laughed gaily, not a shred of fear of him left in her, and even when she said, struck by his spotlessness, that he looked so clean that one could eat one's dinner off him, and Scrap laughed, Mellersh laughed too. He would have minded that at home, ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... It would be of no use to reply. Shrews are tamed only by silence. Anderson had long since learned that the little shred of influence which remained to him in his own house would disappear whenever his teeth were no longer able to shut his tongue securely in. So now, when his wife poured out this hot lava of argumentum ad hominem, he closed the teeth down in a dead-lock ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston

... useless document on the fire. When Marie came back in the evening, she settled herself in front of the fire to dry herself, and to revive it for the room's twilight; and the letter, which had been only in part consumed, took fire again. And suddenly there gleamed in the night a shred of paper with a shred of my writing—"I love you as much as you ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... And Leclere, with fiendish ken, seemed to divine each particular nerve and heartstring, and with long wails and tremblings and sobbing minors to make it yield up its last shred of grief. It was frightful, and for twenty-four hours after, Batard was nervous and unstrung, starting at common sounds, tripping over his own shadow, but, withal, vicious and masterful with his team-mates. Nor did he show signs of a breaking spirit. Rather did he grow more grim ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... amazing than its greenness. The unsullied freshness of a new creation seemed to lie on it all day long. It was a world which suggested no past and boded no future. Its transparent air, in which there was not a shred of atmosphere, its high lights, and long shadows, and restful, clambering woods, and singing birds, and sweet, strong winds were like those of some perpetual, paradisical present, with no story to tell, and none that would ever be enacted. It ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King

... dusk their hands met over the scabbard, and as she freed herself a shred of her lace flounce clung to Tony's enchanted fingers. Looking after her, he saw she was on the arm of a pompous-looking graybeard in a long black gown and scarlet stockings, who, on perceiving the exchange of glances between ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... Finely shred one-fourth of a small firm cabbage. Let stand two hours in salted cold water, allowing one tablespoon of salt to a pint of water. Cook slowly thirty minutes one-fourth cup, each, vinegar and cold water, with a bit of bay leaf, one-fourth teaspoon peppercorns, one-eighth teaspoon ...
— The Starvation Treatment of Diabetes • Lewis Webb Hill

... prophesied very different things. He said in the "preface" that he bore the Gypsies no ill-will, for he had known them "for upwards of twenty years, in various countries, and they never injured a hair of his head, or deprived him of a shred of his raiment." The motive for this forbearance, he said, was that they thought him a Gypsy. In his "introduction" he satisfied some curiosity, but raised still more, when speaking of the English Gypsies and especially of their eminence "in those disgraceful ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... and I defy and challenge the devil together with all his minions to refute it. For I am certain that it is the immutable truth of God." (St. L. 20, 1081.) Despite numerous endeavors, down to the present day, not a shred of convincing evidence has been produced showing that Luther ever wavered in this position, or changed his doctrine ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... to an extraordinary degree of perfection. He knew how to beat out the faintest shred of an idea into an illimitable surface of small-talk. He never took refuge in the weather. He left that to bunglers and beginners. His resources were of a different character, and were so skillfully managed that he never failed to leave a very agreeable impression. Small-talk! ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... to the Eastgate, in order to put Gabriel unawares into the witness-box. Yet, for all these doings and suspicions Cargrim had no very good reason, save his own desire to get Dr Pendle under his thumb. He was groping in the dark, he had not a shred of evidence to suppose that the uneasiness of the bishop was connected with anything criminal; nevertheless, the chaplain put himself so far out of his usual habits as to venture into the unsavoury neighbourhood wherein stood The Derby Winner. Truly this man's cobweb spinning ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... pineapple or aloe, there are many varieties, of which some are highly fragrant, particularly the pandan wangi (Pandanus odoratissima, L.), which produces a brownish white spath or blossom, one or two feet in length. This the natives shred fine and wear about their persons. The pandan pudak, or keura of Thunberg, which is also fragrant, I have reason to believe the same as the wangi. The common sort is employed for hedging and called caldera by Europeans in many ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... when the preliminaries were signed, France made a secret agreement with Spain, by which she divested herself of the last shred of her possessions on the North American continent. As compensation for Florida, which her luckless ally had lost in her quarrel, she made over to the Spanish Crown the city of New Orleans, and under the name of Louisiana gave her the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... clear good fire that will not want stirring or altering, baste with butter, dust on flour, baste with the dripping, and before you take it up, add more butter and sprinkle on a little salt and parsley shred fine; send to table with a nice sallad, green peas, fresh beans, or ...
— American Cookery - The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables • Amelia Simmons

... hour, now, Kano had delighted in the morning-glories. At intervals he strolled about the garden to touch separately, as if in greeting, each beloved plant. Except for the deepening fervor of the sun he would have kept no note of time. The last shred of mist had vanished. Crows and sparrows were busy with breakfast for ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa

... cried Don Guillermo, as the girls dropped down the companion-way, "for thou hast more now than thou canst wear in five years. God of my soul! if a bark came every day they would want every shred on board. My daughter could tapestry the old house ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... chased her and her husband from pillar to post, robbing them, swindling them, betraying them until there was no place on the face of the earth they could call their own, no, not even a stick nor a shred. The devil was good to him—sure he always is good to his own. Money came to him by the waggon-load, and ever did he use it to hound those two unfortunates down, lower and lower until there was no hope nor peace for them, and they wandered ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott

... which the warning had been written was found by the English when he was the only Italian on the height, lying thereto observe and note things in the service of Barto Rizzo. The writing was English, but when one of the English ladies—"who wore her hair like a planed shred of wood; like a torn vine; like a kite with two tails; like Luxury at the Banquet, ready to tumble over marble shoulders" (an illustration drawn probably from Luigi's study of some allegorical picture,—he was at a loss to describe the foreign female head-dress)—when ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... her eyes wandered from him and his canvas to the evening tinted clouds already edged with deeper gold. Through the sheet of glass above she saw a shred of white fleece in mid-heaven turn ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... Vestal yet," Brinnaria retorted, "and that was my answer to those questions. If you don't like it I don't care a shred of bran." ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... full of all sorts of whimsical ideas; all the life she knew surged up in her little brain and escaped from it in fragments. Morning and afternoon she thus moved about, dancing and chattering; and when she grew tired, a footstool or parasol discovered in a corner, or some shred of stuff lying on the floor, would suffice to launch her into a new game in which her effervescing imagination found fresh outlet. Persons, places, and incidents were all of her own creation, and she amused herself as ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... one of the great surging waves that sometimes filled the basin. It gave a terrible lurch to the stranded vessel hitherto so erect; the larger rope snapped instantly; the guiding rope was twitched from the hands that held it; and the canvas that held Emilia was caught and swept away like a shred of foam, and lost amid the whiteness of the seething froth below. Fifteen minutes after, the hammock came ashore ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson



Words linked to "Shred" :   tear, small indefinite amount, bust, snap, rupture, piece of cloth, small indefinite quantity, smidgin, piece of material, pine-tar rag, tease



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