"Handbreadth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... breast are almost bare. Wives of quality, on the other hand, have train-gowns four or five ells in length; which trains there are boys to carry. Brave Cleopatras, sailing in their silk-cloth Galley, with a Cupid for steersman! Consider their welts, a handbreadth thick, which waver round them by way of hem; the long flood of silver buttons, or rather silver shells, from throat to shoe, wherewith these same welt-gowns are buttoned. The maidens have bound silver snoods about their hair, with gold ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the lovely unfoldings of luminous Science, All that Logic can prove or disprove be avowed: Is there room for no faith — though such Evil intrude — In the dominance still of a Spirit of Good? Is there room for no hope — such a handbreadth we scan — In the permanence yet of the Spirit of Man? — May we bless the far seeker, nor blame the fine dreamer? Leave Reason her radiance — Doubt her due cloud; Nor their Rainbows ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... are they called saplings?" Rabbi Eleazar, the son of Azariah, said,(42) "till they can be used." R. Joshua said, "till the age of seven years." R. Akiba said, "a sapling, as commonly named." "A tree decays and sprouts afresh; when less than a handbreadth, it is a sapling; when more than a handbreadth, it is a tree." The words of ...
— Hebrew Literature
... table, with the bloody heads of the squire's former wives ranged upon it. The lady dropped the key in her horror, and on picking it up found it covered with blood-stains, which nothing could remove, while the door stood a handbreadth open, as if an invisible wedge had fallen between the ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... were told off to draw the veil (of the Temple) aside; for it is taught that Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel declared in the name of Rabbi Shimon the Sagan (or high priest's substitute), that the thickness of the veil was a handbreadth. It was woven of seventy-two cords, and each cord consisted of twenty-four strands. It was forty cubits long and twenty wide. Eighty-two myriads of damsels worked at it, and two such veils were made every year. When it became soiled, it took three hundred ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... magical wild ass' skin, which yields him the means of gratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration of the proprietor's life; and for every satisfied desire the skin shrinks in proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the last handbreadth of the peau de chagrin disappear with the ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... desires the deed, And of nought he recketh and thinketh, but a fame-stirred warrior's need; But Greyfell trembleth nothing and nought of the fire doth reck: Then the spurs in his flank are smitten, and the reins lie loose on his neck, And the sharp cry springeth from Gunnar—no handbreadth stirred the beast; The dusk drew on and over and the light of the fire increased, And still as a shard on the mountain in the sandy dale alone Was the shape of the cloudy Greyfell, nor moved he more than the stone; ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... personal being makes comparison fitting, what makes the true contrast? In what respect is man unlike God? In moral antagonism. What is the true likeness? Moral harmony. What separates men from their Father in heaven? Is it that His 'years are throughout all generations,' and 'my days are as an handbreadth'? Is it that His power is infinite, and mine all thwarted by other might and over tending to weakness and extinction? Is it that His wisdom, sunlike, waxes not nor wanes, and there is nothing hid from its beams, while my knowledge, like ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... splendid empire of Charles the Fifth was erected upon the grave of liberty. It is a consolation to those who have hope in humanity to watch, under the reign of his successor, the gradual but triumphant resurrection of the spirit over which the sepulchre had so long been sealed. From the handbreadth of territory called the province of Holland rises a power which wages eighty years' warfare with the most potent empire upon earth, and which, during the progress of the struggle, becoming itself a mighty state, and binding about its ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
