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More "Shrink back" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I'm ashamed—my abominable temper. We are friends. You were right, too. We talk here in Russia too much, far too much, and when the moment comes for action we shrink back. We see too far perhaps. Who knows? But you were right and I am a fool. You've taught me a lesson by your nobility. Thank you, Nicholas. And all of you—I apologise ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... not go! You cast me off forever!" he exclaimed, starting up with a fierce gesture and an expression of the eye that made her shrink back. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... the gift or the courage to deal faithfully yet lovingly with an erring soul, but she did not shrink back even from this service to those she loved. I can bear witness to the wisdom, penetration, skill, and fidelity with which she probed a terribly wounded spirit, and then said with tender solemnity, "I think you need a great deal ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... to alter the mourning customs of our time. We may anxiously desire to do so, but the usual question will occur—"What will people say?" "What will the world say?" We involuntarily shrink back, and play the coward like our neighbours. Still, common sense, repeatedly expressed, will have its influence; and, in course of time, it cannot fail to modify the fashions of society The last act of Queen Adelaide, by which she dispensed with the hired mummery ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... alarmed at the gravity of the task which she had chosen to confront. It had been easy to have energy for Claude in London. She feared it would be less easy to have energy for herself in Mustapha. But she resolved not to shrink back now. Rather vaguely she imagined that through theosophy lay the path to serenity and patience. Just now—indeed, for a long time to come, she needed, would need above all things, patience. In calm ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... AMADEUS (seems to shrink back again; then he walks to and fro; finally he remains standing in the background, near one of ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... cried Roger, at last, as they ran into the immense train shed. Here all was bustle and seeming confusion, and they picked their way through the crowd with difficulty. The boys rather enjoyed this, but it made Laura and Jessie shrink back. ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... but to love Him back again, and bring Him your hearts. These dark thoughts are like the frost which binds the ground in iron fetters, making all the little flowers that were beginning to push their heads into the light shrink back again. And love, when it comes, will come like the west wind and the sunshine of the Spring; and before its emancipating fingers the earth's fetters will be cast aside, and the white snowdrops and the yellow crocuses will show themselves above the ground. If you want your ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... to be an intimacy. For Fitzjocelyn's sake, as well as for the real good-nature of the advances, Mrs. Ponsonby would not shrink back more than befitted her self-respect. Of that quality she had less than Mrs. Frost, who, with her innate punctilious spirit, avoided all favours or patronage. It was curious to see the gentle old lady fire up with all the dignity of the Pendragons, at the least peril of incurring ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her cousins were watching her, and this prevented her from ever meeting him in thorough comfort at Mr. Lyddell's; and even when at Lord Marchmont's, her maidenly reserve had been so far awakened as to make her shrink back from the full freedom of their former intercourse. This, however, was more in her feeling than in her manners, which, if they differed at all from what they were formerly, only seemed to be what naturally arose ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of this inquiry it is inevitable that some brief account should be rendered of the past relations between England and Ireland. The reader need not shrink back in alarm; it is not proposed to lead him by the reluctant nose through the whole maze and morass of Irish history. The past is of value to political realists only in that residue of it which survives, namely, the wisdom which it ought to have taught ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... Swift's giant cannon been discharged somewhere in the vicinity of his home it could have caused but little more astonishment to Mr. Damon and Professor Bumper than did the simple announcement of the young inventor. The professor seemed to shrink back in his chair, collapsing like an automobile tire when the air is let out. As for Mr. Damon he jumped up ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... the civilization of England's metropolis condones. But the heart of the people does not condone them: and if a great voice does not say this, we shall wonder and be sorry. In the mean while let the parents and guardians of the young, and let the young themselves, shrink back from civilization as a guide to their way and as a power for keeping them safe, in the place of the ...
— Is The Young Man Absalom Safe? • David Wright
... can see them at intervals through the winter. They are wise little things, and swell and then shrink back in ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... 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 ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... dark! You know what I mean. Don't live as I have, believing nothing. No matter what your creed may be, hold fast, have firm faith in it. It is because I believe in nothing that I am so clouded now. Oh, it is such a dark, dark, lonely way! If I had a friend to go with me I should not shrink back; but oh, Beulah, I am so solitary! It seems to me I am going out into a great starless midnight." She shivered, and her cold fingers ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... of devilish hatred that marks the foiled maniac. The girl started to separate the two men, but it was unnecessary; she saw the murder fade from her companion's face before the calm untroubled gaze of the other. She saw his strained body relax, she saw his fists unclench, and she saw him shrink back to her side trembling in fright. The demon in him had been quelled by the unflinching ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... possible of the fate of these criminals. The public punishment of an assassin who failed to strike me, only instigates ten others to try if they cannot hit me better. But the noiseless disappearance of a culprit fills their cowardly souls with horror and dismay, and the ten men shrink back from the intended deed, merely because they do not know in what manner their eleventh accomplice has expiated his crime. The disappearance of prisoners, the oubliettes, are just what is needed. You must quietly remove your enemies and adversaries—it ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... hiss like that of an angry snake, the flames seemed to shrink back at the touch of the elements to which they were opposed. The fan of fire, shooting from the windows, appeared to die ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... way to avoid growing old is not to be afraid of getting along in years. To come down to "hard pan"—whence originates this unwholesome dread of ripeness and maturity? It surely is not a fear of death that makes us blanch and shrink back at the oft-recurring mile-stones in the journey of life that brings all of us nearer the goal towards which ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... approach, I shall no longer see you skim away into the far vista of these alleys, or shrink back into the shadows ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... Ruby, drawing himself up with a look of defiance and a laugh of contempt, that caused the two men to shrink back ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... course first be warmed.) With the end of the hissing flame, as in the first method, the globule of glass is melted and the end of the tail softened. The wire is now pushed into place, the handle removed by heating the end and withdrawing it, and the tail reheated a little if necessary to make it shrink back into line with the walls of the tube. The whole circumference of the tube is heated at that point and ...
— Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing • Francis C. Frary
... of Fauns 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 ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... guided Craig only a few steps past the place of worship, now a silent vault of impenetrable blackness when, turning a corner, the American felt her shrink back. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... 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 which he ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Bacchium!" exclaimed Mr. Murray, with a short, mirthless laugh that made his companion shrink back a few steps. ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... swarthy-looking Spanish peasant-lad who suddenly appeared to block the doorway, a fierce look of savage triumph in his eyes, as he planted his hands upon his hips and burst out into an angry tirade which made the girl shrink back against the wall. ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... heart Nietzsche was much more of a mediaeval saint than a predatory "higher man," but the natural human instinct of any sane and sun-loving pagan may well shrink back dismayed from any contact with this savage "will to power," which, while destroying the quiet cloistered gardens of monastic seclusion, hurls us into the path of these new tyrants. The less rigorous "religious orders" of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... thyself with the infinite creatures which revolve and live and disappear with thee. But if this All, with its smallest and its greatest, with its wisdom and its power, with the wonders of its existence, and the existence of its wonders, is the work of a Being in whose presence thy soul does not shrink back, before whom thou fallest prostrate in a feeling of weakness and nothingness, and to whom thou risest again in the feeling of His love and mercy—if thou really feelest that something dwells in thee more endless and eternal than the cells of the flowers, the spheres of the planets, and the ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... so reasonable that Hubertine immediately handed her the cup she herself held. Whilst she cut two large slices of bread and buttered them, the child, still mistrustful, continued to shrink back; but her hunger was too great, and soon she ate and drank ravenously. That there need not be a restraint upon her, the husband and wife were silent, and were touched to tears on seeing her little hand tremble to such a degree that ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... presently a small round 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. By this time about two feet of its body was visible, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... there is a truth at the bottom of the once current doctrines of catastrophism, still it remains certain that the history of the earth has been one of law in all past time, as it is now. Nor need we shrink back affrighted at the vastness of the conception—the vaster for its very vagueness—that we are thus compelled to form as to the duration of geological time. As we grope our way backward through the dark labyrinth of the ages, epoch succeeds to epoch, and period ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... suffering left him unmoved—he hanged the murderer Palatoff with his own hands. Yet in that operation someone saw him turn very pale and shrink back from his victim. Afterwards the reason was discovered. The condemned man had had the front of his rough shirt fastened with a safety-pin which had worked loose. The point had ripped a little gash in the inexperienced finger of ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... praise the graces, the virtues, and a champion utter appropriate speeches, whilst Superstition, a friar, and Ignorance, a priest, together with other malcontents, shrink back abashed before ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... at him carelessly. He was rather a good-looking man, he thought, with his closely-cropped gray hair and black moustache; but his scrutiny proceeded no further, for just then he caught sight of a familiar face and figure on the platform that made him shrink back into his corner, and wish that he, too, had a newspaper, behind which he could ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 'Christian' the first impulse of AEnone was to shrink back, not knowing but that even the presence of one who had ever come into contact with any of that despised sect might be injurious to her. For at once she began to recall many of the tales which she had heard to its discredit—its members hiding as outcasts in the caves and dens ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
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